He replied at haphazard: “No, I do not think so.”
Langremont, too, was as unhurt as his enemy, and Jacques Rival murmured in a discontented tone: “It is always so with those damned pistols; you either miss or kill. What a filthy weapon.”
Duroy did not move, paralyzed by surprise and joy. It was over. They had to take away his weapon, which he still had clenched in his hand. It seemed to him now that he could have done battle with the whole world. It was over. What happiness! He felt suddenly brave enough to defy no matter whom.
The whole of the seconds conversed together for a few moments, making an appointment to draw up their report of the proceedings in the course of the day. Then they got into the carriage again, and the driver, who was laughing on the box, started off, cracking his whip. They breakfasted together on the boulevards, and in chatting over the event, Duroy narrated his impressions. “I felt quite unconcerned, quite. You must, besides, have seen it yourself.”
Rival replied: “Yes, you bore yourself very well.”
When the report was drawn up it was handed to Duroy, who was to insert it in the paper. He was astonished to read that he had exchanged a couple of shots with Monsieur Louis Langremont, and rather uneasily interrogated Rival, saying: “But we only fired once.”
The other smiled. “Yes, one shot apiece, that makes a couple of shots.”
Duroy, deeming the explanation satisfactory, did not persist. Daddy Walter embraced him, saying: “Bravo, bravo, you have defended the colors of Vie Francaise; bravo!”
George showed himself in the course of the evening at the principal newspaper offices, and at the chief cafés on the boulevards. He twice encountered his adversary, who was also showing himself. They did not bow to one another. If one of them had been wounded they would have shaken hands. Each of them, moreover, swore with conviction that he had heard the whistling of the other’s bullet.
The next day, at about eleven, Duroy received a telegram. “Awfully alarmed. Come at once. Rue de Constantinople.—Clo.”
He hastened to their meeting-place, and she threw herself into his arms, smothering him with kisses.
“Oh, my darling! if you only knew what I felt when I saw the papers this morning. Oh, tell me all about it! I want to know everything.”
He had to give minute details. She said: “What a dreadful night you must have passed before the duel.”
“No, I slept very well.”
“I should not have closed an eye. And on the ground—tell me all that happened.”
He gave a dramatic account. “When we were face to face with one another at twenty paces, only four times the length of this room, Jacques, after asking if we were ready, gave the word ‘Fire.’ I raised my arm at once, keeping a good line, but I made the mistake of trying to aim at the head. I had a pistol with an unusually stiff pull, and I am accustomed to very easy ones, so that the resistance of the trigger caused me to fire too high. No matter, it could not have gone very far off him. He shoots well, too, the rascal. His bullet skimmed by my temple. I felt the wind of it.”
She was sitting on his knees, and holding him in her arms as though to share his dangers. She murmured: “Oh, my poor darling! my poor darling!”
When he had finished his narration, she said: “Do you know, I cannot live without you. I must see you, and with my husband in Paris it is not easy. Often I could find an hour in the morning before you were up to run in and kiss you, but I won’t enter that awful house of yours. What is to be done?”
He suddenly had an inspiration, and asked: “What is the rent here?”
“A hundred francs a month.”
“Well, I will take the rooms over on my own account, and live here altogether. Mine are no longer good enough for my new position.”
She reflected a few moments, and then said: “No, I won’t have that.”
He was astonished, and asked: “Why not?”
“Because I won’t.”
“That is not a reason. These rooms suit me very well. I am here, and shall remain here. Besides,” he added, with a laugh, “they are taken in my name.”
But she kept on refusing, “No, no, I won’t have it.”
“Why not, then?”
Then she whispered tenderly: “Because you would bring women here, and I won’t have it.”
He grew indignant. “Never. I can promise you that.”
“No, you will bring them all the same.”
“I swear I won’t.”
“Truly?”
“Truly, on my word of honor. This is our place, our very own.”
She clasped him to her in an outburst of love, exclaiming: “Very well, then, darling. But you know if you once deceive me, only once, it will be all over between us, all over for ever.”
He swore again with many protestations, and it was agreed that he should install himself there that very day, so that she could look in on him as she passed the door. Then she said: “In any case, come and dine with us on Sunday. My husband thinks you are charming.”
He was flattered “Really!”
“Yes, you have captivated him. And then, listen, you have told me that you were brought up in a country-house.”
“Yes; why?”
“Then you must know something about agriculture?”
“Yes.”
“Well, talk to him about gardening and the crops. He is very fond of that sort of thing.”
“Good; I will not forget.”
She left him, after kissing him to an indefinite extent, the duel having stimulated her affection.
Duroy thought, as he made his way to the office, “What a strange being. What a feather brain. Can one tell what she wants and what she cares for? And what a strange household. What fanciful being arranged the union of that old man and this madcap? What made the inspector marry this giddy girl? A mystery. Who knows? Love, perhaps.” And he concluded: “After all, she is a very nice little mistress, and I should be a very big fool to let her slip away from me.”
VIII
His duel had given Duroy a position among the leader-writers of the Vie Francaise, but as he had great difficulty in finding ideas, he made a specialty of declamatory articles on the decadence of morality, the lowering of the standard of character, the weakening of the patriotic fiber and the anemia of French honor. He had discovered the word anemia, and was very proud of it. And when Madame de Marelle, filled with that skeptical, mocking, and incredulous spirit characteristic of the Parisian, laughed at his tirades, which she demolished with an epigram, he replied with a smile: “Bah! this sort of thing will give me a good reputation later on.”
He now resided in the Rue de Constantinople, whither he had shifted his portmanteau, his hair-brush, his razor, and his soap, which was what his moving amounted to. Twice or thrice a week she would call before he was up, undress in a twinkling, and slip into bed, shivering from the cold prevailing out of doors. As a set off, Duroy dined every Thursday at her residence, and paid court to her husband by talking agriculture with him. As he was himself fond of everything relating to the cultivation of the soil, they sometimes both grew so interested in the subject of their conversation that they quite forgot the wife dozing on the sofa. Laurine would also go to sleep, now on the knee of her father and now on that of Pretty-boy. And when the journalist had left, Monsieur de Marelle never failed to assert, in that doctrinal tone in which he said the least thing: “That young fellow is really very pleasant company, he has a well-informed mind.”
February was drawing to a close. One began to smell the violets in the street, as one passed the barrows of the flower-sellers of a morning. Duroy was living beneath a sky without a cloud.
One night, on returning home, he found a letter that had been slipped under his door. He glanced at the post-mark, and read “Cannes.” Having opened it, he read:
“Villa Jolie, Cannes.
“DEAR SIR AND FRIEND,—
You told me, did you not, that I could reckon upon you for anything? Well, I have a very p
ainful service to ask of you; it is to come and help me, so that I may not be left alone during the last moments of Charles, who is dying. He may not last out the week, as the doctor has forewarned me, although he has not yet taken to his bed. I have no longer strength nor courage to witness this hourly death, and I think with terror of those last moments which are drawing near. I can only ask such a service of you, as my husband has no relatives. You were his comrade; he opened the door of the paper to you. Come, I beg of you; I have no one else to ask.
“Believe me, your very sincere friend,
“MADELEINE FORESTIER.”
A strange feeling filled George’s heart, a sense of freedom and of a space opening before him, and he murmured: “To be sure, I’ll go. Poor Charles! What are we, after all?”
The governor, to whom he read the letter, grumblingly granted permission, repeating: “But be back soon, you are indispensable to us.”
George left for Cannes next day by the seven o’clock express, after letting the Marelles know of his departure by a telegram. He arrived the following evening about four o’clock. A commissionaire guided him to the Villa Jolie, built half-way up the slope of the pine forest clothed with white houses, which extends from Cannes to the Golfe Juan. The house—small, low, and in the Italian style—was built beside the road which winds zig-zag fashion up through the trees, revealing a succession of charming views at every turning it makes.
The man servant opened the door, and exclaimed: “Oh! Sir, madame is expecting you most impatiently.”
“How is your master?” inquired Duroy.
“Not at all well, sir. He cannot last much longer.”
The drawing-room, into which George was shown, was hung with pink and blue chintz. The tall and wide windows overlooked the town and the sea. Duroy muttered: “By Jove, this is nice and swell for a country house. Where the deuce do they get the money from?”
The rustle of a dress made him turn round. Madame Forestier held out both hands to him. “How good of you to come, how good of you to come,” said she.
And suddenly she kissed him on the cheek. Then they looked at one another. She was somewhat paler and thinner, but still fresh-complexioned, and perhaps still prettier for her additional delicacy. She murmured: “He is dreadful, do you know; he knows that he is doomed, and he leads me a fearful life. But where is your portmanteau?”
“I have left it at the station, not knowing what hotel you would like me to stop at in order to be near you.”
She hesitated a moment, and then said: “You must stay here. Besides, your room is all ready. He might die at any moment, and if it were to happen during the night I should be alone. I will send for your luggage.”
He bowed, saying: “As you please.”
“Now let us go upstairs,” she said.
He followed her. She opened a door on the first floor, and Duroy saw, wrapped in rugs and seated in an armchair near the window, a kind of living corpse, livid even under the red light of the setting sun, and looking towards him. He scarcely recognized, but rather guessed, that it was his friend. The room reeked of fever, medicated drinks, ether, tar, the nameless and oppressive odor of a consumptive’s sick room. Forestier held out his hand slowly and with difficulty. “So here you are; you have come to see me die, then! Thanks.”
Duroy affected to laugh. “To see you die? That would not be a very amusing sight, and I should not select such an occasion to visit Cannes. I came to give you a look in, and to rest myself a bit.”
Forestier murmured, “Sit down,” and then bent his head, as though lost in painful thoughts. He breathed hurriedly and pantingly, and from time to time gave a kind of groan, as if he wanted to remind the others how ill he was.
Seeing that he would not speak, his wife came and leaned against the window-sill, and indicating the view with a motion of her head, said, “Look! Is not that beautiful?”
Before them the hillside, dotted with villas, sloped downwards towards the town, which stretched in a half-circle along the shore with its head to the right in the direction of the pier, overlooked by the old city surmounted by its belfry, and its feet to the left towards the point of La Croisette, facing the Isles of Lerins. These two islands appeared like two green spots amidst the blue water. They seemed to be floating on it like two huge green leaves, so low and flat did they appear from this height. Afar off, bounding the view on the other side of the bay, beyond the pier and the belfry, a long succession of blue hills showed up against a dazzling sky, their strange and picturesque line of summits now rounded, now forked, now pointed, ending with a huge pyramidal mountain, its foot in the sea itself.
Madame Forestier pointed it out, saying: “This is L’Estherel.”
The void beyond the dark hill tops was red, a glowing red that the eye would not fear, and Duroy, despite himself, felt the majesty of the close of the day. He murmured, finding no other term strong enough to express his admiration, “It is stunning.”
Forestier raised his head, and turning to his wife, said: “Let me have some fresh air.”
“Pray, be careful,” was her reply. “It is late, and the sun is setting; you will catch a fresh cold, and you know how bad that is for you.”
He made a feverish and feeble movement with his right hand that was almost meant for a blow, and murmured with a look of anger, the grin of a dying man that showed all the thinness of his lips, the hollowness of the cheeks, and the prominence of all the bones of the face: “I tell you I am stifling. What does it matter to you whether I die a day sooner or a day later, since I am done for?”
She opened the window quite wide. The air that entered surprised all three like a caress. It was a soft, warm breeze, a breeze of spring, already laden with the scents of the odoriferous shrubs and flowers which sprang up along this shore. A powerful scent of turpentine and the harsh savor of the eucalyptus could be distinguished.
Forestier drank it in with short and fevered gasps. He clutched the arm of his chair with his nails, and said in low, hissing, and savage tones: “Shut the window. It hurts me; I would rather die in a cellar.”
His wife slowly closed the window, and then looked out in space, her forehead against the pane. Duroy, feeling very ill at ease, would have liked to have chatted with the invalid and reassured him. But he could think of nothing to comfort him. At length he said: “Then you have not got any better since you have been here?”
Forestier shrugged his shoulders with low-spirited impatience. “You see very well I have not,” he replied, and again lowered his head.
Duroy went on: “Hang it all, it is ever so much nicer here than in Paris. We are still in the middle of winter there. It snows, it freezes, it rains, and it is dark enough for the lamps to be lit at three in the afternoon.”
“Anything new at the paper?” asked Forestier.
“Nothing. They have taken on young Lacrin, who has left the Voltaire, to do your work, but he is not up to it. It is time that you came back.”
The invalid muttered: “I—I shall do all my work six feet under the sod now.”
This fixed idea recurred like a knell apropos of everything, continually cropping up in every idea, every sentence. There was a long silence, a deep and painful silence. The glow of the sunset was slowly fading, and the mountains were growing black against the red sky, which was getting duller. A colored shadow, a commencement of night, which yet retained the glow of an expiring furnace, stole into the room and seemed to tinge the furniture, the walls, the hangings, with mingled tints of sable and crimson. The chimney-glass, reflecting the horizon, seemed like a patch of blood. Madame Forestier did not stir, but remained standing with her back to the room, her face to the window pane.
Forestier began to speak in a broken, breathless voice, heartrending to listen to. “How many more sunsets shall I see? Eight, ten, fifteen, or twenty, perhaps thirty—no more. You have time before you; for me it is all over. And it will go on all the same, after I am gone, as if I was still here.” He was silent for a few moments, an
d then continued: “All that I see reminds me that in a few days I shall see it no more. It is horrible. I shall see nothing—nothing of all that exists; not the smallest things one makes use of—the plates, the glasses, the beds in which one rests so comfortably, the carriages. How nice it is to drive out of an evening! How fond I was of all those things!”
He nervously moved the fingers of both hands, as though playing the piano on the arms of his chair. Each of his silences was more painful than his words, so evident was it that his thoughts must be fearful. Duroy suddenly recalled what Norbert de Varenne had said to him some weeks before, “I now see death so near that I often want to stretch out my arms to put it back. I see it everywhere. The insects crushed on the path, the falling leaves, the white hair in a friend’s beard, rend my heart and cry to me, ‘Behold!’”
He had not understood all this on that occasion; now, seeing Forestier, he did. An unknown pain assailed him, as if he himself was sensible of the presence of death, hideous death, hard by, within reach of his hand, on the chair in which his friend lay gasping. He longed to get up, to go away, to fly, to return to Paris at once. Oh! if he had known he would not have come.
Darkness had now spread over the room, like premature mourning for the dying man. The window alone remained still visible, showing, within the lighter square formed by it, the motionless outline of the young wife.
Forestier remarked, with irritation, “Well, are they going to bring in the lamp tonight? This is what they call looking after an invalid.”
The shadow outlined against the window panes disappeared, and the sound of an electric bell rang through the house. A servant shortly entered and placed a lamp on the mantelpiece. Madame Forestier said to her husband, “Will you go to bed, or would you rather come down to dinner?”
He murmured: “I will come down.”
Waiting for this meal kept them all three sitting still for nearly an hour, only uttering from time to time some needless commonplace remark, as if there had been some danger, some mysterious danger in letting silence endure too long, in letting the air congeal in this room where death was prowling.
The Guy De Maupassant Megapack: 144 Novels and Short Stories Page 162
