My Memoirs. Marguerite Steinheil

first dreams, was not spared, and failed to find grace in the sight of my tormentors. As my counsel declared in court: "They tried to find out, not only whether there had been intimate relations between Mlle. Japy and Lieut. Sheffer, but even whether, such relations being proved, a child was not born, who, having years later become an Apache, committed the double murder of the Impasse Ronsin, and spared his own mother!"

      Nothing, however, it need hardly be said, was found against M. Sheffer or myself... except one thing! It appeared that I had once spent six days in Bâle, and this was at once construed into an elopement with M. Sheffer. But exhaustive investigations established the fact that the lieutenant was away at the time attending manœuvres, and it was finally discovered that the elopement to Bâle was nothing more serious than the visit of my mother and myself to the dentist, there being none in Beaucourt!

      It was at the Paris Court of Assize, in November 1909, more than twenty years after the end of my short-lived engagement, that I met once more the man who had been the hero of my first love-dream. I was sitting in the dock, on the "bench of infamy," as barristers call it, accused of having murdered my mother and my husband, and Major Sheffer came to the witness's "bar" in the well of the court and told our innocent little romance of long ago.

      My dream was broken. Life did not seem worth living.... But youth soon forgets. "We are not even capable of being unhappy a long time," Pascal said.

      I spent two months in Bayonne and Biarritz, wrote every week to my parents, and received nearly every day long and delightful letters from my father.

      Then, suddenly, I heard that my father had died. While drinking a glass of icy water he had fallen stone dead... of heart failure. It was on November 14th, 1888. I was nineteen years old. I thought I should lose my reason. They put me in the train and I reached Beaucourt, too late, alas, to see once more the beloved face of my father. He had already been laid in his coffin.

      My father had been loved by all, and the Beaucourt temple was crowded at his funeral. All the musical societies of the neighbourhood came to pay him a last honour, and, massed together, they played Chopin's funeral march.... My poor mother was so prostrated with grief that she was unable to attend the funeral.... I will not say any more about a day which was one of the most painful in my life.... Besides, I was so numb with grief that my memory of it is blurred.

      During the days that followed, everything at home was thrown into such confusion, and the sight of all that my father had touched or loved was so distressing to me, that I begged my mother to let me leave Beaucourt for a while.... She raised her tear-stained face and said pitifully: "And I?" I felt ashamed of my selfishness, and we fell into each other's arms... and, of course, I thought no more of going away....

      Mimi, my younger sister, was ill, and I should have fallen ill too, had I not had to nurse her and my mother. When they recovered, I spent whole days in the woods and by the lakes in our estate, in all those hallowed spots where my father and I spent so many unforgettable hours together.

      For a year I was unable to take my violin from its case, or to open the piano. Everything was changed, and I felt like a lost soul.

      Towards the end of the summer of 1889, I went to Paris with my sisters, to visit the Exhibition. Mme. Herr, who had come to Beaucourt to fetch me, had spoken a great deal to my mother about a great friend of hers, a certain M. Steinheil, a nephew of Meissonier, and I had been asked to go to Bayonne later on with the Herrs.

      We stayed six weeks in Paris and as true "Provincials," anxious to see everything, we entered the Exhibition as soon as the gates were thrown open and left it at night only when we found ourselves almost too tired to stand. This lasted for a month, and then it occurred to me that there was something else to see in Paris besides the Exhibition.

      I had not been in Paris since the time when I had gone there with my father to see a live elephant, and I drank in the beauties of the capital with avidity, under the happy guidance of a friend who was both an artist and antiquarian.

      We went, on a certain Sunday, to a concert, and I heard for the first time Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, of which my father used to say: "If the whole of music were to be destroyed and forgotten, and only one work left, that work ought to be the 'Ninth.'"

      When I returned to Beaucourt I found my mother had started on the building of large, sumptuous and extremely expensive greenhouses. We begged her in vain to have the work stopped. My mother loved building, and, as she said herself: "Every human being has his disease. Your father's was loving to suffer. I have the 'stone' disease. I love bricks, cement, sand, stone. To build has become my passion and at my age, you don't get cured of your passions."

      A few days later, my mother, somewhat anxious about my health, suggested that I should go to Bayonne with the Herrs, and spend a few weeks in the South.

      During the journey, they told me all kinds of wonderful things about M. Steinheil, to whom, they admitted, they had often spoken of me, and who was now in Bayonne, decorating the cathedral there.

      At my sister's I was shown the photograph of the painter, a shortish man of at least forty, thin, with small eyes, a dark moustache, and a pointed beard. "No, thank you!" I exclaimed, "I'd never dream of marrying a man like that. Why, I'd look as though I were his daughter!"

      I was, however, persuaded to meet him. One day, my sister said to me: "To-morrow, we'll go to Biarritz to have tea with some friends."

      "All right," I replied, "while you are with your friends, I will play with my nieces on the sands."

      The next day, just as we were going to board the narrow-gauge train which connects Bayonne with Biarritz, I saw my brother-in-law walk up to a small man, clean-shaven save for his moustache, and wearing a frock-coat that was far too long for him. I did not recognise him as the painter of the photographs. The two men came towards me and M. Herr introduced M. Steinheil to me. At that time I was still as frank and as impulsive as a child, and could not help remarking on the artist's changed appearance. Quite confused, he explained: "My beard was getting grey and I decided to shave it—yesterday."

      In the train, my sister scolded me. "You have laughed at this poor M. Steinheil, and you have hurt his feelings. He is abnormally shy, but he is a charming fellow, a great artist, and the pupil of his uncle Meissonier whose talent you admire so much."

      I rose and walked straight to M. Steinheil: "It appears I have hurt you," I said quite simply. "Please forgive me. You must not be angry. I always say what I think, and after all, what do I care whether you wear a beard or not!"

      My sister, in despair, tugged at my skirt, but the painter said: "I admire your sincerity, Mademoiselle. Frank and impulsive people are becoming so rare nowadays."

      He didn't please me at all.

      I saw M. Steinheil very often after this first, uneventful meeting. And then, one day, I was persuaded to go to the Cathedral to see him at work. His conversation interested me very much, but I could not help teasing him.

      I had pictured him wearing a black velvet coat or in ordinary attire, but this is what I saw when I entered the Cathedral: a tiny man lost in a white smock, like a house-painter, holding a gigantic palette, and perched on the top of a huge scaffolding.

      I burst out laughing in spite of the solemnity of the place. M. Steinheil wheeled round, saw us, dropped his brushes and his palette, which fell noisily on to the flagstones beneath, came down from the scaffolding at top speed, and, when he reached the ground, greeted me with a number of quick, jerky little bows, all of the same depth, just as I had seen President Carnot bow in Paris a few weeks before. Meanwhile, my little nieces and I were forcing our handkerchiefs in our mouths.

      Disconcerted, M. Steinheil took off his smock... and we had a fresh surprise. I thought that underneath that smock he was dressed like any man, but no, he wore a thick knitted brown sweater over his waistcoat, and that sweater reached down to his knees and gave him a most comical appearance.

      We went slowly round the Cathedral, and the painter described to me all the frescoes, those that were the work of his father and those he had himself just completed. He spoke about his father with such feeling