In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower Read Online Free PDF Page A

had
supposed that I should be prevented from seeing it properly by the
presence of the other spectators, as one is when in the thick of a
crowd; now I registered the fact that, on the contrary, thanks to an
arrangement which is, so to speak, symbolical of all spectatorship,
everyone feels himself to be the centre of the theatre; which
explained to me why, when Françoise had been sent once to see some
melodrama from the top gallery, she had assured us on her return that
her seat had been the best in the house, and that instead of finding
herself too far from the stage she had been positively frightened by
the mysterious and living proximity of the curtain. My pleasure
increased further when I began to distinguish behind the said lowered
curtain such confused rappings as one hears through the shell of an
egg before the chicken emerges, sounds which speedily grew louder and
suddenly, from that world which, impenetrable by our eyes, yet
scrutinised us with its own, addressed themselves, and to us
indubitably, in the imperious form of three consecutive hammer–blows
as moving as any signals from the planet Mars. And—once this curtain
had risen,—when on the stage a writing–table and a fireplace, in no
way out of the ordinary, had indicated that the persons who were about
to enter would be, not actors come to recite, as I had seen them once
and heard them at an evening party, but real people, just living their
lives at home, on whom I was thus able to spy without their seeing
me—my pleasure still endured; it was broken by a momentary
uneasiness; just as I was straining my ears in readiness before the
piece began, two men entered the theatre from the side of the stage,
who must have been very angry with each other, for they were talking
so loud that in the auditorium, where there were at least a thousand
people, we could hear every word, whereas in quite a small café one
is obliged to call the waiter and ask what it is that two men, who
appear to be quarrelling, are saying; but at that moment, while I sat
astonished to find that the audience was listening to them without
protest, drowned as it was in a universal silence upon which broke,
presently, a laugh here and there, I understood that these insolent
fellows were the actors and that the short piece known as the
'curtain–raiser' had now begun. It was followed by an interval so long
that the audience, who had returned to their places, grew impatient
and began to stamp their feet. I was terrified at this; for just as in
the report of a criminal trial, when I read that some noble–minded
person was coming, against his own interests, to testify on behalf of
an innocent prisoner, I was always afraid that they would not be nice
enough to him, would not shew enough gratitude, would not recompense
him lavishly, and that he, in disgust, would then range himself on the
side of injustice; so now attributing to genius, in this respect, the
same qualities as to virtue, I was afraid lest Berma, annoyed by the
bad behaviour of so ill–bred an audience—in which, on the other hand,
I should have liked her to recognise, with satisfaction, a few
celebrities to whose judgment she would be bound to attach
importance—should express her discontent and disdain by acting badly.
And I gazed appealingly round me at these stamping brutes who were
about to shatter, in their insensate rage, the rare and fragile
impression which I had come to seek. The last moments of my pleasure
were during the opening scenes of Phèdre . The heroine herself does not
appear in these first scenes of the second act; and yet, as soon as
the curtain rose, and another curtain, of red velvet this time, was
parted in the middle (a curtain which was used to halve the depth of
the stage in all the plays in which the 'star' appeared), an actress
entered from the back who had the face and voice which, I had been
told, were those of Berma. The cast must therefore have been changed;
all the trouble that I had taken in