M
y dear Colette,—I do not know whether you remember a verse of M. Sainte-Beuve which we have read together, and which has remained fixed in my memory; for me this verse speaks eloquently; and it has very often reassured my poor heart, especially for some time past. Here it is:
"To be born, to live, and die in the same house."
I am now all alone in this house where I was born, where I have lived, and where I hope to die. It is not gay every day, but it is pleasant; for there I have souvenirs all around me.
My son Henri is a barrister; he comes to see me twice a year. Jeanne is living with her husband at the other end of France, and it is I who go to see her each autumn. So here I am, all, all alone, but surrounded by familiar objects which incessantly speak to me about my own people, the dead, and the living separated from me by distance.
I no longer read much; I am too old for that; but I am constantly thinking, or rather dreaming. I do not dream as I used to do long ago. You may recall to mind any wild fancies, the adventures our brains concocted when we were twenty, and all the horizons of happiness that dawned upon us!
Nothing out of all our dreaming has been realized, or rather it is quite a different thing that has happened, less charming, less poetic, but sufficient for those who know how to accept their lot in this world bravely.
Do you know why we women are so often unhappy? It is because we are taught in our youth to believe too much in happiness! We are never brought up with the idea of fighting, of striving, of suffering. And, at the first shock, our hearts are broken; we look forward, with blind faith, to cascades of fortunate events. What does happen is at best but a partial happiness, and thereupon we burst out sobbing. Happiness, the real happiness that we dream of, I have come to know what that is. It does not consist in the arrival of great bliss, for any great bliss that falls to our share is to be found in the infinite expectation of a succession of joys to which we never attain. Happiness is happy expectation; it is the horizon of hope; it is, therefore, endless illusion; and, old as I am, I create illusions for myself still, in fact, every day I live; only their object is changed, my desires being no longer the same. I have told you that I spend my brightest hours in dreaming. What else should I do?
I have two ways of doing this. I am going to tell you what they are; they may perhaps prove useful to you.
Oh! the first is very simple; it consists in sitting down before my fire in a low armchair made soft for my old bones, and looking back at the things that have been put aside.
One life is so short, especially a life entirely spent in the same spot:
"To be born, to live, and die in the same house."
The things that bring back the past to our recollection are heaped, pressed together; and, we are old, it sometimes seems no more than ten days since we were young. Yes; everything slips away from us, as if lifeitself were but a single day: morning, evening, and then comes night—a night without a dawn!
When I gaze into the fire, for hours and hours, the past rises up before me as though it were but yesterday. I no longer think of my present existence; reverie carries me away; once more I pass through all the changes of my life.
And I often am possessed by the illusion that I am a young girl, so many breaths of bygone days are wafted back to me, so many youthful sensations and even impulses, so many throbbings of my young heart—all the passionate ardor of eighteen; and I have clear, as fresh realities, visions of forgotten things. Oh! how vividly, above all, do the memories of my walks as a young girl come back to me! There, in the armchair of mine, before the fire, I saw once more, a few nights since, a sunset on Mont Saint-Michel, and immediately afterwards I was riding on horseback through the forest of Uville with the odors of the damp sand and of the flowers steeped in dew, and the evening star sending its burning reflection through the water and bathing my face in its rays as I galloped through the copse. And all I thought of then, my poetic enthusiasm at the sight of the boundless sea, my keen delight at the rustling of the branches as I passed, my most trivial impressions, every fragment of thought, desire, or feeling, all, all came back to me as if I were there still, as if fifty years had not glided by since then, to chill my blood and moderate my hopes. But my other way of reviving the long ago is much better.
You know, or you do not know, my dear Colette, that we destroy nothing in the house. We have upstairs, under the roof, a large room for cast-off thingswhich we call "the lumber-room." Everything which is no longer used is thrown there. I often go up there, and gaze around me. Then I find once more a heap of nothings that I had ceased to think about, and that recalled a heap of things to my mind. They are not those beloved articles of furniture which we have known since our childhood and to which are attached recollections of events of joys or sorrows, dates in our history, which, from the fact of being intermingled with our lives, have assumed a kind of personality, a physiognomy, which are the companions of our pleasant or gloomy house, the only companions, alas! that we are sure not to lose, the only ones that will not die, like the others—those whose features, whose loving eyes, whose lips, whose voices, have vanished for ever. But I find instead among the medley of worn-out gewgaws those little old insignificant objects which have hung on by our side for forty years without ever having been noticed by us, and which, when we suddenly lay eyes on them again, have somehow the importance, the significance of relics of the past. They produce on my mind the effect of those people—whom we have known for a very long time without ever having seen them as they really are, and who, all of a sudden, some evening, quite unexpectedly, break out into a stream of interminable talk, and tell us all about themselves down to their most hidden secrets, of which we had never even suspected the existence.
And I move about from one object to the other with a little thrill in my heart every time something fixes my attention. I say to myself: "See there! I broke that the night Paul started for Lyons;" or else, "Ah! there is mamma's little lantern, which she used to carrywith her going to her evening devotions on dark winter nights." There are even things in this room which have no story to tell me, which have come down from my grandparents, things therefore, whose history and adventures are utterly unknown to those who are living to-day, and whose very owners nobody knows now. Nobody has seen the hands that used to touch them or the eyes that used to gaze at them. These are the things that make me have long, long dreams. They represent to my mind desolate people whose last remaining friend is dead. You, my dear Colette, can scarcely comprehend all this, and you will smile at my simplicity, my childish, sentimental whims. You are a Parisian, and you Parisians do not understand this interior life, those eternal echoes of one's own heart. You live in the outer world, with all your thoughts in the open. Living alone as I do, I can only speak about myself. When you are answering this letter, tell me a little about yourself, that I may also be able to put myself in your place, as you will be able to put yourself in mine to-morrow.
But you will never completely understand M. de Sainte Beuve's verse:
"To be born, to live, and to die in one house."
"To be born, to live, and to die in one house."
A thousand kisses, my old friend,
Adelaide.
H
ow many trifling occurrences, things which have left only a passing impression on our minds, humble dramas of which we have got a mere glimpse so that we have to guess at or suspect their real nature, are, while we are still young and inexperienced, threads, so to speak, guiding us, step by step, towards a knowledge of the painful truth!
Every moment, when I am retracing my steps during the long wandering reveries which distract my thoughts along the path through which I saunter at random, my soul takes wing, and suddenly I recall little incidents of a gay or sinister character which, emerging from the shades of the past, flit before my memory as the birds flit through the bushes before my eyes.
This summer, I wandered along a road in Savoy which commands a view of the right bank of the Lake of Bourget, and, while my glance floated over that mass of water, mirror-like and blue, with a unique blue, pale, tinted with glittering beams by the setting sun, I felt my heart stirred by that attachment which I have had since my childhood for the surface of lakes, for rivers, and for the sea. On the opposite bank of the vast liquid plate, so wide that you did not see the ends of it, one vanishing in the Rhone, and the other in the Bourget, rose the high mountain, jagged like a crest up to the topmast peak of the "Cats's Tooth." On either side of the road, vines, trailing from tree to tree, choked under their leaves their slender supporting branches,and they extended in garlands through the fields, green, yellow, and red garlands, festooning from one trunk to the other, and spotted with clusters of dark grapes.
The road was deserted, white, and dusty. All of a sudden, a man emerged out of the thicket of large trees which shuts in the village of Saint-Innocent, and, bending under a load, he came towards me, leaning on a stick.
When he had come closer to me, I discovered that he was a peddler, one of those itinerant dealers who go about the country from door to door, selling paltry objects cheaply, and thereupon a reminiscence of long ago arose up in my mind, a mere nothing almost, the recollection simply of an accidental meeting I had one night between Argenteuil and Paris when I was twenty-one.
All the happiness of my life, at this period, was derived from boating. I had taken a room in an obscure inn at Argenteuil, and, every evening, I took the Government clerks' train, that long slow train which, in its course, sets down at different stations a crowd of men with little parcels, fat and heavy, for they scarcely walk at all, so that their trousers are always baggy owing to their constant occupation of the office-stool. This train, in which it seemed to me I could even sniff the odor of the writing-desk, of official documents and boxes, deposited me at Argenteuil. My boat was waiting for me, ready to glide over the water. And I rapidly plied my oar so that I might get out and dine at Bezons or Chatou or Epinay or Saint-Ouen. Then I came back, put up my boat, and made my way back on foot to Paris with the moon shining down on me.
Well, one night on the white road I perceived just infront of me a man walking. Oh! I was constantly meeting those night travelers of the Parisian suburbs so much dreaded by belated citizens. This man went on slowly before me with a heavy load on his shoulders.
I came right up to him by quickening my pace so much that my footsteps rang on the road. He stopped and turned round; then, as I kept approaching nearer and nearer, he crossed to the opposite side of the road.
As I rapidly passed him, he called out to me:
"Hallo! good evening, monsieur."
I responded:
"Good evening, mate."
He went on:
"Are you going far?"
"I am going to Paris."
"You won't be long getting there; you're going at a good pace. As for me, I have too big a load on my shoulders to walk so quickly."
I slackened my pace. Why had this man spoken to me? What was he carrying in this big pack? Vague suspicions of crime sprang up in my mind, and rendered me curious. The columns of the newspapers every morning contain so many accounts of crimes committed in this place, the peninsula of Gennevilliers, that some of them must be true. Such things are not invented merely to amuse readers—all this catalogue of arrests and varied misdeeds with which the reports of the law courts are filled.
However, this man's voice seemed rather timid than bold, and up to the present his manner had been more discreet than aggressive.
In my turn I began to question him:
"And you—are you going far?"
"Not farther than Asnieres."
"Is Asnieres your place of abode?"
"Yes, monsieur, I am a peddler by occupation, and I live at Asnieres."
He had quitted the sidewalk, where pedestrians move along in the daytime under the shadows of the trees, and he was soon in the middle of the road. I followed his example. We kept staring at each other suspiciously, each of us holding his stick in his hand. When I was sufficiently close to him, I felt less distrustful. He evidently was disposed to assume the same attitude towards me, for he asked:
"Would you mind going a little more slowly?"
"Why do you say this?"
"Because I don't care for this road by night. I have goods on my back, and two are always better than one. When two men are together, people don't attack them."
I felt that he was speaking truly, and that he was afraid. So I yielded to his wishes, and the pair of us walked on, side by side, this stranger and I, at one o'clock in the morning, along the road leading from Argenteuil to Asnieres.
"Why are you going home so late when it is so dangerous?" I asked my companion.
He told me his history. He had not intended to return home this evening, as he had brought with him that very morning a stock of goods to last him three or four days. But he had been so fortunate in disposing of them that he found it necessary to get back to his abode without delay in order to deliver next day a number of things which had been bought on credit.
He explained to me with genuine satisfaction that he had managed the business very well, having a tendencyto talk confidentially, and that the knick-knacks he displayed were useful to him in getting rid, while gossiping, of other things which he could not easily sell.
He added:
"I have a shop in Asnieres. 'Tis my wife keeps it."
"Ah! So you're married?"
"Yes, m'sieur, for the last fifteen months. I have got a very nice wife. She'll get a surprise when she sees me coming home to-night."
He then gave me an account of his marriage. He had been after this young girl for two years, but she had taken time to make up her mind.
She had, since her childhood, kept a little shop at the corner of a street, where she sold all sorts of things—ribbons, flowers in summer, and principally pretty little shoe-buckles, and many other gewgaws, in which, owing to the favor of a manufacturer, she enjoyed a speciality. She was well-known in Asnieres as "La Bluette." This name was given to her because she often dressed in blue. And she made money, as she was very skillful in everything she did. His impression was that she was not very well at the present moment; he believed she was in the family way, but he was not quite sure. Their business was prospering; and he traveled about exhibiting samples to all the small traders in the adjoining districts. He had become a sort of traveling commission-agent for some of the manufacturers, working at the same time for them and for himself.
"And you—what are you," he said.
I answered him with an air of embarrassment. I explained that I had a sailing-boat and two yawls in Argenteuil, that I came for a row every evening, andthat, as I was fond of exercise, I sometimes walked back to Paris, where I had a profession, which—I led him to infer—was a lucrative one.
He remarked:
"Faith, if I had spondulics like you, I wouldn't amuse myself by trudging that way along the roads at night—'Tisn't safe along here."
He gave me a sidelong glance, and I asked myself whether he might not all the same, be a criminal of the sneaking type who did not want to run any fruitless risk.
Then he restored my confidence when he murmured:
"A little less quickly, if you please. This pack of mine is heavy."
The sight of a group of houses showed that we had reached Asnieres.
"I am nearly at home," he said. "We don't sleep in the shop; it is watched at night by a dog, but a dog who is worth four men. And then it costs too much to live in the center of the town. But listen to me, monsieur! You have rendered me a precious service, for I don't feel my mind at ease when I'm traveling with my pack along the roads. Well, now you must come in with me, and drink a glass of mulled wine with my wife if she hasn't gone to bed, for she is a sound sleeper, and doesn't like to be waked up. Besides, I'm not a bit afraid without my pack, and so I'll see you to the gates of the city with a cudgel in my hand."
I declined the invitation; he insisted on my coming in; I still held back; he pressed me with so much eagerness, with such an air of real disappointment, such expressions of deep regret—for he had the art of expressing himself very forcibly—asking me in the tone of one who felt wounded "whether I objected tohave a drink with a man like him," that I finally gave way and followed him up a lonely road towards one of those big dilapidated houses which are to be found on the outskirts of suburbs.
In front of this dwelling I hesitated. This high barrack of plaster looked like a den for vagabonds, a hiding-place for suburban brigands. But he pushed forward a door which had not been locked, and made me go in before him. He led me forward by the shoulders, through profound darkness, towards a staircase where I had to feel my way with my hands and feet, with a well-grounded apprehension of tumbling into some gaping cellar.
When I had reached the first landing, he said to me: "Go on up! 'Tis the sixth story."
I searched my pockets, and, finding there a box of vestas, I lighted the way up the ascent. He followed me, puffing under his pack, repeating:
"Tis high! 'tis high!"
When we were at the top of the house, he drew forth from one of his inside pockets a key attached to a thread, and unlocking his door he made me enter.
It was a little whitewashed room, with a table in the center, six chairs, and a kitchen-cupboard close to the wall.
"I am going to wake up my wife," he said; "then I am going down to the cellar to fetch some wine; it doesn't keep here."
He approached one of the two doors which opened out of this apartment, and exclaimed:
"Bluette! Bluette!" Bluette did not reply. He called out in a louder tone: "Bluette! Bluette!"
Then knocking at the partition with his fist, he growled: "Will you wake up in God's name?"
He waited, glued his ear to the key-hole, and muttered, in a calmer tone: "Pooh! if she is asleep, she must be let sleep! I'll go and get the wine: wait a couple of minutes for me."
He disappeared. I sat down and made the best of it.
What had I come to this place for? All of a sudden, I gave a start, for I heard people talking in low tones, and moving about quietly, almost noiselessly, in the room where the wife slept.
Deuce take it! Had I fallen into some cursed trap? Why had this woman—this Bluette—not been awakened by the loud knocking of her husband at the doorway leading into her room; could it have been merely a signal conveying to accomplices: "There's a mouse in the trap! I'm going to look out to prevent him escaping. 'Tis for you to do the rest!"
Certainly, there was more stir than before now in the inner room; I heard the door opening from within. My heart throbbed. I retreated towards the further end of the apartment, saying to myself: "I must make a fight of it!" and, catching hold of the back of a chair with both hands, I prepared for a desperate struggle.
The door was half opened, a hand appeared which kept it ajar; then a head, a man's head covered with a billycock hat, slipped through the folding-doors, and I saw two eyes staring hard at me. Then so quickly that I had not time to make a single movement by way of defense, the individual, the supposed criminal, a tall young fellow in his bare feet with his shoes in his hands, a good looking chap, I must admit—half a gentleman,in fact, made a dash for the outer door, and rushed down the stairs.
I resumed my seat. The adventure was assuming a humorous aspect. And I waited for the husband, who took a long time fetching the wine. At last I heard him coming up the stairs, and the sound of his footsteps made me laugh, with one of those solitary laughs which it is hard to restrain.
He entered with two bottles in his hands. Then he asked me:
"Is my wife still asleep? You didn't hear her stirring—did you?"
I knew instinctively that there was an ear pasted against the other side of the partition-door, and I said: "No, not at all."
And now he again called out:
"Pauline!"
She made no reply, and did not even move.
He came back to me, and explained:
"You see, she doesn't like me to come home at night, and take a drop with a friend."
"So then you believe she was not asleep?"
He wore an air of dissatisfaction.
"Well, at any rate," he said, "let us have a drink together."
And immediately he showed a disposition to empty the two bottles one after the other without more ado.
This time I did display some energy. When I had swallowed one glass I rose up to leave. He no longer spoke of accompanying me, and with a sullen scowl, the scowl of a common man in an angry mood, the scowl of a brute whose violence is only slumbering, in the direction of his wife's sleeping apartment, he muttered:
"She'll have to open that door when you've gone."
I stared at this poltroon, who had worked himself into a fit of rage without knowing why, perhaps, owing to an obscure presentiment, the instinct of the deceived male who does not like closed doors. He had talked about her to me in a tender strain; now assuredly he was going to beat her.
He exclaimed, as he shook the lock once more:
"Pauline!"
A voice like that of a woman waking out of her sleep, replied from behind the partition:
"Eh! what?"
"Didn't you hear me coming in?"
"No, I was asleep! Let me rest."
"Open the door!"
"Yes, when you're alone. I don't like you to be bringing home fellows at night to drink with you."
Then I took myself off, stumbling down the stairs, as the other man, of whom I had been the accomplice had done. And, as I resumed my journey toward Paris, I realized that I had just witnessed in that wretched abode a scene of the eternal drama which is being acted every day, under every form, and among every class.
W
hen M. Antoine Leuillet married the Widow Mathilde Souris, he had been in love with her for nearly ten years.
M. Souris had been his friend, his old college chum. Leuillet was very fond of him, but found him rather a muff. He often used to say: "That poor Souris will never set the Seine on fire."
When Souris married Mdlle. Mathilde Duval, Leuillet was surprised and somewhat vexed, for he had a slight weakness for her. She was the daughter of a neighbor of his, a retired haberdasher with a good bit of money. She was pretty, well-mannered, and intelligent. She accepted Souris on account of his money.
Then Leuillet cherished hopes of another sort. He began paying attentions to his friend's wife. He was a handsome man, not at all stupid, and also well off. He was confident that he would succeed; he failed. Then he fell really in love with her, and he was the sort of lover who is rendered timid, prudent, and embarrassed by intimacy with the husband. Mme. Souris fancied that he no longer meant anything serious by his attentions to her, and she became simply his friend. This state of affairs lasted nine years.
Now, one morning, Leuillet received a startling communication from the poor woman. Souris had died suddenly of aneurism of the heart.
He got a terrible shock, for they were of the same age; but the very next moment, a sensation of profoundjoy, of infinite relief of deliverance, penetrated his body and soul. Mme. Souris was free.
He had the tact, however, to make such a display of grief as the occasion required; he waited for the proper time to elapse, and attended to all the conventional usages. At the end of fifteen months he married the widow.
His conduct was regarded as not only natural but generous. He had acted like a good friend and an honest man. In short he was happy, quite happy.
They lived on terms of the closest confidence, having from the first understood and appreciated each other. One kept nothing secret from the other, and they told each other their inmost thoughts. Leuillet now loved his wife with a calm trustful affection; he loved her as a tender, devoted partner, who is an equal and a confidante. But there still lingered in his soul a singular and unaccountable grudge against the deceased Souris, who had been the first to possess this woman, who had had the flower of her youth and of her soul, and who had even robbed her of her poetic attributes. The memory of the dead husband spoiled the happiness of the living husband; and this posthumous jealousy now began to torment Leuillet's heart day and night.
The result was that he was incessantly talking about Souris, asking a thousand minute and intimate questions about him, and seeking for information as to all his habits and personal characteristics. And he pursued him with railleries even into the depths of the tomb, recalling with self-satisfaction his oddities, emphasizing his absurdities, and pointing out his defects.
Every minute he kept calling out to his wife from one end to the other of the house:
"Hallo, Mathilde!"
"Here am I, dear."
"Come and let us have a chat."
She always came over to him, smiling, well aware that Souris was to be the subject of the chat, and anxious to gratify her second husband's harmless fad.
"I say! do you remember how Souris wanted, one day, to prove to me that small men are always better loved than big men?"
And he launched out into reflections unfavorable to the defunct husband, who was small, and discreetly complimentary to himself, as he happened to be tall.
And Mme. Leuillet let him think that he was quite right; and she laughed very heartily, turned the first husband into ridicule in a playful fashion for the amusement of his successor, who always ended by remarking:
"Never mind! Souris was a muff!"
They were happy, quite happy. And Leuillet never ceased to testify his unabated attachment to his wife by all the usual manifestations.
Now, one night when they happened to be both kept awake by the renewal of youthful ardor, Leuillet, who held his wife clasped tightly in his arms, and had his lips glued to hers, said:
"Tell me this, darling."
"What?"
"Souris—'tisn't easy to put the question—was he very—very amorous?"
She gave him a warm kiss, as she murmured:
"Not so much as you, my duck."
His male vanity was flattered, and he went on:
"He must have been—rather a flat—eh?"
She did not answer. There was merely a sly little laugh on her face, which she pressed close to her husband's neck.
He persisted in his questions:
"Come now! Don't deny that he was a flat—well, I mean, rather an awkward sort of fellow?"
She nodded slightly.
"Well, yes, rather awkward."
He went on:
"I'm sure he used to weary you many a night—isn't that so?"
This time, she had an access of frankness, and she replied:
"Oh! yes."
He embraced her once more when she made this acknowledgment, and murmured:
"What an ass he was! You were not happy with him?"
She answered:
"No. He was not always jolly."
Leuillet felt quite delighted, making a comparison in his own mind between his wife's former situation and her present one.
He remained silent for some time: then, with a fresh outburst of merit, he said:
"Tell me this!"
"What?"
"Will you be quite candid—quite candid with me?"
"Certainly, dear."
"Well, look here! Have you never been tempted to—to deceive this imbecile, Souris?"
Mme. Leuillet uttered a little "Oh!" in a shamefaced way, and again cuddled her face closer to her husband's chest. But he could see that she was laughing.
He persisted:
"Come now, confess it! He had a head just suited for a cuckold, this blockhead! It would be so funny! This good Souris! Oh! I say, darling, you might tell it to me—only to me!"
He emphasized the words "to me," feeling certain that if she wanted to show any taste when she deceived her husband, he, Leuillet, would have been the man; and he quivered with joy at the expectation of this avowal, sure that if she had not been the virtuous woman she was he could have had her then.
But she did not reply, laughing incessantly as if at the recollection of something infinitely comic.
Leuillet, in his turn, burst out laughing at the notion that he might have made a cuckold of Souris. What a good joke! What a capital bit of fun, to be sure!
He exclaimed in a voice broken by convulsions of laughter.
"Oh! poor Souris! poor Souris! Ah! yes, he had that sort of head—oh, certainly he had!"
And Mme. Leuillet now twisted herself under the sheets, laughing till the tears almost came into her eyes.
And Leuillet repeated: "Come, confess it! confess it! Be candid. You must know that it cannot be unpleasant to me to hear such a thing."
Then she stammered, still choking with laughter.
"Yes, yes."
Her husband pressed her for an answer.
"Yes, what? Look here! tell me everything."
She was now laughing in a more subdued fashion, and, raising her mouth up to Leuillet's ear, which was held towards her in anticipation of some pleasant piece of confidence, she whispered—"Yes, I did deceive him!"
He felt a cold shiver down his back, and utterly dumbfounded, he gasped.
"You—you—did—really—deceive him?"
She was still under the impression that he thought the thing infinitely pleasant, and replied.
"Yes—really—really."
He was obliged to sit up in bed so great was the shock he received, holding his breath, just as overwhelmed as if he had just been told that he was a cuckold himself. At first, he was unable to articulate properly; then after the lapse of a minute or so, he merely ejaculated.
"Ah!"
She, too, had stopped laughing now, realizing her mistake too late.
Leuillet, at length asked.
"And with whom?"
She kept silent, cudgeling her brain to find some excuse.
He repeated his question.
"With whom?"
At last, she said.
"With a young man."
He turned towards her abruptly, and in a dry tone, said.
"Well, I suppose it wasn't with some kitchen wench. I ask you who was the young man—do you understand?"
She did not answer. He tore away the sheet which she had drawn over her head, and pushed her into the middle of the bed, repeating.
"I want to know with what young man—do you understand?"
Then, she replied with some difficulty in uttering the words.
"I only wanted to laugh." But he fairly shook with rage: "What? How is that? You only wanted to laugh? So then you were making game of me? I'm not going to be satisfied with these evasions, let me tell you! I ask you what was the young man's name?"
She did not reply, but lay motionless on her back.
He caught hold of her arm and pressed it tightly.
"Do you hear me, I say? I want you to give me an answer when I speak to you."
Then, she said, in nervous tones.
"I think you must be going mad! Let me alone!"
He trembled with fury, so exasperated that he scarcely knew what he was saying, and, shaking her with all his strength, he repeated.
"Do you hear me? do you hear me?"
She wrenched herself out of his grasp with a sudden movement, and with the tips of her fingers slapped her husband on the nose. He entirely lost his temper, feeling that he had been struck, and angrily pounced down on her.
He now held her under him, boxing her ears in a most violent manner, and exclaiming:
"Take that—and that—and that—there you are, you trollop!"
Then, when he was out of breath, exhausted from beating her, he got up, and went over to the chest ofdrawers to get himself a glass of sugared orange-water for he was almost ready to faint after his exertion.
And she lay huddled up in bed, crying and heaving great sobs, feeling that there was an end of her happiness, and that it was all her own fault.
Then, in the midst of her tears, she faltered:
"Listen, Antoine, come here! I told you a lie—listen! I'll explain it to you."
And now, prepared to defend herself, armed with excuses and subterfuges, she slightly raised her head all tangled under her crumpled nightcap.
And he, turning towards her, drew close to her, ashamed at having whacked her, but feeling intensely still in his heart's core as a husband an inexhaustible hatred against that woman who had deceived his predecessor, Souris.
T
he Comte de Lormerin had just finished dressing himself. He cast a parting glance at the large glass, which occupied an entire panel of his dressing-room, and smiled.
He was really a fine-looking man still, though he was quite gray. Tall, slight, elegant, with no projecting paunch, with a scanty moustache of doubtful shade in his thin face, which seemed fair rather than white, he had presence, that "chic" in short, that indescribable something which establishes between two men more difference than millions.
He murmured, "Lormerin is still alive!"
And he made his way into the drawing-room where his correspondence awaited him.
On his table, where everything had its place, the work-table of the gentleman who never works, there were a dozen letters lying beside three newspapers of different opinions. With a single touch of the finger he exposed to view all these letters, like a gambler giving the choice of a card; and he scanned the handwriting, a thing he did each morning before tearing open the envelopes.
It was for him a moment of delightful expectancy, of inquiry and vague anxiety. What did these sealed mysterious papers bring him? What did they contain of pleasure, of happiness, or of grief? He surveyed them with a rapid sweep of the eye, recognizing in each case the hand that wrote them, selecting them, makingtwo or three lots, according to what he expected from them. Here, friends; there, persons to whom he was indifferent; further on, strangers. The last kind always gave him a little uneasiness. What did they want from him? What hand had traced those curious characters full of thoughts, promises, or threats?
This day one letter in particular caught his eye. It was simple nevertheless, without seeming to reveal anything; but he regarded it with disquietude, with a sort of internal shiver.
He thought: "From whom can it be? I certainly know this writing, and yet I can't identify it."
He raised it to a level with his face, holding it delicately between two fingers, striving to read through the envelope without making up his mind to open it.
Then he smelled it, and snatched up from the table a little magnifying glass which he used in studying all the niceties of handwriting. He suddenly felt unnerved. "Who is it from? This hand is familiar to me, very familiar. I must have often read its prosings, yes, very often. But this must have been a long, long time ago. Who the deuce can it be from? Pooh! 'tis only from somebody asking for money."
And he tore open the letter. Then he read.
"My dear Friend,—You have, without doubt, forgotten me, for it is now twenty-five years since we saw each other. I was young; I am old. When I bade you farewell, I quitted Paris in order to follow into the provinces my husband, my old husband, whom you used to call 'my hospital.' Do you remember him? He died five years ago, and now, I am returning to Paris to get my daughter married, for I have a daughter, abeautiful girl of eighteen, whom you have never seen. I informed you about her entrance into the world, but you certainly did not pay much attention to so trifling an event."You, you are always the handsome Lormerin; so I have been told. Well, if you still recollect little Lise, whom you used to call Lison, come and dine this evening with her, with the elderly Baronne de Vance, your ever faithful friend, who, with some emotion, stretches out to you, without complaining of her lot, a devoted hand, which you must clasp, but no longer kiss, my poor Jaquelet.
"My dear Friend,—You have, without doubt, forgotten me, for it is now twenty-five years since we saw each other. I was young; I am old. When I bade you farewell, I quitted Paris in order to follow into the provinces my husband, my old husband, whom you used to call 'my hospital.' Do you remember him? He died five years ago, and now, I am returning to Paris to get my daughter married, for I have a daughter, abeautiful girl of eighteen, whom you have never seen. I informed you about her entrance into the world, but you certainly did not pay much attention to so trifling an event.
"You, you are always the handsome Lormerin; so I have been told. Well, if you still recollect little Lise, whom you used to call Lison, come and dine this evening with her, with the elderly Baronne de Vance, your ever faithful friend, who, with some emotion, stretches out to you, without complaining of her lot, a devoted hand, which you must clasp, but no longer kiss, my poor Jaquelet.
"Lise de Vance."
Lormerin's heart began to throb. He remained sunk in his armchair, with the letter on his knees, staring straight before him, overcome by poignant feelings that made the tears mount up to his eyes!
If he had ever loved a woman in his life it was this one, little Lise, Lise de Vance, whom he called "Cinder-Flower" on account of the strange color of her hair, and the pale gray of her eyes. Oh! what a fine, pretty, charming creature she was, this frail Baronne, the wife of that, gouty, pimply Baron, who had abruptly carried her off to the provinces, shut her up, kept her apart through jealousy, through jealousy of the handsome Lormerin.
Yes, he had loved her, and he believed that he, too, had been truly loved. She familiarly gave him the name of Jaquelet, and she used to pronounce that word in an exquisite fashion.
A thousand memories that had been effaced came back to him, far off and sweet and melancholy now.One evening, she called on him on her way home from a ball, and they went out for a stroll in the Bois de Boulogne, she in evening dress, he in his dressing-jacket. It was springtime; the weather was beautiful. The odor of her bodice embalmed the warm air—the odor of her bodice, and also a little, the odor of her skin. What a divine night! When they reached the lake, as the moon's rays fell across the branches into the water, she began to weep. A little surprised, he asked her why.
She replied:
"I don't know. 'Tis the moon and the water that have affected me. Every time I see poetic things, they seize hold of my heart, and I have to cry."
He smiled, moved himself, considering her feminine emotion charming—the emotion of a poor little woman whom every sensation overwhelms. And he embraced her passionately, stammering:
"My little Lise, you are exquisite."
What a charming love affair short-lived and dainty it had been, and all over too so quickly, cut short in the midst of its ardor by this old brute of a Baron, who had carried off his wife, and never shown her afterwards to anyone!
Lormerin had forgotten, in good sooth, at the end of two or three months. One woman drives out the other so quickly in Paris when one is a bachelor! No matter he had kept a little chapel for her in his heart, for he had loved her alone! He assured himself now that this was so.
He rose up, and said: "Certainly, I will go and dine with her this evening!"
And instinctively he turned round towards the glassin order to inspect himself from head to foot. He reflected: "She must have grown old unpleasantly, more than I have!" And he felt gratified at the thought of showing himself to her still handsome, still fresh, of astonishing her, perhaps of filling her with emotion, and making her regret those bygone days so far, far distant!
He turned his attention to the other letters. They were not of importance.
The whole day, he kept thinking of this phantom. What was she like now? How funny it was to meet in this way after twenty-five years! Would he alone recognize her?
He made his toilet with feminine coquetry, put on a white waistcoat, which suited him better with the coat, sent for the hairdresser to give him a finishing touch with the curling-iron, for he had preserved his hair, and started very early in order to show his eagerness to see her.
The first thing he saw on entering a pretty drawing-room freshly furnished, was his own portrait, an old faded photograph, dating from the days of his good-fortune, hanging on the wall in an antique silk frame.
He sat down and waited. A door opened behind him. He rose up abruptly, and, turning round, beheld an old woman with white hair who extended both hands towards him.
He seized them, kissed them one after the other with long, long kisses, then, lifting up his head, he gazed at the woman he had loved.
Yes, it was an old lady, an old lady whom he did not recognize, and who, while she smiled, seemed ready to weep.
He could not abstain from murmuring:
"It is you, Lise?"
She replied:
"Yes, it is I; it is I, indeed. You would not have known me, isn't that so? I have had so much sorrow—so much sorrow. Sorrow has consumed my life. Look at me now—or rather don't look at me! But how handsome you have kept—and young! If I had by chance met you in the street, I would have cried, 'Jaquelet!' Now sit down and let us, first of all, have a chat. And then I'll show you my daughter, my grown-up daughter. You'll see how she resembles me—or rather how I resemble her—no, it is not quite that: she is just like the 'me' of former days—you shall see! But I wanted to be alone with you first. I feared that there would be some emotion on my side, at the first moment. Now it is all over; it is past. Pray be seated, my friend."
He sat down beside her, holding her hand; but he did not know what to say; he did not know this woman—it seemed to him that he had never seen her before. What had he come to do in this house? Of what could he speak? Of the long-ago? What was there in common between him and her? He could no longer recall anything to mind in the presence of this grandmotherly face. He could no longer recall to mind all the nice, tender things so sweet, so bitter, that had assailed his heart, some time since, when he thought of the other, of little Lise, of the dainty Cinder-Flower. What then had become of her, the former one, the one he had loved? that woman of far-off dreams, the blonde with gray eyes, the young one who used to call him "Jaquelet" so prettily?
They remained side by side, motionless, both constrained, troubled, profoundly ill at ease.
As they only talked in commonplace phrases, broken and slow, she rose up, and pressed the button of the bell.
"I am going to call Renee," she said.
There was a tap at the door, then the rustle of a dress; next, a young voice exclaimed:
"Here I am, mamma!"
Lormerin remained scared, as if at the sight of an apparition.
He stammered:
"Good-day, Mademoiselle."
Then, turning towards the mother:
"Oh! it is you!..."
In fact, it was she, she whom he had known in bygone days, the Lise who had vanished and come back! In her he found the woman he had won twenty-five years before. This one was even younger still, fresher, more childlike.
He felt a wild desire to open his arms, to clasp her to his heart again, murmuring in her ear:
"Good-day, Lison!"
A man-servant announced:
"Dinner is ready, Madame."
And they proceeded towards the dining-room.
What passed at this dinner? What did they say to him, and what could he say in reply? He found himself plunged in one of those strange dreams which border on insanity. He gazed at the two women with a fixed idea in his mind, a morbid, self-contradictory idea:
"Which is the real one?"
The mother smiled, repeating over and over again:
"Do you remember?" And it was in the bright eye of the young girl that he found again his memories of the past. Twenty times he opened his mouth to say to her: "Do you remember, Lison?—" forgetting this white-haired lady who was regarding him with looks of tenderness.
And yet there were moments when he no longer felt sure, when he lost his head. He could see that the woman of to-day was not exactly the woman of long ago. The other one, the former one, had in her voice, in her glance, in her entire being, something which he did not find again. And he made prodigious efforts of mind to recall his lady love, to seize again what had escaped from her to him, what this resuscitated one did not possess.
The Baronne said:
"You have lost your old sprightliness, my poor friend."
He murmured:
"There are many other things that I have lost!"
But in his heart touched with emotion, he felt his old love springing to life once more, like an awakened wild beast ready to bite him.
The young girl went on chattering, and every now and then some familiar phrase of her mother which she had borrowed, a certain style of speaking and thinking, that resemblance of mind and manner which people acquire by living together, shook Lormerin from head to foot. All these things penetrated him, making the reopened wound of his passion bleed anew.
He got away early, and took a turn along the boulevard. But the image of this young girl pursued him, haunted him, quickened his heart, inflamed his blood.Apart from the two women, he now saw only one, a young one, the one of former days returned, and he loved her as he had loved her in bygone years. He loved her with greater ardor, after an interval of twenty-five years.
He went home to reflect on this strange and terrible thing, and to think on what he should do.
But, as he was passing, with a wax candle in his hand, before the glass, the large glass in which he had contemplated himself and admired himself before he started, he saw reflected there an elderly, gray-haired man; and suddenly he recollected what he had been in olden days, in the days of little Lise. He saw himself charming and handsome, as he had been when he was loved! Then, drawing the light nearer, he looked at himself more closely, as one inspects a strange thing with a magnifying glass, tracing the wrinkles, discovering those frightful ravages, which he had not perceived till now.
And he sat down, crushed at the sight of himself, at the sight of his lamentable image, murmuring:
"All over, Lormerin!"