Artists' WivesJ.M. Dent and Company, 1902 - 224 pages |
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Common terms and phrases
admired Amaury appeared artist assault with violence Aubertot Aunt beautiful Bohemian burst calm charming Chief Rabbi child claque coat Comtesse contralto costume creature Credo of Love d'Athis dear fellow divan door drawing-room dress estoufato Etienne exer eyes Fajon fame fancy fear felt footlights friends gazing genius glance Guillardin hair handsome happy heart hour household husband HUSBAND'S VERSION idea imagine Irma Italian kind laugh listen live look Madame Deloche Madame Heurtebise magnificent MARESTANG marriage married Monsieur Petitbry mother Moulins mouth never night Nina once PAINTER Paris Parisian passion physiognomy piano poet pretty pretty woman proud Proudhon rage replied Saint-Germain sculptor seemed Simaise smile spoilt studio success suddenly talent talk tears terrible theatre thing thought Tiber TRANSTEVERINA turn uncon unhappy verses voice weariness widow wife WIFE'S VERSION woman wretched
Popular passages
Page 19 - It is written — / would have you note — by a married man, much in love with his wife, very happy in his home, an observer who, spending his life among artists, amused himself by sketching one or two such households as 1 spoke of just now. From the first to the last line of this book, all is true, so true that the author would never publish it. Read it, and come to me when you have read it. I think you will have changed your mind.
Page 168 - ... veils holding interviews with theatrical managers and publishers, busying herself in getting her husband's operas put again on the stage, superintending the printing of his posthumous works and unfinished manuscripts, bestowing on all these details a kind of solemn care and as it were the respect for a shrine. It was at this moment that her second husband met her. He too was a musician, almost unknown it is true, the author of a few waltzes and songs, and of two little operas, of which the scores,...
Page 171 - ... and offensive regret at her condescending marriage. However, he was not wounded by it, quite the contrary. He was so convinced of his inferiority and thought it so natural that the memory of such a man should reign despotically in her heart ! In order the better to maintain in him this humble attitude, she would at times read over with him the letters the great man had written to her when he was courting her. This return...
Page 173 - Do you remember, Anais ? " And Anais sighed and blushed. It was at that time that he had written his most tender pieces, above all Savonarole, the most passionate of his creations, with a grand duet, interwoven with rays of moonshine, the perfume of roses and the warbling of nightingales. An enthusiast sat down and played it on the piano, amid a silence of attentive emotion. At the last note of the magnificent piece, the lady burst into tears. " I cannot help it," she said, " I have never been able...
Page 51 - Strange to say, she hid herself from him to write ; for she believed him still in love, and while imploring her husband's forgiveness, she feared the exaltation of her lover. " He will never allow me to leave," she said to herself. Accordingly, when by dint of supplications she obtained forgiveness and the nurseryman — I have already mentioned that he was a philosopher, — consented to take her back, the return to her own home bore all the mysterious and dramatic aspect ot flight.
Page 43 - II pleut quarante jours plus tard. * At haphazard, the unfortunate creature ravenously devoured the paltriest rhymes, satisfied if she found in them lines ending in " love " and " passion " ; then closing the book, she would spend hours dreaming and sighing: " That would have been the husband for me ! " It is probable that all this would have remained in a state of vague aspiration, if at * When it rains on Saint Medard's day, It rains on for forty more days. the terrible age of thirty, which seems...
Page 46 - A poet who has such beautiful moustaches and who believes in love as he believes in God. For the nurseryman's wife this proved indeed irresistible. In three sittings she was * I believe in love as I believe in God. conquered. Only, as at the bottom of this elegiac nature there was some honesty and pride, she would not stoop to any paltry fault. Moreover the poet himself declared in his Credo, that he only understood one way of erring: that which was openly declared and ready to defy both law and...
Page 170 - ... lady was indeed very much flattered by her conquest; however, she played the comedy of a broken heart, and assumed the disdainful, wearied airs of a woman whose life is ended without hopes of renewal. She, who had never in her life been so quiet and comfortable as since the death of her great man, she actually found tears with which to mourn for him, and an enthusiastic ardour in speaking of him. This, of course, only inflamed her youthful adorer the more and made him more eloquent and persuasive....
Page 170 - In short, this severe widowhood ended in a marriage ; but the widow did not abdicate, and remained — although married — more than ever the widow of a great man ; well knowing that herein lay, in the eyes of her second husband, her real prestige. As she felt herself much older than he, to prevent his perceiving it, she overwhelmed him with her disdain, with a kind of vague pity, and unexpressed and offensive regret at her condescending marriage. However, he was not wounded by it, quite the contrary....
Page 155 - ... All this I saw in an instant, for you may imagine how I fled. Etienne would have spoken to me — detained me ; but with a gesture of horror at the clay-covered hands, I rushed off to mama, and reached her barely alive. You can imagine my appearance. " Good heavens, dear child ! what is the matter?