She was already old, with a ravaged countenance and a physique
curiously hard and stiff. She moved with difficulty--I think she was lame--I
seem to remember some story about a malady of the spine. Her Armand was
disproportionately young and slight, a handsome youth, perplexed in the
extreme. But what did it matter? I believed devoutly in her power to
fascinate him, in her dazzling loveliness. I believed her young, ardent,
reckless, disillusioned, under sentence, feverish, avid of pleasure. I
wanted to cross the footlights and help the slim-waisted Armand in the
frilled shirt to convince her that there was still loyalty and devotion in
the world. Her sudden illness, when the gayety was at its height, her
pallor, the handkerchief she crushed against her lips, the cough she
smothered under the laughter while Gaston kept playing the piano
lightly--it all wrung my heart. But not so much as her cynicism in the long
dialogue with her lover which followed. How far was I from questioning her
unbelief! While the charmingly sincere young man pleaded with
her--accompanied by the orchestra in the old "Traviata" duet, "misterioso,
misterioso!"--she maintained her bitter skepticism, and the curtain fell on
her dancing recklessly with the others, after Armand had been sent away
with his flower.
Between the acts we had no time to forget. The orchestra kept sawing away
at the "Traviata" music, so joyous and sad, so thin and far-away, so
clap-trap and yet so heart-breaking.
Pages:
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246