Jealousy -- Fiction; Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Painters -- France -- Fiction; Paris (France) -- Fiction
When the maid had gone she went to look at herself in the mirror. She
was a little surprised, for she felt so much better that she expected
to find herself rejuvenated by several years in a single night. Then
she realized the childishness of such a hope, and, after another glance,
resigned herself to the knowledge that her complexion was only clearer,
her eyes less fatigued, her lips a little redder than on the day
before. As her soul was content, she could not feel sad, and she smiled,
thinking: “Yes, in a few days I shall be quite myself again. I have gone
through too much to recover so quickly.”
But she remained seated a very long time before her toilet-table, upon
which were laid out in graceful order on a muslin scarf bordered
with lace, before a beautiful mirror of cut crystal, all her little
ivory-handled instruments of coquetry, bearing her arms surmounted by a
coronet. There they were, innumerable, pretty, all different, destined
for delicate and secret use, some of steel, fine and sharp, of strange
shapes, like surgical instruments for operations on children, others
round and soft, of feathers, of down, of the skins of unknown animals,
made to lay upon the tender skin the caresses of fragrant powders or of
powerful liquid perfumes.
She handled them a long time with practised fingers, carrying them from
her lips to her temples with touches softer than a kiss, correcting
imperfections, underlining the eyes, beautifying the eyelashes. At last,
when she went down stairs, she felt almost sure that the first glance
cast upon her would not be too unfavorable.
“Where is Monsieur Bertin?” she inquired of a servant she met in the
vestibule.
“Monsieur Bertin is in the orchard, playing tennis with Mademoiselle,”
the man replied.
She heard them from a distance counting the points. One after the other,
the deep voice of the painter and the light one of the young girl,
called: “Fifteen, thirty, forty, vantage, deuce, vantage, game!”
The orchard, where a space had been leveled for a tennis-court, was
a great, square grass-plot, planted with apple-trees, inclosed by the
park, the vegetable-garden, and the farms belonging to the castle. Along
the slope that formed a boundary on three sides, like the defenses of
an intrenched camp, grew borders of various kinds of flowers, wild and
cultivated, roses in masses, pinks, heliotrope, fuchsias, mignonnette,
and many more, which as Bertin said gave the air a taste of honey.
Besides this, the bees, whose hives, thatched with straw, lined the
wall of the vegetable-garden, covered the flowery field in their yellow,
buzzing flight.
In the exact center of this orchard a few apple-trees had been cut down,
in order to make a good court for tennis, and a tarry net, stretched
across this space, separated it into two camps.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account