Virtue in the Ballet

"Virtue in the Ballet" is a novella by Guy de Maupassant that explores the themes of morality, desire, and the complexities of human relationships within the context of the ballet world. The story follows characters deeply entangled in the art of dance, revealing the contrasts between the superficial glamour of the stage and the underlying struggles of those behind the scenes. Maupassant's sharp observations and rich characterizations offer insight into the interplay of ambition, virtue, and the often harsh realities that performers face, ultimately questioning the true meaning of virtue in a society obsessed with appearances.

• Short story

								
It is a strange feeling of pleasure that the writer about the stage and
the characters of the theatrical feels, when he occasionally discovers a
good, honest human heart in the twilight behind the scenes. Of all the
witches and semi-witches of that eternal Walpurgis night, whose boards
represent the world, the ladies of the ballet have at all times and in
all places been regarded at least like saints, although Hackländer
repeatedly told in vain in his earlier novels, to convince us that true
virtue appears in tights and short petticoats and is only to be found in
ballet girls. I fear that the popular voice is right as a general rule,
but is equally true that here and there one finds a pearl in the dust,
and even in the dirt, and the short story that I am about to relate,
will best illustrate my assertion.

Whenever a new, youthful dancer appeared at the Vienna Opera House, the
habitués began to go after her, and did not rest, until the fresh
young rose had been plucked by some hand or other, though often it was
old and trembling. For how could those young and pretty, sometimes even
beautiful girls who, with every right to life, love and pleasure, were
poor and had to subsist on a very small salary, resist the seduction of
the smell of flowers and of the flash of diamonds? And if one resisted
it, it was love, some real, strong passion, that gave her the strength
for this, generally, however, only to go after luxury all the more
shamelessly and selfishly, when her lover forsook her.

At the beginning of the winter season of 185--the pleasing news was
spread among the habitués, that a girl of dazzling beauty was going to
appear very shortly in the ballet at the Court Theater. When the evening
came, nobody had yet seen that much discussed phenomenon, but report
spread her name from mouth to mouth; it was Satanella. The moment when
the troop of elastic figures in fluttering petticoats jumped onto the
stage, every opera-glass in the boxes and stalls was directed on the
stage, and at the same instant the new dancer was discovered, although
she timidly kept in the background.

She was one of those girls who are surrounded by the bright halo of
virginity, but who at the same time present a splendid type of
womanhood; she had the voluptuous form of Rubens' second wife, whom they
called, not untruly, the risen Green Helen, and her head with its
delicate nose, its small full mouth, and its dark inquiring eyes,
reminded people of the celebrated picture of the Flemish Venus in the
Belvedere in Vienna.

She took the old guard of the Vienna Court Theater by storm, and the
very next morning a perfect shower of billets doux, jewels and
bouquets fell into the poor ballet girl's attic. For a moment she was
dazzled by all this splendor and looked at the gold bracelets, the
brooches set with rubies and emeralds, and at the sparkling earrings,
with flushed cheeks, but then an unspeakable terror of being lost and of
sinking into degradation, seized her, and she pushed the jewels away and
was about to send them back. But as is usual in such cases, her mother
intervened in favor of the generous gentlemen, and so the jewels were
accepted, but the notes which accompanied them were not answered at
present. A second and a third discharge of Cupid's artillery followed,
without making any impression on that virtuous girl; in consequence a
greater number of her admirers grew quiet, though some continued to send
her presents, and to assail her with love letters, and one had the
courage to go still further.

He was a wealthy banker, who had just called on the mother of Henrietta,
as we will call the fair-haired ballet girl, and then one evening, quite
unexpectedly, on the girl herself. He by no means met with the reception
which he had expected from the pretty girl in a faded cotton gown;
Henrietta treated him with a certain amount of good humored respect,
which had a much more unpleasant effect on him than that coldness and
prudery, which is so often synonymous with coquetry and selfish
speculation, among a certain class of women. In spite of everything,
however, he soon went to see her daily, and lavished his wealth, without
her asking him for anything, on the beautiful dancer, and he gave her no
chance of refusing, for he relied on the mother for everything. She took
pretty, small apartments for her daughter and herself in the
Kärntnerstrasse and furnished them elegantly, hired a cook and
housemaid, made an arrangement with a fly-driver, and lastly clothed her
daughter's lovely limbs in silk, velvet and valuable lace.

Henrietta persistently held her tongue at all this; only once she said
to her mother in the presence of the Stock Exchange Jupiter:

"Have you won a prize in the lottery?"

"Of course, I have," her mother replied with a laugh.

The girl, however, had given away her heart long before, and quite
contrary to all precedent, to a man whose very name she was ignorant of,
and who sent her no diamonds, and not even any flowers. But he was young
and good-looking, and stood so retiringly, and so evidently in love, at
the small side door of the Opera House every night, when she got out of
her antediluvian rickety fly, and also when she got into it again after
the performance, that she could not help noticing him. Soon, he began to
follow her wherever she went, and once he summoned up courage to speak
to her, when she had been to see a friend in a remote suburb. He was
very nervous, but she thought all that he said very clear and logical,
and she did not hesitate for a moment to confess that she returned his
love.

"You have made me the happiest, and at the same time the most wretched
of men," he said after a pause.

"What do you mean?" she said innocently.

"Do you not belong to another man?" he asked her in a sad voice.

She shook her abundant, light curls.

"Up till now, I have belonged to myself alone, and I will prove it to
you, by requesting you to call upon me frequently and without restraint.
Everyone shall know that we are lovers. I am not ashamed of belonging to
an honorable man, but I will not sell myself."

"But your splendid apartments, and your dresses," her lover interposed
shyly, "you cannot pay for them out of your salary."

"My mother has won a large prize in the lottery, or made a hit on the
Stock Exchange." And with these words, the determined girl cut short all
further explanations.

That same evening the young man paid his first visit, to the horror of
the girl's mother, who was so devoted to the Stock Exchange, and he came
again the next day, and nearly every day. Her mother's reproaches were
of no more avail than Jupiter's furious looks, and when the latter one
day asked for an explanation as to certain visits, the girl said
proudly:

"That is very soon explained. He loves me as I love him, and I presume
you can guess the rest."

And he certainly did guess the rest, and disappeared, and with him the

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