The Nabob [64]
/patio/ paved with marble, where she used to pass long hours in a cool, delicious sleepiness, listening to the water as it dripped on the great alabaster fountain with its three basins, one over the other, and her gilded barge, with its awning of crimson, which eight Tripolitan boatmen supple and vigorous rowed after sunset on the beautiful lake of El-Baheira? However luxurious the apartment of the Place Vendome might be, it could not compensate for the loss of these marvels. And then she would be more miserable than ever. At last, a man who was a frequent visitor to the house succeeded in lifting her out of her despair. This was Cabassu, the man who described himself on his cards as "professor of massage," a big, dark, thick-set man, smelling of garlic and pomade, square-shouldered, hairy to the eyes, and who knew stories of Parisian seraglios, tales within the reach of madame's intelligence. Having once come to massage her, she wished to see him again, retained him. He had to give up all his other clients, and became, at the salary of a senator, the masseur of this stout lady, her page, her reader, her body-guard. Jansoulet, delighted to see his wife contented, was unconscious of the ridicule attached to this intimacy.
Cabassu was now seen in the Bois, seated beside the favourite maid in the huge and sumptuous open carriage, also at the back of the theatre boxes taken by the Levantine, for she began to go out, since she had grown less torpid under the treatment of her masseur and was determined to amuse herself. The theatre pleased her, especially farces or melodramas. The apathy of her large body found a stimulus in the false glare of the footlights. But it was to Cardailhac's theatre that she went for preference. There, the Nabob found himself in his own house. From the chief superintendent to the humblest /ouvreuse/, the whole staff was under his control. He had a key which enabled him to pass from the corridors on to the stage; and the small drawing-room communicating with his box was decorated in Oriental manner, with a concave ceiling like a beehive, its couches covered in camel's hair, the flame of the gas inclosed in a little Moorish lantern. Here one could enjoy a siesta during rather long intervals between the acts; a gallant attention on the part of the manager to the wife of his partner. Nor did that ape of a Cardailhac stop at this. Remarking the taste of the Demoiselle Afchin for the drama, he had ended by persuading her that she also possessed the intuition, the knowledge of it, and by begging her when she had nothing better to do to glance over and let him know what she thought of the pieces that were submitted to him. A good way of cementing the partnership more firmly.
Poor manuscripts in your blue or yellow covers, bound by hope with fragile ribbons, that set out full of ambition and dreams, who knows what hands may touch you, turn over your pages, what indiscreet fingers deflower your charm, the charm of the unknown, that glittering dust which lies on new ideas? Who may judge you and who condemn? Sometimes, before dining out, Jansoulet, mounting to his wife's room, would find her on her lounge, smoking, her head thrown back, bundles of manuscripts by her side, and Cabassu, armed with a blue pencil, reading in his thick voice and with the Bourg-Saint-Andeol accent, some dramatic lucubration which he cut and scored without pity at the least criticism from the lady.
"Don't disturb yourselves," the good Nabob would signal with his hand, entering on tiptoe. He would listen, shake his head with an admiring air, as he watched his wife: "She is astonishing!" for he himself understood nothing about literature, and there, at least, he could discover once again the superiority of Mlle. Afchin.
"She had the instinct of the stage," as Cardailhac used to say; but, on the other hand, the maternal instinct was wanting in her. Never did she take any interest in her children, abandoning them to the hands of strangers, and, when they were brought to her once a month, contenting herself with offering to them
Cabassu was now seen in the Bois, seated beside the favourite maid in the huge and sumptuous open carriage, also at the back of the theatre boxes taken by the Levantine, for she began to go out, since she had grown less torpid under the treatment of her masseur and was determined to amuse herself. The theatre pleased her, especially farces or melodramas. The apathy of her large body found a stimulus in the false glare of the footlights. But it was to Cardailhac's theatre that she went for preference. There, the Nabob found himself in his own house. From the chief superintendent to the humblest /ouvreuse/, the whole staff was under his control. He had a key which enabled him to pass from the corridors on to the stage; and the small drawing-room communicating with his box was decorated in Oriental manner, with a concave ceiling like a beehive, its couches covered in camel's hair, the flame of the gas inclosed in a little Moorish lantern. Here one could enjoy a siesta during rather long intervals between the acts; a gallant attention on the part of the manager to the wife of his partner. Nor did that ape of a Cardailhac stop at this. Remarking the taste of the Demoiselle Afchin for the drama, he had ended by persuading her that she also possessed the intuition, the knowledge of it, and by begging her when she had nothing better to do to glance over and let him know what she thought of the pieces that were submitted to him. A good way of cementing the partnership more firmly.
Poor manuscripts in your blue or yellow covers, bound by hope with fragile ribbons, that set out full of ambition and dreams, who knows what hands may touch you, turn over your pages, what indiscreet fingers deflower your charm, the charm of the unknown, that glittering dust which lies on new ideas? Who may judge you and who condemn? Sometimes, before dining out, Jansoulet, mounting to his wife's room, would find her on her lounge, smoking, her head thrown back, bundles of manuscripts by her side, and Cabassu, armed with a blue pencil, reading in his thick voice and with the Bourg-Saint-Andeol accent, some dramatic lucubration which he cut and scored without pity at the least criticism from the lady.
"Don't disturb yourselves," the good Nabob would signal with his hand, entering on tiptoe. He would listen, shake his head with an admiring air, as he watched his wife: "She is astonishing!" for he himself understood nothing about literature, and there, at least, he could discover once again the superiority of Mlle. Afchin.
"She had the instinct of the stage," as Cardailhac used to say; but, on the other hand, the maternal instinct was wanting in her. Never did she take any interest in her children, abandoning them to the hands of strangers, and, when they were brought to her once a month, contenting herself with offering to them