What should we get, if we could blend into one picture the English
descriptions of Paris left us by Thackeray, Sala, Du Maurier? Would it
not show us that face as it is still, when we see it in spring? And
drawn by loving hands too, obeying the eyes of genius. An empty square
in Berlin suggests a possible regimental parade, in London a mass
meeting; in Paris it is a playground waiting for the Parisians to come
out and enjoy themselves after their manner, like pretty moths and
dragon-flies in the sun.
But there is another side to it. More than any city in the world, Paris
has a dual nature. Like Janus, she has two faces; like Endymion, half
her life is spent with the gods, half with the powers of darkness. She
has her sweet May mornings, but she has her hideous nights when the
north wind blows and the streets are of glass. She has her life of art
and beauty, and taste and delight, but she has her fevers of blood and
fury, her awful reactions of raw brutality, her hidden sores of strange
crime. Of all cities, Paris is the most refined, the most progressive
in the highest way, the most delicately sensitive; of all cities, too,
when the spasm is on her, she is the most mediæval in her violence, her
lust for blood, her horrible 'inhumanity to man'--Burns might have
written those unforgettable lines of her.
Margaret was not thinking of these things as she took her way through
the Parc Monceau, not because it was nearer but because she loved the
old trees, and the contrast between the green peace within its gates
and the intense life outside. She was nearer than she had perhaps ever
been to fright, just then, and yet would not for the world have turned
back, nor even slackened her pace. In five minutes she would be ringing
the bell at Madame Bonanni's door.
She had heard the prima donna several times but had never met her. She
knew that she was no longer young, though her great voice was
marvellously fresh and elastic. There were men, of that unpleasant type
that is quite sure of everything, who recalled her first appearance and
said that she could not be less than fifty years old. As a matter of
fact, she was just forty-eight, and made no secret of it. Margaret had
learned this from her own singing teacher, but that was all she knew
about Madame Bonanni, when she stopped at the closed door of the
carriage entrance and rang the bell. She did not know whether she was
to meet a Juliet, an Elsa, a Marguerite or a Tosca. She remembered a
large woman with heavy arms, in various magnificent costumes and a
variety of superb wigs, with a lime-light complexion that was always
the same. The rest was music. That, with a choice selection of absurdly
impossible anecdotes, is as much as most people ever know about a great
singer or a great actress. Margaret had been spared the anecdotes,
because most of them were not fit for her to hear, but she had more
than once heard fastidious ladies speak of Madame Bonanni as 'that
dreadful woman.' No one, however, denied that she was a great artist,
and that was the only consideration in Margaret's present need.