By 1883, Paris had completely overcome the twofold disaster of Sedan and the Commune. Some missed the splendour and riches of the Second Empire. Everything seemed magical to me. The Third Republic claimed to be austere. It was said that President Grévy was a good man. However, the ways of a country do not change that fast. An entire troop of servants was mobilized at the hotel for each meal, and at the Café de la Paix we were served by an authentic Turk who insulted us one day in his own tongue because the Senyor had asked him whether the cap he wore could be used as a jelly mould. I will not even mention the Café de Paris, on the Avenue of the Opera, where you do not pay for what you eat, but for the waiters’ dashing tails. Such establishments are wildly expensive. Seeing money spent so frivolously when so many poor people suffer in utter misery is hardly very edifying. I have seen a couple of lovers sit down at a Café, order two ice-creams, eat one spoonful, hold hands under the table, get up and leave in a carriage, all in two minutes’ time.
‘The rich,’ the Senyor assured me, ‘have the obligation of making money circulate. Their luxury feeds many of the poor.’
‘How can you say such things, Tonet? What does a poor man gain when you let your ice-cream go to waste? Isn’t it better not to order it and give the three rals it costs to someone who needs to eat?’
The problem was that the Senyora, who at times was so reasonable, forgot that our purse was now emptier, and tried to relive times long gone, thus becoming too extravagant.
‘I think,’ she said one morning, ‘we should have lunch at the Restaurant Vefour.’
It was supposedly the most expensive place in Paris. The Senyor approved. The famous restaurant, located in the north façade of the Palais Royal, was just a few steps away from our hotel. We walked up a carpeted staircase. The dining room was a regal hall lined with wallpaper that looked like red velvet and was framed in strips of gold. It occupied the entire width of the building and had balconies facing the street and others across the room facing the palace garden. The arched ceiling was decorated with mythological paintings. I need not mention that the entire room was covered in the same carpeting as the staircase. As we entered, we were approached by a steward, or maître, d’hôtel as they call them, and two waiters in tails who took our hats. I will refrain from describing the details of that meal, served on porcelain plates and silver soup tureens and platters. One of the main dishes was golden pheasant, the speciality of the house. I also remember some sort of flat fish that may have been fried or boiled and tasted of butter, and an ice-cold white wine that seemed inoffensive and was, may God forgive me, as treacherous as the children of the Seine.
I, Miquel, could not help thinking that it was all fake. That magnificent palace, built by Cardinal Richelieu, had belonged to Louis XIV, who then handed it over to the Duke of Orléans. The details of the Peace of Westphalia may have been discussed in that very hall; the ill-fated Philippe-Egalité may have conspired against Louis XVI in those rooms. Now all those historical events, glorious or ominous, were eclipsed by a sauce or a wine called, if I am not mistaken, Sauternes. The kindness of the steward and the waiters was so extreme that it could not be sincere. One of them, who seemed to be in charge of all the staff, offered the Senyora snails as an hors d’oeuvre with the following words: ‘Madame, j’ai six escargots arrivés pour vous de Bourgogne.’
I could give an endless description of the comings and goings, the unnecessary manoeuvres, the ‘pardons’ and ‘messieurs’ with every word, to bring a plate, to take it away, to fill a glass. The art of eating took on a ceremonial stature, and the ceremony was one of the most pagan materialism, presented among flowers and served on a silver tray. I prefer to forget such things. What I have not forgotten is the price: for three people, we spent thirty-two francs for lunch that day, not counting the tip.
The life we led in Paris was carefully organized. After mass at Saint Roch we took a carriage through the Bois de Boulogne, and then returned to the hotel for lunch, after which the Senyors went to sit at the Café de la Paix, located on the ground floor of the Grand Hotel. It is true that almost a quarter of a century had gone by since that scandal, but Dona Xima was still living in Paris, she had lived in that very neighbourhood and, since that was the centre of the city, they risked finding her seated at a nearby table any moment. None of that seemed to bother them. I believe they did not even think of it. I thought of it constantly. It was almost fifteen years since I had seen her arrive at Bearn, dazzling in silks and colours, preceded by a valet in red livery. In fifteen years and a city such as Paris, fashions can change twenty times. Elegant ladies now wore simpler dresses. However, there were always those who refused to forsake excess. What would Dona Xima look like now? She must have already turned forty. The last time she had been to Bearn she was at the height of her beauty. She might still be beautiful; she might be dead. If that were so, what would have become of her soul? I was overcome by a feeling of deep pity for that unlucky woman, perverted in her adolescence by the man who had the obligation of ensuring her chastity.
When I gave in to such thoughts, the Senyor appeared as a monster. Later, studying his Memoirs, I realized his heart was not as cold as I was willing to believe. Yet even so, I would have had serious qualms about absolving him. Besides, did Dona Xima not carry the blood of that great-grandmother about whom so much was rumoured, even in connection with the Senyor, who could have been her son? And had Don Toni not also inherited something from the other legendary Don Toni, whose name is still mentioned in rhymes by the peasants of Bearn?
Our Lord Jesus is in Heaven
and in Moorish lands, the heathen…
In those anonymous rhymes we find the same pain and anguish as a great poet of the middle ages left in the Ballade des Pendus:
Pies, corbeaulx nous ont les yeux cavez
Et arraché la barbe et les sourcilz.
Don Toni de Bearn i Torre Roja had violated the honour and peace of humble, decent families who did not deserve such treatment:
Pine and sigh, dear women,
the whirlwind is here;
cry salty tears…
They say that the rhymes accuse him of more calamities than he actually committed, and I am inclined to believe it is true. There have been plenty of scholars who claimed that some of them do not refer to Don Toni but to a real whirlwind that did great damage to the village at the beginning of the eighteenth century: that is the degree to which history is distorted in the course of only a few years. Responsibilities fade away and end up disappearing in a cowardly way when we attempt to find them in the actions of others (of our ancestors, that is) instead of looking deep into ourselves. Our soul is, after all, to use modern terms, ‘personal and untransferable’, as it said in our passports.
One night, the unlucky woman appeared in my dreams: she was older, still beautiful, with a melancholy gaze in those deep eyes Dona Maria Antònia had once compared to mine. I asked her whether she suffered very much.
‘My suffering is bearable,’ she said, ‘but I know it will only grow until my final despair, which will be eternal.’
I gave her a cross to kiss. She refused to do so, smiling sadly.
‘I owe twenty-three francs for the room,’ she said.
I awoke covered in sweat.