'It is on that account,' replied René coldly.
'Very well,' said Claude, taking a seat, 'then we can talk. There must be no misunderstanding this time, so I shall be as plain as I possibly can. If I understand rightly, this wretch of a girl has told you two things. Let us proceed in order. This is the first—that I told her you were intimate with Madame Moraines. Excuse me,' he added, as the poet made a gesture. 'Between us two, in a matter affecting our friendship, I don't care a rap for the conventionalities that forbid us to mention a woman's name. I am not conventional myself, and so I mention her. Infamy number one. Colette told you a lie. This was exactly what I had said to her—I recollect the words as though it were yesterday, and regretted them before they had left my mouth—"I think poor René is falling in love with Madame Moraines." The only thing I went by was your embarrassed manner when mentioning her to me. But Colette had seen you sitting next to her at supper and paying her great attention. We had joked about the matter—as people will joke about these things—without attaching much importance to it. At least, I didn't—but all that's nothing. You were my friend. Your feeling might have been a serious one—it was, as it happened. I was wrong, and I frankly apologise in spite of the insult which, on the word of this vile drab, you have just offered me—me, your best and oldest friend!'
'But then why,' cried René, 'did you give me away to this creature, knowing what she was? And again, had you spoken only of me, I would have forgiven you——'
'Let us pass on to this second point,' said Claude, in his calm, methodical tone, 'that is to say, to the second lie. She told you that I had informed her of Madame Moraines' relations with Desforges. That is false. She had heard of them long ago from all the Salvaneys with whom she dined, supped, and flirted. No, René—if there is anything with which I reproach myself, it is not for having spoken to her about Madame Moraines—I could not have told her anything she didn't know. It is for not having spoken to you openly when you came to see me. I was fully acquainted with the depravity of this second but more fashionable Colette, and I did not warn you of it while there was yet time. Yes, I ought to have spoken—I ought to have opened your eyes and said: "Woo this woman, win her and wear her, but do not love her." And I held my peace. My only excuse is that I did not think her sufficiently disinterested to enter into your life as she has done. I said to myself: "He has no money, so there is no danger."'
'Then,' cried René, who had scarcely been able to contain himself whilst Claude was speaking of Suzanne in such terms, 'do you believe this vile thing that Colette has told me of Madame Moraines and Baron Desforges?'
'Whether I believe it?' replied Larcher, gazing at his friend in astonishment. 'Am I the man to invent such a story about a woman?'
'When you have paid a woman attentions,' said the poet, uttering his words very slowly, and in a tone of deepest contempt, 'attentions which she has repulsed, the least you can do is to respect her.'
'I!' cried Claude, 'I! I have paid Madame Moraines attentions? I understand—this is what she has told you.' He broke into a nervous laugh. 'When we put such things into our plays these harlots accuse us of libelling them. Of libelling them! As if such a thing were possible! They are all the same. And you believed her! You believed me, Claude Larcher, to be such a villain as to dishonour an honest woman in order to avenge my wounded pride? Look me well in the face, René. Do I look like a hypocrite? Have you ever known me to act as one? Have I proved my affection for you? Well—I give you my word of honour that this woman has lied to you, like Colette. The hussies! And there was I dying of grief, without a word of pity, because this woman, who is worse than a prostitute, had accused me of this dirty thing. Yes—worse than a prostitute! They sell themselves for bread—and she, for what? For a little of the wretched luxury thatparvenusindulge in.'
'Hold your tongue, Claude, hold your tongue!' cried René, in terrible accents. 'You are killing me.' A storm of feelings, irresistible in its fury, had suddenly burst forth within him. He could not doubt his friend's sincerity, and this, added to the assurance with which Claude had spoken of Desforges, forced upon the wretched lover a conviction of Suzanne's duplicity too painful to endure. He could restrain himself no longer, and, rushing upon his tormentor, seized him by the lapels of his coat and shook him so violently that the material gave way.
'When you tell a man such things about the woman he loves you must give him proofs—you understand—proofs!'
'You are mad!' replied Claude, disengaging himself from his grasp; 'proofs!—why, all Paris will give you them, my poor boy! Not one person, but ten, twenty, thirty, will tell you that seven years ago the Moraines were ruined. Who got the husband into the Insurance Company? Desforges. He is a director of that company, as he is also a director in the Compagnie du Nord, and a deputy and an ex-Councillor of State, and Heaven knows what besides! He is a big man, this Desforges, although he doesn't look it, and one who can indulge in all kinds of luxuries. Whom do you always find in the Rue Murillo? Desforges. Whom do you meet with Madame Moraines at the theatre? Desforges. And do you think the fellow is a man to play at Platonic love with this pretty woman married to her ninny of a husband? Such nonsense is all very well for you and me, but not for a Desforges! Wherever are your eyes and ears when you go to see her?'
'I have only been to her house three times,' said René.
'Only three times?' repeated Claude, looking at his friend. Emilie's plaintive confidences on the preceding evening had left him no doubt concerning the relations between Suzanne and the poet. René's imprudent exclamation, however, opened his eyes to the peculiar character these relations must have assumed.
'I don't want to know anything,' he went on; 'it is an understood thing that honour forbids us to talk of such women, just as if real honour did not call upon us to denounce their infamy to the whole world. So many fresh victims would then be spared! Proofs? You want proofs. Collect them for yourself. I know only two ways of getting at a woman's secrets—by opening her letters or having her watched. Madame Moraines never writes—you may be sure of that. Put some one on her track.'
'You are advising me to commit an ignoble action!' cried the poet.
'Nothing is noble or ignoble in love,' replied Larcher. 'I have myself done what I advise you to do. Yes, I have set detectives to watch Colette. A connection with one of these hussies means war to the knife, and you are scrupulous about the choice of your weapon.'
'No, no,' replied René, shaking his head; 'I cannot.'
'Then follow her yourself!' continued the relentless logician. 'I know my Desforges. He's a character, don't you make any mistake. I made a study of him once, when I was still fool enough to believe that observation led to talent. This man is an astonishing compound of order and disorder, of libertinism and hygiene. Their meetings are no doubt regulated, like all else in his life,—once a week, at the same hour,—not in the morning, which would interfere with his exercise,—not too late in the afternoon, which would interfere with his visits and his game of bézique at the club. Watch her. Before a week is over you will know the truth. I wish I could say that I had any doubt concerning the result of the experiment And it is I, my poor boy, who led you into this mire! You were so happy here until I took you by the hand and introduced you to that wicked world where you met this monster. If it hadn't been she it would have been another. I seem to bring misfortune on all those I love. But tell me you forgive me! I have such need of your friendship. Come, don't say no!'
Then, as Claude held out his hands, René grasped them fervently, and sinking down into a chair—the same in which Suzanne had sat—he burst into tears and exclaimed, 'My God, what suffering this is!'
* * * * *
Claude had given his friend a week. Before the end of the fourth day René called at the Sainte-Euverte mansion in a state of such agitation that Ferdinand could not repress an exclamation as he opened the door.
'My poor Monsieur Vincy,' said the worthy man, 'are you going to kill yourself with work like master?'
Claude was seated at his writing-table in the famous 'torture-chamber,' smoking as he worked, but, on seeing René, he threw down his cigarette, and a look of intense anxiety came into his face as he cried, 'Mon Dieu!What has happened?'
'You were right,' replied the poet, in a choking voice, 'she is the vilest of women.'
'Except one,' remarked Claude bitterly, and, parodying Chamfort's celebrated phrase, added, 'Colette must not be discouraged. But what have you done?'
'What you advised me to do,' replied René, in accents of peculiar asperity, 'and I have come to beg your pardon for having doubted your word. Yes—I have played the spy upon her. What a feeling it is! The first day, the second day, the third day—nothing. She only paid visits and went shopping, but Desforges came to the Rue Murillo every day. I was in a cab stationed at the corner of the street, and when I saw him enter the house I suffered agonies of torture. At last, to-day, about two o'clock, she goes out in her brougham. I follow her in my cab. After stopping at two or three places, her carriage draws up in front of Galignani's, the bookseller's, under the colonnade in the Rue de Rivoli, and she gets out. I see her speak to the coachman, and the brougham goes off without her. She walks for a short distance under the colonnade, and I see that she is wearing a thick veil. How well I know that veil! My heart beat fast and my brain was in a whirl. I felt that I was nearing a decisive moment. She then disappears through an archway, but I follow her closely and find myself in a courtyard with an opening at the other end, affording egress into the Rue du Mont-Thabor. I look up and down the latter street. No one. She could not have had time to get out of sight. I decide to wait and watch the back entrance. If she had an appointment there she would not go out the same way she came in. I waited for an hour and a quarter in a wine-shop just opposite. At the end of that time she reappeared, still wearing her thick veil. The dress, the walk, and the veil—I know them all too well to be mistaken. She had come out by the Rue du Mont-Thabor. Her accomplice would therefore leave by the Rue de Rivoli. I rush through to that side. After a quarter of an hour a door opens and I find myself face to face with—can you guess? Desforges! At last I have them—the proofs! Wretch that she is!'
'Not at all! Not at all!' replied Claude; 'she is a woman, and they're all alike. May I confide in you in return—that is, make an exchange of horrors? You know how Colette treated me when I begged for a little pity? The other night I flogged her till she was black and blue, and this is what she writes me. Read it.' And he handed his friend a letter that was lying open on the table. René took it and read the following lines:
'2 A. M.'I have waited for you till now, love, but you haven't come. I shall wait for you at home all day to-day, and to-night after I come from the theatre. I only act in the first piece, and I shall make haste to get back. Come for the sake of our old love. Think of my lips. Think of my golden hair. Think of our kisses. Think of her who adores you, who is wretched at having given you pain, and who wants you, as she loves you—madly.'Your own COLETTE.'
'2 A. M.
'I have waited for you till now, love, but you haven't come. I shall wait for you at home all day to-day, and to-night after I come from the theatre. I only act in the first piece, and I shall make haste to get back. Come for the sake of our old love. Think of my lips. Think of my golden hair. Think of our kisses. Think of her who adores you, who is wretched at having given you pain, and who wants you, as she loves you—madly.
'Your own COLETTE.'
'That's something like a love letter, isn't it?' said Larcher with a kind of savage joy. 'It's more cruel than all the rest to have a woman love you like that because you've beaten her to a jelly. But I'll have no more to do with them—neither with her nor anyone else. I hate love now, and I'm going to cut out my heart. Follow my example.'
'If I could!' replied René, 'but it's impossible. You don't know what that woman was to me.' And again yielding to the passion that raged within him, he wrung his hands and broke into a fit of convulsive sobs. 'You don't know how I loved her, how I believed in her, and what I've given up for her. And then to think of her in the arms of this Desforges—it's horrible!' A shudder of disgust ran through him. 'If she had chosen another man, a man of whom I could think with hatred or rage—but without this feeling of horror! Why, I can't even feel jealous of him. For money! For money!' He rose and caught hold of Claude's arm frantically. 'You told me that he was a director of the Compagnie du Nord. Do you know what she wanted to do the other day? To give me a few good tips in shares. I, too, would have been kept by the Baron. It's only natural, isn't it, that the old man should pay them all—the wife, the husband, and the lover? Oh! if I only could! She is going to the Opera to-night—what if I went there? What if I took her by the hair and spat in her face, before all the people who know her, telling them all that she is a low, filthy harlot?'
He fell back into his chair, once more bursting into tears.
'She occupied my thoughts every hour, every moment of the day. You had told me to be on my guard against women, it is true. But then you were beguiled by a Colette, an actress, a creature who had had other lovers before you—whilst she—— Every line in her face swears to me that it is impossible—that I have been dreaming. It is as if I had seen an angel lie. And yet I have the proof, the undeniable proof. Why did I not confront her there in the street, on the threshold of that vile place? I should have strangled her with my hands, like some beast. Claude, my dear fellow, how I wronged you! And the other! I have crushed and trodden under foot the noblest heart that beat in order to get to this monster. It is but just—I have deserved it all. But what can there be in Nature to produce such beings?'
For a long, long time these confused lamentations continued. Claude listened to them in silence, his head resting on his hand. He too had suffered, and he knew what consolation it gives to tell one's sorrow. He pitied the poor youth who sat there sobbing as if his heart would break, and the clear-sighted analyst within him could not help observing the difference between the poet's grief and that which he himself had so often felt under similar circumstances. He never remembered having suffered this torture, even when hard hit, without probing his wounds, whilst René was the picture of a young and sincere creature who has no idea of studying his tears in a mirror. These strange reflections upon the diversity of men's souls did not prevent him from sympathising most deeply with his friend, and there was a note of true feeling in his voice when he at last took advantage of a break in René's lament to speak.
'It is as our dear Heine said—Love is the hidden disease of the heart. You are now at the period of inception. Will you take the advice of a veteran sufferer? Pack up your traps and put miles upon miles between you and this Suzanne. A pretty name and a well-chosen one! A Suzanne who makes money out of the elders! At your age you will be quickly cured. I am quite cured myself. Not that I know how and when it happened—in fact, it amazes me! But for the past three days I have been rid of my love for Colette. Meanwhile, I'm not going to leave you alone; come and dine with me. We shall drink hard and be merry, and so avenge ourselves upon our troubles.'
After his fit of passion had spent itself René had fallen into that state of mental coma which succeeds great outbursts of grief. He suffered himself to be led, like one in a trance, along the Rue du Bac, then along the Rue de Sèvres and the boulevard as far as the Restaurant Lavenue at the corner of the Gare Montparnasse, long frequented by many well-known painters and sculptors of our day. Claude led the way to acabinet particulier, in which he pointed out to René Colette's name, scratched on one of the mirrors amidst scores of others. Rubbing his hands, he exclaimed: 'We must treat our past with ridicule,' and ordered a very elaborate meal with two bottles of the oldest Corton. During the whole of the dinner he did not cease to propound his theories on women, whilst his companion hardly ate, but sat lost in mental contemplation of the divine face in which he had so fully believed. Was it possible that he was not dreaming, and that Suzanne was really one of those of whom Claude was speaking in terms of such contempt?
'Above all,' said Larcher, 'take no revenge. Revenge in love is like drinking alcohol after burning punch. We become attached to women as much by the harm we do them as by that which they do us. Imitate me, not as I used to be, but as I am now, eating, drinking, and caring as much for Colette as Colette cares for me. Absence and silence—these are the sword and buckler in this battle. Colette writes to me, and I don't answer. She comes to the Rue de Varenne. No admission. Where am I? What am I doing? She cannot get to know. That makes them madder than all the rest. Here's a suggestion: To-morrow morning you start for Italy, or England, or Holland, whichever you prefer. Meanwhile Suzanne thinks you are piously meditating upon all the lies she has told you, but in reality you are comfortably seated in your compartment watching the telegraph poles scud past and saying to yourself, "We are on even terms now, my angel." Then in three, four, or five days' time the angel begins to get uneasy. She sends a servant with a note to the Rue Coëtlogon. The servant comes back:—"Monsieur Vincy is travelling!" "Travelling?" The days roll on and Monsieur Vincy does not return, neither does he write—he is happy elsewhere. How I should like to be there to see the Baron's face when she vents her fury upon him. For these equitable creatures invariably make the one who stays behind pay for the one who has gone. But what's the matter with you?'
'Nothing,' said René, though Claude's mention of Desforges had caused him a fresh fit of pain. 'I think you are right, and I shall leave Paris to-morrow without seeing her.'
It was on that understanding that the two friends separated. Claude had insisted on escorting René back to the Rue Coëtlogon, and, as he shook hands with him at the gate, said, 'I will send Ferdinand to-morrow morning to inquire what time you start. The sooner the better, and without seeing her, mind—remember that!'
'You need not be afraid,' replied René.
'Poor fellow!' muttered Claude, as he returned along the Rue d'Assas. Instead of going towards his own home he walked slowly in the direction of the cab rank by the old Couvent des Carmes, turning round once or twice to see whether his companion had really disappeared. Then he stopped for a few minutes and seemed to hesitate. His eyes fell upon the clock near the cab rank, and he saw that it was a quarter-past ten.
'The piece began at half-past eight,' he said to himself, 'and she's just had time to change. I should be an ass to miss such a chance.Cocher!' he cried, waking up the man whose horse seemed to have most speed in him, 'Rue de Rivoli, corner of Jeanne d'Arc's statue, and drive quickly.'
The cab started off and passed the top of the Rue Coëtlogon. 'He is weeping now,' said Claude to himself; 'what would he say if he saw me going to Colette's?' He little thought that as soon as he had entered the house René had told his sister to get out his dress suit. Astonished at such a request, Emilie ventured upon an interrogation, but was met with, 'I have no time to talk,' uttered in such harsh tones that she dared not insist.
It was Friday, and René, as he had told Claude, knew that Suzanne was at the Opera. He had calculated that this was her week. Why had the idea that he must see her again and at once taken such a firm hold upon him that, in his impatience to be off, he quite upset both his sister and Françoise? Was he about to put his threat into practice and insult his faithless mistress in public? Or did he only wish to feast his eyes once more on her deceptive beauty before his departure? On the occasion of his visit to the Gymnase a week ago, after his interview with Colette, his aim had been clear and definite. It was the outward similarity of that visit with the step he was now taking that made him feel more keenly what a change had come over him and his surroundings in such a short space of time. How hopefully had he then betaken himself to the theatre, and now in what mood of despair! Why was he going at all?
He asked himself this question as he ascended the grand staircase, but he felt himself impelled by some force superior to all reason or effort of will. Since he had seen Suzanne leave the house in the Rue du Mont-Thabor he had acted like an automaton. He took his seat in the stalls just as the ballet scene from 'Faust' was drawing to a close. The first effect produced by the music on his overstrung nerves was a feeling of almost morbid sadness; tears started to his eyes and dimmed his vision as he turned his opera-glasses upon Suzanne's box—that box in which she had looked so divinely modest and pretty on the morrow of Madame Komof'ssoirée, though not more so than she did now.
To-night she was in blue, with a row of pearls round her fair throat and diamonds in her golden hair. Another woman, whom René had never seen, was seated beside her; she was a brunette, dressed in white, and wore a number of jewels. There were three men behind them. One was unknown to the poet, the other two were Moraines and Desforges. The unhappy lover gazed upon the trio before him—the woman sold to this aged libertine, and the husband who profited by the bargain. At least, René believed that it was so. This picture of infamy changed his feelings of sadness into fury. All combined to madden him—indignation at finding such ideal grace in Suzanne's face when but that afternoon she had hurried home from her disgusting amours, physical jealousy wrought to its highest pitch by the presence of the more fortunate rival, lastly a kind of helpless humiliation at beholding this perfidious mistress happy and admired, in all the glamour of her queenly beauty, whilst he, her victim, was almost dying of grief and unavenged.
By the time that the ballet was over René had lashed himself into that state of fury which in every day language is expressively styled a cool rage. At such moments, by a contrast similar to that observed in certain stages of madness, the frenzy of the soul is accompanied by complete control of the nerves. The individual may come and go, laugh and talk; he preserves a perfectly calm exterior, and yet inside him there is a whirlwind of murderous ideas. The most unheard-of proceedings then seem quite natural as well as the most pronounced cruelties. The poet had been struck with a sudden idea—to go into Madame Moraines' box and express to her his contempt! How? That did not trouble him much. All he knew was that he must ease his mind, whatever the result might be. As he made his way along the corridor, just then filled with the gilded youth of Paris, he was so beside himself that he came into collision with several people, but strode on unheedingly and without proffering a word of excuse. On reaching theouvreuse, he asked her to show him the sixth box from the stage on the right.
'The box belonging to Monsieur le Baron Desforges?' said the woman.
'Quite right,' replied René. 'He pays for the theatre, too,' he thought; 'that's only as it should be.' The door was opened, and in a trice he had passed through the small ante-room that leads to the box itself. Moraines turned round and smiled at him in his frank and simple way. The next moment he was shaking hands with René in English fashion and saying, 'How d'you do?' as though they were accustomed to meet every day.
Then, turning to his wife, who had witnessed René's entrance without betraying the slightest surprise, he said, 'My darling, this is Monsieur Vincy.'
'I haven't forgotten Monsieur Vincy,' replied Suzanne, receiving her visitor with a graceful inclination of her head, 'although he seems to have forgotten me.'
The perfect ease with which she uttered this phrase, the smile that accompanied it, the painful necessity of shaking hands with this husband whom he regarded as an accessory to his wife's guilt, and of bowing to Baron Desforges as well as to the other persons present in the box—all these details were so strangely out of keeping with the fever consuming the poet that for a few moments he was quite taken aback. Such is life in the world of fashion. Tragedies are played in silence, and amidst an interchange of false compliments, an assumption of meaningless manners, and an empty show of pleasure. Moraines had offered René a seat behind Suzanne, and she sat talking to him about his musical tastes with as much apparent indifference as if this visit were not of terrible significance for her.
Desforges and Moraines were talking with the other lady, and René could hear them making remarks concerning the composition of the audience. He was not accustomed to impose upon himself that self-control which permits women of fashion to talk of dress or music whilst their hearts are being torn with anxiety. He stammered forth replies to Suzanne's words without the least idea of what he was saying. As she bent slightly forward he inhaled the heliotrope perfume she generally used. It awakened tender memories within him, and at last he dared to look at her. He saw her mobile lips, her fair, rose-like complexion, her blue eyes, her golden hair, her snow-white neck and shoulders over which his lips had often strayed. In his eyes there was a kind of savage delirium that almost frightened Madame Moraines. His bare coming had told her that something extraordinary was taking place, but she was under the watchful eye of Desforges, and she could not afford to make a single mistake. On the other hand, the least imprudence on René's part might ruin her. Her whole life depended upon a word or gesture of the young poet, and she knew how easily such word or gesture might escape him. She took up her fan and the lace handkerchief she had laid on the ledge of the box, and rose.
'It is too warm here,' she said, passing her hand over her eyes and addressing René, who had risen at the same time. Will you come into the ante-room? It will be cooler there.'
As soon as they were both seated on the sofa she said aloud, 'Is it long since you last saw our friend Madame Komof?' Then, in an undertone, 'What is the matter, love? What does this mean?'
'It means,' replied René, in a suppressed voice, 'that I know all, and that I am come to tell you what I think of you. You need not trouble to answer. I know all, I tell you—I know at what time you went into the house in the Rue du Mont-Thabor, at what time you left it, and whom you met there. Don't lie; I was there—I saw you. This is the last time I shall ever speak to you, but you understand—you are a wretch, a miserable wretch!'
Suzanne was fanning herself whilst he flung these terrible phrases at her. The emotions they aroused did not prevent her from perceiving that this scene with her enraged lover, who was evidently beside himself, must be cut short at any price. Bending forward, she called her husband from the box.
'Paul,' she said, 'have the carriage called. I don't know whether it's the heat in the house, but I feel quite faint. You will excuse me, Monsieur Vincy?'
'It's strange,' said Moraines to the poet, who was obliged to leave the box with the husband, 'she had been so bright all the evening. But these theatres are very badly ventilated. I am sure she is sorry at being unable to talk to you, for she is such an admirer of your talent. Come and see us soon—good-bye!'
And with his usual energy he again shook hands with René, who saw him disappear towards that part of the vestibule where the footmen stand in waiting. The orchestra was just attacking the first bars of the fifth act of 'Faust.' A fresh fit of rage seized the poet, and found vent in the words which he almost shouted in the now deserted corridor: 'I will be revenged!'
Suzanne knew the Baron's eagle eye too well to imagine that the scene in the box had entirely escaped him. How much had he seen? What did he think? These two questions were of capital importance to her. It was impossible to formulate any reply to them during the few minutes occupied—she leaning on his arm and he supporting her as though he really believed her to be ill—in passing from the box to the entrance reserved for carriages. The Baron's face remained impenetrable and she herself felt unable to exercise her usual faculties of observation. René's sudden onslaught had inspired her with such terror and pain that her indisposition had been a sham only to a certain extent. She had been afraid that the poet, evidently beside himself, might create a scene and ruin her for ever. At the same time her sincere and deep-rooted passion had received a severe blow in this terrible insult and still more terrible discovery. As she lifted up the train of her dress and descended the steps in her blue satin shoes she shuddered as we sometimes do when we escape from a danger which we have had the courage to brave. A faint smile hovered upon her quivering lips, but her face was ashy pale, and it was a real relief to her when she sat down in the corner of her carriage with her husband by her side. Before him, at least, there was no necessity to control herself. As the horses started she bent forward to bow her adieux. A gas-lamp shed its light full upon the Baron's face, which now betrayed his real thoughts. Suzanne read them in a second.
'He knows all,' she thought. 'What is to be done?'
For a few moments after the carriage had gone Desforges still stood there twirling his moustache—with him a sign of extraordinary preoccupation. It being a fine night, he had not ordered his brougham. It was his custom, when the weather was dry, to walk to his favourite club in the Rue Boissy-d'Anglas from any place in which he had been spending the evening—even if such place was some small theatre situated at the other end of the boulevards. Whilst smoking his third cigar—Doctor Noirot only allowed him three a day—he loved to stroll through the streets of that Paris which he justly prided himself upon knowing and enjoying as well as anyone. Desforges was no cosmopolitan, and had a horror of travelling, which he called 'a life of luggage.' This promenade in the evening was his delight. He utilised it for 'making up his balance'—that was his expression—for going over the different events of the day, placing his receipts in one column and his expenses in another. 'Massage, fencing, and morning ride,' were put down in the column of receipts to the credit of his health. 'Drinking burgundy or port'—his pet sin—'or eating truffles or seeing Suzanne' went into the column of expenditure. When he had indulged in some trifling excess that contravened his well-regulated lines of conduct he would carefully weigh the pros and cons, and conclude by pronouncing with the solemnity of a judge whether 'it was worth it' or 'not worth it.'
This Paris, too, in which he had dwelt since his earliest youth, always awakened in him memories of the past. His cynicism went hand in hand with cunning, and he practised only the Epicureanism of the senses. He was a master in the art of enjoying happy hours long after they had passed. In such a house, for instance, he had had appointments with a charming mistress; another recalled to his mind exquisite dinners in good company. 'We ought to make ourselves four stomachs, like oxen, to ruminate,' he used to say; 'that is their only good point, and I have taken it them.'
But when the Moraines had driven away in their brougham on this mild and balmy May evening he began his walk, a prey to most sad and bitter impressions, although the day had been a particularly pleasant one until René Vincy's entry in the box. Suzanne had not been mistaken. He knew all. The poet's visit had struck him all the more forcibly since, that very afternoon, on leaving the house in the Rue de Rivoli, he had found himself face to face with the young man, who stared hard at him. 'Where the deuce have I seen that fellow before?' he had asked himself in vain. 'Where could my senses have been?' he said, when Paul Moraines mentioned René's name to Suzanne. The expression on the visitor's face had immediately aroused his suspicions; when Suzanne went into the ante-room he had placed himself so as to follow the interview from the corner of his eye. Without hearing what the poet said, he had guessed by the look in his eyes, the frown on his brow, and the gestures of his hands that he was taking Suzanne to task. The feigned indisposition of the latter had not deceived him for a single moment. He was one of those who only believe in women's headaches when there is nothing to be gained by them. The manner in which his mistress's hand trembled on his arm as they descended the staircase had strengthened his convictions, and now, as he crossed the Place de l'Opéra, he told himself the most mortifying truths instead of going into his usual raptures before the vast perspective of the avenue, but lately lighted by electricity, or before the façade of the Opera, which he declared to be finer than Notre Dame.
'I have been let in,' he said, 'and at my age, too! It's rather too bad—and for whom?' All combined to render his humiliation more complete—the absolute secresy with which Suzanne had deceived him, and without arousing the slightest suspicion; the startling suddenness of the discovery; lastly, the quality of his rival, a bit of a boy, a scribbling poet! A score of details, one more exasperating than the other, crowded in upon him. The forlorn and bashful look on the poet's face when he had seen him on the day after Madame Komof'ssoirée; Suzanne's inexplicable fits of abstraction, which he had scarcely noticed at the time and her allusions to matutinal visits to the dentist's, the Louvre, or the Bon Marché. And he had swallowed it all—he, Baron Desforges!
'I have been an ass!' he repeated aloud. 'But how did she manage it?' It was this that completely floored him; he could not understand how she had gone about it, even when René's attitude in the box left him no doubt as to their relations. No, there was no possibility of doubt.
Had Suzanne not been his mistress he would never have dared to speak to her as he did, nor would she have allowed it. 'But how?' he asked himself; 'she never received him at home, or I should have known it through Paul. She did not see him out; he goes nowhere.' Once more he repeated, 'I have been an ass!' and felt really angry with the woman who was the cause of his perturbation. He had just passed the Café de la Paix and had to brush aside two women who accosted him in their usual shameless manner. 'Bah!' he exclaimed; 'they are all alike.' He walked on for a few paces and saw that he had let his cigar go out. He threw it away with a gesture of impatience. 'And cigars are like women.' Then he shrugged his shoulders as it occurred to him how childishly he was behaving. 'Frédéric, my dear fellow,' whispered an inner voice, 'you have been an ass, and you are continuing therôle.' He took a fresh cigar from his case, held it to his ear as he cracked it, and went into a cigar-shop for a light. The havana proved to be delicious, and the Baron, a connoisseur, thoroughly enjoyed it. 'I was wrong,' he thought; 'here is one that is not a fraud.'
The soothing effect of the cigar changed the tenour of his ideas.
He looked about him and saw that he had almost reached the end of the boulevard. The pavement was as crowded as at midday, and the carriages and cabs went hurrying by. The gas-lamps glinted upon the young foliage of the trees in a fantastic manner, and on the right the dark mass of the Madeleine stood out against the dark blue sky studded with stars. This Parisian picture pleased the Baron, who continued his reflections in a calmer frame of mind. 'Hang it all!' he cried; 'can it be that I am jealous?' As a rule he shook his head whenever he was treated to an example of that mournful passion, and would generally reply, 'They pay your mistress attentions! But that is merely a compliment to your good taste.' 'I, jealous! Well, that would be good!'
When we have accustomed ourselves to play a certain part in the eyes of the world for years together we continue to play it even when alone. Desforges was ashamed of his weakness—like an officer who, sent out on a night expedition, blushes to find himself afraid and refuses to admit the presence of that feeling. 'It is not true,' he said to himself; 'I am not jealous.' He conjured up a vision of Suzanne in René's arms, and it tickled his vanity to feel that the picture, though not a pleasant one, did not cause him one of those fits of intense pain that constitute jealousy. By way of contrast, he recalled the poet's entry in the box, his agitated manner, and the unconquerable frenzy that betrayed itself in every lineament. There you had a really jealous man, exposed to the full fury of that terrible mania.
The antithesis between the relative calm he felt within him and his rival's despair was so flattering to the Baron's vanity that for a moment he was absolutely happy. He caught himself making use of his customary expression, one he had inherited from his father, a clever speculator, who had again had it from his mother, a fine Normandy woman who had linked her fortunes with those of the first Baron Desforges, a Prefect under thegrand empereur, 'Gumption! Why should I be jealous? In what has Suzanne deceived me? Did I expect her to love me with a love such as this fool of a poet no doubt dreamt of? What could a man of more than fifty ask of her? To be kind and amiable? That she has been. To afford me an opportunity of spending my evenings agreeably? She has done so. Well, what then? She has met a strapping youth, a bit wild, with a fresh-looking complexion, and a fine pair of lips. As she couldn't very well ask me to get him for her, she has indulged in a little luxury on her own account. But, of the two of us, I should say that he is the cuckold!'
This reflection, so purely Gallic in form, occurred to him just as he reached the door of his club. The plain language in which it had found expression relieved him for a moment. 'That's all very well,' he thought; 'but what would Crucé say?' The adroit collector had once sold him a worthless daub at an exorbitant figure, and Desforges had ever since entertained for him that mixture of respect and resentment felt by very clever men for those who have duped them well. He drew a picture of the small club-room and the cunning Crucé relating Suzanne's adventure with René to two or three of his most envious colleagues. The idea was so hateful to the Baron that it stopped him from entering the club, and he walked away in the direction of the Champs-Elysées trying to shake off its influence. 'Bah! Neither Crucé nor the others will know anything of it. It's lucky after all that she didn't hit upon any of these men about town.' He threw a glance at the club windows that looked out upon the Place de la Concorde, and which were all lit up. 'Instead of that she has taken some one who is not in Society, whom I never meet, and whom she has neither patronised nor presented. I must do her the justice to admit that she has been very considerate. Her trepidation, too, just now, was entirely on my account. Poor little woman!'
'Poor little woman!' he repeated, continuing his soliloquy under the trees of the avenue. 'This beast is capable of making her repent her caprice most bitterly. He seemed in a pretty rage to-night! What want of taste and manners! In my box, too! What irony! If this good Paul were not the husband I have made him, she would be a ruined woman. And then he has discovered the secret of our meetings, and we shall have to leave the Rue du Mont-Thabor. No—the fellow is impossible!' This was one of his favourite expressions. A fresh fit of ill humour had seized him, this time directed against the poet, but, as he prided himself upon being a man of sense and upon his clear-sightedness, he suppressed it at once. 'Am I going to be angry with him for being jealous of me? That would be the height of folly! Let me rather think upon what he is likely to do. Blackmail! No. He is too young for that. An article in some paper? A poet with pretensions to sentiment—that won't be in his line. I wonder whether his indignation will lead him to cast her off altogether? That seems too good to be true. A young scribbler, as poor as a church mouse, shall give up a beautiful and loving mistress, surrounded by all the refinements of luxury, who costs him nothing! Get out! But what if he asks her to break with me, and she is foolish enough to yield?' He saw at once and clearly what disturbance such a rupture would create in his life. 'Firstly, there would be the loss of Suzanne, and where should I find another so charming, so sprightly, so accustomed to my ways and habits? Then, again, I should have to find something to do in the evenings, to say nothing of the fact that I have no better friend in Paris than this excellent Paul.' To remove his fears concerning these contingencies he was obliged to recapitulate the bonds of interest that made him indispensable to the Moraines. 'No,' he concluded, as he reached the door of his mansion in the Cours-la-Reine, 'he will not let her go, she will not give me up, and everything will come right. Everything always comes right in the end.'
This assurance and philosophy were probably not so sincere as the Baron's vanity—his only weakness—would have him believe, and for the first time in his life he got out of patience with his valet, a pupil of his who for years had helped him to undress. Though he was still anxious about the future, and more inwardly upset than he cared to admit, this easy-going egoist nevertheless slept right off for seven hours, according to his wont. Thanks to a life of moderate and continual activity, to a careful system of diet, to absolute regularity in rising and retiring, and, above all, to the care he took to rid his brain at midnight of all troublesome thoughts, he had acquired such a fixed habit of dropping off to sleep at the same hour that nothing less than the announcement of another Commune—the most terrible calamity he could think of—would have kept him awake. On opening his eyes in the morning, his mind refreshed by his recuperative slumbers, all irritation was so completely dispelled that he recalled the events of the preceding night with a smile.
'I am sure thathehas not done as much,' he said to himself, thinking of the sleepless hours that René must have spent, 'nor Suzanne either'—she had been so agitated—'nor Moraines.' An indisposition of his wife's always turned that poor fellow upside down. 'What a fine title for a play—"The happiest of the four!" I must take credit for its invention.' His joke pleased him immensely, and when Doctor Noirot, during the process of massage, had said to him, 'Monsieur le Baron's muscles are in excellent condition this morning; they are as healthy, supple, and firm as those of a man of thirty,' the sensation of well-being abolished the last traces of his ill humour.
He had now but one idea—how to prevent last night's scene from bringing any change into his comfortable existence, so well adapted to his dear person. He thought of it as he drank his chocolate, a kind of light and fragrant froth which his valet prepared according to the precepts of a master of the culinary art. He thought of it as he galloped through the Bois on this bright spring morning. He thought of it as he sat down to luncheon about half-past twelve opposite the old aunt whose duties consisted of looking after the linen, the silver, and the servants' accounts, until such time as she should be called upon to look after him. He decided to adopt the principle of every wise policy, both public and private—to wait! 'Better give the young man time to make a fool of himself and slip away of his own accord. I must be very kind, and pretend I have seen nothing.'
Turning this resolve over in his mind, he made his way on foot to the Rue Murillo about two o'clock. He stopped before the shop window of an art dealer whom he knew very well, and his eyes fell upon a Louis XVI. watch, its chased gold case set in a wreath of roses and bearing a charming miniature. 'An excellent means,' he thought, 'of proving to her that I am for thestatus quo.' He bought the pretty toy at a reasonable price, and congratulated himself upon its acquisition when, on entering Suzanne's littlesalon, he saw how anxiously she had awaited his coming. Her careworn look and her pallor told him that she must have spent the night in concocting plans to get out of the dilemma into which the scene with René had led her, and by the way in which she eyed him the Baron saw that she knew she had not escaped his perspicacity. This compliment was like balm to his wounded vanity, and he felt real pleasure in handing her the case containing the little bauble with the words, 'How do you like this?'
'It is charming,' said Suzanne; 'the shepherd and shepherdess are most life-like.'
'Yes,' replied Desforges; 'they almost look as though they were singing the romance of those days:
'I gave up all for fickle Sylvia's sake,She leaves me now and takes another swain . . .'
'I gave up all for fickle Sylvia's sake,She leaves me now and takes another swain . . .'
His fine and well-trained tenor voice had once gained him some success in the drawing-rooms, and he hummed the refrain of the well-known lament with a variation of his own:
'Love's pangs last but a moment,Love's pleasures last for life . . .'
'Love's pangs last but a moment,Love's pleasures last for life . . .'
'If you will place this shepherd and shepherdess on a corner of your table, they will be better than with me.'
'How you spoil me!' said Suzanne, with some embarrassment.
'No,' replied Desforges, 'I spoil myself. Am I not your friend before all else?' Then, kissing her hand, he added in a serious tone that contrasted with his usual bantering accents, 'And you will never have a better.'
That was all. One word more and he would have compromised his dignity. One word less and Suzanne might have believed him her dupe. She felt deeply grateful for the consideration with which he had treated her—the more so since that consideration left her free to devote her mind to René. All her thoughts had been concentrated during her sleepless night upon this one question—how to manage the one while keeping the other, now that the two men had seen and understood each other? Break with the Baron? She had thought of it, but how could it be done? She saw herself caught in the web of lies which she had spun for her husband this many a year. Their mode of life could not be kept up without the aid of her rich lover. To break with him was to condemn herself to immediately seek a new relationship of the same kind. On the other hand, to keep Desforges meant breaking with René. The Baron, she had said to herself, would never understand that in loving another she was not robbing him of a whit of affection. Do men ever admit such truths? And now he was kind and considerate enough not even to mention whatever he had noticed. Never, even when paying the heaviest bills, had he appeared so generous as at that moment, when, by his attitude, he allowed her to devote herself to the task of winning back her young lover and the kisses she neither could nor would do without.
'He is right,' she said to herself when Desforges had gone; 'he is my best friend.' And immediately, with that marvellous facility women possess for indulging in fresh hopes on the slightest provocation, she was ready to believe that matters would arrange themselves as easily on the other side. As she lay at full length on the sofa, her fingers idly toying with the pretty little watch, her thoughts were busied with the poet and with the means she should employ to win him back. She must examine the situation carefully and look it full in the face. What did René know? This first point had been already answered by himself; he had seen both her and the Baron come out of the house in the Rue du Mont-Thabor. Now Desforges, from motives of prudence, never went out the same way as she did. René must therefore know of the existence of the two exits. Had he seen her leave her carriage and walk as far as the entrance in the Rue de Rivoli. It was very probable. If chance alone had brought him into contact with her first, and then with the Baron, he could have drawn no conclusions from the double meeting. No, he must have watched her and followed her. But what had induced him to do so? At their last interview at the beginning of the week she had left him so reassured, so full of love and happiness! There was only one thing that could possibly have caused a revival of suspicion so violent as to lead him to watch her movements—Claude's return. Once more a feeling of rage against that individual came over her.
'If it is to him that I owe this fresh alarm, he shall pay for it,' she thought. But she soon returned to the real danger, which, for the moment, was of more importance to her than her rancour against the imprudent Larcher. The fact remained that in some way or other René had detected the secret of her meetings with Desforges, and this evidently caused him such intense pain that he had been compelled to fling his discovery at her as soon as it was made. His mad conduct at the Opera was but a proof of love, though it had nearly ruined her, and, instead of her being angry with him for it, she only cherished him the more. His passion was a sign of her power over him, and she concluded that a lover who loved so madly would not be difficult to win back. Only she must see him, speak to him, and explain her visit to the Rue du Mont-Thabor with her own lips. She could say that she had gone to see a sick friend who was also a friend of the Baron's. But what of the carriage sent back from Galignani's? She had wanted to walk a little way. But the two entrances? So many houses are built like that. She had had too much experience of René's confiding nature to doubt that she would convince him somehow or other. He had simply been overwhelmed at the moment by proofs that corroborated his suspicions, and was probably already doubtful and pleading with himself the cause of his love.
Her reflections had carried her as far as this when her carriage was announced. The desire to get René back had taken such a hold upon her, and she was, moreover, so convinced that her presence would overcome all resistance, that a bold plan suddenly occurred to her. Why should she not see the poet at once? Why not, now that she had nothing to fear from Desforges? In love quarrels the quickest reconciliations are the best. Would he have the courage to repulse her if she came to him in the little room that had witnessed her first visit, bringing him a fresh and indisputable proof of love? She would say, 'You have insulted, slandered, and tortured me—yet I could not bear to think you in doubt and pain—and I came!' No sooner had she grasped the possibility of taking this decisive step than she clung to it as if it were a sure way out of the anguish that had tortured her since the preceding evening. She dressed so hurriedly that she quite astonished her maid, and yet she had never looked prettier than in the light grey gown she had chosen. Without a moment's hesitation, she told her coachman to drive to the Rue Coëtlogon. To that point had this woman, generally so circumspect and so careful of appearances, come.
'Just for once!' she said to herself as her brougham rolled along; 'I shall get there quicker.' The ideas of worldly prudence had soon made way for others. 'I wonder whether René is at home? Of course he is. He is waiting for a letter from me, or for some sign of my existence.' It was almost the same question she had asked herself and the same answer she had given on the occasion of her first visit in March, two months and a half before. By the difference in her feelings she could measure the progress she had made since that time. Then, she had hastened to the poet's dwelling in obedience to a violent caprice—but still only a caprice. Now, it was love that coursed through her veins, the love that thirsts for love in return, that sees nought else in the world but the object it desires, and that would unflinchingly make for its goal under the cannon's mouth. She loved now with all her body and soul; she had proofs of it in her unreasonable impatience to get along still faster and in her fears that the step she had taken might be in vain. Her agitation was intense when the carriage stopped at the gate that barred the entrance to the street. The latter, thanks to the trees whose foliage overtopped the garden wall on the right, looked fresh and green in the soft sunlight of this bright May afternoon.
She had undoubtedly been less moved on the former occasion when asking theconciergewhether M. Vincy was at home. The man told her that he was in. She rang the bell, and, as before, the sound of it caused a thrill to run through her from head to foot. She heard a door open and light footsteps approaching. Remembering the heavy tread she had once heard in the same place, she concluded that the person now coming to the door was neither the maid nor René; the footfall of the latter she knew too well. She had a presentiment that she was about to face her lover's sister—the woman whose absence had favoured her former visit. She had no time to think of the drawbacks of this unexpected incident, for Madame Fresneau had already opened the door. Her face left Suzanne no doubt as to her identity, so great was the resemblance between the brother and sister. Neither had Emilie any hesitation in deciding who the visitor was. The sight of René's fresh sufferings during the past few days, added to the information she had gleaned from Claude, had intensified her hatred towards Madame Moraines, and as she replied to Suzanne's question she could not help giving her words a tone of bitter and unconcealed hostility.
'No, madame, my brother is not in.' Then, her sisterly affection suggesting a way to avoid all further questions as to the time of René's return, she added: 'He left town this morning.'
The reply given her by theconciergetold Suzanne that this was a lie, but she had no reason for believing the lie to be an invention of Emilie's. She was obliged to believe, and did believe, that Madame Fresneau was obeying the orders given her by her brother. She tried to learn nothing further, a graceful inclination of her head in the very best form being the only revenge she took for the almost rude manners of thebourgeoise.Her outward calm, however, hid a great deal of disappointment and real pain. She did not stop to ask herself whether Emilie's strange behaviour was due to René's indiscreet confidences or not. She merely said to herself, 'He does not wish to see me again,' and that idea hurt her deeply. On reaching the street she turned to cast a glance at the window of the room into which she had once made her way, and remembered how, on that occasion, she had also looked round on leaving, and had seen the poet standing behind the half-drawn blinds. Would he not take up the same position to see her go when his sister told him who had called? She stood waiting for five minutes, and the fact of the blinds remaining down was a source of fresh grief to her. As she got into her brougham she was as agitated as only a woman can be who loves sincerely and who is obliged to be incessantly changing her plans. After turning the matter over again and again, she, who never wrote, decided to send the following letter:
Saturday, 5 o'clock.'Dear René,—I called at your house, and your sister told me you had left town. But I know that is not true. You were there, only a few yards away from me, in that room where every object must have reminded you of my former visit, and yet you would not see me. You can surely have no doubts of my sincerity on that occasion? Why should I have acted a lie? I entreat you to let me see you, if it be only for a minute. Come and read in my eyes what you swore never to doubt—that you are my all, my life, my heaven. Since last night I am as one dead. Your horrible words are continually in my ears. It cannot be you who spoke them. Where could you have got that bitterness, almost akin to hatred? How can you condemn me unheard on a suspicion for which you will blush when I have proved to you how false it is? I ought, it is true, to be indignant and angry with you, but my heart, dear René, contains only love for you, and a desire to efface from your soul all that the enemies of our happiness have engraved there. The step I took this morning, though contrary to all that a woman owes herself, I took so cheerfully that, had you seen me, you could have had no doubt respecting the sentiments that animate me. Send me no answer. I feel even as I write how powerless a letter is to describe the feelings of the heart. I shall expect you on Monday at eleven inour sanctuary.It should be my right to tell you I demand to see you there, for those accused have always the right to defend themselves. I will only say, Come, if you ever loved, even for a day, the woman who has never told you and never will tell you aught but the truth. I swear it, my only love.'
Saturday, 5 o'clock.
'Dear René,—I called at your house, and your sister told me you had left town. But I know that is not true. You were there, only a few yards away from me, in that room where every object must have reminded you of my former visit, and yet you would not see me. You can surely have no doubts of my sincerity on that occasion? Why should I have acted a lie? I entreat you to let me see you, if it be only for a minute. Come and read in my eyes what you swore never to doubt—that you are my all, my life, my heaven. Since last night I am as one dead. Your horrible words are continually in my ears. It cannot be you who spoke them. Where could you have got that bitterness, almost akin to hatred? How can you condemn me unheard on a suspicion for which you will blush when I have proved to you how false it is? I ought, it is true, to be indignant and angry with you, but my heart, dear René, contains only love for you, and a desire to efface from your soul all that the enemies of our happiness have engraved there. The step I took this morning, though contrary to all that a woman owes herself, I took so cheerfully that, had you seen me, you could have had no doubt respecting the sentiments that animate me. Send me no answer. I feel even as I write how powerless a letter is to describe the feelings of the heart. I shall expect you on Monday at eleven inour sanctuary.It should be my right to tell you I demand to see you there, for those accused have always the right to defend themselves. I will only say, Come, if you ever loved, even for a day, the woman who has never told you and never will tell you aught but the truth. I swear it, my only love.'
When Suzanne had finished her letter she read it over. A lingering instinct of prudence made her hesitate before signing it, but the sincerity of her passion caused her to blush for her momentary weakness, and, taking up her pen, she wrote her name at the bottom of this faithful description of the strange moral condition into which she had drifted. She lied once more in swearing that she spoke the truth, and yet nothing was truer, more spontaneous, and less artificial than the feelings which dictated the supreme deception that capped all the rest. She summoned her footman, and, again scorning all ideas of prudence, told him to give the letter—any single sentence in which would have ruined her—to a commissionaire for immediate delivery. During the thirty-six hours that separated her from the rendez-vous she had fixed she lived in a state of nervous excitement of which she would never have deemed herself capable.
This woman, who had such perfect control over herself, and who had entered upon this adventure with the same Machiaveliansangfroidshe had maintained in all her Society relations for years, now felt powerless to follow, or even to form, any kind of plan respecting the attitude to be assumed towards her lover. She was to dine out that night, but she went through the process of dressing in an absolutely listless way—an unusual thing for her—and without even looking in the glass. During the whole of the dinner she found not a word to say to her neighbour, the ubiquitous Crucé, and her brougham had been ordered for ten o'clock on the plea that she was still suffering from her indisposition of the preceding evening. On her way home she paid not the slightest attention to her husband's words; his very presence was intolerable to her, for it was on his account, remaining at home as he did on Sundays, that she had been obliged to put off her meeting with René until Monday. Would the poet consent to come? How anxiously, as the servant helped her off with her cloak, did she scan the tray on which were placed the letters that had come by the evening post! The poet's writing was not to be seen on any envelope. She spent the whole of Sunday in bed, under pretext of a bad headache, but in reality trying to think out some plan in case René refused to believe her story of a sick friend as an explanation of her visit to the Rue du Mont-Thabor.
But he would believe it. She could not admit to herself that he would not; the supposition was too painful. Her fever of longing and suspense, of hope and fear, reached its climax on Monday morning as she ascended the stairs of the house in the Rue des Dames. If René were waiting for her, hidden, as usual, behind the half-open door, it would prove that her letter had conquered him, and in that case she was saved. But no—the door was closed. Her hand trembled as she inserted the key in the lock. She entered the first room and found it empty and the blinds drawn. She sat down in the semi-darkness and gazed upon the objects that recalled a happiness so recent and yet already so far away. There was just the ordinary furniture of a modest drawing-room—a few arm-chairs and a sofa in blue velvet, with antimacassars carefully hung at the proper height. The handful of books René had brought were ranged in perfect order on a well-dusted shelf, and the worthy landlady had even taken care that the gilt clock, with its figure of Penelope, had been kept going.
Suzanne listened to the swing of the pendulum as it broke the silence in the apartment. Seconds passed, then minutes, then quarters, and still René did not come. He would not come now. As this fact dawned upon her Madame Moraines, accustomed from her earliest youth to having all her wishes gratified, was seized with a fit of real despair. She began to weep like a child, and her tears fell faster and faster, unaccompanied now by any thoughts of simulation. She felt a desire to write, but no sooner had she found some paper in the blotting-book left by her lover and dipped the pen in the ink than she pushed the things away, exclaiming, 'What is the good of it?' To show that she had been there in case René should come after she was gone she left behind her the scented handkerchief with which she had dried her bitter tears. She murmured to herself, 'He used to like this scent!' and by the side of the handkerchief she laid the gloves that he had always buttoned for her as she was going. Then, with a heavy heart, she left the room in which she had been so happy. Could it be possible that those happy hours had gone—and for ever?
The Fresneau family were at dinner when the commissionaire delivered Suzanne's letter. Françoise entered, holding the dainty envelope in her great red hand, and the expression on René's face as he tore it open sufficed to tell Emilie from whom the missive came. She trembled. The sight of her brother's wild despair had emboldened her to refuse admission to the unknown visitor whom she had instinctively recognised as its undoubted cause, the dangerous woman Claude Larcher had spoken of as the most wanton creature living. But to face René's anger and tell him what she had done was beyond her strength, and she postponed the unpleasant step from hour to hour. The look her brother gave her after reading the letter made her drop her eyes and colour to the roots of her hair. Fresneau, who was carving a fowl with rare ability—he had learnt the art, a strange one for him, at his father's table in days gone by—was so struck by the expression on his brother-in-law's face that he sat staring at him with a wing stuck on the point of his fork. Then, being afraid that his wife had noticed his surprise, he broke out into a laugh and tried to excuse his momentary abstraction by saying, 'This knife will cut butter.'
His jocular remark was followed by a silence that lasted until dinner was over—a silence threatening to Emilie, inexplicable to Fresneau, and unperceived by René, who was almost choking and did not eat a mouthful. Hardly had Françoise removed the cloth and placed the tobacco bowl and the decanter of brandy on the table when the poet went off to his room, after having asked the maid to light him a lamp.
'He looks annoyed, doesn't he?' observed the professor.
'Annoyed?' replied Emilie. 'Some idea for his play has probably occurred to him, and he wants to put it into writing at once. But it's a bad thing to work immediately after dinner—I'll go and tell him so.'
Glad to have found some excuse, Emilie went into her brother's room. She found him scribbling a reply to Suzanne's note in the twilight, without even waiting for the lamp. He was no doubt expecting his sister to come in, for he said roughly and in an angry tone; 'Oh, there you are! Some one called to see me to-day, and you said I was out of town?'
'René,' said Emilie, joining her hands, 'forgive me; I thought I was doing right. I was afraid of your seeing this woman in your present state.' Then, finding strength in the ardour of her affection to bare her inmost thoughts, she went on, 'This woman is your evil genius——'
'It seems,' cried the poet, with suppressed rage, 'that you still take me for a child of fifteen. Am I at home here—yes or no?' he shouted, bursting out. 'If I cannot do as I like, say so, and I'll go and live elsewhere. I have had enough of this coddling, you understand. Look after your son and your husband, and let me do as I like.'
He saw his sister standing there before him pale and overcome by the harsh words he had used. He was himself ashamed of his outburst. It was so unjust to make poor Emilie atone for the pain that was gnawing at his heart. But he was not in a mood just then for acknowledging himself in the wrong, and, instead of taking in his arms the woman he had so cruelly wounded in her most sensitive parts, he left the room, closing the door behind him with a bang. He snatched up his hat in the ante-room, and from the place where he had left her, trembling with agitation, Emilie could hear him leave the house.
The worthy Fresneau, who, after listening in amazement to René's excited accents, had also heard the noise of his departure, now entered the room to learn what had happened. He saw his wife standing there in the semi-darkness like one dead. Seizing her hands, he cried, 'What's the matter?' in such an affectionate tone that she flung her arms round his neck and cried out amidst her sobs:
'Mon ami—I have no one but you in the world!'
She lay there weeping, with her head on her husband's shoulder, whilst the poor fellow scarcely knew whether to curse or bless his brother-in-law, his despair at his wife's grief and his joy at seeing her fly to him for comfort being equally great.
'Come, come,' he said, 'don't be silly. Tell me what has taken place between you.'
'He has no heart, he has no heart,' was all the answer he could get.
'Nonsense, nonsense!' he replied, adding, with that clear-sightedness which true affection brings to the dullest, 'He knows how much you love him, and he abuses his knowledge—that's all!'
Whilst Fresneau was consoling Emilie as well as he could, though without getting her to divulge the secret of her quarrel with the poet, the latter was striding along the streets a prey to a fresh attack of that grief which had tortured his soul for the past twenty-four hours. Suzanne had been right in thinking that a voice within him would plead against what he knew—against what he had seen. Who that has loved and been betrayed has not heard that voice which reasons against all reason and bids us hope against all hope? Faith has gone for ever, but how pleased we should be to find ourselves again at the stage of doubt! How regretfully we then recall as some happy period the cruel days when suspicion had not yet grown into horrible and unbearable certainty!
René would have purchased with his blood the shadow of the shadow of a doubt, but the more he dwelt upon all the details that had led to his conviction the more firmly did that conviction take root in his heart. 'But if she had been paying a harmless visit?' hazarded the voice of love. Harmless? Would she have concealed her destination from her coachman? Would she have gone out by the other door, thickly veiled, walking straight before her, but looking furtively about her just as she did on leaving him? And then the appearance of Desforges almost immediately after at the other entrance! . . . All the proofs brought forward by Claude occurred to him one after another—the Society rumours, the recent ruin of the Moraines, the post obtained for the husband, the suggestion made to him by Suzanne for purchasing shares, and her lies, now proved to be such. 'What more positive proofs can I have,' he asked himself, 'except one?' And as the terrible vision of Suzanne in the arms of her aged lover rose up before him he closed his eyes in pain. Then came thoughts of her visit to the Rue Coëtlogon and of the letter he had in his pocket. 'And she dares ask to see me? What can she have to say? I will go, as she asks, and take my revenge by insulting her as Claude insults Colette. . . . No,' he continued, 'that would be degrading myself to her level; true revenge consists in ignoring her. I shall not go.'
He wavered between these two decisions, feeling quite powerless to make up his mind, so intense was his longing to see Suzanne once more and so sincere his resolution not to be duped again by her lies. His perplexity became so great that he resolved to go and ask Claude's advice. Now only did he begin to feel some surprise that this faithful friend had not sent to inquire about him in the morning, as he had promised to do.
'I'll go and call on him, although he'll probably not be in,' said René as he bent his steps towards the Rue de Varenne. It was about half-past ten when he rang the ponderous bell of the Sainte-Euverte mansion. There was a light burning in one of the apartments occupied by Claude, who, contrary to René's expectations, was not out. The poet found him in the smoking-room, the first of the small set at the top of the stairs. A lamp with a pink globe shed a soft light round the apartment, the walls of which were adorned with a large piece of tapestry and a copy of the 'Triumph of Death' attributed to Orcagna. In a corner of the room the bluish flame of a spirit lamp was burning under a small tea kettle; this, with the two cups, a decanter of sherry, and somebouchées au foie grason a china dish were proofs that the occupant of this quiet abode expected a visitor. A bundle of small Russian cigarettes with long mouthpieces—Colette's favourites—plainly revealed to René who that visitor was. He would still have hesitated to believe his own eyes had not Claude, in evident embarrassment, said, with a shamefaced smile:
'After all, it's as well that you should know it—canis reversus ad vomitum suum.Yes, I am expecting Colette. She is coming here after the theatre. Do you object to meeting her?'
'Candidly,' replied René, 'I prefer not to see her.'
'And how do matters stand with you?' asked Claude.
After the poet had briefly acquainted him with the present position, the scene at the Opera, Suzanne's visit, and her request for a meeting, Larcher rejoined: 'What can I say to you? Have I the right to advise you, weak as I am myself? But does that really matter? I can see my own follies clearly enough, although I am continually stumbling like a blind man. Why, then, should I not see clearly for you, who have perhaps more energy than I? You are younger, and have never stumbled yet. . . . It comes to this. Have you resolved to become, like me, an erotic maniac, a madman ruled only by sexual passion, and—worse than all—a wretch sensible of his own degradation? Then keep this appointment. Suzanne will give you no reasons, not one. Don't you see that if she were innocent the very sight of you would be hateful to her after what you have said? She came to your house. Why? To blind you once more with her beauty. Now she summons you to the very place where you will be least able to resist that beauty. She will say what women always say in these cases. Words—and words—and words again. But you will see her, you will hear the rustle of her skirts. And, believe me, there is no love-potion so powerful as treachery! You will feel the truth of this when you stifle her with savage and brutish embraces—and then, good-bye to reproaches! Everything is forgotten. But what follows? You saw how brave I was yesterday. See what a coward I am to-day, and say to yourself, like the workman who sees his drunken comrade staggering helplessly along, "That's how I shall be on Sunday!" If, after all, you feel unable to do without her—if you must have her, as the drunkard must have his wine—you will find solace in this cowardice, even though it kill you. That solace I have found. Glut yourself with this woman's love. It will rid you either of your love for her or of your self-respect. You will learn to treat Suzanne exactly as I treat Colette. But remember what I have told you to-night—it is the end of all. Talent I no longer possess. Honour! What should I do with it, having forgiven what I have forgiven? My poor boy,' he concluded in tones of entreaty, 'you can still save yourself. You are at the top of the ladder that leads down to the sewer—listen to the cry of an unhappy wretch who is up to his neck in filth at the bottom. And now, good-bye, if you don't want to see Colette. Why did she tell you what she did? You knew nothing, and where ignorance is bliss—— Good-bye once more, old man. Think of me and pity me!'
'No,' said the poet, as he made his way home, 'I will not descend to such depths.' For the first time perhaps since witnessing Claude's unhappy passion he really understood the nature of his wretched friend's malady. He had just discovered in himself feelings identical to those which had made such an abject slave of Colette's lover—a mingling of utter contempt and ardent physical longing for a woman justly tried and condemned. Yes, in spite of all he had learnt he still desired Suzanne—still desired those lips kissed by Desforges and all that beauty which the hoary libertine had stained but not destroyed. It was that fair white flesh that troubled his senses now—nought but that flesh! To this had come his noble love, his worship of her whom he had once called his Madonna. Claude was right: if he yielded to this base longing but once, all would be lost. His loathing for the slough of corruption in which his friend was helplessly struggling was so intense that it gave him strength to say, 'I pledge myself not to go to the Rue des Dames on Monday,' and he knew he would keep his word.
Whilst Suzanne was undergoing the tortures of hope and despair in the little bluesalonon the appointed morning René too was suffering intensely, but it was in his own room. 'I won't go—I won't go!' he muttered repeatedly. Then he thought of his friend, and he sighed 'Poor Claude!' as he fully realised the position of the man who had been beaten in the struggle in which he himself was now engaged. He pitied himself whilst pitying Colette's victim, and this pity, as well as his old and long-continued religious habits, aided his courage. For some time now he had refrained from all observances, and had surrendered himself to those doubts which all modern writers entertain more or less before returning to Christianity as the sole source of spiritual life. But even during the period of doubt the moral muscle, developed by exercise in childhood and youth, continues to put forth its strength. In his resistance to the most pressing calls of passion, the nephew and pupil of the Abbé Taconet once more found this power at his service. When the last stroke of twelve had died away he said to himself, 'Suzanne has gone home—I am saved.'