THE ASHES OF LOVE
On the Boulevard two names were heard from all lips:
“Emma Helsson” and “Montrose.”
The nearer one approached the Opera, the oftener he
heard those names repeated. Immense posters,
too, affixed to the Morris columns, announced them
in the eyes of passers, and in the evening air could
be felt the excitement of an approaching event.
That heavy monument called the National Academy of
Music, squatted under the black sky, exhibited to
the crowd before its doors the pompous, whitish facade
and marble colonnade of its balcony, illuminated like
a stage setting by invisible electric lights.
In the square the mounted Republican guards directed
the movement of the crowds, and the innumerable carriages
coming from all parts of Paris allowed glimpses of
creamy light stuff and fair faces behind their lowered
windows.
The coupes and landaus formed in line under the reserved
arcades, and stopped for a moment, and from them alighted
fashionable and other women, in their opera-cloaks,
trimmed with fur, feathers, and rare laces—precious
bodies, divinely set forth!
All the way along the celebrated stairway was a sort
of fairy flight, an uninterrupted mounting of ladies
dressed like queens, whose throats and ears scattered
flashing rays from their diamonds, and whose long trains
swept the stairs.
The theater was filling early, for no one wished to
lose a note of the two illustrious artists; and throughout
the vast amphitheater, under the dazzling electric
light from the great chandelier, a throng of people
were seating themselves amid an uproar of voices.
From the stage-box, already occupied by the Duchess,
Annette, the Count, the Marquis, Bertin and Musadieu,
one could see nothing but the wings, where men were
talking, running about, and shouting, machinists in
blouses, gentlemen in evening dress, actors in costume.
But behind the great curtain one heard the deep sound
of the crowd, one felt the presence of a mass of moving,
over-excited beings, whose agitation seemed to penetrate
the curtain, and to extend even to the decorations.
They were about to present Faust.
Musadieu was relating anecdotes about the first representatives
of this work at the Theatre Lyrique, of its half success
in the beginning followed by brilliant triumph, of
the original cast, and their manner of singing each
aria. Annette, half turned toward him, listened
with that eager, youthful curiosity with which she
regarded the whole world; and at times she cast a
tender glance at her fiance, who in a few days would
be her husband. She loved him, now, as innocent
hearts love; that is to say she loved in him all the
hopes she had for the future. The intoxication
of the first feasts of life, and the ardent longing
to be happy, made her tremble with joy and expectation.
And Olivier, who saw all, and knew all, who had sounded
all the depths of secret, helpless, and jealous love,
down in the furnace of human suffering, where the
heart seems to crackle like flesh over hot coals,
stood in the back of the box looking at them with eyes
that betrayed his torture.
