LAURENT PAINTS PALMER'S PORTRAIT.Laurent succeeded, therefore, in calming himself sufficiently to study the American's regular, placid features.
LAURENT PAINTS PALMER'S PORTRAIT.
Laurent succeeded, therefore, in calming himself sufficiently to study the American's regular, placid features.
Monsieur Palmer arrived, and Laurent, agitated and preoccupied as he was, must needs begin his portrait. He had made up his mind to question him with consummate art, and to extort all Thérèse's secrets from him. He could devise no way of broaching the subject, and as the American posed conscientiously, as motionless and dumb as a statue, hardly a word was spoken on either side during the sitting.
Laurent succeeded, therefore, in calming himself sufficiently to study the American's regular, placid features. His beauty was without a blemish, a fact that imparted to his face at first sight the inanimate air peculiar to absolutely regular faces. But, on examining him more closely, you could detect a certain shrewdness in his smile and fire in his glance. At the same time that Laurent made these observations, he was trying to determine his model's age.
"I beg your pardon," he said abruptly, "but it would be well for me to know whether you are a young man somewhat overworked, or a middle-aged man wonderfully well preserved. It is of no use for me to look at you, I do not understand what I see."
"I am forty years old," replied Monsieur Palmer simply.
"God save us!" exclaimed Laurent; "then you must enjoy robust health?"
"Excellent!" said Palmer.
And he resumed his graceful pose and his tranquil smile.
"It's the face of a happy lover," said the artist to himself, "or else of a man who has never cared for anything but roast beef."
He could not resist the temptation to ask:
"So you knew Mademoiselle Jacques when she was very young?"
"She was fifteen years old when I first saw her."
Laurent had not the courage to ask him in what year that was. It seemed to him that the blood rushed to his face when he mentioned Thérèse. What did her age matter to him? It was her story that he would have liked to hear. Thérèse did not appear thirty; Palmer might have been no more than her friend. And then his voice was loud and penetrating. If it had been he to whom Thérèse had said:I love no one but you, he would have made some sort of a reply that Laurent would have heard.
At last, the evening came, and the artist, who was not in the habit of being punctual, arrived before the time at which Thérèse usually received him. He found her in her garden, unoccupied, contrary to her custom, and walking back and forth in evident agitation. As soon as she spied him, she went to meet him, and said, taking his hand with an air of authority rather than affection:
"If you are a man of honor, you will tell me all that you heard through this shrubbery. Come, speak; I am listening."
She sat down on a bench, and Laurent, irritated by this unusual reception, tried to worry her by making evasive replies; but she cowed him by her manifest displeasure, and by an expression of the face which was entirely strange to him. The dread of a definitive rupture with her led him to tell her the simple truth.
"So that was all you heard?" she said. "I said to a person whom you did not even see: 'You are now my only love on earth?'"
"Did I dream it, Thérèse? I am ready to believe it, if you bid me."
"No, you did not dream it. I may have said it, nay, I probably did say it. And what was the answer?"
"None that I heard," replied Laurent, upon whom Thérèse's admission had the effect of a cold shower-bath; "I didn't even hear the sound of his voice. Is your mind at rest?"
"No, I have other questions to ask you. To whom do you suppose that I said that?"
"I suppose nothing. I know no one but Monsieur Palmer, with whom the nature of your relations is not known."
"Ah!" cried Thérèse, with a strange air of satisfaction, "so you think it was Monsieur Palmer?"
"Why should it not be he? Do I insult you by supposing the possibility of an old liaison recently renewed? I know that your relations with all those whom I have seen here for the past three months are as disinterested on their part and as indifferent on yours as my own relations with you. Monsieur Palmer is very handsome, and he has the manners of a gallant man. I like him very much. I have neither the right nor the presumption to examine you touching your private sentiments. But—you will say that I have been watching you."
"I shall, indeed," rejoined Thérèse, who did not seem to think of denying anything whatsoever; "why do you watch me? It seems to me a wretched thing to do, although I don't understand it at all. Tell me how you came to do it."
"Thérèse!" replied the young man eagerly, determined to rid himself of all that he had on his mind, "tell me that you have a lover, and that Palmer is the man, and I will love you truly, I will talk to you with absolute frankness. I will ask your pardon for an outbreak of madness, and you shall never have any reason to reproach me. Come, do you wish me to be your friend? Despite all my boasting, I feel that I need your friendship and that I am capable of being your friend. Be frank with me, that is all that I ask of you!"
"My dear fellow," Thérèse replied, "you talk to me as if I were a coquette who was trying to keep you by her side, and who had some confession to make. I cannot accept that situation; it is in no respect suited to me. Monsieur Palmer is not and never will be to me anything more than a highly valued friend, with whom I am not even on intimate terms, and whom I had lost sight of for a long time until recently. So much I may say to you, but nothing more. My secrets, if I have any, do not require a confidant, and I beg you to take no more interest in them than I desire you to do. It is not for you to question me, therefore, but to answer my questions. What were you doing here four days ago? Why were you watching me? What is theoutbreak of madnesswhich I am to know about and pass judgment upon?"
"The tone in which you speak to me is not encouraging. Why should I confess, when you no longer deign to treat me as a comrade and to have confidence in me?"
"Do not confess then," said Thérèse, rising. "That will prove to me that you did not deserve the esteem I felt for you, and that you did not reciprocate it in the least, since you tried to find out my secrets."
"So you turn me out," said Laurent, "and it is all over between us?"
"It is all over, adieu!" replied Thérèse in a severe tone.
Laurent left the house in a rage which made it impossible for him to say a word; but he had not taken thirty steps in the street, when he returned, telling Catherine that he had forgotten to deliver a message which somebody had given him for her mistress. He found Thérèse sitting in a small salon; the garden door was still open; she seemed to have gone so far, and to have paused there, grieved and downcast, absorbed in her reflections. She received him frigidly.
"So you have come back?" she said; "what is it that you forgot?"
"I forgot to tell you the truth."
"I no longer care to hear it."
"But you asked me for it?"
"I thought that you might tell it spontaneously."
"And I might have, I should have; I was wrong not to do it. Look you, Thérèse, do you think it possible for a man of my age to see you without falling in love with you?"
"In love?" said Thérèse, with a frown. "So you were making sport of me, were you, when you told me that you could not fall in love with any woman?"
"No, indeed; I said what I thought."
"Then you were mistaken, and you are really in love! are you quite sure of it?"
"Oh! don't be angry; great Heaven! I am not sure enough for that. Thoughts of love have passed through my head, through my senses, if you choose. Have you so little experience that you considered it impossible?"
"I am old enough to have had experience," she replied; "but I have lived alone for a long while. I have had no experience of certain situations. Does that surprise you? It is true, none the less. I am very simple-minded, although I have been deceived, like everybody else! You have told me a hundred times that you respected me too much to look upon me as a woman, for the reason that your love for women was altogether gross. So I believed that I was in no danger from the outrage of your desires; and of all that I esteemed in you, your sincerity upon that point was what I esteemed most highly. I allowed myself to become interested in your destiny with the greater freedom, because, you remember, we said to each other, laughing, but with serious meaning: 'Between two persons, of whom one is an idealist and the other a materialist, there is the Baltic Sea.'"
"I said it in all sincerity, and I walked confidently along the shore on my side, without an idea of crossing; but it happened that the ice would not bear. Is it my fault that I am twenty-four, and that you are beautiful?"
"Am I still beautiful? I hoped not."
"I cannot say; I did not think so at first, and then, one fine day, you seemed beautiful to me. So far as you are concerned, it is involuntary, I know that perfectly well; but it was involuntary on my part, too, my feeling this fascination, so involuntary that I fought against it and tried to divert my mind from it. I rendered unto Satan what belongs to Satan, that is to say, my poor soul, and I brought here unto Cæsar only what belongs to Cæsar,—my respect and my silence. But for eight or ten days this accursed emotion has reappeared in my dreams. It vanishes as soon as I am with you. On my word of honor, Thérèse, when I see you, when you speak to me, I am calm, I no longer remember that I cried out for you in a moment of frenzy, which I cannot understand myself. When I speak of you, I say that you are not young, or that I don't like the color of your hair. I declare that you are my comrade, that is to say, my brother, and I feel when I say it that I am perfectly loyal. And then a few puffs of spring surprise the winter in my idiotic heart, and I fancy that it is you who blow them. And it is you, in truth, Thérèse, with your adoration of what you call real love! That sets me thinking, whatever kind of love one may have!"
"I think that you are mistaken, I never speak of love."
"No, I know it. You follow a rigid rule in that respect. You have read somewhere that even to speak of love was to give it or take it; but your silence is most eloquent, your reticence gives one the fever, and your excessive prudence has a diabolical fascination."
"In that case, let us meet no more," said Thérèse.
"Why not? what is it to you that I have had a few sleepless nights, since it depends solely upon you to make me as tranquil as I used to be."
"What must I do to bring that about?"
"What I told you: tell me that you belong to some one. I shall look upon that as final, and as I am very proud, I shall be cured as by a fairy's wand."
"And suppose I tell you that I belong to no one, because I no longer care to love any one, will not that suffice?"
"No; I shall be conceited enough to think that you may change your mind."
Thérèse could not help laughing at the adroitness with which Laurent manœuvred.
"Very well," said she, "be cured, and give me back a friendship of which I was proud, instead of a life for which I should have to blush. I love some one."
"That is not enough, Thérèse: you must tell me that you belong to him."
"Otherwise you would think that some one was yourself, eh? Well, so be it, I have a lover. Are you satisfied?"
"Perfectly. As you see, I kiss your hand to thank you for your frankness. Come, be a good girl, tell me that it is Palmer."
"I cannot do that: it would be false."
"Then—I don't know what to think!"
"It is no one whom you know; it is a person who is absent from Paris."
"But who comes sometimes?"
"Apparently, since you overheard an outpouring of sentiment."
"Thanks, thanks, Thérèse. Now I am fairly on my feet again; I know who you are and who I am, and, if I must tell you the whole truth, I believe that I love you better so, for you are a woman now, and not a sphinx. Ah! why didn't you speak sooner?"
"Has this passion made such terrible ravages?" said Thérèse, mockingly.
"Why, yes, perhaps! Ten years hence I will tell you about it, Thérèse, and we will laugh together over it."
"Agreed; good-night."
Laurent went to bed in a very tranquil frame of mind and altogether undeceived. He had really suffered on Thérèse's account. He had passionately desired her, but had never dared to let her suspect it. Certainly it was not a meritorious passion. There was as much vanity as curiosity in it. That woman of whom all her friends said: "Whom does she love? I wish it were I, but it is no one," had appeared to him in the guise of a beautiful ideal to be grasped. His imagination had taken fire, his pride had bled with the dread, the almost certainty, of failure.
But this young man was not exclusively given over to pride. He had at times a dazzling and dominating vision of the right, the good, and the true.
He was an angel, gone astray and diseased, if not absolutely fallen like so many others. The craving for love devoured his heart, and a hundred times a day he asked himself in dismay if he had not abused life too much already, and if he still had strength to be happy.
He awoke calm and depressed. He already regretted his chimera, his beautiful sphinx, who read his thoughts with good-natured attention, who admired him, scolded him, pitied him, and encouraged him by turns, without ever revealing a corner of her own destiny, but affording a foretaste of treasures of affection, devotion, perhaps of sensual pleasure! At all events, it was in this way that it pleased Laurent to interpret Thérèse's silence touching herself, and a certain smile, as mysterious as Joconda's, which played about her lips and in the corner of her eye, when he blasphemed in her presence. At such times, she seemed to say to herself: "I could, if I chose, describe the paradise in contrast with that villainous hell; but the poor fool would not understand me."
When the mystery of her heart was once unveiled, Thérèse lost her prestige in Laurent's eyes at first. She was no longer anything more than a woman like other women. He was even tempted to degrade her in her own esteem, and, although she had never allowed him to question her, to accuse her of hypocrisy and prudery. But, from the moment that he knew that she belonged to some one, he ceased to regret that he had respected her, and he no longer desired anything of her, not even her friendship, which, he thought, he would have no difficulty in supplying elsewhere.
This state of affairs lasted two or three days, during which Laurent prepared several explanations, in the event that Thérèse should ask him, to account for the time that had passed without his calling upon her. On the fourth day, Laurent found himself in the clutches of a savage attack ofspleen. Harlots and courtesans made him ill; he found in none of his friends the patient and delicate kindliness with which Thérèse would detect his ennui, try to divert his mind, help him to seek its cause and remedy, in a word, give her whole mind to him. She alone knew what ought to be said to him, and seemed to understand that the fate of an artist like him was not a matter of trifling importance, as to which a more exalted mind had the right to declare that, if he were unfortunate, it was so much the worse for him.
He ran to her house in such hot haste, that he forgot what he intended to say by way of apology; but Thérèse showed neither displeasure nor surprise because of his neglect, and spared him the necessity of lying by asking him no questions. He was stung by her indifference, and discovered that he was more jealous of her than before.
"She has probably seen her lover," he thought; "she has forgotten me."
However, he did not manifest his irritation, and kept such close watch upon himself thereafter, that Thérèse was deceived.
Several weeks passed in alternations of frenzy, coldness, and affection. Nothing else on earth was so necessary to him and so beneficent as that woman's friendship, nothing so bitter and so galling as to be unable to seek her love. The confession he had demanded, far from curing him as he had flattered himself that it would, had intensified his suffering. It was jealousy, which he could no longer conceal from himself, since it had a definite and admitted cause. How, in Heaven's name, could he ever have fancied that as soon as he knew that cause, he would scorn the idea of striving to destroy it?
And yet he made no effort to supplant the invisible and happy rival. His pride, which was excessive when he was with Thérèse, would not allow him to do it. When he was alone, he hated him, decried him to himself, attributing all sorts of absurdities to that phantom, insulting him and challenging him ten times a day.
Then he would become disgusted with suffering, seek comfort in debauchery, forget himself for a moment, but instantly relapse into profound depression, and go to pass an hour or two with Thérèse, overjoyed to see her, to breathe the air that she breathed, and to contradict her in order to have the pleasure of listening to her voice, scolding and caressing by turns.
Finally he detested her for not divining his torments; he despised her for remaining faithful to that lover of hers, who could not be a man of more than ordinary talent, since she did not feel the need of talking about him; he would leave her, swearing that he would not go near her again for a long while, and he would have returned an hour later if he had had any hope that she would receive him.
Thérèse, who had caught a glimpse of his love for a moment, no longer suspected it, so well did he play his part. She was sincerely attached to the unhappy youth. Being an enthusiastic artist beneath her calm and thoughtful exterior, she had set up a sort of altar, she said,to what he might have been, and she still felt for him an indulgent pity, blended with genuine respect for genius diseased and gone astray. If she had been very certain of not arousing any evil desire, she would have fondled him like a son, and there were times when she checked herself as she was on the point of using the familiar form of address to him.
Was there a touch of love in that maternal sentiment? There surely was, unknown to Thérèse; but a truly chaste woman, who has lived longer by work than by passion, can keep from herself for a long while the secret of a love which she has resolved to fight against. Thérèse believed that she was certain of having no thought of her own satisfaction in that attachment of which she bore all the burden; as soon as it was evident that Laurent found tranquillity and contentment with her, she found tranquillity and contentment to give him. She was well aware that he was incapable of loving as she understood the word; so that she had been hurt and alarmed at the momentary caprice which he had confessed. That paroxysm past, she congratulated herself upon having found in a harmless fib a means of preventing its recurrence; and, as on all occasions, whenever he felt at all excited, Laurent hastened to proclaim the impassable barrier of iceof the Baltic Sea, she was no longer afraid, and accustomed herself to live amid flames without being burned.
All these sufferings and perils of the two friends were concealed and, as it were, incubated beneath a habitual satirical gaiety, which is the natural mood, the indelible seal, as it were, of French artists. It is a sort of second nature, for which the people of more northern countries blame us severely, and for which the serious English, above all, look down upon us. Yet it is that which constitutes the charm of refined liaisons, and often preserves us from many a mad or foolish step. To seek the absurd side of things is to discover the weak and illogical side. To laugh at the perils by which the heart is encompassed, is to practise defying them, like our soldiers, who go into fire laughing and singing. To make fun of a friend is often to save him from some weakness in which our pity would have led him to gratify himself. And, finally, to make fun of one's self is to rescue one's self from the foolish intoxication of overweening self-esteem. I have noticed that people who never jest are generally endowed with puerile and intolerable vanity.
Laurent's gaiety, like his talent, was dazzling with color and wit, and was the more natural because it was original. Thérèse had less wit than he, in the sense that she was naturally given to musing, and was an indolent talker; but what she needed was a playful spirit in others; then her own would gradually wake, and her quiet merriment was not without charm.
The result of this habitual good humor was that love, a subject upon which Thérèse never jested and did not like to have others jest in her presence, found no opportunity to slip in a word, to utter a note.
One fine morning, Monsieur Palmer's portrait was finished, and Thérèse handed to Laurent, in her friend's name, a snug little sum which the young man promised to put aside, to be used in case of illness or of some unforeseen and unavoidable expense.
Laurent had become intimate with Palmer while painting his portrait. He had found him what he was: upright, just, generous, intelligent, and well-informed. Palmer was a wealthy American of the middle class, whose patrimonial fortune was derived from trade. He had been in business himself and had travelled extensively in his younger days. At thirty, he had had the excellent sense to consider himself rich enough, and to determine to live for his own enjoyment. So he no longer travelled except for pleasure, and after he had seen, as he said, many curious things and extraordinary countries, he took delight in the sight of beautiful things and in studying countries which were really interesting by reason of their civilization.
Although he was not a very enlightened student of art, his judgment was reasonably reliable, and on all subjects his ideas were as healthy as his instincts. His French showed the effect of his timidity, to such a degree that it was almost unintelligible and absurdly incorrect at the beginning of a conversation; but when he felt at ease, one could see that he knew the language, and that all he lacked was longer practice or greater confidence to speak it very well.
Laurent had studied him with much curiosity and perturbation at the outset. When it was proved by affirmative evidence that he was not Mademoiselle Jacques's lover, he estimated his character more fairly, and conceived a sort of friendship for him which resembled, albeit at a long distance, his sentiment for Thérèse. Palmer was a tolerant philosopher, strict enough in his dealings with himself and very charitable to others. In his ideas, if not in his character, he resembled Thérèse, and he was almost always in accord with her on all points. Now and then Laurent still felt jealous of what he called, in musical parlance, their imperturbableunison; and, as it was simply an intellectual jealousy, he ventured to complain of it to Thérèse.
"Your definition amounts to nothing," she said. "Palmer is too placid and too perfect for me. I have a little more fire, and I sing a little louder than he does. Compared with him, I am the high note in the major third."
"In that case, I am only a false note," said Laurent.
"No," said Thérèse, "with you I am modified and go down the scale to form the minor third."
"Then with me you descend half a tone?"
"And I am half an interval nearer to you than to Palmer."
One day, at Palmer's request, Laurent went to the Hôtel Meurice, where the American lived, to see that the portrait was suitably framed and packed. The lid was nailed on in their presence, and Palmer himself wrote his mother's name and address thereon with a brush; then, as the porters carried the box away to dispatch it on its long journey, Palmer grasped the artist's hand, and said:
"I owe it to you that my dear mother is soon to have a very great pleasure, and I thank you again. Now will you allow me to talk with you a few moments? I have something to say to you."
They went into a salon where Laurent saw several trunks.
"I start to-morrow for Italy," said the American, offering him some excellent cigars and a taper, although he did not smoke himself; "and I do not choose to part with you without a few words touching a delicate matter, so delicate that, if you interrupt me, I shall not be able to find the proper French words for what I want to say."
"I swear that I will be as mute as the tomb," said Laurent, with a smile, surprised and considerably disturbed by this preamble.
"You love Mademoiselle Jacques," continued Palmer, "and I think that she loves you. Perhaps you are her lover; if you are not, I feel certain that you will be sooner or later. Ah! you promised not to speak! Say nothing, for I ask you nothing. I consider you worthy of the honor I attribute to you; but I am afraid that you are not well enough acquainted with Thérèse to know that, if your love is an honor to her, hers is no less an honor to you. I am afraid of that because of the questions you asked me about her, and of certain remarks that have been made about her before us two, by which I saw that you were more moved than I was. That proves that you know nothing about her; now I, who know the whole story, propose to tell you the whole story, so that your attachment to Mademoiselle Jacques may be founded on the esteem and respect which she deserves."
"Wait a moment, Palmer," cried Laurent, who was burning to hear what was coming, but was restrained by an honorable scruple. "Do you propose to tell me this with Mademoiselle Jacques's permission, or by her command?"
"Neither," replied Palmer. "Thérèse will never tell you the story of her life."
"Then say no more! I do not wish to know anything except what she wishes me to know."
"Good, very good!" rejoined Palmer, shaking his hand; "but suppose that what I have to tell you clears her from all suspicion?"
"Then why does she conceal it?"
"From consideration for others."
"Well, go on," said Laurent, unable to resist the temptation.
"I shall mention no names," said Palmer. "I will simply tell you that, in one of the large cities of France, there was once a rich banker who seduced a charming girl, his own daughter's governess. He had by her a female child who was born twenty-eight years ago on Saint Jacques's Day, was entered on the municipal register as born of unknown parents, and received no other family name than Jacques. Thérèse is that child.
"The governess received a sum of money from the banker, and, five years later, married one of his clerks, an honest fellow who had no suspicion of anything wrong, the whole affair having been kept very secret. The child was brought up in the country. Her father had taken charge of her. She was afterward placed in a convent, where she received a very fine education and was the object of much care and affection. Her mother saw her constantly during the first years; but after she was married, her husband became suspicious, and, resigning his position with the banker, took his wife to Belgium, where he went into business on his own account and made a fortune. The poor mother had to force back her tears and obey.
"That mother still lives a long way from her daughter; she has other children, and her conduct since her marriage has been beyond reproach; but she has never been happy. Her husband, who loves her dearly, keeps her almost under lock and key, and has never ceased to be jealous of her; which is in her eyes the merited penalty of her sin and her falsehood.
"It would seem that age should have brought confession on the one hand and forgiveness on the other. It would have been arranged so in a novel; but there is nothing less logical than real life, and that household is as disturbed as on the first day, the husband deep in love, uneasy and rough, the wife penitent, but silent and down-trodden.
"And so, under the difficult circumstances in which Thérèse was placed, she was deprived of the support, the assistance, the advice, and the consolation of her mother. But the mother loves her all the more dearly for being obliged to see her in secret, by stealth, when she succeeds in coming to Paris alone for two or three days, as has happened recently. But it is only within a few years that she has been able to devise pretexts of one sort or another, and obtain these occasional leaves of absence. Thérèse adores her mother, and will never make any admission that can possibly compromise her. That is why she will never endure a word of blame concerning the conduct of other women. You may well have thought that at such times she was indirectly claiming indulgence for herself. Nothing of the sort. Thérèse has nothing for which to seek forgiveness; but she has forgiven her mother everything; such is the story of their relations.
"I now have to tell you the story of the Comtesse de ——three stars. That is what you say in French, I believe, when you do not wish to call people by name. This countess, who bears neither her title nor her husband's name, is Thérèse again."
"So she is married? she is not a widow?"
"Patience! she is married, and she is not. You will see in a moment. Thérèse was fifteen years old when her father, the banker, became a widower and a free man; for his lawful children were all settled in life. He was an excellent man, and, despite the misstep of which I have told you and which I do not justify, it was impossible not to love him, he was so entertaining and generous. I was very intimate with him. He had told me in confidence the story of Thérèse's birth, and on several occasions he took me with him when he went to see her at the convent where she was. She was beautiful, intelligent, lovable, high-spirited. He would have been glad, I think, to have me make up my mind to ask her hand in marriage; but my heart was not free at that time; otherwise—— But I could not think of it.
"He then asked me some questions about a young Portuguese nobleman who was a frequent visitor at his house, who had very large interests in Havana, and who was very handsome. I had met this Portuguese in Paris, but I did not really know him, and I abstained from giving any opinion about him. He was very fascinating; but, for my part, I would never have placed any confidence in his face. He was the Comte de ——, to whom Thérèse was married a year later.
"I was obliged to go to Russia; when I returned, the banker had died of apoplexy, and Thérèse was married, married to that foreigner, that madman, I will not say that villain, because he was able to retain her love, even after she discovered his crime: that man already had a wife in the colonies when he had the incredible audacity to seek Thérèse's hand and to marry her.
"Do not ask me how Thérèse's father, a man of sense and experience, had allowed himself to be so deceived. I could but repeat to you what my own experience has taught me, to wit: that in this world, the things that happen are at least half of the time the direct opposite of what seemed likely to happen.
"In the later years of his life the banker had done divers other foolish things which would lead one to think that his reason was slightly clouded. He had left Thérèse a legacy instead of giving her a marriage-portion outright in his life-time. This legacy was of no effect as against the lawful heirs, and Thérèse, who adored her father, would not have applied to the courts even if there had been any chance of success. She was left penniless, therefore, just as she became a mother, and, at the same time, a frantic woman made a descent upon her, demanding her rights and threatening to make a scandal: it was her husband's first and only lawful wife.
"Thérèse had an extraordinary amount of courage: she pacified the unfortunate creature, and persuaded her not to apply to the courts; she induced the count to take back his wife and start for Havana with her. Because of Thérèse's birth and the secrecy with which her father had chosen to encompass the manifestations of his affection, her marriage had taken place secretly, abroad, and the young couple had lived abroad ever since. Indeed, their life had been most mysterious. The count, unquestionably afraid of being unmasked if he should reappear in the world, made Thérèse believe that he had a passion for living in solitude with her, and the trustful young wife, in love with her husband and naturally romantic, considered it altogether natural that her husband should travel with her under a false name, to avoid meeting people who were indifferent to him.
"Thus when Thérèse awoke to the horror of her situation, it was not impossible that everything might be shrouded in silence. She consulted a discreet lawyer, and, having acquired the certainty that her marriage was null and void, but that it required a judgment to quash it, if she wished ever to make use of her liberty, she instantly and irrevocably made up her mind to be neither free nor married, rather than besmirch her child's father with a degrading scandal and conviction. That made the child a bastard beyond recall; but it was better that he should have no name and should remain forever in ignorance of his birth, than that he should claim a tarnished name and bring dishonor upon his father.
"Thérèse still loved the wretch! she confessed as much to me, and he loved her with a diabolical passion. There were heart-rending struggles, indescribable scenes, in which Thérèse fought with an energy beyond her years, I will not say beyond her sex; a woman, when she is heroic, is not heroic by halves.
"At last, she carried the day; she kept her child, expelled the culprit from her arms, and saw him depart with her rival, who, although consumed by jealousy, was so far overcome by her magnanimity that she kissed her feet when they parted.
"Thérèse changed her abode and her name, passed as a widow, having resolved to be forgotten by the few people who had known her, and began to live for her child, with pitiful energy. The child was so dear to her, that she thought that she could find consolation with him; but this last joy was destined not to be of long duration.
"As the count was wealthy, and had no children by his first wife, Thérèse had been persuaded, at her rival's earnest entreaty, to accept a reasonable allowance, in order to enable her to give her son a suitable education; but the count had no sooner taken his wife back to Havana than he abandoned her again, made his escape, returned to Europe, and threw himself at Thérèse's feet, imploring her to fly with him and the child to the other side of the world.
"Thérèse was inexorable; she had reflected and prayed. Her heart had become strong, she no longer loved the count. On her son's account, she did not propose that such a man as the count should become the master of her life. She had lost the right to be happy, but not the right to respect herself; she repulsed him, without reproaches, but without weakness. The count threatened to leave her penniless; she replied that she was not afraid to work for a living.
"The wretched madman thereupon devised an execrable scheme, to place Thérèse at his mercy, or to be revenged for her resistance. He kidnapped the child and disappeared. Thérèse hurried after him; but he had taken his measures so carefully that she went astray and did not overtake him. It was at that crisis that I met her in England, dying of despair and fatigue at an inn, almost insane, and so changed by unhappiness that I hardly recognized her.
"I persuaded her to rest, and let me act for her. My investigations were lamentably successful. The count had returned to America. The child had died of fatigue on arriving there.
"When I was obliged to convey that horrible news to the unhappy creature, I was terrified myself at the calmness she displayed. At last, she wept, and I saw that she was saved. I was forced to leave her; she told me that she proposed to settle where she was. I was distressed by her destitution; she deceived me by telling me that her mother would not allow her to lack anything. I learned later that her poor mother would have been powerless to help her; she had not a centime at her disposal for which she had not to account. Moreover, she was entirely ignorant of all her daughter's misfortunes. Thérèse, who wrote to her in secret, had concealed them in order not to drive her to desperation.
"Thérèse lived on in England, giving lessons in French, drawing, and music, for she possessed talents which she had the courage to turn to account, that she might not have to accept compassion from any one.
"After a year, she returned to France, and settled in Paris, where she had never been, and where no one knew her. She was then but twenty years old; she was married at sixteen. She was no longer at all pretty, and it required eight years of repose and resignation to restore her health and her gentle gaiety of long ago.
"During all that time, I saw her only at rare intervals, for I am always travelling; but I always found her dignified and proud, working with invincible courage, and concealing her poverty behind miraculous neatness and cleanliness, never complaining of God, or of any mortal, refusing to talk of the past, sometimes caressing children by stealth and leaving them as soon as one looked at her, fearing, doubtless, that she might betray some emotion.
"I had not seen her for three years, when I came to ask you to paint my portrait, and I was trying to find her address, which I was on the point of asking you for when you mentioned her to me. Having arrived only the night before, I did not know that she had at last attained success, celebrity, and a comfortable income.
"It was only on finding her under such conditions, that it occurred to me that that heart, so long crushed, might live again, and suffer—or be happy. Try to make her happy, my dear Laurent, she has well earned it! And, if you are not sure that you will not make her suffer, blow out your brains to-night rather than return to her. That is all that I had to say to you."
"Stay," said Laurent, deeply moved; "this Comte de ——, is he still alive?"
"Unfortunately, yes. These men who drive other people to despair are always in good health and escape all dangers. They never hand in their resignations; why, this fellow recently had the presumption to send me a letter for Thérèse, which I handed to her in your presence, which she treated as it deserved."
Laurent had thought of marrying Thérèse as he listened to Monsieur Palmer's narrative. That narrative had produced a revolution in him. The monotonous tone, the pronounced accent, and a few curious grammatical lapses which we have not thought it worth our while to reproduce, had imparted to it, in his auditor's vivid imagination, an indefinable something as strange and terrible as Thérèse's destiny. That girl without kindred, that mother without children, that wife without a husband, was surely doomed to an exceptionally cruel fate! What depressing notions of love and life she must have retained! The sphinx reappeared before Laurent's dazzled eyes. Thérèse unveiled seemed to him more mysterious than ever; had she ever been consoled? could she be for a single instant?
He embraced Palmer effusively, swore to him that he loved Thérèse, and that, if he ever succeeded in winning her love, he would remember every hour of his life the hour that had just passed and the story he had just heard. Then, having promised not to betray his knowledge of Mademoiselle Jacques's history, he went home and wrote:
"THÉRÈSE:"Do not believe a word of all I have been saying to you these last two months. Do not believe either what I said to you when you were afraid that I would fall in love with you. I am not amorous, it is not that; I love you madly. It is absurd, it is insane, it is wretched; but I, who thought that I never should or could say or write to a woman the wordsI love you!find them too cold and constrained to-day to express my feeling for you. I can live no longer with this secret which is choking me, and which you will not guess. I have tried a hundred times to leave you, to go to the end of the world, to forget you. In an hour I am at your door, and very often, at night, consumed with jealousy and almost frantic with rage against myself, I pray God to deliver me from my torment by summoning this unknown lover in whom I do not believe, and whom you invented to disgust me with the thought of you. Show me that man in your arms, or love me, Thérèse! Failing these alternatives, I can conceive but one other, and that is to kill myself and have done with it. This is cowardly, stupid, the commonplace threat worn threadbare by all despairing lovers; but is it my fault if there is a despair which makes all those who undergo it utter the same shriek, and am I mad because I happen to be a man like other men?"Of what avail has been all that I have invented to protect myself from it, and to render my poor personality as harmless as it wished to be free?"Have you anything to reproach me for in my dealings with you, Thérèse? Am I a conceited ass, a rake, I who prided myself upon making myself stupid so as to give you confidence in my friendship? But why do you wish that I should die without having loved, you who alone can teach me what love is, and who know it well? You have a treasure in your heart, and you smile as you sit beside a poor devil who is dying of hunger and thirst. You toss him a small coin from time to time; that means friendship in your eyes; it is not even pity, for you must know that the drop of water increases the thirst."And why do you not love me? You may have loved some one who was a worse man than I. I am not worth much, to be sure, but I love you, and is not that everything?"You will not believe it; you will say again that I am mistaken, as you said before! No, you cannot say so, unless you lie to God and to yourself. You see that my torment gets the better of me, and that I am making an absurd declaration, I who dread nothing on earth so much as being laughed at by you!"Thérèse, do not think me corrupt. You know very well that the bottom of my heart has never been sullied, and that from the abysses into which I have cast myself I have always, in spite of myself, raised my voice to Heaven. You know that with you I am as chaste as an infant, and you have not feared to take my head in your hands sometimes, as if you were about to kiss me on the forehead. And you would say: 'Bad head! you deserve to be broken.'—And yet, instead of crushing it like the head of a snake, you would try to make the pure and burning breath of your mind penetrate it. Ah! well, you have succeeded only too well; and, now that you have kindled the fire on the altar, you turn away and say to me: 'Place it in somebody's else care! Marry; love some sweet, devoted, lovely girl; have children, be ambitious for them, live a virtuous life, have a happy home—have everything, except me!'"But, Thérèse, it is you whom I love passionately, not myself. Since I have known you, you have been striving to make me believe in happiness and to cultivate my taste for it. It is not your fault if I have not become as selfish as a spoiled child. But I am worthy of a better fate. I do not ask if your love would mean happiness to me. I simply know that it would be life, and that, good or bad, it is that life, or death, that I must have."
"THÉRÈSE:
"Do not believe a word of all I have been saying to you these last two months. Do not believe either what I said to you when you were afraid that I would fall in love with you. I am not amorous, it is not that; I love you madly. It is absurd, it is insane, it is wretched; but I, who thought that I never should or could say or write to a woman the wordsI love you!find them too cold and constrained to-day to express my feeling for you. I can live no longer with this secret which is choking me, and which you will not guess. I have tried a hundred times to leave you, to go to the end of the world, to forget you. In an hour I am at your door, and very often, at night, consumed with jealousy and almost frantic with rage against myself, I pray God to deliver me from my torment by summoning this unknown lover in whom I do not believe, and whom you invented to disgust me with the thought of you. Show me that man in your arms, or love me, Thérèse! Failing these alternatives, I can conceive but one other, and that is to kill myself and have done with it. This is cowardly, stupid, the commonplace threat worn threadbare by all despairing lovers; but is it my fault if there is a despair which makes all those who undergo it utter the same shriek, and am I mad because I happen to be a man like other men?
"Of what avail has been all that I have invented to protect myself from it, and to render my poor personality as harmless as it wished to be free?
"Have you anything to reproach me for in my dealings with you, Thérèse? Am I a conceited ass, a rake, I who prided myself upon making myself stupid so as to give you confidence in my friendship? But why do you wish that I should die without having loved, you who alone can teach me what love is, and who know it well? You have a treasure in your heart, and you smile as you sit beside a poor devil who is dying of hunger and thirst. You toss him a small coin from time to time; that means friendship in your eyes; it is not even pity, for you must know that the drop of water increases the thirst.
"And why do you not love me? You may have loved some one who was a worse man than I. I am not worth much, to be sure, but I love you, and is not that everything?
"You will not believe it; you will say again that I am mistaken, as you said before! No, you cannot say so, unless you lie to God and to yourself. You see that my torment gets the better of me, and that I am making an absurd declaration, I who dread nothing on earth so much as being laughed at by you!
"Thérèse, do not think me corrupt. You know very well that the bottom of my heart has never been sullied, and that from the abysses into which I have cast myself I have always, in spite of myself, raised my voice to Heaven. You know that with you I am as chaste as an infant, and you have not feared to take my head in your hands sometimes, as if you were about to kiss me on the forehead. And you would say: 'Bad head! you deserve to be broken.'—And yet, instead of crushing it like the head of a snake, you would try to make the pure and burning breath of your mind penetrate it. Ah! well, you have succeeded only too well; and, now that you have kindled the fire on the altar, you turn away and say to me: 'Place it in somebody's else care! Marry; love some sweet, devoted, lovely girl; have children, be ambitious for them, live a virtuous life, have a happy home—have everything, except me!'
"But, Thérèse, it is you whom I love passionately, not myself. Since I have known you, you have been striving to make me believe in happiness and to cultivate my taste for it. It is not your fault if I have not become as selfish as a spoiled child. But I am worthy of a better fate. I do not ask if your love would mean happiness to me. I simply know that it would be life, and that, good or bad, it is that life, or death, that I must have."
Thérèse was deeply distressed by this letter. She was, as it were, struck by lightning. Her love bore so little resemblance to Laurent's, that she fancied that she did not love him with love, especially when she reread the expressions used by him. There was no delirium in Thérèse's heart, or, if there were, it had entered there, drop by drop, so slowly that she did not notice it, and believed that she was as thoroughly mistress of herself as on the first day. The wordpassionoffended her.
"Passions! I?" she said to herself. "In Heaven's name, does he think that I don't know what passion is, and that I want any more of that poisoned draught? What have I done to him, I who have given him so much affection and thought, that he should propose to me, by way of thanks, despair, madness, and death?—After all," she thought, "it is not his fault, poor creature! He doesn't know what he wants, nor what he asks for. He seeks love like the philosopher's stone, in which one strives all the more earnestly to believe because he cannot grasp it. He thinks that I have it, and that I amuse myself by refusing to give it to him! There is always a touch of frenzy in whatever he thinks. How can I appease him, and turn him aside from a fancy that is rapidly making him unhappy?
"It is my fault; he has some right to say so. While trying to wean him from debauchery, I familiarized him too much with a virtuous attachment; but he is a man, and he deems our affection incomplete. Why did he deceive me? why did he make me believe that he was tranquil when he was with me? What shall I do to repair the idiocy of my inexperience? I have not been enough of a woman in the matter of presumption. I did not know that a woman, however lukewarm and weary of life she may be, can still disturb a man's brain. I ought to have believed that I was fascinating and dangerous, as he once told me, and to have guessed that he afterward contradicted himself on that point only to quiet my fears. So it is a misfortune, then,—for it certainly cannot be a sin,—not to have the instinct of coquetry?"
Thereupon, Thérèse, searching her memory, remembered that she had instinctively been reserved and distrustful to defend herself from the desires of other men who were not attractive to her; with Laurent she felt no such instinct, because she esteemed him in his friendship for her, because she could not believe that he would seek to deceive her, and also, it must be admitted, because she cared more for him than for any other. Alone in her studio, she paced the floor, oppressed by a painful sense of discomfort, sometimes glancing at the fatal letter which she had placed on a table as if she knew not what to do with it and could neither decide to read it again nor to destroy it, and sometimes looking at her unfinished work on the easel. She was working with enthusiasm and pleasure when they brought her that letter, that is to say, that doubt, that anxiety, that amazement, and that dread. It was like a mirage which caused all the spectres of her former miseries to reappear upon her unclouded, peaceful horizon. Every word written on that paper was like a hymn of death which she had heard in the past, a prophecy of fresh misfortunes to come.
She tried to recover her serenity by resuming her painting. That was her great remedy for all the petty ills of external life; but it was powerless that day; the terror which that passion aroused in her assailed her in the purest and most private sanctuary of her present life.
"Two pleasures disturbed or destroyed," she said to herself, throwing away her brush and taking up the letter: "work and friendship."
She passed the rest of the day without making up her mind to anything. But one point was perfectly clear in her mind, the determination to say no; but she proposed that it should be no in reality, and was not bent upon announcing her decision in hot haste, with the timorous abruptness of the woman who is afraid of succumbing unless she makes haste to barricade the door. How to say that no from which there should be no appeal, which should leave no hope behind, yet should not be like a red-hot iron on the sweet memory of friendship, was a hard and bitter problem for her to solve. That memory was her own love; when one has the body of a dearly loved one to bury, one cannot decide, without bitter sorrow, to place a white cloth over the face and bestow the body in the common grave. You would fain embalm it in a grave of its own, which you could look upon from time to time, praying for the soul of him whose dust it contains.
Darkness came upon her before she had hit upon any expedient for denying herself without inflicting too much pain. Catherine, seeing that she dined with little appetite, asked her anxiously if she were ill.
"No," she replied, "I have something on my mind."
"Ah! you work too hard," said the good old woman, "you do not think about taking care of yourself."
Thérèse raised her finger; it was a gesture with which Catherine was familiar, and which signified: "Don't speak of that."
The hour at which Thérèse received her few friends had, for some time past, been taken advantage of by Laurent only. Although the door stood open for whoever chose to come, he alone came, whether because the others were away from Paris—it was the season for going into the country or remaining there—or because they had detected in Thérèse a certain preoccupation, an involuntary and poorly concealed desire to talk exclusively with Monsieur de Fauvel.
Laurent usually arrived at eight, and Thérèse said to herself as she glanced at the clock:
"I did not answer his letter; he won't come to-day."
There was a horrible void in her heart as she added:
"He must never come again."
How was she to pass that endless evening, which she was accustomed to pass in conversation with her young friend, while she worked at some little sketch or some fancy-work, and he smoked his cigar, half-reclining lazily on the cushions of the couch? It occurred to her to escape the impending ennui by calling upon a friend in Faubourg Saint-Germain, with whom she sometimes went to the play; but her friend always retired early, and it would be too late when she arrived. It was such a long way, and the cabs moved so slowly! Then, too, she would have to dress, and Thérèse, who lived in slippers, like all artists who work with enthusiasm and cannot bear to be incommoded by their clothes, was very indolent in the matter of arraying herself in visiting costume. Suppose she should put on a veil and a shawl, send for a cab, and drive slowly through the deserted avenues of the Bois de Boulogne? Thérèse had sometimes taken such a drive with Laurent, when the evening heat was so stifling that they sought a breath of fresh air under the trees. Such excursions with anybody else would have compromised her seriously; but Laurent guarded religiously the secret of her confidence, and they both took delight in the unconventionality of those mysterious tête-à-têtes, which concealed no mystery. She remembered them as if they were already far away, and said to herself, sighing at the thought that they would never return:
"Those were happy times! They can never come again for him who suffers, or for me who am no longer in ignorance of it."
At nine o'clock, she at last attempted to answer Laurent's letter, but a peal of the bell made her heart beat fast. It was he! She rose to tell Catherine to say that she had gone out. Catherine returned: it was only a letter from him. Thérèse had an involuntary thrill of regret that it was not himself.
There were only these few words in the letter:
"Adieu, Thérèse! you do not love me, and I love you like a child!"
"Adieu, Thérèse! you do not love me, and I love you like a child!"
These two lines made Thérèse tremble from head to foot. The only passion that she had never striven to extinguish in her heart was maternal love. That wound, although apparently healed, was still bleeding like unsatisfied love.
"Like a child!" she repeated, crumpling the letter in her quivering hands. "He loves me like a child!Mon Dieu! what does he mean by that? does he know how he hurts me?Adieu! My boy had learned to sayadieu! but he did not say it when they carried him away. I should have heard him! and I shall never hear him again!"
Thérèse was overexcited, and, as her emotion seized upon the most painful of pretexts for manifesting itself, she burst into tears.
"Did you call me?" said Catherine, entering the room. "Mon Dieu! what is the matter? You are weeping as you used to in the old days!"
"Nothing, nothing, leave me," replied Thérèse. "If any one comes to see me, say that I have gone to the theatre. I want to be alone. I am ill."
Catherine left the room, but went into the garden. She had seen Laurent creeping stealthily along the hedge.
"Do not sulk like this," she said. "I don't know why my mistress is crying; but it must be your fault, you make her unhappy. She doesn't want to see you. Go, ask her pardon!"
Catherine, despite all her respect for Thérèse and devotion to her, was satisfied that Laurent was her lover.
"She is weeping?" he cried. "Oh!mon Dieu! why is she weeping?"
And he rushed across the little garden and threw himself at Thérèse's feet, who was sobbing in the small salon, with her face in her hands.
Laurent would have been overjoyed to see her thus if he had been the rake that he sometimes sought to appear; but in reality he was wonderfully tender-hearted, and Thérèse possessed the secret power of arousing his real nature. The tears with which her face was bathed caused him genuine and profound grief. On his knees he implored her to forget his madness, and to restore him to reason by her gentleness and good sense.
"I wish only what you wish," he said, "and since you weep for our dead and gone friendship, I swear that I will bring it to life again rather than cause you fresh sorrow. But let us be frank with each other, my sweet, kind Thérèse, my dearest sister, for I no longer feel the strength to deceive you! do you summon the courage to accept my love as a deplorable discovery that you have made, and as a disease of which you propose to cure me by patience and pity. I will do my utmost in that direction, I swear to you! I will not ask you for so much as a kiss, and I think that will not cost me so much as you might fear, for I do not yet know whether my senses are involved in all this. No, really I do not think it. How could it be so, after the life I have led and am at liberty to lead still? What I feel is a thirst of the heart; why should it frighten you? Give me a little of your heart, and take all of mine. Consent to be loved by me, and do not tell me again that it is an insult to you, for what drives me to despair is to see that you despise me too much to permit me, even in a dream, to aspire to you. That lowers me so in my own eyes that it makes me long to kill the miserable devil who so offends your moral sense. Raise me, rather, from the slough into which I have fallen, and bid me expiate my evil life and become worthy of you. Yes, leave me a ray of hope! however faint it may be, it will make another man of me. You will see, you will see, Thérèse! The mere idea of striving to seem a better man to you gives me strength already; I can feel it! do not take it from me. What will become of me if you spurn me? I shall descend again all the steps I have climbed up since I have known you. All the fruit of our sacred friendship will be lost, so far as I am concerned. You will have tried to cure a sick man, and will have killed him instead! And then, too, will you yourself, who are so noble and so good, be content with your work? will you not reproach yourself for not having conducted it to a better end? Be to me a Sister of Charity, who does not confine herself to dressing the hurts of a wounded man, but who strives to reconcile his soul with Heaven. Come, Thérèse, do not withdraw your faithful hands from mine, do not turn away your face, so lovely in sorrow. I will not leave your feet until you have at least forgiven me for loving you, if you have not authorized me to love you!"
Thérèse could but accept this effusion as serious, for Laurent was perfectly honest. To hold him off with distrust would have been equivalent to an avowal of the too warm affection which she had for him; a woman who shows fear is already vanquished. So she assumed a brave face, and perhaps it was not mere affectation, for she believed that her strength was still equal to the task. Indeed, she was not ill-advised by her very weakness.
To break with him at that moment would have been to arouse terrible emotions which it was much better to appease, reserving the right to relax the bond gently, with skill and prudence. That might be a matter of some days. Laurent was so impressionable, and rushed so abruptly from one extreme to the other!
So they both calmed down, assisting each other to forget the storm, and even exerting themselves to laugh at it, in order to afford each other mutual encouragement touching the future; but, do what they would, their position was essentially changed, and their intimacy had taken a giant's stride. The fear of losing each other had brought them nearer together, and, while vowing that there had been no change in their friendship, there was in all their words and thoughts a sort of languor of the heart, a sort of rapturous fatigue, which was in effect the enfranchisement of love!
Catherine, when she brought the tea, put them completely at their ease by her artless, maternal solicitude.
"You would do much better," she said to Thérèse, "to eat the wing of a chicken instead of making a hole in your stomach with this tea!—Do you know," she said to Laurent, pointing at her mistress, "that she never touched her dinner?"
"Then let her sup at once!" cried Laurent. "Don't say no, Thérèse; you must do it! What in Heaven's name would become of me if you should be taken sick?"
And as Thérèse refused to eat, for she really was not hungry, he declared, at a sign from Catherine urging him to insist, that he was hungry himself; and that was quite true, for he had forgotten to dine. Thereupon Thérèse was delighted to give him some supper; and they ate together for the first time, which was no trivial occurrence in Thérèse's lonely and modest life. To eat together is one of the greatest promoters of intimacy. It is the satisfaction in common of a material necessity of existence, and if you seek a loftier meaning in it, it is a communion, as the word indicates.
Laurent, whose ideas naturally took a poetic turn, even in the midst of merriment, laughingly compared himself to the Prodigal Son, for whom Catherine made haste to kill the fatted calf. This fatted calf, which presented itself in the guise of a meagre chicken, naturally added to the gaiety of the two friends. It was so little for the young man's appetite to feed upon, that Thérèse was distressed. The quarter was sadly lacking in resources, and Laurent insisted that Catherine should not put herself out for him. In the depths of a closet they unearthed a huge jar of guava jelly. It was a present from Palmer, which Thérèse had forgotten to open, but which Laurent opened and attacked with great zest, talking meanwhile with the utmost warmth of the excellent Dick, of whom he had been foolish enough to be jealous, and whom he should love thenceforth with all his heart.
"You see, Thérèse," he said, "how unjust disappointment makes us! Believe me, children should be spoiled. Only those who are treated gently, turn out well. So give me plenty of guavas, now and always! Harshness is not simply a bitter gall, it is a deadly poison!"
When the tea arrived, Laurent discovered that he had devoured the chicken like a selfish glutton, and that Thérèse had eaten nothing at all. He rebuked himself for his heedlessness and confessed it; then he dismissed Catherine, and insisted upon making the tea himself and waiting on Thérèse. It was the first time in his life that he had ever waited on any one, and he found therein an exquisite enjoyment which he recognized with ingenuous surprise.