“Oh, what a setting for a love scene!”
I exclaimed.
She smiled.
“Is it not true? Is it not true? You
will see!”
And she made me sit down beside her.
“This is what makes one long for more life.
But you hardly think of these things, you men of to-day.
You are speculators, merchants and men of affairs.
“You no longer even know how to talk to us.
When I say ‘you,’ I mean young men in
general. Love has been turned into a liaison which
very often begins with an unpaid dressmaker’s
bill. If you think the bill is dearer than the
woman, you disappear; but if you hold the woman more
highly, you pay it. Nice morals—and
a nice kind of love!”
She took my hand.
“Look!”
I looked, astonished and delighted. Down there
at the end of the avenue, in the moonlight, were two
young people, with their arms around each other’s
waist. They were walking along, interlaced, charming,
with short, little steps, crossing the flakes of light;
which illuminated them momentarily, and then sinking
back into the shadow. The youth was dressed in
a suit of white satin, such as men wore in the eighteenth
century, and had on a hat with an ostrich plume.
The girl was arrayed in a gown with panniers, and
the high, powdered coiffure of the handsome dames of
the time of the Regency.
They stopped a hundred paces from us, and standing
in the middle of the avenue, they kissed each other
with graceful gestures.
Suddenly I recognized the two little servants.
Then one of those dreadful fits of laughter that convulse
you made me writhe in my chair. But I did not
laugh aloud. I resisted, convulsed and feeling
almost ill, as a man whose leg is cut off resists
the impulse to cry out.
As the young pair turned toward the farther end of
the avenue they again became delightful. They
went farther and farther away, finally disappearing
as a dream disappears. I no longer saw them.
The avenue seemed a sad place.
I took my leave at once, so as not to see them again,
for I guessed that this little play would last a long
time, awakening, as it did, a whole past of love and
of stage scenery; the artificial past, deceitful and
seductive, false but charming, which still stirred
the heart of this amorous old comedienne.
I set out to see Italy thoroughly on two occasions,
and each time I was stopped at the frontier and could
not get any further. So I do not know Italy,
said my friend, Charles Jouvent. And yet my two
attempts gave me a charming idea of the manners of
that beautiful country. Some time, however, I
must visit its cities, as well as the museums and works
of art with which it abounds. I will make another
attempt to penetrate into the interior, which I have
not yet succeeded in doing.
