The man-servant who answered his ring possessed that type of face peculiar to nearly all custodians of old buildings; it is met with both in the guides of ruined castles and in the vergers of cathedrals, and shows how vast must be the influence which places have on human beings. It is a face with a greenish tint and with a hawk-like expression about the eyes and mouth; from its appearance one would suppose that it smelt damp. Ferdinand—that was the name of this individual—differed from his kind only in dress, which, consisting as it did of Claude's cast off clothes, was fashionable and smart. He had been valet to the late Comte de Saint-Euverte, and, in addition to his duties as Larcher's servant, he was a kind of housekeeper for the whole mansion, from which he seldom emerged more than once a month. Theconciergewent on all the writer's errands, and his wife did the cooking. This little world lived entirely under the spell of Claude, who, through his knowledge of character and his infantile goodness of heart, possessed in a rare degree the gift of winning the attachment of his inferiors. When Ferdinand saw who the caller was he could not help showing great uneasiness.
'They shouldn't have let you come up, sir!' he said. 'I shall get into trouble.'
'Is Monsieur Larcher at work?' asked René, smiling at the man's terror.
'No,' replied Ferdinand in an undertone, and quite at a loss what to do with a visitor whom his master had evidently not expected. 'But Madame Colette is here.'
'Ask him whether he can see me for a minute,' said the poet, curious to know how the two lovers stood after the scene of the preceding evening; and, in order to conquer the valet's hesitation, he added: 'I'll take all the responsibility.'
'You may come up, sir,' was the answer with which he returned, and, preceding René through the ante-room, he took him up the small inner staircase that led to the three apartments usually inhabited by Claude, and which the writer either called his 'laboratory' or his 'torture-chamber,' according to the mood he was in.
The staircase and the first two of the three rooms were remarkable for the richness of their carpets and hangings. The faint light that filtered through the stained-glass windows on this dull February afternoon scarcely cast a shadow, either in the smoking-room with its morocco-covered furniture or in the largesalonlined with books. Claude's favourite nook was a den at the end, the walls of which were hung with some dark material and adorned with a few canvases andaquarellesof the most modern painters of the day—these being what the writer's extravagant fancy preferred. There were two opera boxes by Forain, a dancing girl by Degas, a rural scene by Raffaelli, a sea-piece by Monet, four etchings by Félicien Rops, and on a draped pedestal a bust of Larcher himself by Rodin. The bust was a splendid piece of work, in which the great sculptor had reproduced with marvellous skill all that might be read in his model's face—qualms of morality mingled with libertinism, bold reflection allied to a weak will, innate idealism hand in hand with an almost systematically acquired corruption. A low bookcase, a desk in one corner, three fauteuils in Venetian style with negroes supporting the arms, and a wide green leather couch completed the furniture of this retreat, clouded at that moment with the smoke of Colette's Russian cigarette.
The young lady was lying at full length on the couch, her fair hair tumbling about her ears, and attired in somewhat masculine style, with a stand-up collar and an open jacket. Her short plain cloth skirt revealed a pair of neat ankles and long narrow feet encased in black silk stockings and patent leather shoes. Her sunken cheeks were pale—that pallor produced in most theatrical women by the constant use of paint, by late hours, and by the fatigues of an arduous profession.
'Ah! mon petit Vincy,' she cried, holding out her hand to the visitor, 'you have come just in time to save me from a beating. I only wish you knew how badly this boy treats me! Come, Claudie,' she added, shaking her finger at her lover, who was seated at her feet, 'say it's not true if you dare.' And with a graceful movement of her lithe and supple body—she herself would confess that she scarcely ever wore a corset—the charming creature rose to a sitting posture, laid her fair head on Claude's shoulder, and placed between his lips the cigarette she had just been smoking. The wretched man looked at his young friend with shame and supplication written on his face; then, turning to Colette, his eyes filled with tears. At this the actress's behaviour became more wanton still, and leaning forward upon her lover's shoulder, she gazed into his eyes until she saw in them the look of passion that she knew so well how to turn to her own advantage.
A dead silence ensued. The fire burned brightly in the grate, and a solitary sunbeam, making its way through the coloured glass, fell in a long red streak upon the girl's face. René had been present at scenes of this kind too often to feel surprised at the want of modesty of either his friend or Colette. He was well acquainted with the strange cynicism of their nature; but he also remembered Claude's terrible language the night before, and the cruel words his mistress had uttered after his disappearance. He was astounded to see to what depths of degradation the writer's weakness dragged him down, and to witness such proofs of this wretched woman's inconsistency. In the close atmosphere of this room, impregnated with the perfume that Colette used, and before the almost immodest attitude of the pair before him, there came over him a feeling of sensuality with which he was already too familiar. The sight of this depraved creature—though her depravity was generally clothed in graceful forms—had often awakened in him ideas of a physical passion very different from any he had hitherto known. She had frequently received him in her dressing-room at the theatre, and as she stood in careless dishabille before her glass putting the finishing touches to her face, or completing, with unblushing indifference, the more hidden details of her toilet, she had appeared to him like some temptress personifying the highest forms of voluptuousness, and at such times he would envy Claude as much as he sometimes pitied him. But these feelings would soon be dispelled by the disgust with which the moral degradation of the actress inspired him and by the burning scruples of friendship that animate and restrain the young. René would have been horrified to find himself, even for a moment, coveting what he considered his friend's property, and perhaps the knowledge of this delicacy of feeling went for something in Colette's behaviour. Out of sheer wantonness she amused herself by displaying her beauty before him, just as we hold up a flower to be smelt when we know the hands will not be put out to seize it. Wantonness it was, too, that led the misguided girl to dally with Claude and to lavish such caresses upon him before René.
All this, however, produced in the poet a vague physical longing that he could not repress; it grew upon him unconsciously, and, by an association of desires, more difficult to interrupt in its secret workings than an association of ideas, the vision of Madame Moraines was once more before him, surrounded by the halo of seduction that had so completely dazzled him on the previous evening. Two things were now obvious to René: one was, that he must go and call on that woman to-day; the other, that he would never be able to utter her name and ask for her address before the lascivious creature who was torturing Claude with her kisses.
'Get away,' said the writer, pushing her from him; 'I love you, and you know it. Why, then, do you make me suffer so? Ask René what a state I was in last night. Tell her, Vincy, and tell her she should not trifle with me. After all,' he cried, burying his face in his hands, 'what does it matter? If you became the most degraded wretch on earth, I should still idolise you.'
'These are some of the pretty things I have to hear all day long,' cried Colette, rolling back on the cushions with a laugh. 'Well, René, tell him about me too. Tell him how angry I was last night because he went home without saying a word. And then he didn't write, so I came here. Yes, I came tohim, if you please. You savage!' she cried, taking Larcher by the hair, 'do you think I should trouble to run after you if I didn't love you?'
Every feature of her face expressed the real nature of the feeling she entertained for Claude—cruel sensuality, that sensuality which impels a woman to make a martyr of the man from whose power she cannot free herself. History tells of queens who loved in this fashion, and who handed over to the headsman the men whom they hated and yet desired to possess. René quietly observed:
'I was uneasy about him last night, it is true, and you were very cruel.'
'That will do!' cried Colette, with a contemptuous laugh. 'I've already told you that you swallow anything he says. I've given that up myself long ago. One day he threatened to commit suicide, and when I came here in my stage clothes, without even waiting to wash my paint off, I found him—correcting proofs!'
'But that I'm obliged to do,' replied Claude; 'you often have to smile on the stage yourself when you're really in trouble.'
'What does that prove?' she retorted sharply; 'that we are merely acting. Only I take you for what you are, and you don't.'
Whilst she rattled on, rating Claude with that savage rancour that a woman takes no pains to conceal from the man with whom she is on intimate terms, René's glance, as it wandered round the room, fell upon a directory containing the addresses of the 'upper ten' and the hangers-on of Society.
Taking it up he turned over the leaves, and to offer some excuse for his action, mendaciously remarked, 'Why, your name isn't here, Claude!'
'I should think not,' said Colette; 'I won't let him send it. He sees quite enough of the swells as it is.'
'I thought you liked the society of that kind of man,' observed Claude.
'What a clever thing to say!' she replied, with a graceful shrug of her shoulders. 'They're smart, it's true—it's their business to be. They know how to dress, to play tennis, to ride, and to talk of horses, whilst you, with all your brains, will never be anything but a cad. How I wish you were now what you were eight years ago when I first met you in that restaurant at the corner of the Rue des Saints-Pères! I had just come from the Conservatoire with my mother and Farguet, my professor, and we were having some lunch. You looked so good, sitting in the corner—as though you had come from a monastery, and were having your first peep at the world. It was that, I think, that made me like you. Are you coming to the theatre to-night?' she asked René, as he closed the book and rose to go. He had found what he wanted; Madame Moraines lived in the Rue Murillo, near the Parc Monceau. 'No? Well, to-morrow then, and mind you don't get gadding about like this boy! Such fine ladies as they are, too, your Society women—I know something of them! Oh, look at his face—won't he storm as soon as you're gone! You're surely not going to be jealous of women?' she said, lighting a fresh cigarette. 'Good-bye, René.'
'She is like that before you,' observed Claude, as he let his friend out; 'but you wouldn't believe how gentle and affectionate she can be when we are alone!'
'And how about Salvaney?' asked René unthinkingly.
Claude turned pale. 'She says that she merely went to his rooms to look at some drawings for her nextrôle: she swears that there was nothing wrong in it With women, everything is possible—even what is good,' he added, giving René a hand that was not very steady. 'I can't help it—I must believe her when she looks at me in her peculiar way.'
'Can a man of sense, and a good fellow into the bargain, fall as low as that?' René asked himself on leaving his unhappy friend. Then, thinking of Colette's handsome face, he muttered, 'She is very pretty. Heavens! if one could only get Rosalie's beauty of soul united to this creature's incomparable grace and elegance!'
But was not such union to be found? The inner or moral beauty, without which a woman is more bitter than death to the heart of a right-thinking man, and the outer or physical glamour that enables her to attract and captivate his grosser nature—was not such complete and supreme harmony to be found in those creatures whom the accidents of birth and fortune have surrounded by the attributes of real aristocracy, and whose personal charms are in keeping with their surroundings? Was not Madame Moraines an example of this? In any case, that was the poet's first impression of her, and he took a delight in strengthening this impression by argument. Yes, he was sure that this woman, whose soothing image floated through his brain, did indeed possess that double charm—not only beauty and grace superior to Colette's, but a soul as unsullied as Rosalie's. The refinement of her manners, the sweetness of her voice, and the ideality of her conversation gave abundant proofs of it.
René walked on, his mind occupied with these thoughts, and his eyes fixed upon a sort of mirage that made him insensible to all around him. He awoke from this fit of somnambulism on reaching the end of the Pont des Invalides, and found himself in the middle of the Avenue d'Antin. His footsteps had mechanically turned towards the quarter where dwelt the woman to whom his thoughts were so constantly recurring that day. He smiled as he remembered how often he had made a pilgrimage to this Rue Murillo when Gustave Flaubert still lived there. René was such an ardent admirer of the author of the 'Tentation' that it had always been a great treat to him to gaze up at the house of the eminent and powerful writer. How long ago those times seemed now, and how rapturous they would have been had he then known that the woman who was to realise his fondest ideal would live in that very street! Should he go and see her to-day? The question became more pressing as time advanced. One sweep more of the large hand round the dial, and it would be five o'clock—he could see her. He could see her! The idea of this being a real possibility took such a hold upon his mind that all the objections his timidity could devise arose at once. 'No,' he muttered, 'I shall not go; she would be surprised to see me so soon. She only asked me to come because she knew all the others had invited me. She did not want to seem less polite.'
What had seemed in others an empty compliment became a delicate attention in the case of the woman he was beginning to love—unknown to himself. The discovery of an additional motive for distinguishing her from all the women he had met on the previous evening made him feel less able to resist the desire to be near her. He hailed a cab almost mechanically, and on reaching home commenced to dress. His sister was out, and Françoise was busy in the kitchen. Though he had still not the courage to say to himself outright, 'I am going to the Rue Murillo,' he paid as much attention to the minute details of his toilet as amorous youths—at such times a deal more coquettish than women—are wont to do. It was now no longer upon his timidity that he relied for help to battle against the ever-increasing desire within him. Every object in the room recalled memories of Rosalie. With the innate honesty of the young, he for a long time tried to impress upon himself the duty he owed the poor girl. 'What would I think of her if I heard that she was accepting the attentions of a man whom she liked as much as I like Madame Moraines? But then,' rejoined the tempting voice, 'you are an artist, and require fresh sensations and experience of the world. And who says that you are going to call on Madame Moraines only to make love to her?'
He was just in the act of applying his handkerchief to a bottle of 'white rose' that stood on his dressing-table. The penetrating perfume sent the warm blood coursing through his veins in that irresistible tide of voluptuous desire that marks the nascent passions of ardent but continent natures such as his. Since his secret engagement to Rosalie his delicate scruples had led him to return to a life of absolute purity. But the barriers of reserve gave way before this subtle perfume, which awakened memories of all that was least ideal in her rival—the golden ringlets in her neck, her ruby lips and pearly teeth, her snowy rounded shoulders and the long bare arms with their tapering wrists. And this, too, just as he was attempting to attribute his admiration for her to intellectual motives. Of what avail were ideas of loyalty towards Rosalie in the face of such visions? It was five o'clock. René left the house, jumped into another cab, and told the man to drive to the Rue Murillo. He kept his eyes closed the whole of the way, so intensely painful was the sensation of suspense. Mingled with this was shame for his own weakness, apprehension of what was in store for him, deep joy at the thought that he was about to see that glorious face once more, and, permeating all, a spice of that mad hope, intoxicating on account of its very vagueness, that urges the young along fresh paths simply for the sake of their novelty. The feeling of permanence, so indispensable to a man of experience, who knows how short life really is, is hateful to the very young. At twenty-five they are by nature changeable, and consequently fickle. René, who was even better than a good many others, had already irreparably betrayed in thoughts the girl who loved him when his cab set him down at the door of the woman he had seen for one hour on the previous night. He would rather have stepped upon Rosalie's heart than not enter that door now. If a last thought of his betrothed did trouble him at that moment, he no doubt dismissed it with the usual phrase—'She won't know,' and passed on.
The house in which Madame Moraines lived was one of those buildings to be found in the fashionable quarters of Paris which, although parcelled out into flats, have been made by the modern architect to look almost like private mansions. The house was of noble elevation and stood back some little distance from the street, the privacy of the courtyard being insured by some railings that shut it off from the outside world. In the centre of these railings was the porter's lodge, a sort of Gothic pavilion, and as René inquired whether Madame Moraines was at home he could see that the interior of this lodge was better furnished and looked smarter and brighter than the drawing-room of the Offarels on reception nights. The strain upon the young man's nerves had now become so painful that if the veteran soldier who was ending his days in this haven of rest had answered him in the negative he would almost have thanked him. But what he heard was, 'Second floor up the steps at the bottom of the courtyard.'
He crossed the marble threshold and then mounted a wooden staircase covered with a soft-toned carpet. The air that he breathed on the stairs was warm, like that of a room. Here and there stood exotic plants, the gaslight glinting on their green foliage. Chairs were placed at every turn of the staircase, and twice did René sink down into one. His knees trembled under him. If until then he had had any doubts respecting the nature of the feelings he entertained for Madame Moraines, his present state of excitement should have warned him that those feelings amounted to something more than simple curiosity. But he went on as if he were in a dream. He was in that state when he pressed the button at the side of the door, when he heard the servant coming to open it, and when he gave him his name; then, before he had recovered his wits, the man had shown him into a smallsalon, where he found the dangerous creature whose charms had so enslaved him, though he knew nothing of her except that she was beautiful. Alas! that this beauty should so often be only a mask, and a dangerous mask, too, when we give it credit for being more than it really pretends to be.
Had René in fancy painted any setting for this rare and majestic beauty, he could have imagined no other than that in which he saw Madame Moraines for the second time. She was seated at her writing-desk, on which stood a lighted lamp covered with a lace shade, whilst an ivy plant trained to creep along a gilded trellis formed a novel and pleasing screen to the table. The small room was filled with a profusion of ornaments and trifles indispensable to every modern interior. The inevitable reclining-chair, with its heap of cushions, the whatnot crowded with Japanesenetsukés, the photographs in their frames of filigree, the three or fourgenrepictures, the lacquered boxes standing on the little table covered with its strip of Oriental silk, the flowers distributed here and there—who in Paris is unacquainted with this refinement of comfort now so stereotyped as to be quite commonplace? But all that René knew of Society life he had learnt either from Balzac and other novelists of fifty years ago or from more modern authors who had never seen the inside of a drawing-room; theensembleof this apartment, beautifully harmonised by the soft tints of the shaded lamp, was therefore to him like the revelation of a hidden trait peculiar to the woman who had presided over its arrangement. The charm of the moment was the more irresistible since the Madonna who dwelt in this shrine, with its subdued light and its warm air heavy with the scent of flowers, received him with a smile and a look in her eyes that at once dispelled all his childish fears.
The men whom Nature has endowed with that inexplicable power of pleasing women, apart from whatever other qualities they may possess, either mental or physical, are provided with a kind of antennæ of the soul to warn them of the impressions they produce. The poet, in spite of his complete ignorance both of Suzanne's disposition and of the customs of the world she lived in, felt that he had done right in coming. This knowledge served to soothe his overstrung nerves, and he gave himself up entirely to the sweetness that emanated from this creature, the first of her kind whom he had been permitted to approach. By merely looking at her he saw that she was not the same woman as on the previous evening. She had evidently but just come in; some pressing duty—a note, perhaps, to be written—had only given her time to take off her hat and to substitute a dainty pair of slippers for her outdoor boots, so that she was still wearing a walking-dress of some dark material with a high collar like Colette's. Her hair, René noticed, was of the same colour as the actress's, and was twisted into a plain coil upon her head. Like that, she seemed to René more approachable, less superhuman, less surrounded by that impenetrable atmosphere in which the pomp of dress and the ceremony of grand receptions envelop a woman of fashion. The few traits that she possessed in common with the actress only added to her charms. They enabled René to measure the distance that separated the two beings, and whilst doing this he heard Suzanne say in that voice which on the previous evening had proved so irresistibly seductive: 'How good of you to come, Monsieur Vincy!'
It was nothing—a mere figure of speech. Madame de Sermoises, and Madame Ethorel, and even the spiteful Madame Hurault would have used the same words. But, in the mouth of Madame Moraines, and for him to whom they were addressed, they were expressive of deep and true sympathy, of unbounded kindness, and of divine indulgence. The phrase had been accompanied by a gesture of indescribable grace, by a slight look of surprise in the pale blue eyes, and by a smile more seductive than ever. Had René not come to the Rue Murillo fully prepared to seize upon the slightest motives for admiring Suzanne still more, the tribute which she paid to his vanity by this form of reception would alone have conquered him. Do not the most celebrated authors and those most weary of drawing-room sycophancy allow themselves to be captivated by attentions of this kind? The author of the 'Sigisbée' was not inclined to look at these things so critically, either. He had come in fear and trembling, and his reception had shown him he was welcome. Since the morning he had felt a passionate desire to see Suzanne again; he stood before her, and she was glad to see him.
There was a merry look in her eyes as her pretty lips now framed the second sentence she had yet spoken: 'If you accepted all the invitations which were showered upon you yesterday you must have had a hard day's work?'
'But you are the only one I have called upon, madame,' he replied naïvely. He had scarcely uttered the words when a deep blush overspread his face. The significance of his reply was so apparent, the sentiments it expressed so sincere, that he felt quite abashed, like a child whose simple nature has led it to tell what it wished to keep secret. Had he not been guilty of familiarity that would shock this exquisite creature, this woman whose delicate perception no shade of meaning could escape, and upon whose sensitive nature the slightest want of tact would certainly jar? The pale pink of her cheeks and the silken gloss of her hair, the blue of her eyes, and the grace of all her person made her appear to him for the few seconds that followed his exclamation like some Titania, by the side of whom he was but an obscure and loutish Bottom. Before her he felt as clumsy in mind as he would have been in body had he tried to imitate any of her graceful movements—the way, for instance, in which she closed her handsomely worked blotting-book and with her fair hands put in order the knick-knacks that covered her table. An imperceptible smile hovered about her lips as the young man uttered his simple words. But how could he have seen that smile when his eyes were modestly cast down at the moment? How could he have guessed that his reply would be acceptable, although it was precisely the one that had been expected and even provoked? René was only certain of one thing—that Madame Moraines was as gentle and as kind as she was beautiful; instead of appearing offended or drawing back she tried to conquer the fresh fit of timidity that was beginning to seize him by replying to his foolish remark.
'Well, sir, I certainly deserve that preference, which would create a deal of jealousy if it were known, for no one admires your talent as much as I do. Your poetry contains such true and delicate sentiment. We women, you know, never judge by reason; our hearts criticise for us, and it is so seldom that a modern author manages to touch only the right chords. How can it be otherwise? We are faithful to the old ideals—ah! yes, I know that is not at all the fashion to-day—it makes one look almost ridiculous. But we defy ridicule—and then, besides, I have inherited these ideas from my poor father. It was always his fondest wish to do something towards raising the literary tone in our unhappy country. I thought of him as I listened to your verses; how he would have enjoyed them!'
She stopped, as if to banish these too melancholy recollections. On hearing the way in which she pronounced her father's name one must needs have been a monster of distrust not to believe that the incurable wound caused by the death of that celebrated minister bled afresh every time she thought of him. René was, nevertheless, a little surprised at the tenor of her words. He remembered that one of the last things Sainte-Beuve had written was a philippic against a copyright bill proposed by Bois-Dauffin, and he had always looked upon the statesman as one of the sworn enemies of literature, of whom there are thousands in the political world. He, moreover, had a profound horror of the conventional idealism to which Madame Moraines had alluded. In poetry, his favourite author was Théophile Gautier, both on account of his construction and the precision of his metaphors—in prose, the severe Flaubert, on account of his wonderfully clear style, and his lack of all mannerisms.
It pleased him, however, that Suzanne should see in her father a liberal protector of literature, for it proved the depth of her filial piety. He was also pleased to find that she cherished an ideal of his art almost childish in its simplicity. Such a comprehension of beauty, if sincere, showed real inner purity. If sincere! René would have disdained to entertain such a doubt in the presence of this ethereal angel with her dreamy eyes. He stammered out some phrase as vague as that in which Madame Moraines had expressed her idea, and spoke only of woman's fine judgment in literature—he, the worshipper not only of Gautier, but of Baudelaire! Was she quick enough to hear by his tone of voice that she was on a wrong tack? Or did the profound ignorance in which, like so many Society women, she was content to dwell—never reading anything beyond a paper and a few third-rate novels when travelling—make it impossible for her to keep up a conversation of this order and quote names in support of her ideas? In any case, she soon dropped this dangerous subject, and quickly passed from the ideal in art to another more feminine problem, the ideal in love. In merely uttering the word 'love,' which, in itself, contains so much that is contradictory, she managed to assume such an air of modesty that René felt as if he had been taken into her confidence. It was evidently a subject upon which this woman, so far above all ideas of gallantry, did not care to enter unless she was in full sympathy with her hearer.
'What pleases me, too, so much in the "Sigisbée,"' she observed, in her sweet, musical voice, 'is the faith in love portrayed there—the horror of coquetry, of lies, of all that dishonours the most divine sentiment of which the human soul is capable. Believe me,' she added, resting her head upon her hand as if in deep reflection, and regarding René with a look of such seriousness that it seemed to concentrate all her thoughts; 'believe me, the day that you doubt the reality of love you will cease to be a poet. But there is a God who watches over genius,' she went on, with a kind of suppressed emotion. 'That God will not permit the splendid gifts with which he has endowed you to be sterilised by scepticism—for you are a believer, I am sure, and a good Catholic?'
'I was,' he replied.
'And now?' she asked, with a look almost of pain on her face.
'I have my days of doubt,' he answered in simple fashion. She was silent, whilst he sat gazing in speechless admiration at this woman who, in the vortex of Society life, could still ascend to a world of higher and nobler ideas. He did not stop to think that there was something degrading—something like an attempt to gain cheap applause—in parading before a stranger—and what else was he to her?—the most sacred feelings of the heart. Although he had in his uncle, the Abbé Taconet, a perfect example of a true Christian soul, he was not surprised to hear Madame Moraines combine in one sentence two things so completely foreign to each other as a belief in God and the gift of writing plays in verse. He knew nothing except that to hear her voice once more, to see in her blue eyes that expression of true faith, to gaze upon the curl of her dainty lips, to feel her presence near him now, always, and for ever, he would have braved the direst perils. Amid this silence the singing of the tea urn in a corner of the littlesalonbecame more perceptible. Suzanne passed her hand with its well-polished nails over her eyes; then, with a smile of apology for having dared, ignorant as she was, to broach such serious problems to a great mind like his, she suddenly changed her theme as lightly as some women will offer you a sandwich after having discussed the immortality of the soul.
'But you have not come here to be preached at,' she cried, 'and I am forgetting that I am only a worldly woman after all. Will you have a cup of tea? Then come and help me make it.'
She rose; her step was so lithe and she walked with such an easy grace that to René, who was already completely bewitched, it seemed as if her very movements continued in some way the charm of her conversation. He too had risen, and was now made to take a seat near the little table on which the tea-kettle was singing merrily. He looked at her as her dainty hands, so carefully tended, deftly moved amongst the fragile china with which the tray was laden. She was talking, too, but now her talk ran upon a score of details of every day life. As she poured the strong liquor into the cups she told him where she got her tea; then, as she added the boiling water, she questioned him upon the manner in which he made his coffee when he wanted to work. She finished by taking a seat beside him, after having spread a small cloth for the cups, the plates of toast and cake, the pot of cream, and all the rest. She had set it out as though it were for a young lady's tea party, and bestowed upon her visitor those little attentions in which women excel. They know that the most savage men often love to be petted and made much of, and that they are so easily won by this false coinage of pretended affection. Suzanne was now beginning to question the poet, and made him give her an account of his feelings on the first night of the 'Sigisbée,' thus completing her work of seduction by compelling him to talk about himself. All René's timidity had disappeared, and he felt as if he had known this woman for years, so rapidly had she succeeded in gaining an ascendency over him in this first visit. It was therefore a cruel sensation, like awaking from a heavenly dream, when the door opened to admit a new-comer.
'Oh! what a bother!' exclaimed Suzanne in an undertone. How sweet this exclamation sounded in the poet's ears, and how he appreciated her pretty look of annoyance, and the graceful shrug of her shoulders that accompanied it! He rose to take his leave, but not before Madame Moraines had introduced him to the unwelcome visitor.
'Monsieur le Baron Desforges—Monsieur Vincy.'
The poet caught a glance of a man of middle height attired in a smart-fitting frock-coat. The man might have been fifty-five or forty-five—in reality he was fifty-six—so difficult was it to read his age from his impenetrable features. His moustache was still fair, and though the Baron had managed to escape baldness, that plague common to all Parisians, the colour of his hair, a decided grey, showed that he made no attempt to hide his years. His face was a little too full-blooded to be strictly in keeping with the rest of his appearance. His searching gaze rested upon René with that air of profound indifference which diplomatists by profession are so prone to affect, and which seems to say to the man so regarded, 'If I chose to know you, I should know you—but I do not choose to.' Was this really the meaning of the look that rested on him, or was René merely put out by the interruption to his charmingtête-à-tête?Be that as it might, the poet felt an immediate and profound antipathy towards the Baron, who, on hearing his name, had bowed without uttering a word to show whether he knew him or not. But what did that matter to René, since Madame Moraines had still managed to say with a smile as she gave him her hand: 'Thanks for your kind visit. I am so glad that you found me at home.'
Glad! And what word should he use—he who, in an almost maudlin state of intoxication, felt, as he left the house in which this delightful creature lived, that before that day and that hour he had never really loved!
'It's Madame Komof's little poet,' said Suzanne, as soon as the door had closed upon René. The tone in which she replied to the Baron's mute interrogation indicated the familiar footing upon which Desforges stood in this house. Then with that girlish smile she could so well assume—one of those smiles in which the most distrustful men will always believe, because they have seen their sisters smile like that—she went on, 'Oh! I forgot—you wouldn't go last night. I looked so nice—you would have been proud of me. I had my hair done just as you like it. I expected to see you come in later on. This young man, who is the author of the play, was introduced to me, and the poor fellow just called to leave his card. He didn't know my hours, and came straight up. You have done him a great service in giving him an opportunity to escape. He had stayed so long that he was afraid to go.'
'You see that I was right in setting my face against last night's affair,' remarked the Baron. 'Here we have another man of letters brought out. He has been here, and will call on others. He'll call again, no doubt, and then he'll be invited here and there. People will talk before him as they do before you and me, without thinking that on leaving your house he will, out of sheer vanity, go and retail the stories he has heard here in somecaféor newspaper office. And then the Society dames will be astonished to find themselves figuring in the columns of some scurrilous sheet or in an up-to-date novel. To invite writers into the drawing-room is one of the latest and maddest freaks of so-called Society. We wrong them by robbing them of their time, and they return the injury by libelling us. I was told the other day that the daughter of one of this gentleman's colleagues, who helps her papa in his books, was heard to say: "We never go anywhere without bringing home at least two pages of useful notes." I myself cannot understand this mania for talking into phonographs—and such silly, lying phonographs, too, as they are!'
'Ah!' exclaimed Suzanne, taking the Baron's hand in hers, and looking up at him with an admiration that was too marked not to be sincere, 'how fortunate I am in having you to guide me through life! What correct and clear judgment you have!'
'Oh! merely a little gumption, that's all,' replied Desforges, with a shake of the head; 'that will prevent one from committing nine-tenths of the bad actions that are really only follies. All my wisdom of life is to try and get what I can out of what is left me—and what is left me is precious little. Do you know that I shall be fifty-six this week, Suzanne?'
She shook her pretty head, and came closer to him as he stopped in his march up and down the room. With a look of ingenuousness that might have been worn either by an accomplished wanton or a big girl asking her father for a kiss she brought first her cheek with its pretty dimple, and then the corner of her sweet mouth, under the Baron's lips.
'Come,' she said, 'don't you want any tea? It's a bad sign when you begin to talk about your age; you must have upset yourself either in theChambreor at some Board meeting.'
As she spoke she moved towards the little table, and her eyes fell upon the cups and plates she and René had used. Did she remember the Madonna-likerôleshe had played in this very spot only a quarter of an hour ago, and the handsome young man for whose benefit she had assumed her most bewitching attitudes? And if such a thought really entered that pretty head, set in its coils of pale gold, did she feel any shame, any regret, that the poet had gone, or only a kind of secret joy, such as these bold actresses feel in their moments of greatest hypocrisy? She made the tea with as much care as she had bestowed on the process a few minutes before. Desforges had naturally slipped into the arm-chair just vacated by René, and Suzanne occupied her former seat as she sat listening to the Baron's talk. This estimable man had an unfortunate habit of dogmatising at times. He knew the world—that was his great boast, and he was justified in making it. Only, he attached a little too much importance to this knowledge.
'It was rather trying in the Chambre to-day, it is true,' he said. 'I went to hear de Suave hurl his thunderbolts at the Government. He still believes in Parliamentary speeches and in oratorical triumphs. As for me, I have, of course, become a sceptic, a grumbler, and a pessimist since the day when I refused office. They are glad to have me in the House because my grandfather was a Prefect under one emperor and I a Councillor of State under another. The name looks well at the bottom of a poster; but as for hearing me, that's another matter. And they have such respect for me, too! When I drop in at the club in the afternoon I find half-a-dozen of my friends, both young and old, engaged in restoring the monarchy whilst watching the girls pass, if it is summer, or between two deals at bézique in winter. When I come in you should see how quickly they change their faces and their conversation, as if I were discretion itself. I should like to have told them a few home-truths to-day, just to relieve my feelings, but I went to the Rue de la Paix instead to get your earrings.'
With these words he took from his pocket a small leather case; it was quite plain, without the jewellers address, and as he held it out the fire flashed from the two splendid diamonds it contained, making Suzanne's eyes sparkle with delight. The case passed from the Baron's hands into hers, and after gazing at its contents for a moment, she closed the little box and placed it among some other things on a small shelf beside her. The manner in which she accepted it would alone have sufficed to prove how accustomed she was to receiving similar presents. Then, turning to Desforges, her sweet face all aglow with pleasure, she exclaimed, 'How good you are to me!'
'Don't thank me. It's pure selfishness,' said the Baron, though evidently pleased by the impression the earrings had made. 'It is I who ought to thank you for being good enough to wear these poor stones—I do so love to see you look nice. Ah!' he added, 'I had forgotten to tell you—the famous port has arrived; I shall send you half the consignment, and, by a stroke of good luck, I have managed to get the Watteau you admired so much for a mere song.'
'I shall have a chance of thanking you to-morrow, I hope, in the Rue du Mont-Thabor,' she replied, darting a look at him; 'at four o'clock, isn't it?' she added, dropping her eyes with a blush. If, endowed with the power of second sight, poor René, who had just returned home in a fit of idolatry, could have perceived her at that moment without hearing the conversation he would certainly have seen in her noble face an expression of most divine modesty. But those downcast lids and the look she had given him had probably brought other thoughts to the Baron's mind, for his eyes grew bright, and the blood rushed to his cheeks—those cheeks which bore such evident traces of good living, a dangerous vice whose consequences Desforges was always trying to elude. 'I hold the balance,' he used to say, 'between gout and apoplexy.'
Giving his moustache a twirl, he changed the subject, and in a thick voice, by which his mistress could once more gauge the hold she had upon the senses of this hoary sinner, asked, 'Who will be in your box to-night?'
'Only Madame Ethorel.'
'What men?'
'Ethorel cannot come. There will be my husband—and, of course, Crucé.'
'He must make a pretty little thing out of her, only in commission!' exclaimed Desforges. 'He has just put her on to a picture for which she has paid twenty thousand francs—I'll wager he got ten thousand out of it!'
'What a wretch!' cried Suzanne.
'She is such a fool,' remarked the Baron, 'and Crucé is known to be aconnaisseur.Besides, if poor Ethorel didn't have him to consult, his money would go just the same in absolute rubbish. All is for the best in this best of possible worlds. Well, go on.'
'Little de Brèves and you. Hark!' she exclaimed, stopping to listen. 'Some one is coming up—I have such an ear.' And then, looking at the Baron in precisely the same way she had looked, at René, she added, with a pretty look of annoyance, 'Mon Dieu!What a bother! Oh! it's no one,' breaking into a silvery laugh as the servant opened the door; 'it's only my husband. Good afternoon, Paul.'
'That sounds very complimentary,' said the man who had just entered, a tall, well-built fellow with frank, fearless eyes, and one of those pale but healthy complexions that reveal great energy. His features had that stamp of regularity which is only to be met with in Paris in very young men, for a face of that kind in a man of more than thirty-five indicates a perfectly clear conscience. The depth of his love was easily measured by the way in which Moraines looked at his wife, and his sincerity by the manner in which he shook hands with the Baron.
After a hearty laugh at Suzanne's exclamation, he added, with mock gravity, 'Am I intruding, madame?'
'Do you want any tea?' asked Suzanne, quietly; 'I must tell you that it's cold. "Yes, please," or "No, thank you?"'
'No, thank you,' replied Moraines, dropping into an arm-chair, and preparing his words as if to produce an effect, like some visitor. 'Some husbands are real idiots, and I blush for the community. Have you heard about Hacqueville? The story was told me at the club just now. Haven't heard it, eh? Well, this morning he happens to open a letter addressed to his wife which leaves no doubt as to the lady's virtue.'
'Poor Mainterne,' cried Suzanne, 'he was so fond of Lucie!'
'That's the beauty of it,' shouted Moraines, in the triumphal accents of one who is about to astonish his hearers; 'the letter didn't come from Mainterne, but Laverdin! Lucie had more than two strings to her bow. And guess to whom Hacqueville takes the letter and looks for advice?'
'To Mainterne,' replied the Baron.
'You've heard the story?'
'No,' rejoined Desforges, 'but it seems so simple. And what did Mainterne say?'
'You may guess how indignant he was. Lucie has gone to her mother's, and a duel is announced between Hacqueville and Laverdin, in which the former insists upon Mainterne being his second. Well, of all the fools I've seen, I think he is about the biggest. And he hasn't a single friend to open his eyes.'
'He'll find one,' said the Baron, rising to go. 'The moral of your story is, never write.'
'Won't you stay and dine with us, Frédéric?' asked Moraines.
'I have an engagement,' replied Desforges, 'but will meet you later at the Opera. Madame Moraines has been good enough to save me a seat.'
'In your box,' rejoined Paul, with more truth than he thought. The Baron, who had been a widower for the past ten years, had kept his box at the Opera, and sublet it for alternate weeks to his excellent friends the Moraines. The rent, however, was never paid. The husband was as little aware of his wife's accommodating ways as he was of the impossibility of living as they did on their income of fifty thousand francs. The remnant of the wretched fortune left by the late Minister, Madame Moraines' father, who in fifteen years of office had saved almost nothing, formed the half of this annual budget. The other half was the salary which Moraines got as secretary to an insurance company, a place procured for him by Desforges. In spite of Suzanne's protests, Paul had not lost the deplorable habit of expatiating upon his wife's clever husbanding of their united income, which was very small for the world in which the Moraines lived. Thanks to his simple-minded confidence, he was the kind of man who, when his friends complained of the increasing severity of the struggle for life, would say, 'You ought to have a wife like mine—sheknows where to get bargains. She has a maid who is a perfect treasure, and who can turn out a dress as well as the best tailor!' 'You make me look ridiculous!' Suzanne would often say; but he loved her too well to give up praising her, and now, just after Desforges had left, his first act was to take her hands in his and say, 'How nice it is to have you all to myself for a moment! Kiss me, Suzanne.'
She gave him her cheek and the corner of her mouth, just as she had done to Desforges.
'When I am told such terrible stories as that,' he continued, 'it gives me quite a shock; but I soon recover when I think that I have been lucky enough to get a little woman like yourself. Ah! Suzanne, how I love you!'
'And yet I am sure you will scold me,' she replied, escaping from his embrace. 'The woman you think so clever, and of whom you are so proud, has been very foolish. Those diamonds,' she went on, holding up the box brought by Desforges, 'that I told you about—well, I couldn't resist them, and so I bought them.'
'But it's out of your own savings,' remarked Paul. 'What fine stones! Do you want me not to scold you? Then let me put them in.'
'You'll never be able to manage it,' she replied, holding up one of her dainty ears adorned with a plain pink pearl, which Paul slipped out deftly. Then came the turn of the other ear and the other pearl. He showed the same dexterity in putting in the diamonds, touching his beloved as gently with his strong man's hands as any girl could have done. To look at herself, Suzanne took up a small mirror set in a frame of antique silver, another present of the Baron's, and smiled. She looked so pretty at that moment that Paul drew her towards him, and, holding her in his arms, tried to obtain a kiss from her lips. As a rule, she never refused him this. Possibly, from some complication in her nature, she had managed to preserve, in spite of all, a kind of physical liking for this honest, manly fellow, whom she deceived in such a cruel fashion. What, then, had suddenly come over her, and made the usual kiss unbearable? She pushed her husband away almost roughly, saying, 'Oh! let me alone'—then, as if to mitigate the harshness of her tone, she added, 'It's ridiculous in an old married couple. Good-bye, I have hardly time to dress.'
With these words she passed into her bedroom, and so into her dressing-room. Of all the apartments in her home, this was the one in which the profound materialism that formed the basis of this woman's nature was most revealed. Her maid, Céline, a tall, dark girl with impenetrable eyes, commenced to undress her in this shrine of beauty, as gorgeously upholstered as that of any royal courtesan, and anyone who had seen Suzanne at that moment would have understood that she was ready to do anything for the luxury of living in this atmosphere of supreme refinement.
This woman, so delicately fashioned that she seemed almost fragile, was one of those creatures who combine full hips with a slender waist, neat ankles with a well-turned leg, dainty wrists with rounded arms, small features with a full figure, and whose dresses, by hiding all such material charms, clothe them, as it were, with spirituality. She cast a glance at the long mirror set in the centre of her wardrobe, where, packed away in sweet-smelling sachets, lay piles of embroidered linen; seeing how well she looked she smiled as there once more flashed across her brain the same idea that but a few moments ago had dragged her from her husband's arms. This idea was evidently not one of those which it pleased her to entertain, for she shook her head, and a few minutes later, having thrown over her bare neck and shoulders a dressing-jacket of pale bluefoulardsilk and put her naked feet into a pair of soft swans-down slippers, she gave herself up to the hands of her maid, who began to dress the long, shining hair. The cool water in which she had bathed her face had completely restored her self-possession, and in the mirror before her she saw all the details of this apartment that she had turned into the chapel of her one religion—her beauty.
All was reflected there—the soft-toned carpet, the bath of English porcelain, the wide marble washhand-stand with its silver fittings and its host of small toilet necessaries. Did the sight of all these things remind her of the divers conditions that secured her this happy existence? In any case, it was of her husband she was thinking when she exclaimed, 'The dear, good fellow!' The sparkling diamonds that she had kept in her ears recalled thoughts of Desforges, and following close upon the other came the mental exclamation, 'Dear, kind friend!' These two contradictory impressions became as easily reconciled in the head adorned with those long silken tresses as the two facts were reconciled in life. Women excel in these moral mosaics, which appear less monstrous when the process of their construction has been carefully watched. This fair Parisian of thirty was certainly as thoroughly corrupted as it is possible to be; but, to do her justice, it must be said at once that she was unaware of it, so passive had she been with regard to the circumstances that had gradually reduced her to this state of unconscious immorality.
When Suzanne had allowed herself to be married to Paul Moraines two years before the war of 1870 she had felt neither repugnance nor enthusiasm. The matter had been arranged by the two families; old Moraines, a senator ever since the establishment of the Second Empire, belonged to the same set as old Bois-Dauffin, and Paul, who was then an officer of the Council of State, a good dancer and a charming ladies' man, seemed made for her, as she did for him. For the first two years they formed what is called in women's parlance 'a sweet couple;' it was one round of balls, suppers, and theatre parties, with rural festivities in summer and hunting parties in autumn, all of which both of them enjoyed to the full. Paul himself well defined the kind of relations that bound him to his wife amidst these continual pleasures. 'You are as bewitching as a mistress,' he would say to her as he kissed her in the brougham that took them home at one in the morning.
The revolution of the Fourth of September put an end to this fairy-like existence. The families on both sides had lived on large salaries that were suddenly stopped, but this stoppage had no immediate effect upon the gratification of their expensive tastes. Until his death, which occurred in 1873, Bois-Dauffin was convinced of the speedy restoration of arégimethat had been so strong, so well supported, and so popular. The ex-senator, who survived his friend only a few months, shared his sanguine dreams. Paul had, of course, lost his place at the Council of State. He possessed, to an even greater extent than his father and his father-in-law, that blind faith in the success of the cause which will always remain an original trait of the Imperialist party. Suzanne, who had no faith of any kind, commenced to be troubled in 1873 by a very clear vision of the ruin towards which she and her husband were steering by living, as they did, on their capital. This was precisely the moment when Frédéric Desforges commenced to pay her court.
This man, who was then not yet fifty, had remained the most brilliant representative of the generation that had come in with the Second Empire, and which had for its chief the clear-sighted and seductive Duc de Morny. In Suzanne's eyes the Baron's highest recommendation lay in the romantic tales of gallantry that were told of him in the drawing-room, and soon this prestige was supplemented by his indisputable superiority in the knowledge and management of Parisian Society. Having been left a childless widower after a brief union, with almost nothing to do, for his parliamentary duties did not trouble him much, and with an income of four hundred thousand francs a year, exclusive of his mansion in the Cours-la-Reine, his estate in Anjou and hischaletat Deauville, the former favourite of the famous Duke had the rare courage to allow himself to grow old—just as his leader had had the courage to die. He wished to form one last attachment that would bear cultivating until his sixtieth year, and procure him not only an agreeable and accommodating mistress, but a pleasant circle in which to spend his evenings. He had taken in the position of Madame Moraines at a glance, and decided that this was exactly the kind of woman he wanted—extremely pretty and graceful, guaranteed against all probability of maternity by six years of childless married life, and possessing a presentable husband, who would never become a blackmailer. The crafty Baron summed up all these advantages, and by gradually worming his way into Suzanne's confidence, by proving his devotion in getting Moraines his secretaryship, by making her accept presents upon presents, and by showing that exquisite tact of a man who only asks to be tolerated, he at last got her to consent to his wishes. All this, too, was done so slowly and so imperceptibly, and theliaison, when once established, became so simple and so closely bound up with her daily life, that the criminality of her relations with Desforges scarcely ever seemed to strike Suzanne.
What wrong was she doing Moraines, after all? Was she not his wife, and really attached to him? As for the Baron, it is true that he provided a very fair share of the luxuries in which she indulged. But what of that? May not a woman receive presents? If he paid a bill here, and a bill there, did that hurt anyone? She was his mistress, but their relationship was clothed in an air of respectability that made it seem almost like a legitimate union. She had become so accustomed to this compromise with her conscience that she considered herself, if not quite an honest woman, at least vastly superior in virtue to a number of her friends with whose various intrigues she was acquainted. If her conscience reproached her at all, it was for having deceived Desforges, two years after the beginning of their intimacy, with a swell clubman, whom she had carried off from one of her friends during the racing season at Deauville. This individual had, however, almost compromised her so fatally, and she had been so quick to detect in him the self-conceit of a mere flirt, that she had been only too glad to sever the connection at once. Thereupon she had sworn to restrict herself to the peaceful delights of her three-cornered arrangement—to Paul's gentlemanly ways and the Baron's Epicurean gallantry. And so carefully had she kept her resolve, and with such attention to outward appearance, that her good name was as safe as it could be in the enviable position to which her beauty raised her. She had rivals who were too well accustomed to drawing up accounts not to know that the Moraines were living at the rate of eighty thousand francs a year; 'and we knew them when they were almost beggars,' added these kind people. 'Scandal!' cried all the Baron's friends in chorus, and he had a way of making friends everywhere. 'Scandal!' cried the simple-minded people who are shocked by the tales of infamy that go the round of the drawing-rooms every night. 'Scandal!' added the wiseacres, who know that the best thing to do in Paris is to pretend to believe nothing, and to take people at their own value.
Recollections of the innumerable services that Desforges had rendered her were no doubt running through Suzanne's mind as, seated before her toilet table, she exclaimed, 'The dear, kind friend!' Why, then, did the Baron's face, intelligent but worn, suddenly make way for another and a younger face, adorned with an ideal beard and lit up by a pair of dark blue eyes that reflected all the ardour of a virgin and enthusiastic soul? Why, whilst Céline's nimble fingers were busy with laces and hooks, would an inner voice continually murmur the sweet music of these four syllables—René Vincy? What secret temptation was she resisting when she whispered again and again the word, 'Impossible!'
She had seen the poet twice. That she, the mistress, almost the pupil, of the elegant Desforges; she, the very pattern of the Society belle, who had sold herself for all this fine perfumed linen in which she wrapped her beauty—for these soft, silken skirts which her maid was now fastening about her waist and for the countless luxuries that a licentious woman of fashion delights in, that she could so forget herself as to be captivated by the eyes and words of a chance poetaster, seen to-day and forgotten to-morrow, was well nigh impossible. She had said 'Impossible!' and yet here she was thinking of him again. How strange it was that ever since meeting René she had been unable to rid herself of the alluring hope of winning him! If anyone had used that old-fashioned phrase, 'Love at first sight,' in her hearing, she would have shrugged those pretty shoulders whose graceful contours were now revealed by her low-necked Opera gown and whose whiteness was enhanced by the single string of pearls she wore; and yet, what other words could describe the sudden and ardent feelings that her meeting with the poet had inspired—feelings that were hourly growing more intense?
The fact of the matter was that for some months past Suzanne had been somewhat bored between her husband—'the dear, good fellow'—and her 'dear, kind friend,' the Baron. The life of pleasure and of luxury for which she had made so many sacrifices seemed to her empty and dull. This she called 'being too happy.' 'I ought to have a little trouble,' she would say, with a laugh. Incessant indulgence had destroyed her appetite for enjoyment and made her a prey to the moral and physical weariness that frequently causesdemi-mondainesto suddenly throw up a position which it has cost them much labour to attain. They require fresh sensations, and, above all, that of love. They will commit any folly when once they have met the man who is able to make them feel something beyond their former empty delights—one whom their less elegant sisters would expressively term 'their sort.'
For Madame Moraines, who had just attained her thirtieth year, and who, satiated as she was with every kind of luxury, with no ambition to realise, and without the least respect for the men she met in her set, the apparition of a new being like René, so entirely different to the usual drawing-room 'swell,' might and did become an event in its way. It was curiosity that led her to take a seat next to him at Madame Komof's supper-table, and her feminine tact had at once told her in whatrôleshe would be most seductive in his eyes. His conversation had delighted her, but on her return home she had gone to sleep after uttering the 'Impossible!' which is used as a charm against all complaints of this kind by Society belles, a class more bound down in their narrow paths of pleasure than any busy housewife by her daily duties. Then René had called, and the impression he had already made on her was intensified a hundred-fold. She was pleased with all she saw or imagined in the young man—his good looks, his true-heartedness, his awkwardness, and his timidity. It was in vain that she kept repeating 'Impossible!' as she put the finishing touch to her dress by fastening one or two diamond pins in her bodice—in spite of that word she was already capitulating. She turned the idea over again and again, and all kinds of plans for bringing the adventure to a successful issue passed through her practical mind. 'Desforges is very sharp,' she reflected, adding, as she remembered the Baron's tirade against literary men, 'and he has already smelt a rat.' This tirade had at first afforded her amusement, but now it annoyed her, and made her feel a desire to act in a manner entirely opposed to her excellent friend's wishes. She was so completely absorbed in thought that it attracted her maid's attention, and caused that young person to say to the footman, 'There's something wrong with Madame. Can Monsieur have found out anything?'
This unreasonable and irresistible abstraction lasted all through dinner, then on the way to the theatre, and even during the performance, until Madame Ethorel suddenly remarked, 'Isn't that Monsieur Vincy looking at us over there—in the stalls near the door on the right?'
'Madame Komof's poet?' asked Suzanne indifferently. During René's visit she had mentioned that she was going to the Opera that night. She remembered it now as she put up her own glasses, mounted in chased silver—another present from the Baron. She saw René, and as he timidly turned away his glance a sudden thrill ran through her. Had Desforges, from his place at the back of the box, overheard Madame Ethorel's remark? No, she thought not; he was in deep conversation with Crucé.
'He is talking shop,' she said to herself as she listened, 'and has heard nothing. What is going on in me?'
It was the first time for many a day that the music touched some chord of feeling within her. She spent the evening between the happiness that René's presence caused her and the mortal dread that he might visit her in her box. The shame of having been remarked no doubt paralysed the poet, for he dared not even look towards the place where Suzanne sat, and when she went down to her carriage his face was not to be seen in the double row of men who lined the staircase. There was therefore nothing to prevent her from giving herself up to the idea that had obtained such a hold upon her, and as she laid her fair head upon the lace-covered pillow she had got so far as to say: 'Provided he doesn't ask his friend Larcher for information about me!'
Every morning a little before nine Paul Moraines entered his wife's room. By that time she had had her bath and was employed in attending to little trifles. Her small white feet, showing their blue veins, played in and out of her slippers, her dressing gown of soft clinging material was gathered round her slim waist by a silken cord, and her hair hung down in a thick golden plait. The bedroom, in which the big bedstead took up a good deal of space, was aired and perfumed, and to Paul the three-quarters of an hour he spent in taking his morning cup of tea with Suzanne at a little table near the window was the happiest part of the day. He had to be at his office by ten, and was too busy to come home for lunch. He was the kind of man who sits down in a first-class restaurant about half-past twelve, orders theplat du jour, a small bottle of wine, and a cup of coffee, and goes away after having spent the smallest sum possible. It pleased him to rival his wife's economy in this fashion. But his morning cup of tea was the reward he looked forward to during the six or seven hours he devoted to the Company's work.
'There are some days,' he would say in his simple way, 'when I should see nothing of you if it were not for this thrice blessed cup of tea!' It was he who served her; he buttered her toast with infinite care and watched her dainty teeth attack the crisp morsels. He was uneasy when, as on the morning after she had seen René at the Opera, her eyes were not quite so bright as usual and a look of fatigue showed that she had not had sufficient sleep. All night had she been tormented by thoughts of the young poet, and by the stir he had made amongst the small bundle of remnants she called her feelings. Her mind being before all else clear and precise—the mind of a business man at the service of a pretty woman's whims—she had reviewed the means at her disposal for gratifying her passionate caprice. The first condition was that she should see René again, and see him often; now, that was impossible at her own house, as was proved by her husband's words that very morning. After a few tender inquiries concerning her health, he asked, Did you have many visitors yesterday?'
'None at all,' she replied; and it being her custom never to tell an unnecessary fib, she added, 'only Desforges and that young fellow who wrote the play performed at Madame Komof's the other night.'
'René Vincy,' remarked Moraines. 'I'm sorry I missed him—I like his work very much. What is he like? Is he presentable?'
'He's nothing much,' answered Suzanne; 'quite insignificant.'
'Did Desforges see him?'
'Yes—why?'
'I'll ask the Baron about him. I dare say he took his measure at the first glance. He has a rare knowledge of men.'
'That's just like him,' said Suzanne, when Moraines was gone, after having devoured her with kisses; 'he tells the Baron everything.' She foresaw that the first person to tell Desforges of René's frequent visits to the Rue Murillo, if she got the poet to come, would be Paul himself. 'He is really too silly,' she went on, getting out of patience with him for his absolute confidence in the Baron, which she had herself been most instrumental in inspiring. But now she was beginning to fret under the first feelings of restraint.
Thoughts of René ran through her head all the morning, which was spent in looking over accounts and in receiving the visit of Madame Leroux, her manicure, a person of ripe age, extremely devout, with a sanctimonious and discreet air, who waited on the most aristocratic hands and feet in Paris. As a rule Suzanne, who, with perfect justice, looked upon inferiors as the principal source of all Society scandal, had a long talk with Madame Leroux, partly to procure her good-will, partly to hear a good many details concerning those whom the artiste deigned to honour with her services. Madame Leroux was therefore never tired of singing the praises of that charming Madame Moraines, 'so unaffected and so good. She absolutely worships her husband.' But that day none of the manicure's flattery could draw a single word from her fair client. The desire that had seized hold of the latter grew stronger and stronger, whilst the obstacles that stood in the way of its gratification assumed a clearer and more uncompromising shape. To gain a man's love requires time and opportunities of meeting. René did not go into Society, and if he had done so it would have been worse still, for other women would have taken him from her. Here, in her home in the Rue Murillo, she could have wormed her way into his virgin heart so easily—and only the Baron's watchfulness prevented her.
It was the first time for some years that she felt herself fettered, and a fit of anger against the man to whom she owed all she had came over her. Filled with such thoughts as these she lunched as usual alone, and in very frugal fashion. Even with the generous assistance of her benefactor she could only make both ends meet by practising economy in things that would not be noticed, such as the table. In her solitude she felt so miserable and at the same time so utterly powerless that, as she rose, the cry almost escaped her, 'What is the use of it, after all?'
What was the use of it all, indeed? She was a slave. Not only could she not see René as she wished in her own house, but that very afternoon, in spite of the new sentiments that were springing up within her, she had to keep an appointment with Desforges.
'What is the use of it?' she repeated, as she got herself ready to go out, putting on a pair of tiny shoes instead of boots, a plain dress that fastened in front, a black bonnet, and in her pocket a thick veil. She had ordered her carriage for two o'clock—a brougham and pair that she hired by the month for the afternoon and evening. On getting into it she was so crushed by the weight of her slavery that she could have cried. What, then, were her feelings when, on turning the corner of the street, she saw René standing there, evidently waiting to see her pass?
Their eyes met. He took his hat off with a blush, and she too could not help blushing in the corner of her carriage, so great was the pleasurable revulsion of feeling caused by this unexpected meeting, and especially by the idea that he must be in love with her. She, the creature of calculation and deceit, fell into one of those profound reveries in which women, when in love, anticipate all the delights to which the sentiment they experience and inspire can give birth. At such a moment they will give themselves up in thoughts to the man they did not know a week ago. If they dared, they would give themselves up too, there and then, though this would not hinder them from persuading the man who conquered them at the first glance that their subjugation was a work of time and degrees. In this they are right, for man's stupid vanity is gratified by the difficulties of the conquest, and few have sense enough to understand the divine quality of love that is spontaneous, natural, and irresistible.
Whilst the poet walked off, saying to himself, 'I am undone—she will never forgive me for such folly,' Suzanne was in one of those transports of delight before which prudence itself gives way, and, forgetting her fears of the morning, she now saw her way to carrying out one of those simple plans such as only the eminently realistic mind of a woman can concoct. She had set herself the task of deceiving a very sharp man, and one who was well acquainted with her disposition. The best thing to do, therefore, was to act in a manner exactly contrary to what that man would expect and foresee. Matters must be precipitated; René must be brought to her feet after two or three visits, and she must surrender before he had had time to woo her; Desforges would never suspect her of such an escapade—he who knew her to be so circumspect, so cautious, and so clever. But what if the poet despised her for her too easy surrender? She shook her pretty head incredulously as this objection occurred to her. That was a matter of tact and of woman's wit, and there she was sure of her ground!
Her joy at having roughly worked out this problem and the joy of deceiving the subtle Baron became so strangely mixed that she now looked forward to her appointment not only without regret, but with malicious delight. On reaching the colonnades in the Rue de Rivoli she got out as usual and sent the carriage home. The house in which the Baron had taken rooms for his meetings with Suzanne possessed two entrances, an advantage so uncommon in Paris that buildings favoured in that way are not only well-known, but much sought after by transgressors of the Seventh Commandment. Frédéric was too intimately acquainted with this phase of Parisian life to have fallen into the error of going to a place whose reputation was already made. The house he had somewhat accidentally hit upon must have escaped discovery by reason of its sedate and dismal-looking frontage in the Rue du Mont-Thabor, where he had taken the first floor, consisting of an ante-room and three other apartments. The rooms were kept in order by his valet, a man on whom he could thoroughly rely, thanks to the liberal wages he gave him. Considerable regard had been paid to what must be called the comfort of pleasure in furnishing this small suite, where the hangings and curtains deadened the noises from without, where soft skins were thrown down here and there for naked feet, where the countless mirrors reminded one of similar but less decorous places, and where the low arm-chairs and couches invited those long, familiar talks in which lovers delight. In a word, the minute care bestowed upon this interior would alone have betrayed the extent of the Baron's sensualism.
Suzanne had so often come to this house during the past few years, she had so often tied on her thick veil in the doorway in the Rue de Rivoli, so often hastened past the porter's lodge that she had come to perform almost mechanically these rites of adultery which procure novices such exquisite emotions. To-day, as she mounted the stairs, she could not help thinking how differently she would feel if she were going to meet René Vincy instead of the Baron in this quiet retreat She knew so well exactly what would happen. Desforges would be there and have everything prepared for her reception, from the flowers in the vases to the bread and butter for tea; then, at a given moment, she would go into the dressing-room and come out in a loose lace gown, her hair hanging about her shoulders and her little feet encased in slippers similar to those she wore in the morning. She took not the least pleasure in all this, but the Baron had such a charming way of showing his gratitude for the favours she granted him and displayed so much wit and affection during their long talks together that it was frequently he who had to remind his mistress that it was time to go.