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MADEMOISELLE MA M?RE
She was born in Chauville-le-Vieux. Her mother gave piano lessons at the local Lyc?e de Jeunes Filles, and her father had been "professeur de violon" at the little Conservatoire. Music was her destiny. As a hollow-eyed, stunted child, who should have been romping in the unfrequented park, she had been doomed to hours of piano practice in the stuffy salon, where during eight months of the year a window was never opened for longer than it took to shake out the rug. Her name was Marie Lamande.
Because its Lyc?e was widely known, English and American families came to stay in Chauville--the English pupils discovering what it was to be taught with enthusiasm--and Marie knew French girls who had been initiated into the pleasures of tea-parties. Open-mouthed, she heard that the extravagant anglaise or am?ricaine must have spent at least five or six francs on the cakes. But all the foreigners successively grew tired of inviting French children whose astonished mothers sent them trooping as often as they were asked, and, in no case, gave an invitation in return, and Marie herself never had the good luck to be asked.
Like her parents, she had been intended for the groove of tuition, and in due course tuition became her lot. But she was a gifted pianist, and ambitious; she dreamed of glory. Some years after she had been left alone, when her age was twenty-seven, she dared to escape from the melancholy town that she had grown to execrate. A slight little woman, without influence or knowledge of life, she aspired to conquer Paris. She attacked it with a sum sufficient to keep her for twelve months.
She found a lodging now in the rue Honor?-Chevalier, and sought engagements for Soir?es d'Art and Matin?es Artistiques, writing to many people who made no reply, and crossing the bridge to appeal in person to many others, who were inaccessible, or rude.
Among the few letters of introduction that she had brought from Chauville, one served its purpose. Madame Herbelin, the Directrice of the Lyc?e, always kindly disposed towards her, had recommended her to an acquaintance as a teacher. Thanks to this, she earned five francs each Thursday by a lesson.
When nine alarming weeks had slipped away she gained an interview with a fat man who had much knowledge, and who was interested in hearing himself talk. He said to her:
She told him: "I am a poor woman, and the only pupil that I have here is a child in Montparnasse."
The fat man, groaning comically, volunteered to "see what he could do."
He forgot her after five minutes.
Practising, in the feeble lamplight of the attic, she used to wait, through the long evenings, for the postman and news that never came. "For me?" she would call over the banisters. "Nothing, mademoiselle!" Then, back to the hired Pleyel, that barely left space for her to wash. Inexorable technique, cascades of brilliance, while her heart was breaking.
After she shut the piano, the dim light looked dimmer. The narrow street was silent. Only, in the distance sometimes, was the jog-trot of a cab-horse and the minor jangle of its bell.
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