CHAPTER VIII
Next day his ferment had subsided. The unknown never left him, but shekept her distance. Her less certain features were effaced in mist, herfascination became feebler, and she no longer was his solepreoccupation.
The idea, suddenly formed on a word of Des Hermies, that the unknownmust be Chantelouve's wife, had, in fashion, checked his fever. If itwas she--and his contrary conclusions of the evening before seemedhardly valid when he took up one by one the arguments by which he hadarrived at them--then her reasons for wanting him were obscure,dangerous, and he was on his guard, no longer letting himself go incomplete self-abandon.
And yet, there was another phenomenon taking place within him. He hadnever paid any especial attention to Hyacinthe Chantelouve, he had neverbeen in love with her. She interested him by the mystery of her personand her life, but outside her drawing-room he had never given her athought. Now ruminating about her he began almost to desire her.
Suddenly she benefited by the face of the unknown, for when Durtalevoked her she came confused to his sight, her physiognomy mingled withthat which he had visualized when the first letters came.
Though the sneaking scoundrelism of her husband displeased him, he didnot think her the less attractive, but his desires were no longer beyondcontrol. In spite of the distrust which she aroused, she might be aninteresting mistress, making up for her barefaced vices by her goodgrace, but she was no longer the non-existent, the chimera raised in amoment of uncertainty.
On the other hand, if his conjectures were false, if it was not Mme.Chantelouve who had written the letters, then the other, the unknown,lost a little of her subtlety by the mere fact that she could beincarnated in a creature whom he knew. Still remote, she became less so;then her beauty deteriorated, because, in turn, she took on certainfeatures of Mme. Chantelouve, and if the latter had profited, theformer, on the contrary, lost by the confusion which Durtal hadestablished.
In one as in the other case, whether she were Mme. Chantelouve or not,he felt appeased, calmed. At heart he did not know, when he revolved theadventure, whether he preferred his chimera, even diminished, or thisHyacinthe, who at least, in her reality, was not a disenchanting frump,wrinkled with age. He profited by the respite to get back to work, buthe had presumed too much upon his powers. When he tried to begin hischapter on the crimes of Gilles de Rais he discovered that he wasincapable of sewing two sentences together. He wandered in pursuit ofthe Marshal and caught up with him, but the prose in which he wished toembody the man remained listless and lifeless, and he could think onlypatchily.
He threw down his pen and sank into an armchair. In revery he wastransported to Tiffauges, where Satan, who had refused so obstinately toshow himself, now became incarnate in the unwitting Marshal, to wallowhim, vociferating, in the joys of murder.
"For this, basically, is what Satanism is," said Durtal to himself. "Theexternal semblance of the Demon is a minor matter. He has no need ofexhibiting himself in human or bestial form to attest his presence. Forhim to prove himself, it is enough that he choose a domicile in soulswhich he ulcerates and incites to inexplicable crimes. Then, he can holdhis victims by that hope which he breathes into them, that instead ofliving in them as he does, and as they don't often know, he will obeyevocations, appear to them, and deal out, duly, legally, the advantageshe concedes in exchange for certain forfeits. Our very willingness tomake a pact with him must be able often to produce his infusion into us.
"All the modern theories of the followers of Maudsley and Lombroso donot, in fact, render the singular abuses of the Marshal comprehensible.Nothing could be more just than to class him as a monomaniac, for he wasone, if by the word monomaniac we designate every man who is dominatedby a fixed idea. But so is every one of us, more or less, from thebusiness man, all whose thoughts converge on the one idea of gain, tothe artist absorbed in bringing his masterpiece into the world. But whywas the Marshal a monomaniac, how did he become one? That is what allthe Lombrosos in the world can't tell you. Encephalic lesions, adherenceof the _pia mater_ to the cerebrum, mean absolutely nothing in thisquestion. For they are simple resultants, effects derived from a causewhich ought to be explained, and which no materialist can explain. It iseasy to declare that a disturbance of the cerebral lobes producesassassins and demonomaniacs. The famous alienists of our time claim thatanalysis of the brain of an insane woman disclosed a lesion or adeterioration of the grey matter. And suppose it did! It would still bea question whether, in the case of a woman possessed with demonomania,the lesion produced the demonomania, or the demonomania produced thelesion.... Admitting that there was a lesion! The spiritual Comprachicoshave never resorted to cerebral surgery. They don't amputate thelobes--supposed to be reliably identified--after carefully trepanning.They simply act upon the pupil by inculcating ignoble ideas in him,developing his bad instincts, pushing him little by little into thepaths of vice; and if this gymnastic of persuasion deteriorates thecerebral tissues in the subject, that proves precisely that the lesionis only the derivative and not the cause of the psychological state.
"And then, and then, these doctrines which consist nowadays inconfounding the criminal with the insane, the demonomaniac with the mad,have absolutely no foundation. Nine years ago a lad of fourteen, FelixLemaire, assassinated a little boy whom he did not know. He just wantedto see the child suffer, just wanted to hear him cry. Felix slashed thelittle fellow's stomach with a knife, turned the blade round and roundin the warm flesh, then slowly sawed his victim's head off. Felixmanifested no remorse, and in the ensuing investigation proved himselfto be intelligent and atrocious. Dr. Legrand Du Saule and otherspecialists kept him under vigilant surveillance for months, and couldnot discover the slightest pathological symptom. And he had had fairlygood rearing and certainly had not been corrupted by others.
"His behaviour was like that of the conscious or unconsciousdemonomaniacs who do evil for evil's sake. They are no more mad than therapt monk in his cell, than the man who does good for good's sake.Anybody but a medical theorist can see that the desire for good and thedesire for evil simply form the two opposing poles of the soul. In thefifteenth century these extremes were represented by Jeanne d'Arc andthe Marshal de Rais. Now there is no more reason for attributing madnessto Gilles than there is for attributing it to Jeanne d'Arc, whoseadmirable excesses certainly have no connection with vesania anddelirium.
"All the same, some frightful nights must have been passed in thatfortress," said Durtal. He was thinking of the chateau de Tiffauges,which he had visited a year ago, believing that it would aid him in hiswork to live in the country where Gilles had lived and to dig among theruins.
He had established himself in the little hamlet which stretches alongthe base of the abandoned donjon. He learned what a living thing thelegend of Bluebeard was in this isolated part of La Vendee on the borderof Brittany.
"He was a young man who came to a bad end," said the young women. Morefearful, their grandmothers crossed themselves as they went along thefoot of the wall in the evening. The memory of the disembowelledchildren persisted. The Marshal, known only by his surname, still hadpower to terrify.
Durtal had gone every day from the inn where he lodged to the chateau,towering over the valleys of the Crume and of the Sevre, facing hillsexcoriated with blocks of granite and overgrown with formidable oaks,whose roots, protruding out of the ground, resembled monstrous nests offrightened snakes.
One might have believed oneself transported into the real Brittany.There was the same melancholy, heavy sky, the same sun, which seemedolder than in other parts of the world and which but feebly gilded thesorrowful, age-old forests and the mossy sandstone. There were the sameendless stretches of broken, rocky soil, pitted with ponds of rustywater, dotted with scattered clumps of gorse and fruze copse, andsprinkled with pink harebells and nameless yellow prairie flowers.
One felt that this iron-grey sky; this starving soil, empurpled onlyhere and there by the bleeding flower of the buckwheat; that theseroads, bord
ered with stones placed one on top of the other, withoutcement or plaster; that these paths, bordered with impenetrable hedges;that these grudging plants; these inhospitable fields; these crippledbeggars, eaten with vermin, plastered with filth; that even the flocks,undersized and wasted, the dumpy little cows, the black sheep whose blueeyes had the cold, pale gleam that is in the eyes of the Slav or of thetribade; had perpetuated their primordial state, preserving an identicallandscape through all the centuries.
Except for an incongruous factory chimney further away on the bank ofthe Sevre, the countryside of Tiffauges remained in perfect harmony withthe immense chateau, erect among its ruins. Within the close, still tobe traced by the ruins of the towers, was a whole plain, now convertedinto a miserable truck garden. Cabbages, in long bluish lines,impoverished carrots, consumptive navews, spread over this enormouscircle where iron mail had clanked in the tournament and whereprocessionals had slowly devolved, in the smoke of incense, to thechanting of psalms.
A thatched hut had been built in a corner. The peasant inhabitants,returned to a state of savagery, no longer understood the meaning ofwords, and could be roused out of their apathy only by the display of asilver coin. Seizing the coin, they would hand over the keys.
For hours one could browse around at ease among the ruins, and smoke anddaydream. Unfortunately, certain parts were inaccessible. The donjon wasstill shut off, on the Tiffauges side, by a vast moat, at the bottom ofwhich mighty trees were growing. One would have had to pass over thetops of the trees, growing to the very verge of the wall, to gain aporch on the other side, for there was now no drawbridge.
But quite accessible was another part which overhung the Sevre. Therethe wings of the castle, overgrown with ivy and white-crested viburnum,were intact. Spongy, dry as pumice stone, silvered with lichen andgilded with moss, the towers rose entire, though from their crenelatedcollarettes whole blocks were blown away on windy nights.
Within, room succeeded glacial room, cut into the granite, surmountedwith vaulted roofs, and as close as the hold of a ship. Then by spiralstairways one descended into similar chambers, joined by cellarpassageways into the walls of which were dug deep niches and lairs ofunknown utility.
Beneath, those corridors, so narrow that two persons could not walkalong them abreast, descended at a gentle slope, and bifurcated so thatthere was a labyrinth of lanes, leading to veritable cells, on the wallsof which the nitre scintillated in the light of the lantern like steelmica or twinkling grains of sugar. In the cells above, in the dungeonsbeneath, one stumbled over rifts of hard earth, in the centre or in acorner of which yawned now the mouth of an unsealed oubliette, now awell.
Finally, at the summit of one of the towers, that at the left as oneentered, there was a roofed gallery running parallel to a circularfoothold cut from the rock. There, without doubt, the men-at-arms hadbeen stationed to fire on their assailants through wide loopholesopening overhead and underfoot. In this gallery the voice, even thelowest, followed the curving walls and could be heard all around thecircuit.
Briefly, the exterior of the castle revealed a fortified place built tostand long sieges, and the dismantled interior made one think of aprison in which flesh, mildewed by the moisture, must rot in a fewmonths. Out in the open air again, one felt a sensation of well-being,of relief, which one lost on traversing the ruins of the isolated chapeland penetrating, by a cellar door, to the crypt below.
This chapel, low, squat, its vaulted roof upheld by massive columns onwhose capitals lozenges and bishop's croziers were carved, dated fromthe eleventh century. The altar stone survived intact. Brackishdaylight, which seemed to have been filtered through layers of horn,came in at the openings, hardly lighting the shadowed, begrimed wallsand the earth floor, which too was pierced by the entrance to anoubliette or by a well shaft.
In the evening after dinner he had often climbed up on the embankmentand followed the cracked walls of the ruins. On bright nights one partof the castle was thrown back into shadow, and the other, by contrast,stood forth, washed in silver and blue, as if rubbed with mercuriallusters, above the Sevre, along whose surface streaks of moonlightdarted like the backs of fishes. The silence was overpowering. Afternine o'clock not a dog, not a soul. He would return to the poor chamberof the inn, where an old woman, in black, wearing the cornet head-dressher ancestors wore in the sixteenth century, waited with a candle to barthe door as soon as he returned.
"All this," said Durtal to himself, "is the skeleton of a dead keep. Toreanimate it we must revisualize the opulent flesh which once coveredthese bones of sandstone. Documents give us every detail. This carcasswas magnificently clad, and if we are to see Gilles in his ownenvironment, we must remember all the sumptuosity of fifteenth centuryfurnishing.
"We must reclothe these walls with wainscots of Irish wood or with highwarp tapestries of gold and thread of Arras, so much sought after inthat epoch. Then this hard, black soil must be repaved with green andyellow bricks or black and white flagstones. The vault must be starredwith gold and sown with crossbows on a field _azur_, and the Marshal'scross, _sable_ on shield _or_, must be set shining there."
Of themselves the furnishings returned, each to its own place. Here andthere were high-backed signorial chairs, thrones, and stools. Againstthe walls were sideboards on whose carved panels were bas-reliefsrepresenting the Annunciation and the Adoration of the Magi. On top ofthe sideboards, beneath lace canopies, stood the painted and gildedstatues of Saint Anne, Saint Marguerite, and Saint Catherine, so oftenreproduced by the wood-carvers of the Middle Ages. There werelinen-chests, bound in iron, studded with great nails, and covered withsowskin leather. Then there were coffers fastened by great metal claspsand overlaid with leather or fabric on which fair faced angels, cut fromilluminated missal-backgrounds, had been mounted. There were great bedsreached by carpeted steps. There were tasselled pillows and counterpanesheavily perfumed, and canopies and curtains embroidered with armories orsprinkled with stars.
So one must reconstruct the decorations of the other rooms, in whichnothing was standing but the walls and the high, basket-funneledfireplaces, whose spacious hearths, wanting andirons, were still charredfrom the old fires. One could easily imagine the dining-rooms and thoseterrible repasts which Gilles deplored in his trial at Nantes. Gillesadmitted with tears that he had ordered his diet so as to kindle thefury of his senses, and these reprobate menus can be easily reproduced.When he was at table with Eustache Blanchet, Prelati, Gilles de Sille,all his trusted companions, in the great room, the plates and the ewersfilled with water of medlar, rose, and melilote for washing the hands,were placed on credences. Gilles ate beef-, salmon-, and bream-pies;levert-and squab-tarts; roast heron, stork, crane, peacock, bustard, andswan; venison in verjuice; Nantes lampreys; salads of briony, hops,beard of judas, mallow; vehement dishes seasoned with marjoram and mace,coriander and sage, peony and rosemary, basil and hyssop, grain ofparadise and ginger; perfumed, acidulous dishes, giving one a violentthirst; heavy pastries; tarts of elder-flower and rape; rice with milkof hazelnuts sprinkled with cinnamon; stuffy dishes necessitatingcopious drafts of beer and fermented mulberry juice, of dry wine, orwine aged to tannic bitterness, of heady hypocras charged with cinnamon,with almonds, and with musk, of raging liquors clouded with goldenparticles--mad drinks which spurred the guests in this womanless castleto frenzies of lechery and made them, at the end of the meal, writhe inmonstrous dreams.
"Remain the costumes to be restored," said Durtal to himself, and heimagined Gilles and his friends, not in their damaskeened field harness,but in their indoor costumes, their robes of peace. He visualized themin harmony with the luxury of their surroundings. They wore glitteringvestments, pleated jackets, bellying out in a little flounced skirt atthe waist. The legs were encased in dark skin-tight hose. On their headswere the artichoke chaperon hats like that of Charles VII in hisportrait in the Louvre. The torso was enveloped in silver-threadeddamask, which was crusted with jewelleries and bordered with marten.
He thought
of the costume of the women of the time, robes of precioustentered stuffs, with tight sleeves, great collars thrown back over theshoulders, cramping bodices, long trains lined with fur. And as he thusdressed an imaginary manikin, hanging ropes of heavy stones, purplishor milky crystals, cloudy uncut gems, over the slashed corsage, a womanslipped in, filled the robe, swelled the bodice, and thrust her headunder the two-horned steeple-headdress. From behind the pendent lacesmiled the composite features of the unknown and of Mme. Chantelouve.Delighted, he gazed at the apparition without ever perceiving whom hehad evoked, when his cat, jumping into his lap, distracted his thoughtsand brought him back to his room.
"Well, well, she won't let me alone," and in spite of himself he beganto laugh at the thought of the unknown following him even to the chateaude Tiffauges. "It's foolish to let my thoughts wander this way," hesaid, drawing himself up, "but daydream is the only good thing in life.Everything else is vulgar and empty.
"No doubt about it, that was a singular epoch, the Middle Epoch ofignorance and darkness, the history professors and Ages," he went on,lighting a cigarette. "For some it's all white and for others utterlyblack. No intermediate shade, atheists reiterate. Dolorous and exquisiteepoch, say the artists and the religious savants.
"What is certain is that the immutable classes, the nobility, theclergy, the bourgeoisie, the people, had loftier souls at that time. Youcan prove it: society has done nothing but deteriorate in the fourcenturies separating us from the Middle Ages.
"True, a baron then was usually a formidable brute. He was a drunken andlecherous bandit, a sanguinary and boisterous tyrant, but he was a childin mind and spirit. The Church bullied him, and to deliver the HolySepulchre he sacrificed his wealth, abandoned home, wife, and children,and accepted unconscionable fatigues, extraordinary sufferings,unheard-of dangers.
"By pious heroism he redeemed the baseness of his morals. The race hassince become moderate. It has reduced, sometimes even done away with,its instincts of carnage and rape, but it has replaced them by themonomania of business, the passion for lucre. It has done worse. It hassunk to such a state of abjectness as to be attracted by the doings ofthe lowest of the low. The aristocracy disguises itself as a mountebank,puts on tights and spangles, gives public trapeze performances, jumpsthrough hoops, and does weight-lifting stunts in the trampled tan-barkring!
"The clergy, then a good example--if we except a few convents ravaged byfrenzied Satanism and lechery--launched itself into superhumantransports and attained God. Saints swarmed, miracles multiplied, andwhile still omnipotent the Church was gentle with the humble, itconsoled the afflicted, defended the little ones, and mourned orrejoiced with the people of low estate. Today it hates the poor, andmysticism dies in a clergy which checks ardent thoughts and preachessobriety of mind, continence of postulation, common sense in prayer,bourgeoisie of the soul! Yet here and there, buried in cloisters farfrom these lukewarm priests, there perhaps still are real saints whoweep, monks who pray, to the point of dying of sorrow and prayer, foreach of us. And they--with the demoniacs--are the sole connecting linkbetween that age and this.
"The smug, sententious side of the bourgeoisie already existed in thetime of Charles VII. But cupidity was repressed by the confessor, andthe tradesman, just like the labourer, was maintained by thecorporations, which denounced overcharging and fraud, saw that decriedmerchandise was destroyed, and fixed a fair price and a high standard ofexcellence for commodities. Trades and professions were handed down fromfather to son. The corporations assured work and pay. People were not,as now, subject to the fluctuations of the market and the mercilesscapitalistic exploitation. Great fortunes did not exist and everybodyhad enough to live on. Sure of the future, unhurried, they createdmarvels of art, whose secret remains for ever lost.
"All the artisans who passed the three degrees of apprentice,journeyman, and master, developed subtlety and became veritable artists.They ennobled the simplest of iron work, the commonest faience, the mostordinary chests and coffers. Those corporations, putting themselvesunder the patronage of Saints--whose images, frequently besought,figured on their banners--preserved through the centuries the honestexistence of the humble and notably raised the spiritual level of thepeople whom they protected.
"All that is decisively at an end. The bourgeoise has taken the placeforfeited by a wastrel nobility which now subsists only to set ignoblefashions and whose sole contribution to our 'civilization' is theestablishment of gluttonous dining clubs, so-called gymnastic societies,and pari-mutuel associations. Today the business man has but these aims,to exploit the working man, manufacture shoddy, lie about the quality ofmerchandise, and give short weight.
"As for the people, they have been relieved of the indispensable fear ofhell, and notified, at the same time, that they are not to expect to berecompensed, after death, for their sufferings here. So they scamp theirill-paid work and take to drink. From time to time, when they haveingurgitated too violent liquids, they revolt, and then they must beslaughtered, for once let loose they would act as a crazed stampededherd.
"Good God, what a mess! And to think that the nineteenth century takeson airs and adulates itself. There is one word in the mouths of all.Progress. Progress of whom? Progress of what? For this miserable centuryhasn't invented anything great.
"It has constructed nothing and destroyed everything. At the presenthour it glorifies itself in this electricity which it thinks itdiscovered. But electricity was known and used in remotest antiquity,and if the ancients could not explain its nature nor even its essence,the moderns are just as incapable of identifying that force whichconveys the spark and carries the voice--acutely nasalized--along thewire. This century thinks it discovered the terrible science ofhypnotism, which the priests and Brahmins in Egypt and India knew andpractised to the utmost. No, the only thing this century has inventedis the sophistication of products. Therein it is passed master. It haseven gone so far as to adulterate excrement. Yes, in 1888 the two housesof parliament had to pass a law destined to suppress the falsificationof fertilizer. Now that's the limit."
The doorbell rang. He opened the door and nearly fell over backward.
Mme. Chantelouve was before him.
Stupefied, he bowed, while Mme. Chantelouve, without a word, wentstraight into the study. There she turned around, and Durtal, who hadfollowed, found himself face to face with her.
"Won't you please sit down?" He advanced an armchair and hastened topush back, with his foot, the edge of the carpet turned up by the cat.He asked her to excuse the disorder. She made a vague gesture andremained standing.
In a calm but very low voice she said, "It is I who wrote you those madletters. I have come to drive away this bad fever and get it over within a quite frank way. As you yourself wrote, no liaison between us ispossible. Let us forget what has happened. And before I go, tell me thatyou bear me no grudge."
He cried out at this. He would not have it so. He had not been besidehimself when he wrote her those ardent pages, he was in perfectly goodfaith, he loved her--
"You love me! Why, you didn't even know that those letters were from me.You loved an unknown, a chimera. Well, admitting that you are tellingthe truth, the chimera does not exist now, for here I am."
"You are mistaken. I knew perfectly that it was Mme. Chantelouve hidingbehind the pseudonym of Mme. Maubel." And he half-explained to her,without, of course, letting her know of his doubts, how he had liftedher mask.
"Ah!" She reflected, blinking her troubled eyes. "At any rate," shesaid, again facing him squarely, "you could not have recognized me inthe first letters, to which you responded with cries of passion. Thosecries were not addressed to me."
He contested this observation, and became entangled in the dates andhappenings and in the sequence of the notes. She at length lost thethread of his remarks. The situation was so ridiculous that both weresilent. Then she sat down and burst out laughing.
Her strident, shrill laugh, revealing magnificent, but short and pointedteeth, in a mocking
mouth, vexed him.
"She has been playing with me," he said to himself, and dissatisfiedwith the turn the conversation had taken, and furious at seeing thiswoman so calm, so different from her burning letters, he asked, in atone of irritation, "Am I to know why you laugh?"
"Pardon me. It's a trick my nerves play on me, sometimes in publicplaces. But never mind. Let us be reasonable and talk things over. Youtell me you love me--"
"And I mean it."
"Well, admitting that I too am not indifferent, where is this going tolead us? Oh, you know so well, you poor dear, that you refused, right atfirst, the meeting which I asked in a moment of madness--and you gavewell-thought-out reasons for refusing."
"But I refused because I did not know then that you were the women inthe case! I have told you that it was several days later that DesHermies unwittingly revealed your identity to me. Did I hesitate as soonas I knew? No! I immediately implored you to come."
"That may be, but you admit that I'm right when I claim that you wroteyour first letters to another and not me."
She was pensive for a moment. Durtal began to be prodigiously bored bythis discussion. He thought it more prudent not to answer, and wasseeking a change of subject that would put an end to the deadlock.
She herself got him out of his difficulty. "Let us not discuss it anymore," she said, smiling, "we shall not get anywhere. You see, this isthe situation: I am married to a very nice man who loves me and whoseonly crime is that he represents the rather insipid happiness which onehas right at hand. I started this correspondence with you, so I am toblame, and believe me, on his account I suffer. You have work to do,beautiful books to write. You don't need to have a crazy woman comewalking into your life. So, you see, the best thing is for us to remainfriends, but true friends, and go no further."
"And it is the woman who wrote me such vivid letters, who now speaks tome of reason, good sense, and God knows what!"
"But be frank, now. You don't love me."
"I don't?"
He took her hands, gently. She made no resistance, but looking at himsquarely she said, "Listen. If you had loved me you would have come tosee me; and yet for months you haven't tried to find out whether I wasalive or dead."
"But you understand that I could not hope to be welcomed by you on theterms we now are on, and too, in your parlour there are guests, yourhusband--I have never had you even a little bit to myself at your home."
He pressed her hands more tightly and came closer to her. She regardedhim with her smoky eyes, in which he now saw that dolent, almostdolorous expression which had captivated him. He completely lost controlof himself before this voluptuous and plaintive face, but with a firmgesture she freed her hands.
"Enough. Sit down, now, and let's talk of something else. Do you knowyour apartment is charming? Which saint is that?" she asked, examiningthe picture, over the mantel, of the monk on his knees beside acardinal's hat and cloak.
"I do not know."
"I will find out for you. I have the lives of all the saints at home. Itought to be easy to find out about a cardinal who renounced the purpleto go live in a hut. Wait. I think Saint Peter Damian did, but I am notsure. I have such a poor memory. Help me think."
"But I don't know who he is!"
She came closer to him and put her hand on his shoulder.
"Are you angry at me?"
"I should say I am! When I desire you frantically, when I've beendreaming for a whole week about this meeting, you come here and tell methat all is over between us, that you do not love me--"
She became demure. "But if I did not love you, would I have come to you?Understand, then, that reality kills a dream; that it is better for usnot to expose ourselves to fearful regrets. We are not children, yousee. No! Let me go. Do not squeeze me like that!" Very pale, shestruggled in his embrace. "I swear to you that I will go away and thatyou shall never see me again if you do not let me loose." Her voicebecame hard. She was almost hissing her words. He let go of her. "Sitdown there behind the table. Do that for me." And tapping the floor withher heel, she said, in a tone of melancholy, "Then it is impossible tobe friends, only friends, with a man. But it would be very nice to comeand see you without having evil thoughts to fear, wouldn't it?" She wassilent. Then she added, "Yes, just to see each other--and if we did nothave any sublime things to say to each other, it is also very nice tosit and say nothing!"
Then she said, "My time is up. I must go home."
"And leave me with no hope?" he exclaimed, kissing her gloved hands.
She did not answer, but gently shook her head, then, as he lookedpleadingly at her, she said, "Listen. If you will promise to make nodemands on me and to be good, I will come here night after next at nineo'clock."
He promised whatever she wished. And as he raised his head from herhands and as his lips brushed lightly over her breast, which seemed totighten, she disengaged her hands, caught his nervously, and, clenchingher teeth, offered her neck to his lips. Then she fled.
"Oof!" he said, closing the door after her. He was at the same timesatisfied and vexed.
Satisfied, because he found her enigmatic, changeful, charming. Now thathe was alone he recalled her to memory. He remembered her tight blackdress, her fur cloak, the warm collar of which had caressed him as hewas covering her neck with kisses. He remembered that she wore nojewellery, except sparkling blue sapphire eardrops. He remembered thewayward blonde hair escaping from under the dark green otter hat.Holding his hands to his nostrils he sniffed again the sweet and distantodour, cinnamon lost among stronger perfumes, which he had caught fromthe contact of her long, fawn-coloured suede gloves, and he saw againher moist, rodent teeth, her thin, bitten lips, and her troubled eyes,of a grey and opaque lustre which could suddenly be transfigured withradiance. "Oh, night after next it will be great to kiss all that!"
Vexed also, both with himself and with her. He reproached himself withhaving been brusque and reserved. He ought to have shown himself moreexpansive and less restrained. But it was her fault, for she had abashedhim! The incongruity between the woman who cried with voluptuoussuffering in her letters and the woman he had seen, so thoroughlymistress of herself in her coquetries, was truly too much!
"However you look at them, these women are astonishing creatures," hethought. "Here is one who accomplishes the most difficult thing you canimagine: coming to a man's room after having written him excessiveletters. I, I act like a goose. I stand there ill at ease. She, in asecond, has the self-assurance of a person in her own home, or visitingin a drawing-room. No awkwardness, pretty gestures, a few words, andeyes which supply everything! She isn't very agreeable," he thought,reminded of the curt tone she had used when disengaging herself, "andyet she has her tender spots," he continued dreamily, remembering notso much her words as certain inflections of her voice and a certainbewildered look in her eyes. "I must go about it prudently that night,"he concluded, addressing his cat, which, never having seen a womanbefore, had fled at the arrival of Mme. Chantelouve and taken refugeunder the bed, but had now advanced almost grovelling, to sniff thechair where she had sat.
"Come to think of it, she is an old hand, Mme. Hyacinthe! She would nothave a meeting in a cafe nor in the street. She scented from afar theassignation house or the hotel. And though, from the mere fact of my notinviting her here, she could not doubt that I did not want to introduceher to my lodging, she came here deliberately. Then, this first denial,come to think of it, is only a fine farce. If she were not seeking aliaison she would not have visited me. No, she wanted me to beg her todo what she wanted to do. Like all women, she wanted me to offer herwhat she desired. I have been rolled. Her arrival has knocked the propsout from under my whole method. But what does it matter? She is no lessdesirable," he concluded, happy to get rid of disagreeable reflectionsand plunge back into the delirious vision which he retained of her."That night won't be exactly dreary," he thought, seeing again her eyes,imagining them in surrender, deceptive and plaintive, as he woulddisrobe her and make a b
ody white and slender, warm and supple, emergefrom her tight skirt. "She has no children. That is an earnest promisethat her flesh is quite firm, even at thirty!"
A whole draft of youth intoxicated him. Durtal, astonished, took a lookat himself in the mirror. His tired eyes brightened, his face seemedmore youthful, less worn. "Lucky I had just shaved," he said to himself.But gradually, as he mused, he saw in this mirror, which he was solittle in the habit of consulting, his features droop and his eyes losetheir sparkle. His stature, which had seemed to increase in thisspiritual upheaval, diminished again. Sadness returned to histhoughtful mien. "I haven't what you would call the physique of a lady'sman," he concluded. "What does she see in me? for she could very easilyfind someone else with whom to be unfaithful to her husband. Enough ofthese rambling thoughts. Let's cease to think them. To sum up thesituation: I love her with my head and not my heart. That's theimportant thing. Under such conditions, whatever happens, a love affairis brief, and I am almost certain to get out of it without committingany follies."
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