Page:Once a Week Volume 7.djvu/12

 4 the Parisian with the brutality of the London thief. At present he is a little too fond of pleasure to be very successful; but in time he may outgrow that; he is young, there is hope for him. He is clever, he has no heart; he would sell his mother for a chasse of Marasquin; his sister for a packet of cigarettes; his father—well, he did sell him—we owe him thanks for that—for twelve hundred francs: and le père Dominique is now at the galleys as a natural consequence. But Madame sa mère knows not of the transaction: it is a hold I have upon her son.”

“And the sister?”

“The sister is Mademoiselle Stephanie dancing now for our pleasure.”

“And is she—?”

“Ah! Monsieur Inspector, you interrogate me, is it not so? France through her executive, is interested in Mademoiselle Boisfleury and her family. They are emigrés. France may wish that they should return to her bosom. She is a great nation; she has moments of clemency; she has moments of cruelty. She may pardon the family for the beauty and the talent of the daughter, or she may turn the key upon the whole group. I don’t say which course she will pursue. It is not for us, cher ami, to decide this kind of question. We are but members of the executive; police-men, as you others say. Eh, bien? we wait and see, and we act when some one whispers in our ears what we shall do. For Stephanie—”

“Hush! don’t talk so loud. I must go: I see my gent from Liverpool in a private box, with a lady—his sister very likely—good bye. I must go up-stairs to the door of the box,” and the stout Inspector withdrew.

“Have I take too much haff-naff—do I talk too much?” Monsieur Chose asked himself.

The bald, handsome gentleman in front here politely proffered his opera-glass to the Frenchman.

By-and-by on a bridge of small civilities, Mr. Martin and Monsieur Chose passed gradually into conversation. Monsieur Chose was evidently in a talkative mood. Martin was always a good listener; he distinguished himself especially in that character on the present occasion. Perhaps he had, or thought he had, an object in view in doing this.

“The ballet in England,” said the Frenchman with a grand air, “is an exotic which has never taken deep root—which would die but for much care and what you call forcing. In France it is a natural production, and it flourishes always. London tries to like, to acquire a taste for the ballet. Paris loves it from instinct. It is the dream of the English that they have the tastes, the perceptions of the French. Monsieur, believe me, it is not possible. They try to like claret—they swallow it with a wry face; it does not please them, really; why should they pretend that it does? Let England keep to her native productions; to her port wine, her sherry wine, her porter, ale, her haff-naff, which is excellent, I know it; which fits well to this climate opaque and brumeux. Let her not seek to imitate the pleasures of the French. For you, the pantomime of Christmas; for us, the ballet—pensif—poetic, sublime! We are a nation of sentiment; we love always the appeals to our hearts, to our emotions. We should hiss this ballet in Paris. It is good, but it is not good enough. The nuances are not preserved; the ensemble is not cared for. The whole is without esprit. Mademoiselle Boisfleury is charming; Mademoiselle Blondette is ravissante, but for the others! Monsieur, to see a ballet of the first quality, you must see it in Paris and nowhere else, as to eat strawberries in perfection you must pluck them yourself from their beds.”

“Monsieur,” said Martin, bowing, “I have long entertained these opinions, but I have never been able to express them so well. Your remarks are profound—more, they are philosophical.”

“!” exclaimed the Frenchman, his face beaming with delight as he bowed his head repeatedly, “you do me an honour extreme. But it is given to the intellect of France to be not less appreciative and judicial in its character, than competent to wield those attributes to the advantage of the universe!”

Monsieur Chose spoke with an air of enthusiasm and deep conviction: his gestures were extremely animated, and he rose from his seat. There were cries in the pit behind him of “Sit down in front!”

“I am carried out of myself,” he said, with an air of greater calmness, “let me remember my situation. Ah, behold us now at the grand scene of ‘L’Aérolithe. ”

A roar of applause was the recognition of Blister’s triumph in the picture of the “Summit of Mount Pretroska by moonlight, amid the Peaks of the Carpathian Mountains,” the last scene of the ballet. (It may be as well to say that Blister had never in his life been further from London than Blackwall! but then he never professed to give faithful representations of particular landscapes; and, indeed, he held that vraisemblance had nothing to do with scene-painting, perhaps because he thought that if he made the background too natural, it would interfere too much with the actors who were to be the fore-ground figures, and who it must be said, were generally quite as far off truth of delineation as was Blister.)

Monsieur Chose was loud in his applause throughout the whole of the scene, though his approval was always given with a great air of consciousness of superiority and condescension. Nevertheless, his repeated “Brava! brava!” possessed a tone of languid ecstasy that brought all his neighbours into a like frame of mind, and induced them to applaud also. It was as though his manifestations of delight were wrung from him, notwithstanding the obstacles presented by a constitutional indolence and an aristocratic indifference, and were therefore all the more precious. And the scene was worthy of applause. When the première danseuse swung high up in the air, descending gradually lower, a strong lime light pouring upon her—so strong that the wire supporting her was hardly visible from the stalls, while it could not be traced at all from the boxes, except now and then when it caught the light—the effect was almost poetical; Monsieur Chose said it was quite. The inevitably absurd characteristics of the ballet