第22章 FLORINE(3)

Suspicious as a spy,or a judge,or an old statesman,she was difficult to impose upon,and therefore the more able to see clearly into most matters.She knew the ways of managing tradespeople,and how to evade their snares,and she was quite as well versed in the prices of things as a public appraiser.To see her lying on her sofa,like a young bride,fresh and white,holding her part in her hand and learning it,you would have thought her a child of sixteen,ingenuous,ignorant,and weak,with no other artifice about her but her innocence.Let a creditor contrive to enter,and she was up like a startled fawn,and swearing a good round oath.

"Hey!my good fellow;your insolence is too dear an interest on the money I owe you,"she would say."I am sick of seeing you.Send the sheriff here;I'd prefer him to your silly face."Florine gave charming dinners,concerts,and well-attended soirees,where play ran high.Her female friends were all handsome;no old woman had ever appeared within her precincts.She was not jealous;in fact,she would have thought jealousy an admission of inferiority.She had known Coralie and La Torpille in their lifetimes,and now knew Tullia,Euphrasie,Aquilina,Madame du Val-Noble,Mariette,--those women who pass through Paris like gossamer through the atmosphere,without our knowing where they go nor whence they came;to-day queens,to-morrow slaves.She also knew the actresses,her rivals,and all the prima-donnas;in short,that whole exceptional feminine society,so kindly,so graceful in its easy "sans-souci,"which absorbs into its own Bohemian life all who allow themselves to be caught in the frantic whirl of its gay spirits,its eager abandonment,and its contemptuous indifference to the future.

Though this Bohemian life displayed itself in her house in tumultuous disorder,amid the laughter of artists of every deion,the queen of the revels had ten fingers on which she knew better how to count than any of her guests.In that house secret saturnalias of literature and art,politics and finance were carried on;there,desire reigned a sovereign;there,caprice and fancy were as sacred as honor and virtue to a bourgeoise;thither came Blondet,Finot,Etienne Lousteau,Vernou the feuilletonist,Couture,Bixiou,Rastignac in his earlier days,Claude Vignon the critic,Nucingen the banker,du Tillet,Conti the composer,--in short,that whole devil-may-care legion of selfish materialists of all kinds;friends of Florine and of the singers,actresses and "danseuses"collected about her.They all hated or liked one another according to circumstances.

This Bohemian resort,to which celebrity was the only ticket of admission,was a Hades of the mind,the galleys of the intellect.No one could enter there without having legally conquered fortune,done ten years of misery,strangled two or three passions,acquired some celebrity,either by books or waistcoats,by dramas or fine equipages;plots were hatched there,means of making fortune scrutinized,all things were discussed and weighed.But every man,on leaving it,resumed the livery of his own opinions;there he could,without compromising himself,criticise his own party,admit the knowledge and good play of his adversaries,formulate thoughts that no one admits thinking,--in short,say all,as if ready to do all.Paris is the only place in the world where such eclectic houses exist;where all tastes,all vices,all opinions are received under decent guise.Therefore it is not yet certain that Florine will remain to the end of her career a second-class actress.

Florine's life was by no means an idle one,or a life to be envied.

Many persons,misled by the magnificent pedestal that the stage gives to a woman,suppose her in the midst of a perpetual carnival.In the dark recesses of a porter's lodge,beneath the tiles of an attic roof,many a poor girl dreams,on returning from the theatre,of pearls and diamonds,gold-embroidered gowns and sumptuous girdles;she fancies herself adored,applauded,courted;but little she knows of that treadmill life,in which the actress is forced to rehearsals under pain of fines,to the reading of new pieces,to the constant study of new roles.At each representation Florine changes her dress at least two or three times;often she comes home exhausted and half-dead;but before she can rest,she must wash off with various cosmetics the white and the red she has applied,and clean all the powder from her hair,if she has played a part from the eighteenth century.She scarcely has time for food.When she plays,an actress can live no life of her own;she can neither dress,nor eat,nor talk.Florine often has no time to sup.On returning from a play,which lasts,in these days,till after midnight,she does not get to bed before two in the morning;but she must rise early to study her part,order her dresses,try them on,breakfast,read her love-letters,answer them,discuss with the leader of the "claque"the place for the plaudits,pay for the triumphs of the last month in solid cash,and bespeak those of the month ahead.In the days of Saint-Genest,the canonized comedian who fulfilled his duties in a pious manner and wore a hair shirt,we must suppose that an actor's life did not demand this incessant activity.Sometimes Florine,seized with a bourgeois desire to get out into the country and gather flowers,pretends to the manager that she is ill.