The Beautiful Madame de Gimeuse

By Maurice LeBlanc

T the foot of the staircase that led up to the reception rooms Diane de Gimeuse made the mistake of looking at herself in a glass. She was seized with a boundless sense of despair; and it needed all her self-control to prevent her from bursting into sobs.

After reigning for more than thirty years as the loveliest woman in Paris, Diane was abdicating. She had gone into a long retirement, and was now returning to society for the first time, and returning with white hair.

Her friend, Mme. Arnold, at whose house she was making her reappearance, met her in the doorway of the great drawing-room and whispered to her:

“Try to smile, Diane, and you will still be the prettiest woman here.”

Diane could not smile. Besides, what was the good? No one was looking at her; and she remembered the stir and the movement of curiosity which her arrival used to provoke, in the old days, wherever she went.

A tall man, with a grey moustache, came and kissed Mme. Arnold’s hand. Her duties as hostess calling her elsewhere, she kept him back:

“So you have come, illustrious novelist! Well, my dear Villeneuve, won’t you give your arm to Mme. de. But how silly of me! I was just going to introduce you, and you have known each other for years!”

Then she hurried away. Villeneuve hesitated for a second, while offering his arm, and Diane said:

“Confess, monsieur, that you do not recognise me.”

He replied, frankly:

“As a matter of fact, I did not recognise you at first.”

“It’s my white hair, is it not? It makes a great difference in me.”

“Yes,” he said. “It improves you immensely.”

“That’s very nice of you,” she replied. “But, really, I should not have minded. I have only three or four times had the pleasure of meeting you; and I could hardly expect you to remember.”

They sat down a little to one side, in a corner from which they were able to watch the younger people dancing. Diane, filled with melancholy impressions, was silent. She observed her former rivals. They were all still struggling to maintain their outward charms; and Diane asked herself painfully whether she too could not have postponed the irremediable renunciation. But, seeing that Villeneuve was looking at her, she drew herself up and smiled, in spite of herself.

Then he said:

“I paid you a stereotyped compliment just now, when I told you that the change had improved you. But I want to say so again, because I mean it.”

“Really?” she asked.

“Yes, there is something gentler about you, something more approachable.”

“So I looked neither gentle nor approachable, when I had fair hair and dressed like a girl?”

“I don’t know what you were like then. I see you as you are.”

“And the woman that I am,” she said, in a voice with which a touch of irony and a touch of bitterness were blended, “finds greater favour in the eyes of Villeneuve the novelist?”

“Is it an offence, on my part, if she does?”

“An offence against the past, yes.”

“Tah! Yesterday’s past is so near! What separates you from it? The colour of your hair.”

“And a few wrinkles,” she murmured. “Let us talk of something else, do you mind?”

They chatted at random, first in an indifferent tone, afterwards more intimately, as though their liking for each other sprang rather from the sound of their voices than from the words which they uttered. Then they were silent, and Diane thought that he was seeking a pretext to leave her. Soon, however, she perceived, without turning her head, that he once more had his eyes fixed upon her. And this persistence gave her a certain feeling of embarrassment.

At last Villeneuve said:

“You know I am something of a professional psychologist? It’s as good a trade as another. Would you say that it gives me the right to put a very indiscreet question to you?”

“Yes, for I shall still have the right not to reply.”

“Well, I should like to know. ... There is something that interests me immensely. Why or how did you come to resolve?”

“To cease being the beautiful Mme. de Gimeuse?” she said, completing the sentence for him.

“No, but to cease insisting upon being thought so.”

“Oh, I took the resolution when I felt that it was necessary. Perhaps I even felt it too late.”

“But there must have been something, an incident of some kind?”

“Not at all.”

“Still”

“There was nothing at all, I tell you.”

“You won’t answer?”

“No.”

“A glass of champagne, then.”

“With pleasure.”

She took the glass which he handed her, drank it almost at a draught, and at once, changing her mind, murmured:

“After all, if it interests you, why shouldn’t I tell you? But, as I say, nothing happened out of the way—at most, a rather painful little tragedy of conscience—hardly that even. Yes, the only incident took place within myself, within my understanding, as the result of a number of tiny facts. It was mostly weariness, you know, an infinite weariness, a sort of dejection. From one day, almost, to the next, I had had enough of being the beautiful Mme. de Gimeuse, and especially of being nothing but that. I suddenly realised that, in order to remain the beautiful Mme. de Gimeuse, whom the poets sang and whom the world had accepted as an article of faith, I had sacrificed all my tastes, all my preferences, all my dreams, my very life, which, after all, I could easily have begun anew after the death of my husband. I was beautiful—that was enough. Beauty, in those far-away times—and yet so near!—seemed to me a function that must needs be fulfilled, a vocation to which one is obliged to yield. Had I a brain, had I any qualities of heart and mind? I do not know. I was the beautiful Mme. de Gimeuse, and I proved it by attending every party, and every first night, and I proved it by remaining beautiful whatever happened, whatever my mood might be from day to day. Do you see the torture of it?”

“Is it a torture?” he asked. “Are you sure?”

“It is a torture,” she declared. “At least, from the years when the lies begin. One triumphs at first, because one is the stronger, and imposes upon people. And then comes doubt, and then despair. And then comes the struggle—the constant, daily, crafty struggle—the struggle with one’s figure, the struggle with one’s wrinkles, and we worry and cast about and haunt the masseuses and the beauty specialists, and we try newspaper receipts and drugs advertised by every sort of quack, until one ends by becoming nothing more than a painted, plastered doll, and by lying and having to lie more and more every day. Ah, no, no, no; I had had enough of it!”

There was a long silence between them. Then Villeneuve said:

“Have you never been in love?”

“I never had time. Besides, I did not attract love.”

“What attracts love is not so much beauty as charm.”

“A charm which I did not possess?”

“Yes, but your beauty used to hide it. I received that impression one evening when I was talking to you at the Opera. Beauty ends by becoming a mask behind which a number of other beauties—beauties much greater and much more captivating--lie concealed. Those are the beauties which one sees in you to-day. They are resuming their natural place.” And, lowering his voice, he added: “And it is a very touching sight.”

She raised her eyes to his. The glance which they exchanged was one of friendship. They felt full of loyalty, one for the other; and Diane went on speaking, revealing corners of her soul which she herself discovered with a certain astonishment.

Then Villeneuve, in his turn, told her his life, the mortifications he had undergone, the vanity of ambition and success,

“But you have loved?” she asked.

“Twenty times; in other words, never; for real love is endless.”

It was growing late. She gave him her hand:

“Good-bye, and thank you. This evening, which I dreaded, has been delightful, thanks to you.”

“No,” he said, “thanks to yourself and to the confidence, the unexpected confidence, which you have shown me. You had something on your mind; you wanted to unburden yourself; and you found me here.”

They took a few steps, and she sat down again, without any reason. And they continued chatting for a long time of all the things which they cared about. They perceived, in this way, that many of these things were alike.

“Good-night again,” said Mme. de Gimeuse, “and this time really.”

“Good-night,” he said. “But when shall I see you?”

“One of these days?”

“When?”

“Come to tea on Wednesday.”

“Shall we be alone?”

“Yes.”

Standing face to face, they shook hands and looked, for a moment, into the depth of each other’s eyes. And Diane felt, from the warmth of Villeneuve’s glance, that she had awakened a new emotion in that man’s soul.

Driving home, she reflected that it was the first time, since she had made her entrance into society, that she was carrying with her, from a party, the perturbing thought of a conquest. And it was the first day on which she had consented to be the beautiful Mme. de Gimeuse no longer, and to show the wrinkles in her face and the snowy whiteness of her hair.

On the Wednesday, Villeneuve came and had tea with Mme. de Gimeuse.

A month later, the newspapers announced their approaching marriage.