‘Such is the cross we bear!’ said Nicolas with a sigh. ‘Constantly searching for a needle in a haystack!’
*
The footlights had just been lit, and the three knocks interrupted their conversation. The evening’s play was Athalie by Racine. Knowing the work all too well, Nicolas soon found his attention wandering, the details of the actors’ performances proving more arresting than the plot. The newcomer certainly had an attractive countenance, although it was her partner, Lekain, playing the role of Abner to perfection, who impressed him more with his supreme skill: through some miracle of artifice, his prodigious ugliness disappeared and his stern, forbidding expression grew softer. Part of the audience, however, seemed to resent Mademoiselle Raucourt for taking a role in which Mademoiselle Dumesnil and La Clairon had won fame. For weeks now, Monsieur de Sartine’s spies had been reporting that a cabal had been organised by Mademoiselle Vestris. A member of the famous dynasty of dancers as well as of the Théâtre-Français, Mademoiselle Vestris was protected by the Duc de Choiseul, still in exile in Chanteloup since his disgrace, and by the Duc de Duras. These highly placed contacts were the basis of her self-importance and capacity to create trouble.
Suddenly, a cat was heard miaowing. Whether the cat belonged to the establishment or had been surreptitiously brought in, the effect of the animal’s cry was extraordinary: the actors stopped in astonishment, and the youngest members of the choir were swept up in a fit of laughter that spread to the audience. The laughter reached its height when a young man in the stalls cried out in a bright, nasal voice, ‘I wager that’s Mademoiselle Vestris’s cat.’
Hilarity swelled in the auditorium like a wave. Lekain imposed silence and was about to resume the performance when something else interrupted his flow. A man stood up in the stalls and leapt over the footlights on to the stage. There, shoving the actors who tried to drag him away, he declared that his name was Billard and that he had come to Paris to present a play of his own composition entitled The Seducer. This work, he said, had been praised by a number of men of taste but rejected by the ham actors in this theatre. The audience, amused by this second interlude, were listening so attentively that he was encouraged to continue.
He was so tired of being repeatedly rejected, he said, that he had decided to declare open war on the present company. He would denounce its bad taste, condemn its members to a thousand misfortunes, and pride himself on no longer having to depend on such judges. He appealed to the spectators in the stalls: he would read his play to them and, if they judged it worthy, that would force this unworthy assembly to accept it. When they tried to prevent him, he brandished his sword, which was soon torn from him by a French Guard. A confused mass of soldiers and theatre employees dragged him by force into the foyer.
The performance resumed immediately, in order to put an end to the commotion as quickly as possible, but a unanimous cry rose from the stalls, acclaiming the author. The clamour grew and the French Guards came back in force, arresting several spectators. There was an indescribable hullaballoo as members of the audience stood firm, and blows were exchanged.
Nicolas hurried out after Commissioner Chorrey, who had turned crimson and was puffing and blowing. They came out into the foyer to find the author standing on a chair, reading his play to the guards, who were highly amused. When the watch arrived, Chorrey ordered the officer to conduct the culprit to the mad-house at Charenton, pending further information. This sequence of events had been a great distraction to Nicolas’s wounded soul, chasing away the anger and resentment. There was no point in his staying any longer, he thought. He had seen and heard enough of Mademoiselle Raucourt. Certain rather unnatural vocal effects of hers seemed to him to spoil the charms of her appearance and the elegance of her acting. In fact, at moments, it became so rough, hoarse and excessive as to destroy the music of the verse. He took his leave of Chorrey, who made him promise to come to dinner as soon as possible at his little house in Rue Maquignonne, near the police pavilion at the horse market. Nicolas recalled having been present, a dozen years earlier, while still an apprentice in the profession, at the inauguration, by Monsieur de Sartine, of this elegant building. He recalled, too, that Chorrey had a solid fortune, which he had inherited from his father, a horse dealer.
The cold and damp of the night revived his anguish. Once again, as had so often happened in his youth, Nicolas found himself incapable of keeping his imagination in check. Left to itself, it would run wild, stubbornly heading down any path that presented itself, and he would be unable to rest until he had explored them all. It was a kind of mental itch, which he tried to dismiss, but in vain. The slightest upset or vexation, and it returned as strong as ever. If only he could take the middle way, see things in all their simplicity, and accept every fleeting moment of happiness for what it was! Monsieur de Noblecourt, being the honest man that he was, had promised him the cure: wisdom would come with age and the waning of the passions.
Nicolas forced himself to reflect coolly on the current situation. How absurd to make a drama out of a woman’s caprice! A woman on her own, separated from her lover most of the time because of his work, as coquettish as the rest of her sex, susceptible to the attentions of idle young men, and perhaps driven to make him jealous as the only means of gauging the strength of his feelings for her. And he had flown into a rage at the smallest provocation as if he were her lord and master, and had over-dramatised what should only have been a little quarrel intended to reinvigorate their love for each other. He decided to give Julie a surprise and return unexpectedly. No sooner had this idea come into his head than the desire to see her again took him over completely. He hailed a cab in Rue Saint-Honoré, and was driven across a frozen, deserted Paris as far as Rue de Verneuil. He added such a generous tip to the fare that the astonished coachman called him ‘Monseigneur’.
He looked up. The lights were still on in the windows of Madame de Lastérieux’s house, and he could see shadows dancing. His ardour cooled: he had imagined that the house would be empty and dark and his lover tired and ready for bed. But perhaps there was still hope. When he got to the first floor, however, and opened the door with his key, he heard loud laughter and the clinking of glasses. Disappointment overwhelmed him like nausea. How wrong he had been to think that the party had been cut short simply because he had left in a hurry!
Casimir appeared, carrying a tray. Nicolas retreated into a dark corner. When Casimir came back out of the servants’ pantry, his arms were laden with bottles. With an unaccustomed, but welcome, sense of pettiness, Nicolas remembered the bottle of old Tokay from Hungary he had acquired at no small cost from the Austrian ambassador’s butler: the fellow supplemented his wages by selling wine from his country that had been brought in in his master’s baggage, as well as supplying Monsieur de Sartine with interesting information. Julie loved that wine as an accompaniment to truffles, quail and pâté de foie gras in the manner of the Maréchal de Soubise. Nicolas decided to recover the bottle, which he had placed in the servants’ pantry that afternoon. Fortunately, it was still there: doubtless, the veil of dust and spiders’ webs that covered it and the dirty dishes piled around it had prevented it from being used during that evening’s banquet. He slipped it into the inside pocket of his cloak: he had made up his mind to go to Rue Montmartre after all, and there was no point in arriving there empty-handed. He turned, and there, leaning on the doorpost, his right hand on his hip, looking at him mockingly, was the young man who had been playing the pianoforte. Where the devil had he seen that face before? Nicolas walked out past him, shoving him slightly as he did so. Casimir watched in surprise as he raced down the stairs like a madman.
He wandered for a long time along the quais, in the darkness and the mud, accosted at times by whores with toothless mouths uttering obscenities and disgusting propositions. In one of them, excessively made up and with her nose missing, he thought he recognised old Émilie, a ghost from his past, who cut meat from the carcasses of horses in the knacker’s yard at Montfaucon to use in the soup she sold. The memory of the old woman cast him into a whirlpool of images and faces, amongst which the face of the young man in Rue de Verneuil kept coming back
