The Kill - Emile Zola [134]
Reassured, M. Hupel de la Noue gaped in delight at his “poem.” He could not resist the temptation to repeat to everyone in his vicinity what he had been saying for a month: “I had thought of doing it in verse, but this way the lines are nobler, don’t you think?”
Then, as the waltz lulled the audience with its endless ebb and flow, he launched into explanations. Mignon and Charrier moved closer to him and listened attentively.
“You are of course familiar with the subject. Handsome Narcissus, son of the river Cephisus and the nymph Liriope, scorns the love of the nymph Echo. . . . Echo was part of the retinue of Juno,4 whom she amused with her speeches while Jupiter roamed the world. . . . Echo, as you know, was the daughter of Air and Earth. . . .”
He waxed rapturous about the poetry of the ancients. Then, in a more intimate tone, he said, “I felt I could give free rein to my imagination. . . . The nymph Echo takes handsome Narcissus to visit Venus in a seaside grotto, where the goddess is to kindle his love with her fire. But Venus proves powerless. From the youth’s pose one can see that he has not been touched.”
This explanation was by no means superfluous, for few of the spectators in the room grasped the precise significance of the various groups. By the time the prefect, speaking in a hushed voice, had finished identifying all the characters, the audience admired his work even more. Mignon and Charrier continued to gaze wide-eyed at the tableau, however. Its meaning still eluded them.
A grotto had been fashioned on the stage between the red velvet curtains. The silk backdrop had been arranged with large jagged folds imitating the contours of rocks, on which images of shells, fish, and aquatic vegetation had been painted. The platform itself was uneven, a small mound having been set in place and covered with the same silk fabric, upon which the decorator had painted a bed of fine sand strewn with pearls and flecks of silver. It was the lair of a goddess. There, atop the little hillock, stood Mme de Lauwerens, dressed as Venus. A little stout for the part, she wore her pink tights with the dignity of a duchess of Olympus. She interpreted her character as the Queen of Love, whom she played with severe, wide-open, all-devouring eyes. Behind her, revealing only her mischievous face, her wings, and her quiver, little Mme Daste lent her amiable smile to the character of Cupid. Arrayed alongside the mound were the Three Graces, Mmes de Guende, Teissière, and von Meinhold, all wrapped in muslin, smiling, and laced together as in the sculpture by Pradier.5 On the other side of the mound, the marquise d’Espanet and Mme Haffner stood wrapped in a single cascade of lace, their arms around each other’s waists, their hair entwined, lending a risqué note to the tableau, a hint of Lesbos,6 which M. Hupel de la Noue explained in an even lower voice meant to be heard only by the men: his intention, he said, had been to use this example to demonstrate the power of Venus. At the foot of the mound Countess Wanska portrayed Voluptuousness. She lay stretched out, her body contorted by an ultimate spasm of pleasure, her eyes lifeless and half-closed as though she were about to lose consciousness. Of dark complexion, she had let down her black hair, and her bodice, streaked with tawny flames, revealed patches of flushed skin. The colors of the costumes, ranging from the snowy white of the veil of Venus to the dark red of the tunic of Voluptuousness, defined a restrained palette in which flesh tones dominated. And beneath the electric light, ingeniously directed onto the scene through one of the garden windows, all that gauze and lace and other diaphanous fabric blended so well with the shoulders and tights that those flesh tones came alive, and it was hard to be sure that these ladies had not carried their pursuit of artistic truth to the point of appearing on stage completely naked. This was merely the apotheosis; the drama