. The
wife, disdainful, melancholy, and very superior, was on that evening
more than ever the widow of a great man! She had a peculiar way of
glancing at her husband from over her shoulder, of calling him "my
poor dear friend," of casting on him all the wearisome drudgery of the
reception, with an air of saying: "You are only fit for that." Around
her gathered a circle of former friends, those who had been spectators
of the brilliant debuts of the great man, of his struggles, and his
success. She simpered to them; played the young girl! They had known
her when so young! Nearly all of them called her by her Christian
name, "Anais." They formed a kind of coenaculum, which the poor
husband respectfully approached, to hear his predecessor spoken of.
They recalled the glorious first nights, those evenings on which
nearly every battle was won, and the great man's manias, his way of
working; how, in order to summon up inspiration, he insisted on his
wife being by his side, decked out in full ball dress. "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 can not help it," she
said, "I have never been able to hear it without weeping." The great
man's old friends surrounded his unhappy widow with sympathetic
expressions, coming up to her one by one, as at a funereal ceremony,
to give a thrilling clasp to her hand.

"Come, come, Anais, be courageous." And the drollest thing was to see
the second husband, standing by the side of his wife, deeply touched
and affected, shaking hands all round, and accepting, he too, his
share of sympathy. "What genius! what genius!" he repeated as he
mopped his eyes. It was at the same time ridiculous and affecting.

II

MY FIRST DRESS COAT[11]

How did I come by it, that first dress coat? What primitive tailor,
what confiding tradesman was it, trustful as Don Juan's famous
Monsieur Dimanche, who upon the faith of my fantastic promises,
decided one fine morning on bringing it to me, brand new, and
artistically pinned up in a square of shiny green calico? It would be
difficult for me to tell.