The young man bowed.
The door opened again, and a short, stout gentleman appeared, having on his arm a tall, handsome woman, much younger than himself, and of distinguished appearance and grave bearing. They were Monsieur Walter, a Jew from the South of France, deputy, financier, capitalist, and manager of the Vie Francaise, and his wife, the daughter of Monsieur Basile-Ravalau, the banker.
Then came, one immediately after the other, Jacques Rival, very elegantly got up, and Norbert de Varenne, whose coat collar shone somewhat from the friction of the long locks falling on his shoulders and scattering over them a few specks of white scurf. His badly-tied cravat looked as if it had already done duty. He advanced with the air and graces of an old beau, and taking Madame Forestier’s hand, printed a kiss on her wrist. As he bent forward his long hair spread like water over her bare arm.
Forestier entered in his turn, offering excuses for being late. He had been detained at the office of the paper by the Morel affair. Monsieur Morel, a Radical deputy, had just addressed a question to the Ministry respecting a vote of credit for the colonization of Algeria.
The servant announced: “Dinner is served, Madame,” and they passed into the dining-room.
Duroy found himself seated between Madame de Marelle and her daughter. He again felt ill at ease, being afraid of making some mistake in the conventional handling of forks, spoons, and glasses. There were four of these, one of a faint blue tint. What could be meant to be drunk out of that?
Nothing was said while the soup was being consumed, and then Norbert de Varenne asked: “Have you read the Gauthier case? What a funny business it is.”
After a discussion on this case of adultery, complicated with blackmailing, followed. They did not speak of it as the events recorded in newspapers are spoken of in private families, but as a disease is spoken of among doctors, or vegetables among market gardeners. They were neither shocked nor astonished at the facts, but sought out their hidden and secret motives with professional curiosity, and an utter indifference for the crime itself. They sought to clearly explain the origin of certain acts, to determine all the cerebral phenomena which had given birth to the drama, the scientific result due to an especial condition of mind. The women, too, were interested in this investigation. And other recent events were examined, commented upon, turned so as to show every side of them, and weighed correctly, with the practical glance, and from the especial standpoint of dealers in news, and vendors of the drama of life at so much a line, just as articles destined for sale are examined, turned over, and weighed by tradesmen.
Then it was a question of a duel, and Jacques Rival spoke. This was his business; no one else could handle it.
Duroy dared not put in a word. He glanced from time to time at his neighbor, whose full bosom captivated him. A diamond, suspended by a thread of gold, dangled from her ear like a drop of water that had rolled down it. From time to time she made an observation which always brought a smile to her hearers’ lips. She had a quaint, pleasant wit, that of an experienced tomboy who views things with indifference and judges them with frivolous and benevolent skepticism.
Duroy sought in vain for some compliment to pay her, and, not finding one, occupied himself with her daughter, filling her glass, holding her plate, and helping her. The child, graver than her mother, thanked him in a serious tone and with a slight bow, saying: “You are very good, sir,” and listened to her elders with an air of reflection.
The dinner was very good, and everyone was enraptured. Monsieur Walter ate like an ogre, hardly spoke, and glanced obliquely under his glasses at the dishes offered to him. Norbert de Varenne kept him company, and from time to time let drops of gravy fall on his shirt front. Forestier, silent and serious, watched everything, exchanging glances of intelligence with his wife, like confederates engaged together on a difficult task which is going on swimmingly.
Faces grew red, and voices rose, as from time to time the man-servant murmured in the guests’ ears: “Corton or Chateau-Laroze.”
Duroy had found the Corton to his liking, and let his glass be filled every time. A delicious liveliness stole over him, a warm cheerfulness, that mounted from the stomach to the head, flowed through his limbs and penetrated him throughout. He felt himself wrapped in perfect comfort of life and thought, body and soul.
A longing to speak assailed him, to bring himself into notice, to be appreciated like these men, whose slightest words were relished.
But the conversation, which had been going on unchecked, linking ideas one to another, jumping from one topic to another at a chance word, a mere trifle, and skimming over a thousand matters, turned again on the great question put by Monsieur Morel in the Chamber respecting the colonization of Algeria.
Monsieur Walter, between two courses, made a few jests, for his wit was skeptical and broad. Forestier recited his next day’s leader. Jacques Rival insisted on a military government with land grants to all officers after thirty years of colonial service.
“By this plan,” he said, “you will create an energetic class of colonists, who will have already learned to love and understand the country, and will be acquainted with its language, and with all those grave local questions against which new-comers invariably run their heads.”
Norbert de Varenne interrupted him with: “Yes; they will be acquainted with everything except agriculture. They will speak Arabic, but they will be ignorant how beet-root is planted out and wheat sown. They will be good at fencing, but very shaky as regards manures. On the contrary, this new land should be thrown entirely open to everyone. Intelligent men will achieve a position there; the others will go under. It is the social law.”
A brief silence followed, and the listeners smiled at one another.
George Duroy opened his mouth, and said, feeling as much surprised at the sound of his own voice as if he had never heard himself speak: “What is most lacking there is good land. The really fertile estates cost as much as in France, and are bought up as investments by rich Parisians. The real colonists, the poor fellows who leave home for lack of bread, are forced into the desert, where nothing will grow for want of water.”
Everyone looked at him, and he felt himself blushing.
Monsieur Walter asked: “Do you know Algeria, sir?”
George replied: “Yes, sir; I was there nearly two years and a half, and I was quartered in all three provinces.”
Suddenly unmindful of the Morel question, Norbert de Varenne interrogated him respecting a detail of manners and customs of which he had been informed by an officer. It was with respect to the Mzab, that strange little Arab republic sprung up in the midst of the Sahara, in the driest part of that burning region.
Duroy had twice visited the Mzab, and he narrated some of the customs of this singular country, where drops of water are valued as gold; where every inhabitant is bound to discharge all public duties; and where commercial honesty is carried further than among civilized nations.
He spoke with a certain raciness excited by the wine and the desire to please, and told regimental yarns, incidents of Arab life and military adventure. He even hit on some telling phrases to depict these bare and yellow lands, eternally laid waste by the devouring fire of the sun.
All the women had their eyes turned upon him, and Madame Walter said, in her deliberate tones: “You could make a charming series of articles out of your recollections.”
Then Walter looked at the young fellow over the glasses of his spectacles, as was his custom when he wanted to see anyone’s face distinctly. He looked at the dishes underneath them.
Forestier seized the opportunity. “My dear sir, I had already spoken to you about Monsieur George Duroy, asking you to let me have him for my assistant in gleaning political topics. Since Marambot left us, I have no one to send in quest of urgent and confidential information, and the paper suffers from it.”
Daddy Walter became serious, and pushed his spectacles upon his forehead, in order to look Duroy well in the face. Then he said: “It is true that M
onsieur Duroy has evidently an original turn of thought. If he will come and have a chat with us tomorrow at three o’clock, we will settle the matter.” Then, after a short silence, turning right round towards George, he added: “But write us a little fancy series of articles on Algeria at once. Relate your experiences, and mix up the colonization question with them as you did just now. They are facts, genuine facts, and I am sure they will greatly please our readers. But be quick. I must have the first article tomorrow or the day after, while the subject is being discussed in the Chamber, in order to catch the public.”
Madame Walter added, with that serious grace which characterized everything she did, and which lent an air of favor to her words: “And you have a charming title, ‘Recollections of a Chasseur d’Afrique.’ Is it not so, Monsieur Norbert?”
The old poet, who had worn renown late in life, feared and hated new-comers. He replied dryly: “Yes, excellent, provided that the keynote be followed, for that is the great difficulty; the exact note, what in music is called the pitch.”
Madame Forestier cast on Duroy a smiling and protective glance, the glance of a connoisseur, which seemed to say: “Yes, you will get on.” Madame de Marelle had turned towards him several times, and the diamond in her ear quivered incessantly as though the drop of water was about to fall.
The little girl remained quiet and serious, her head bent over her plate.
But the servant passed round the table, filling the blue glasses with Johannisberg, and Forestier proposed a toast, drinking with a bow to Monsieur Walter: “Prosperity to the Vie Francaise.”
Everyone bowed towards the proprietor, who smiled, and Duroy, intoxicated with success, emptied his glass at a draught. He would have emptied a whole barrel after the same fashion; it seemed to him that he could have eaten a bullock or strangled a lion. He felt a superhuman strength in his limbs, unconquerable resolution and unbounded hope in his mind. He was now at home among these people; he had just taken his position, won his place. His glance rested on their faces with a new-born assurance, and he ventured for the first time to address his neighbor. “You have the prettiest earrings I have ever seen, Madame.”
She turned towards him with a smile. “It was an idea of my own to have the diamonds hung like that, just at the end of a thread. They really look like dew-drops, do they not?”
He murmured, ashamed of his own daring, and afraid of making a fool of himself:
“It is charming; but the ear, too, helps to set it off.”
She thanked him with a look, one of those woman’s looks that go straight to the heart. And as he turned his head he again met Madame Forestier’s eye, always kindly, but now he thought sparkling with a livelier mirth, an archness, an encouragement.
All the men were now talking at once with gesticulations and raised voices. They were discussing the great project of the metropolitan railway. The subject was not exhausted till dessert was finished, everyone having a deal to say about the slowness of the methods of communication in Paris, the inconvenience of the tramway, the delays of omnibus traveling, and the rudeness of cabmen.
Then they left the dining-room to take coffee. Duroy, in jest, offered his arm to the little girl. She gravely thanked him, and rose on tiptoe in order to rest her hand on it.
On returning to the drawing-room he again experienced the sensation of entering a greenhouse. In each of the four corners of the room tall palms unfolded their elegantly shaped leaves, rising to the ceiling, and there spreading fountain-wise.
On each side of the fireplace were india-rubber plants like round columns, with their dark green leaves tapering one above the other; and on the piano two unknown shrubs covered with flowers, those of one all crimson and those of the other all white, had the appearance of artificial plants, looking too beautiful to be real.
The air was cool, and laden with a soft, vague perfume that could scarcely be defined. The young fellow, now more himself, considered the room more attentively. It was not large; nothing attracted attention with the exception of the shrubs, no bright color struck one, but one felt at one’s ease in it; one felt soothed and refreshed, and, as it were, caressed by one’s surroundings. The walls were covered with an old-fashioned stuff of faded violet, spotted with little flowers in yellow silk about the size of flies. Hangings of grayish-blue cloth, embroidered here and there with crimson poppies, draped the doorways, and the chairs of all shapes and sizes, scattered about the room, lounging chairs, easy chairs, ottomans, and stools, were upholstered in Louise Seize silk or Utrecht velvet, with a crimson pattern on a cream-colored ground.
“Do you take coffee, Monsieur Duroy?” and Madame Forestier held out a cup towards him with that smile which never left her lips.
“Thank you, Madame.” He took the cup, and as he bent forward to take a lump of sugar from the sugar-basin carried by the little girl, Madame Forestier said to him in a low voice: “Pay attention to Madame Walter.”
Then she drew back before he had time to answer a word.
He first drank off his coffee, which he was afraid of dropping onto the carpet; then, his mind more at ease, he sought for some excuse to approach the wife of his new governor, and begin a conversation. All at once he noticed that she was holding an empty cup in her hand, and as she was at some distance from a table, did not know where to put it. He darted forward with, “Allow me, Madame?”
“Thank you, sir.”
He took away the cup and then returned.
“If you knew, Madame,” he began, “the happy hours the Vie Francaise helped me to pass when I was away in the desert. It is really the only paper that is readable out of France, for it is more literary, wittier, and less monotonous than the others. There is something of everything in it.”
She smiled with amiable indifference, and answered, seriously:
“Monsieur Walter has had a great deal of trouble to create a type of newspaper supplying the want of the day.”
And they began to chat. He had an easy flow of commonplace conversation, a charm in his voice and look, and an irresistible seductiveness about his moustache. It curled coquettishly about his lips, reddish brown, with a paler tint about the ends. They chatted about Paris, its suburbs, the banks of the Seine, watering places, summer amusements, all the current topics on which one can prate to infinity without wearying oneself.
Then as Monsieur Norbert de Varenne approached with a liqueur glass in his hand, Duroy discreetly withdrew.
Madame de Marelle, who had been speaking with Madame Forestier, summoned him.
“Well, sir,” she said, abruptly, “so you want to try your hand at journalism?”
He spoke vaguely of his prospects, and there recommenced with her the conversation he had just had with Madame Walter, but as he was now a better master of his subject, he showed his superiority in it, repeating as his own the things he had just heard. And he continually looked his companion in the eyes, as though to give deep meaning to what he was saying.
She, in her turn, related anecdotes with the easy flow of spirits of a woman who knows she is witty, and is always seeking to appear so, and becoming familiar, she laid her hand from time to time on his arm, and lowered her voice to make trifling remarks which thus assumed a character of intimacy. He was inwardly excited by her contact. He would have liked to have shown his devotion for her on the spot, to have defended her, shown her what he was worth, and his delay in his replies to her showed the preoccupation of his mind.
But suddenly, without any reason, Madame de Marelle called, “Laurine!” and the little girl came.
“Sit down here, child; you will catch cold near the window.”
Duroy was seized with a wild longing to kiss the child. It was as though some part of the kiss would reach the mother.
He asked in a gallant, and at the same time fatherly, tone: “Will you allow me to kiss you, Mademoiselle?”
The child looked up at him in surprise.
“Answer, my dear,” said Madame de Marelle, laughingly.
“Yes, sir, this time; but it will not do always.”
Duroy, sitting down, lifted Laurine onto his knees and brushed the fine curly hair above her forehead with his lips.
Her mother was surprised. “What! she has not run away; it is astounding. Usually she will only let ladies kiss her. You are irresistible, Monsieur Duroy.”
He blushed without answering, and gently jogged the little girl on his knee.
Madame Forestier drew near, and exclaimed, with astonishment: “What, Laurine tamed! What a miracle!”
Jacques Rival also came up, cigar in mouth, and Duroy rose to take leave, afraid of spoiling, by some unlucky remark, the work done, his task of conquest begun.
He bowed, softly pressed the little outstretched hands of the women, and then heartily shook those of the men. He noted that the hand of Jacques Rival, warm and dry, answered cordially to his grip; that of Norbert de Varenne, damp and cold, slipped through his fingers; that of Daddy Walter, cold and flabby, was without expression or energy; and that of Forestier was plump and moist. His friend said to him in a low tone, “Tomorrow, at three o’clock; do not forget.”
“Oh! no; don’t be afraid of that.”
When he found himself once more on the stairs he felt a longing to run down them, so great was his joy, and he darted forward, going down two steps at a time, but suddenly he caught sight in a large mirror on the second-floor landing of a gentleman in a hurry, who was advancing briskly to meet him, and he stopped short, ashamed, as if he had been caught tripping. Then he looked at himself in the glass for some time, astonished at being really such a handsome fellow, smiled complacently, and taking leave of his reflection, bowed low to it as one bows to a personage of importance.
III
When George Duroy found himself in the street he hesitated as to what he should do. He wanted to run, to dream, to walk about thinking of the future as he breathed the soft night air, but the thought of the series of articles asked for by Daddy Walter haunted him, and he decided to go home at once and set to work.
He walked along quickly, reached the outer boulevards, and followed their line as far as the Rue Boursault, where he dwelt. The house, six stories high, was inhabited by a score of small households, trades-people or workmen, and he experienced a sickening sensation of disgust, a longing to leave the place and live like well-to-do people in a clean dwelling, as he ascended the stairs, lighting himself with wax matches on his way up the dirty steps, littered with bits of paper, cigarette ends, and scraps of kitchen refuse. A stagnant stench of cooking, cesspools and humanity, a close smell of dirt and old walls, which no rush of air could have driven out of the building, filled it from top to bottom.
The Guy De Maupassant Megapack: 144 Novels and Short Stories Page 150
