[1]Dans le monde des arts, comme dit our friend Bernard.
[1]Dans le monde des arts, comme dit our friend Bernard.
"First of all, my dear Laurent, I entreat you, if you have any friendship for me, not to indulge too often in foolish things which injure your health. I will wink at all others. You may ask me to mention one such, and I should be sadly embarrassed to do it; for I know very few foolish things which are not injurious. So I must needs find out what you call by that name. If you mean one of those long suppers you spoke about the other day, I think that they are killing you, and I am in despair. What are you thinking of, in God's name, to ruin thus, with a smile on your lips, an existence so precious and beautiful? But you want no sermons; I confine myself to prayers.
"As for your Englishman, who is an American, I have seen him, and as I shall not see you to-night or to-morrow, to my great regret, I must tell you that you were altogether wrong not to consent to do his portrait. He would have offered you the eyes out of his head, and with an American like Dick Palmer, the eyes out of his head means a goodly number of bank-notes, of which you stand in need to prevent you from doing foolish things, that is to say, from haunting gambling-houses in the hope of a stroke of fortune which never comes to people of imagination, because people of imagination do not know how to play cards, because they always lose, and because they must thereupon appeal to their imagination for the wherewithal to pay their debts—a trade to which that princess does not feel adapted, and to which she cannot adapt herself except by setting fire to the poor body she inhabits.
"You find me very outspoken, do you not? That does not matter to me. Moreover, if we approach the subject from a more exalted standpoint, all the reasons that you gave to your American and me are not worth two sous. That you do not know how to paint portraits is possible, nay, it is certain, if it must be done under the conditions which attend vulgar success in that art; but Monsieur Palmer did not stipulate that it should be so. You took him for a green-grocer, and you made a mistake. He is a man of judgment and taste, who knows what he is talking about, and who has an enthusiastic admiration for you. Judge whether I gave him a warm welcome! He came to me as a makeshift; I saw it plainly enough, and I was grateful to him for it. So I consoled him by promising to do all that I possibly could to induce you to paint him. We will talk about it the day after to-morrow, for I have made an appointment with the said Palmer for that evening, so that he may assist me to plead his own cause, and may carry away your promise.
"And now, my dear Laurent, console yourself as best you can for not seeing me for two days. It will not be difficult for you: you know many bright people, and you have a footing in the best society. For my part, I am only an old sermonizer who is very fond of you, who implores you not to go to bed late every night, and who advises you to carry nothing to excess or abuse. You have no right to do it: genius imposes obligations.
"Your comrade,
"THÉRÈSE JACQUES."
MY DEAR THÉRÈSE:
"I start in two hours for the country, with the Comte de S—— and Prince D——. There will be youth and beauty in the party, so I am assured. I promise and swear to you to do nothing foolish and to drink no champagne—without reproaching myself bitterly therefor! What can you expect? I should certainly have preferred to lounge in your great studio, and talk nonsense in your little lilac salon; but since you are in retirement with your thirty-six provincial cousins, you will certainly not notice my absence the day after to-morrow; you will have the delicious music of the Anglo-American accent throughout the evening. Ah! so the excellent Monsieur Palmer's name is Dick? I thought that Dick was the familiar diminutive of Richard! To be sure, in the matter of languages, French is the only one I can claim to know.
"As for the portrait, let us say no more about it. You are a thousand times too motherly, my dear Thérèse, to think of my interests to the detriment of your own. Although you have a fine clientèle, I know that your generosity does not permit you to save money, and that a few bank-notes will be much more suitably placed in your hands than in mine. You will employ them in making others happy, and I should toss them on a card-table, as you say.
"Moreover, I have never been less in the mood for painting. One needs for that two things which you have, reflection and inspiration; I shall never have the first, and Ihave hadthe second. So I am disgusted with it, as with an old witch who has exhausted me by galloping me across fields on the skinny back of her horse Apocalypse. I see clearly enough what I lack; with all respect to your good sense, I have not yet lived hard enough, and I am going away for three days or a week with Madame Reality, in the guise of divers nymphs of the Opéracorps de ballet. I hope, on my return, to be a most accomplished, that is to say, a most blasé and most reasonable man of the world.
"Your friend,
"LAURENT."
Thérèse understood perfectly, at first sight, the spleen and jealousy which dictated this letter.
"And yet," she said to herself, "he is not in love with me. Oh! no; he certainly will never be in love with any one, with me least of all."
But as she read and reread the letter and mused upon it, Thérèse feared lest she might deceive herself in seeking to convince herself that Laurent incurred no danger with her.
"But what danger?" she said to herself; "the danger of suffering for an unsatisfied caprice? Does one suffer much for a caprice? I have no idea myself. I never had one."
But the clock marked half-past five in the afternoon; and Thérèse, having put the key in her pocket, called for her hat, gave her servant leave of absence for twenty-four hours, laid several special injunctions upon her faithful old Catherine, and took a cab. Two hours later, she returned accompanied by a short, slender woman, slightly bent and closely veiled, whose face the driver did not see. She closeted herself with this mysterious individual, and Catherine served them a dainty little dinner. Thérèse waited upon and was most attentive to her guest, who gazed at her with such agitation and ecstasy that she could not eat.
Laurent, for his part, made his preparations for the projected trip to the country; but when Prince D—— called for him with his carriage, Laurent informed him that unexpected business would detain him two or three hours, and that he would join him in the country during the evening.
Laurent had no business, however. He had dressed himself in feverish haste. He had caused his hair to be arranged with special care. Then he had tossed his coat on a chair, and run his fingers through his too symmetrical curls, heedless of the effect he might thus produce. He paced the floor of his studio, now rapidly, now slowly. When Prince D—— had gone, making him promise ten times over that he would soon follow, he ran out to the stairs to ask him to wait and to say that he would throw over his business and go with him; but he did not recall him, but returned to his room, and threw himself on the bed.
"Why does she close her door to me for two days? There is something behind it! And when she makes an appointment with me for the third day, it is to make me meet an American or an Englishman whom I don't know! But she must certainly know this Palmer whom she calls by his diminutive! In that case, why in the deuce did he ask me for her address? Is it a feint? Why should she feign with me? I am not Thérèse's lover, I have no rights over her! Thérèse's lover! that I certainly shall never be. God preserve me from it! A woman who is five years older than I, perhaps more! Who can tell a woman's age, especially this woman's, of whom nobody knows anything? So mysterious a past must cover some monumental folly, perhaps a fully-matured disgrace. And for all that, she is a prude, a devotee, or a philosopher perhaps, who knows? She talks on every subject with such impartiality, or tolerance, or indifference—— Does any one know what she believes, what she doesn't believe, what she wants, what she loves, or even if she is capable of loving?"
Mercourt, a young critic and friend of Laurent, entered the studio.
"I know," he said, "that you are going to Montmorency. So I have simply looked in to ask you for an address, Mademoiselle Jacques's."
Laurent started.
"What the devil do you want of Mademoiselle Jacques?" he rejoined, pretending to be looking for cigarette-papers.
"I? nothing—that is to say, yes, I would like to know her; but I know her only by sight and reputation. I want her address for a person who is anxious to be painted."
"You know Mademoiselle Jacques by sight, you say?"
"Parbleu! she is altogether famous now, and who has not noticed her? She is made to be noticed!"
"You think so?"
"To be sure, and you?"
"I? I know nothing about it. I am very fond of her, so I am not a competent judge."
"You are very fond of her?"
"Yes, I admit it, you see; which proves that I am not paying court to her."
"Do you see her often?"
"Sometimes."
"Then you are her friend—seriously?"
"Well, yes, to some extent. Why do you laugh?"
"Because I don't believe a word of it; at twenty-four, one is not the serious friend of a—young and beautiful woman!"
"Bah! she is neither so young nor so beautiful as you say. She is a good comrade, not unpleasant to look at, that's all. But she belongs to a type that I don't like, and I am obliged to forgive her for being a blonde. I don't like blondes, except in painting."
"She is not so very light after all! her eyes are of a soft black, her hair is neither light nor dark, and she arranges it in a peculiar way. However, it's becoming to her: she has the look of an amiable sphinx."
"A very pretty comparison; but—you like tall women, it seems!"
"She is not very tall, and she has small feet and small hands. She is a true woman. I have examined her very carefully, being in love with her."
"I say, what are you thinking about?"
"It makes no difference to you, since, viewed as a woman simply, she doesn't attract you."
"My dear fellow, if she did attract me, it would be all the same. In that case, I should try to be on a more intimate footing with her than I am; but I should not be in love with her, that being a profession which I do not practise; consequently, I should not be jealous. So press your suit, if you think best."
"I shall, if I find the opportunity; but I have no time to seek it, and, at heart, I am like you, Laurent, perfectly disposed to be patient, since I am of an age and a society in which there is no lack of pleasure. But, as we are speaking of that woman, and as you know her, tell me—it is pure curiosity on my part—whether she is a widow or——"
"Or what?"
"I meant to say whether she is the widow of a lover or a husband."
"I have no idea."
"That isn't possible."
"On my word of honor, I never asked her. It makes no difference to me!"
"Do you know what people say?"
"No, I don't care at all. What is it that people say?"
"You see that you do care! They say that she was married to a rich man with a title."
"Married——"
"Married as much as one can be, before the mayor and the priest."
"What nonsense! she would bear her husband's name and title."
"Ah! there you are! There's a mystery about her. When I have time, I propose to investigate it, and I will tell you what I learn. They say that she has no known lover, although she leads a very independent life. But of course you know how that is, don't you?"
"I don't know the first thing about it. Come, come! do you suppose I pass my life watching and questioning women? I am not an idler like you. I find life hardly long enough to live and work."
"As to living, I don't say that you are not right. You seem to live hard enough, my boy. But as to working,—they say that you don't work enough. Let us see, what have you there? Let me look!"
"No, it's nothing; I have nothing started here."
"Yes, you have: that head—that is very fine, deuce take me! Let me look, I say, or I'll give you the devil in my nextsalon."
"You are quite capable of it."
"Yes, when you deserve it; but as to that head, it is superb, and one cannot help admiring it. What is it to be?"
"Do you suppose I know?"
"Do you want me to tell you?"
"You will confer a favor on me."
"Make a sibyl of it. Then you can arrange the hair as you please, it doesn't make any difference."
"Stay! that's an idea."
"And then you don't compromise the person it resembles."
"Does it resemble any one?"
"Parbleu! wretched joker, do you think that I don't recognize it? Come, come, my dear fellow, you must have meant to laugh at me, since you deny everything, even the simplest things. You are the lover of that face!"
"And to prove it, I am going to Montmorency!" said Laurent, coldly, taking his hat.
"That doesn't prove anything!" replied Mercourt.
They went out together, and Mercourt saw Laurent enter a cab; but Laurent went no farther than the Bois de Boulogne, where he dined all alone at a small café, and returned at night-fall, on foot and lost in his thoughts.
The Bois de Boulogne of that time was not what it is to-day. It was smaller, more neglected, poorer, more mysterious, and more like the country; one could reflect there.
On the Champs-Elysées, less splendid and less thickly settled than to-day, were tracts of land newly thrown open to building, where one could hire at a reasonable price small houses with gardens, where perfect privacy was attainable. One could live quietly there and work.
It was in one of those neat white cottages, amid flowering lilacs, and behind a tall hedge of hawthorn with a green gate, that Thérèse lived. It was May. The weather was magnificent. How Laurent found himself, at nine o'clock, behind that hedge, in the lonely, unfinished street where no lanterns had as yet been placed, and where nettles and weeds still flourished along the sides, he himself would have been embarrassed to explain.
The hedge was very thick, and Laurent skirted it noiselessly on all sides, but could see nothing save the golden reflection on the foliage of a light which he supposed to be placed on a small table in the garden by which he was accustomed to sit and smoke when he passed the evening with Thérèse. Was somebody smoking in the garden, or were they taking tea there, as sometimes happened? But Thérèse had informed Laurent that she expected a whole family from the provinces, and he could hear only two voices whispering mysteriously together, one of which seemed to belong to Thérèse. The other voice spoke very low; was it a man's?
Laurent listened until he had a ringing in his ears, and at last he heard, or thought he heard, Thérèse say:
"What does all this matter? I have but one love on earth, and that is you!"
"Now," said Laurent to himself, hastily leaving the narrow, deserted street, and returning to the noisy roadway of the Champs-Elysées, "now my mind is at rest. She has a lover! After all, she was under no obligation to tell me of it! But she needn't have talked to me on all occasions in a way to make me think that she did not and never intended to belong to any man. She is like all women: the longing to lie supersedes all else. What difference does it make to me? And yet I would never have believed it. Indeed, I must have been a little cracked over her without realizing it, since I went there and played the spy, the most dastardly of all trades, except when one is driven to it by jealousy! I cannot regret it very much; it saves me from great unhappiness and from a great imposition: that of desiring a woman who has nothing that makes her desirable above other women, not even sincerity."
Laurent stopped an empty cab that was passing, and went to Montmorency. He proposed to pass a week there, and not to darken Thérèse's door for a fortnight. But he remained in the country only forty-eight hours, and arrived at Thérèse's cottage on the evening of the third day, simultaneously with Monsieur Richard Palmer.
"Ah!" said the American, offering him his hand, "I am very glad to see you!"
Laurent could not avoid taking the proffered hand; but he could not refrain from asking Monsieur Palmer why he was so glad to see him.
The foreigner paid no heed to the artist's somewhat impertinent tone.
"I am glad because I am fond of you," he replied, with irresistible cordiality, "and I am fond of you because I have a great admiration for you!"
"What! are you here?" said Thérèse, surprised to see Laurent. "I had given you up for this evening."
And it seemed to the young man that there was an unfamiliar coolness in the tone in which those simple words were spoken.
"Indeed!" he replied in an undertone, "you had become reconciled to it very readily, and I fear that I am disturbing a delightful tête-à-tête."
"That is the more cruel of you," she rejoined in the same playful tone, "because you seemed disposed to arrange it for me."
"You evidently counted upon it, as you did not cancel his appointment. Shall I go?"
"No, stay. I will resign myself to endure your presence."
The American, after saluting Thérèse, had opened his portfolio and taken from it a letter which had been given him to hand to her. Thérèse read it with an unmoved air, and made no comment whatever upon it.
"If you wish to answer," said Palmer, "I have an opportunity to forward a letter to Havana."
"Thanks," Thérèse replied, opening the drawer of a little table by her side, "I shall not answer it."
Laurent, who watched all her movements, saw that she put the letter with several others, one of which he recognized by its shape and superscription. It was the note he had written her two days before. For some reason, I know not what, it vexed him to see that letter in company with the one Monsieur Palmer had just handed her.
"She tosses me in there," he said to himself, "pellmell with her cast-off lovers. And yet I have no claim to that honor. I have never spoken to her of love."
Thérèse began to talk about Monsieur Palmer's portrait. Laurent was deaf to their entreaties, keeping a close watch upon their every glance, upon the slightest inflection of their voices, and imagining every moment that he could detect a secret dread, on their part, of his yielding; but their persistence was so manifestly sincere, that he became calmer, and reproved himself for his suspicions. If Thérèse had relations with this stranger, living alone and perfectly independent as she did, apparently owing nothing to any one, and never seeming to pay any heed to what people might say of her, had she any need of the pretext of a portrait to receive the object of her love or her caprice as often and for as long a time as she chose?
And as soon as he felt perfectly at ease, Laurent was no longer restrained by a sense of shame from gratifying his curiosity.
"Are you an American, pray?" he asked Thérèse, who from time to time repeated in English for Monsieur Palmer's benefit the remarks that he did not clearly understand.
"An American?" replied Thérèse; "have I not told you that I have the honor of being a compatriot of yours?"
"But you speak English so well!"
"You do not know whether I speak it well or ill, as you do not understand it. But I see what is in the wind, for I know that you are an inquisitive fellow. You are wondering whether Dick Palmer and I are acquaintances of yesterday or of long standing. Well, ask him."
Palmer did not wait for a question which Laurent could not readily have made up his mind to ask. He said that this was not his first visit to France, and that he had known Thérèse when she was very young, at the house of some relations of hers. He did not say what relations. Thérèse was accustomed to say that she had never known either father or mother.
Mademoiselle Jacques's past was an impenetrable mystery to the people of fashion who went to her to have their portraits painted, and to the small number of artists whom she received in private. She had come to Paris, whence no one knew, when no one knew, with whom no one knew. She had been known two or three years only, a portrait she had painted having attracted the attention of connoisseurs and been suddenly lauded as the work of a master. Thus, from the patronage of the humble and an unknown existence, she had passed without transition to a reputation of the first rank and to the enjoyment of an ample income; but she had changed not a whit in her simple tastes, her love of independence, and the playful austerity of her manners. She never posed, and never spoke of herself except to declare her sentiments and opinions with much frankness and courage. As for the facts of her life, she had a way of evading questions and going off in another direction which saved her the necessity of replying. If any one chose to insist, she was accustomed to say, after some vague words:
"We are not talking about me. I have nothing interesting to tell, and if I have had sorrows, I have forgotten all about them, as I have no time to think of them. I am very happy now, for I have plenty of work, and I love work above everything."
It was by pure chance, and as a result of being thrown together in an assemblage of artists, that Laurent had made Mademoiselle Jacques's acquaintance. Having been launched as a gentleman and an eminent artist in two different social circles. Monsieur Fauvel possessed, at twenty-four, an amount of experience which all men have not acquired at forty. He prided himself upon it, and mourned over it by turns: but he had no experience in matters of the heart, for that is not acquired in a life of dissipation. Thanks to the scepticism which he affected, he had begun by passing judgment in his own mind that all those whom Thérèse treated as friends must be lovers, and not until he had heard them affirm and demonstrate the purity of their relations with her, did he reach the point of looking upon her as a young woman who might have had passions, but not vulgar intrigues.
Thereupon, he had become intensely curious to ascertain the cause of the anomaly: a young, intelligent, and lovely woman, absolutely free and living alone of her own free will. He had begun to see her more frequently, and of late almost every day; at first on all sorts of pretexts, latterly representing himself as a friend of no consequence, too fond of pleasure to care to talk with a serious-minded woman, but too idealistic, after all, not to feel the craving for affection and the value of disinterested friendship.
In theory that was quite true; but love had stolen into the young man's heart, and we have seen that Laurent was struggling against the invasion of a sentiment which he still desired to disguise from Thérèse and from himself, especially as he felt it for the first time in his life.
"But, after all," he said, when he had promised Monsieur Palmer to undertake his portrait, "why in the devil are you so bent on having a thing that may not be good, when you know Mademoiselle Jacques, who certainly will not refuse to paint a portrait of you that is sure to be excellent?"
"She does refuse," replied Palmer, with much candor, "and I don't know why. I promised my mother, who is weak enough to think me very handsome, a portrait by a master, and she won't consider it a good likeness if it is too true to life. That is why I have applied to you as being an idealist. If you refuse me, I shall have either the grief of not gratifying my mother, or the bother of looking farther."
"That will not take long; there are so many people more capable than I am!"
"I do not think it; but, assuming it to be true, it doesn't follow that they will have the time at once, and I am in a hurry to send the portrait away. It should arrive for my birthday, four months hence, and the transportation will take about two months."
"That is to say, Laurent," added Thérèse, "that you must finish the portrait in six weeks at the outside; and as I know how much time you will need, you must begin to-morrow. Come, it is understood, you promise, don't you?"
Monsieur Palmer held out his hand to Laurent, saying:
"The bargain is made. I say nothing about money; Mademoiselle Jacques is to arrange the terms, I shall not interfere. At what hour to-morrow?"
The hour being fixed, Palmer took his hat, and Laurent felt bound to do the same out of respect to Thérèse; but Palmer paid no heed to him and took his leave, after pressing Mademoiselle Jacques's hand without kissing it.
"Shall I go, too?" said Laurent.
"It isn't necessary," she replied; "everybody whom I receive in the evening, knows me well. But you must go at ten o'clock to-night; for several times lately I have forgotten myself so far as to chatter with you till nearly midnight, and as I can't sleep after five in the morning, I have felt very tired."
"And yet you didn't turn me out!"
"No, it didn't occur to me."
"If I were a conceited donkey, I should be very proud of that!"
"But you are not conceited, thank God! you leave that to the fools. But, despite the compliment, Master Laurent, I have a bone to pick with you. They say you are not working."
"And it was for the purpose of forcing me to work that you held Palmer's head at my throat like a pistol?"
"Well, why not?"
"You are kind, Thérèse, I know; you mean to make me earn my living in spite of myself."
"I don't interfere with your means of existence, I have no right to do it. I have not the good or ill fortune to be your mother; but I am your sister,—in Apollo, as our classic Bernard says,—and it is impossible for me not to be grieved by your spasms of indolence."
"But what difference can it make to you?" cried Laurent, with a mingling of irritation and pleasure which Thérèse felt, and which impelled her to reply frankly.
"Listen, my dear Laurent," she said, "we must have an understanding. I have a very great friendship for you."
"I am very proud of it, but I do not know why! Indeed, I am of no use as a friend, Thérèse. I have no more belief in friendship than in love between a man and woman."
"You have told me that before, and it makes no difference to me what you do or do not believe. For my own part, I believe in what I feel, and I feel both interest and affection for you. I am like that: I cannot endure to have any person whatsoever about me without becoming attached to him and wishing that he might be happy. I am accustomed to do my utmost in that direction, without caring whether the person in question is grateful to me or not. Now you are not any person whatsoever, you are a man of genius, and, what is more, a man of heart, I trust."
"I, a man of heart? Yes, if you use the term in the ordinary worldly meaning. I know how to fight a duel, pay my debts, and defend the woman to whom I offer my arm, whoever she may be. But if you consider me tender-hearted, loving, artless——"
"I know that you affect to be old, blasé and corrupt. But your affectation produces no effect on me. It is a very popular fashion at the present time. In your case, it is a disease, genuine it may be and painful, but it will pass away when you choose. You are a man of heart, for the very reason that you suffer because of the emptiness of your heart; a woman will come along who will fill it, if she knows how to go about it and if you will let her. But this is outside of my subject; I am speaking to the artist; the man in you is unhappy, only because the artist is not satisfied with himself."
"Ah! you are wrong, Thérèse," rejoined Laurent earnestly. "The opposite of what you say is true: it is the man who suffers in the artist and stifles him. I do not know what to do with myself, you see. Ennui is killing me. Ennui because of what? you will ask. Because of everything! I cannot, like you, be tranquil and attentive during six hours of work, take a turn in the garden and toss bread to the sparrows, then go back to work again for four hours, and in the evening smile on two or three tiresome creatures, like myself for example, until it is time to go to sleep. My sleep is broken, my work is feverish, my walks are agitated. Invention bewilders me and makes me tremble; execution, always too slow to suit me, makes my heart beat violently, and I weep and have to exert myself not to shriek when I give birth to an idea which intoxicates me, but which I am mortally ashamed of and disgusted with the next morning. If I change it, it is worse, for it leaves me; it is much better to forget it and wait for another; but that arrives in such confusion and of such enormous proportions, that my poor frame cannot hold it. It weighs upon me and tortures me until it has assumed measurable proportions and the other pain returns, the pain of childbirth, a real physical suffering which I cannot describe. And that is how my life goes when I allow myself to be vanquished by this giant of an artist who is within me, and from whom the poor devil who is speaking to you removes one by one, by the forceps of his will, meagre, half-dead mice! So it is much better, Thérèse, that I should live as I have chosen to live, that I should commit excesses of all sorts, and kill this gnawing worm which my fellows modestly call their inspiration, but which I call my infirmity, pure and simple."
"It is decided then," said Thérèse, smiling; "the die is cast, and you are trying to drive your intelligence to suicide? Well, I do not believe a word of it. If some one should propose to you to-morrow to change places with Prince D—— or Comte de S——, with the millions of the first and the fine horses of the other, you would say, referring to your poor despised palette:Give me back my love!"
"My despised palette? You do not understand me, Thérèse! It is an instrument of glory, I know that perfectly well; and what people call glory is the esteem accorded to talent, purer and more delicious than that accorded to titles and wealth. Therefore it is a very great privilege and a very great pleasure for me to say to myself: 'I am only a poor, penniless gentleman, and my equals, who do not derogate from their station, lead the lives of gamekeepers and foregather with gleaners of dead wood, whom they pay in fire-wood. But I have derogated, I have adopted a profession, and the result is that when I, at twenty-four years of age, ride a hired horse among the richest and noblest of Paris, mounted on horses worth ten thousand francs, if there happens to be a man of taste or a woman of intelligence among the idlers seated along the Champs-Elysées, I am stared at and pointed out, and not the others——' You laugh! do you think me very vain?"
"No, but very like a child, thank God! You won't kill yourself."
"Why, I have not the slightest inclination to kill myself. I love myself as much as other men love themselves; indeed, I love myself with all my heart, I swear! But I say that my palette, the instrument of my glory, is the instrument of my torture, since I cannot work without suffering. Thereupon I seek in dissipation, not death of body or mind, but to fatigue and tranquillize my nerves. This is the whole of it, Thérèse. What is there in that that is not reasonable? I cannot work decently except when I am ready to drop with fatigue."
"That is true," said Thérèse, "I have noticed it, and I wonder at it as an anomaly; but I am very much afraid that method of working will kill you; indeed, I cannot imagine how it can be otherwise. Stay, answer one question: did you begin life by hard work and abstinence, and did you feel the necessity of seeking distraction for the sake of rest?"
"No; just the opposite. When I left school, I was very fond of painting, but did not expect that I should ever be compelled to paint. I believed that I was rich. My father died leaving only about thirty thousand francs, which I made haste to devour, in order to have at least one year of luxury in my life. When I found that I was stranded, I took to the brush; I have been pulled to pieces, and lauded to the clouds, which, in our day, constitutes the greatest possible success, and now I lead a life of luxury and pleasure from time to time, for a few months or a few weeks, so long as the money lasts. When it is all gone, I have no fault to find, for I am always at the end of my strength and my desires alike. Thereupon I go back to my work, frantically, with mingled sorrow and ecstasy, and when the work is finished, idleness and extravagance begin again."
"Have you been leading this life long?"
"Nothing can be long at my age! About three years."
"Ah! but that is long for your age, I tell you! And then you began badly; you set fire to your vital spirits before they had taken their flight; you drank vinegar to stunt your growth. Your head continued to grow none the less, and genius developed in it in spite of everything; but perhaps your heart has atrophied, perhaps you will never be complete either as man or as artist."
These words, spoken with tranquil melancholy, irritated Laurent.
"So you despise me, do you?" he said, rising.
"No," she replied, holding out her hand, "I pity you!"
And he saw two great tears roll slowly down her cheeks.
Those tears produced a violent reaction in him; his own face was bathed in tears as he threw himself at Thérèse's feet, not like a lover declaring his passion, but like a child making his confession.
"Ah! my poor dear friend!" he cried, taking her hands, "you are quite right to pity me, for I need it! I am unhappy, so unhappy that I am ashamed to tell you! This indescribable something that I have in my breast in place of a heart is crying incessantly for I know not what, nor do I know what to give it to appease it. I love God, and I do not believe in Him. I love all women, and I despise them all! I can say this to you, who are my comrade and my friend! I surprise myself sometimes on the point of idolizing a courtesan, whereas beside an angel I should probably be colder than a marble statue. Everything is turned topsy-turvy in my notions; it may be that everything has gone wrong in my instincts. Suppose I should tell you that the time has already passed when I can find cheerful ideas in wine! Yes, I am depressed when I am drunk, it seems, and they told me that the day before yesterday, in that debauch at Montmorency, I declaimed tragic things with a vehemence as ghastly as it was absurd. What do you suppose will become of me, Thérèse, if you do not have pity for me?"
"To be sure, I have pity for you, my poor child," said Thérèse, wiping his eyes with her handkerchief; "but what good can that do you?"
"Ah! but if you should love me, Thérèse! Do not take your hands away! Have you not given me leave to be a sort of friend to you?"
"I have told you that I was fond of you; you replied that you could not believe in a woman's friendship."
"I might, perhaps, believe in yours; you must have a man's heart, since you have a man's strength and talent. Give it to me."
"I have not taken yours, and I propose to try to be a man for you," she replied; "but I don't quite know how to go about it. A man's friendship should be more outspoken and authoritative than I feel capable of being. In spite of myself, I shall pity you more than I shall scold you, as you see already! I had made up my mind to humiliate you to-day, to make you angry with me and yourself; instead of which, here I am weeping with you, and that doesn't advance matters at all."
"Yes, it does! yes, it does!" cried Laurent. "These tears do me good, they have watered the parched place; perhaps my heart will grow again there! Ah! Thérèse, you told me once, when I boasted before you of things that I should have blushed for, that I was a prison-wall. You forgot only one thing: that there is a prisoner behind that wall! If I could open the door, you would see him; but the door is closed, the wall is of bronze, and not my will, nor my faith, nor my affection, nor even my voice can penetrate it. Must I then live and die thus? What will it avail me, I ask you, to have daubed the walls of my dungeon with a few fanciful pictures, if the wordloveis written nowhere there?"
"If I understand you," said Thérèse dreamily, "you think that your work needs to be enlivened by sentiment."
"Do not you think so, too? Is not that what all your reproaches say?"
"Not precisely. There is only too much fire in your execution; the critics blame you for it. For my part, I have always felt deep respect for that youthful exuberance which makes great artists, and the beauties of which prevent any one who has true enthusiasm from harping upon its defects. Far from considering your work cold and positive, it seems to me burning and impassioned; but I have tried to make out where the seat of that passion was; I see now: it is in the craving of the heart. Yes," she added, still musing, as if she were seeking to pierce the veil of her own thought, "desire certainly may be a passion."
"Well, what are you thinking about?" said Laurent, following her absorbed glance.
"I am wondering if I ought to declare war on this power that is in you, and if, by persuading you to be happy and tranquil, I should not quench the sacred fire. And yet—I fancy that aspiration cannot be a durable condition of the mind, and that, when it has been earnestly expressed during its feverish stage, it must either subside of itself or overpower us. What do you say? Has not each age its special force and manifestation? Are not what we call the differentmannersof a master, simply the expression of the successive transformations of his being? At thirty, will it be possible for you to have aspired to everything without attaining anything? Will you not be compelled to adopt some fixed theory touching some point or other? You are at the age of caprice; but soon will come the age of light. Do you not wish to make progress?"
"Does it depend upon me to do it?"
"Yes, if you do not attempt to disturb the equilibrium of your faculties. You cannot persuade me that exhaustion is the proper remedy for fever: it is simply its fatal result."
"What febrifuge do you suggest, then?"
"I don't know; marriage, perhaps."
"Horror!" cried Laurent, bursting with laughter.
And he added, still laughing, and without any very clear idea of the source of that corrective:
"Unless I marry you, Thérèse. Ah! that is an idea, on my word!"
"Charming," she rejoined, "but altogether impossible."
This reply impressed Laurent by its conclusive tranquillity, and what he had just said by way of jest suddenly assumed the guise of a buried dream, as if the operation had taken place in his mind. That powerful and ill-fated mind was so constituted that the wordimpossiblewas all that was necessary to make him desire a thing, and that was just the word Thérèse had uttered.
Instantly his inclination to fall in love with her reawoke, and with it his suspicions, his jealousy, and his anger. Hitherto the spell of friendship had lulled and, as it were, intoxicated him; of a sudden he became bitter, and cold as ice.
"Ah! yes, of course," he said, taking his hat to go, "that is the key-word of my life, which constantly turns up on every occasion, at the end of a jest, as well as at the end of every serious subject:impossible! You do not know that foe, Thérèse; your love is tranquil and undisturbed. You have alover, or afriend, who is not jealous, because he knows you to be cold or reasonable! That reminds me that it is getting late, and that yourthirty-seven cousinsare probably here, waiting for me to go."
"What is that you are saying?" demanded Thérèse in utter amazement; "what ideas have come into your head? Are you subject to attacks of insanity?"
"Sometimes," he added, taking his leave. "You must excuse them."
The next day, Thérèse received the following letter from Laurent:
"MY DEAR GOOD FRIEND:"How did I leave you last night? If I said some horrible thing to you, forget it, I had no consciousness of it. I had an attack of vertigo which did not leave me at your door; for I found myself at my own door, in a cab, with no idea how I got there."It often happens with me, my dear friend, that my mouth says one thing when my brain is saying another. Pity me and forgive me. I am ill, and you were right in saying that the life I lead is detestable."By what right do I put questions to you? Do me the justice to admit that this is the first time I have ever questioned you, in the three months that I have known you intimately. What does it matter to me whether you are engaged, married, or a widow? You do not choose that anybody shall know, and have I tried to find out? Have I asked you? Ah! Thérèse, my head is still in confusion this morning, and yet I feel that I am lying, and I do not intend to lie to you. Friday evening I had my first attack of curiosity with regard to you, and yesterday's was the second; but it shall be the last, I swear, and to have done with the subject once and for all, I propose to make a clean breast of everything. I was at your door the other evening, that is to say, at your garden gate. I looked, and saw nothing; I listened and I heard! Even so, what does it matter to you? I do not know his name, I did not see his face; but I know that you are my sister, my consolation, my confidante, my mainstay. I know that I wept at your feet last night, and that you wiped my eyes with your handkerchief, and said: 'What are we to do, what are we to do, my poor boy?' I know that you, wise, hard-working, placid, respected creature that you are, since you are free and beloved, since you are happy, find time and charity to remember that I exist, to pity me, and to try to make my life better. Dear Thérèse, the man who would not bless you would be an ingrate, and, although I am a miserable wretch, I do not know ingratitude. When will you receive me, Thérèse? It seems to me that I insulted you? That only was lacking! Shall I come to you this evening? If you say no, on my word, I shall go to the devil!"
"MY DEAR GOOD FRIEND:
"How did I leave you last night? If I said some horrible thing to you, forget it, I had no consciousness of it. I had an attack of vertigo which did not leave me at your door; for I found myself at my own door, in a cab, with no idea how I got there.
"It often happens with me, my dear friend, that my mouth says one thing when my brain is saying another. Pity me and forgive me. I am ill, and you were right in saying that the life I lead is detestable.
"By what right do I put questions to you? Do me the justice to admit that this is the first time I have ever questioned you, in the three months that I have known you intimately. What does it matter to me whether you are engaged, married, or a widow? You do not choose that anybody shall know, and have I tried to find out? Have I asked you? Ah! Thérèse, my head is still in confusion this morning, and yet I feel that I am lying, and I do not intend to lie to you. Friday evening I had my first attack of curiosity with regard to you, and yesterday's was the second; but it shall be the last, I swear, and to have done with the subject once and for all, I propose to make a clean breast of everything. I was at your door the other evening, that is to say, at your garden gate. I looked, and saw nothing; I listened and I heard! Even so, what does it matter to you? I do not know his name, I did not see his face; but I know that you are my sister, my consolation, my confidante, my mainstay. I know that I wept at your feet last night, and that you wiped my eyes with your handkerchief, and said: 'What are we to do, what are we to do, my poor boy?' I know that you, wise, hard-working, placid, respected creature that you are, since you are free and beloved, since you are happy, find time and charity to remember that I exist, to pity me, and to try to make my life better. Dear Thérèse, the man who would not bless you would be an ingrate, and, although I am a miserable wretch, I do not know ingratitude. When will you receive me, Thérèse? It seems to me that I insulted you? That only was lacking! Shall I come to you this evening? If you say no, on my word, I shall go to the devil!"
Laurent's servant brought back Thérèse's reply. It was very short:Come this evening. Laurent was neither arouénor a puppy, although he often thought of being, or was tempted to be, one or the other. He was, as we have seen, a creature full of contrasts, whom we describe without trying to explain, for that would not be possible; certain characters elude logical analysis.
Thérèse's reply made him tremble like a child. She had never written him in that tone. Was it meant as a command to him to come to receive his dismissal upon stated grounds? or was she summoning him to a love-meeting? Had those three words, cold or ardent as it happened, been dictated by indignation or by passion?