I
It really was an odd notion of mine to choose Mademoiselle Pearl for queen that particular evening.
Every year I went to eat my Twelfth Night dinner at the house of my old friend Chantal. My father, whose most intimate friend he was, had taken me there when I was a child. I had continued the custom, and I shall doubtless continue it as long as I live, and as long as there is a Chantal left in the world.
The Chantals, moreover, lead a strange life; they live in Paris as if they were living in Grasse, Yvetot, or Pont-à-Mousson.
They owned a small house with a garden, near the Observatory. There they lived in true provincial fashion. Of Paris, of the real Paris, they knew nothing and suspected nothing; they were far, very far away. Sometimes, however, they made a journey, a long journey. Madame Chantal went to the big stores, as they called it among themselves. And this is the manner of an expedition to the big stores.
Mademoiselle Pearl, who keeps the keys of the kitchen cupboards—for the linen cupboards are in the mistress’s own charge—Mademoiselle Pearl perceives that the sugar is coming to an end, that the preserves are quite finished, and that there’s nothing worth talking about left in the coffee-bag.
Then, put on her guard against famine, Madame Chantal passes the rest of the stores in review, and makes notes in her memorandum book. Then, when she has written down a quantity of figures, she first devotes herself to lengthy calculations, followed by lengthy discussions with Mademoiselle Pearl. They do at last come to an agreement and decide what amount of each article must be laid in for a three months’ supply: sugar, rice, prunes, coffee, preserves, tins of peas, beans, crab, salt and smoked fish, and so on and so forth.
After which they appoint a day for making the purchases, and set out together in a cab, a cab with a luggage rack on top, to a big grocery store over the river in the new quarters, with an air of great mystery, and return at dinnertime, worn out but still excited, jolting along in the carriage, its roof covered with packages and sacks like a removal van.
For the Chantals, all that part of Paris situated at the other side of the Seine constituted the new quarters, quarters inhabited by a strange noisy people, with the shakiest notions of honesty, who spent their days in dissipation, their nights feasting, and threw money out of the windows. From time to time, however, the young girls were taken to the theatre to the Opéra Comique or the Française, when the play was recommended by the paper Monsieur Chantal read.
The young girls are nineteen and seventeen years old today; they are two beautiful girls, tall and clear-skinned, very well trained, too well trained, so well trained that they attract no more attention than two pretty dolls. The idea never occurred to me to take any notice of them or to court the Chantal girls; I hardly dared speak to them, they seemed so unspotted from the world; I was almost afraid of offending against the proprieties in merely raising my hat.
The father himself is a charming man, very cultured, very frank, very friendly, but desirous of nothing so much as repose, quiet, and tranquillity, and mainly instrumental in mummifying his family into mere symbols of his will, living and having their being in a stagnant peacefulness. He read a good deal, from choice, and his emotions were easily stirred. His avoidance of all contact with life, common jostlings and violence had made his skin, his moral skin, very sensitive and delicate. The least thing moved and disturbed him, hurt him.
The Chantals had some friends, however, but friends admitted to their circle with many reserves, and chosen carefully from neighbouring families. They also exchanged two or three visits a year with relatives living at a distance.
As for me, I dine at their house on the fifteenth of August and on Twelfth Night. That is as sacred a duty to me as Easter communion to a Catholic.
On the fifteenth of August a few friends were asked, but on Twelfth Night I was the only guest and the only outsider.