That evening, Flavie had sent her maid away early. She wanted to be alone. Until midnight, she remained in the little salon that led to her bedroom. Stretched out on a love-seat, she had picked up a book; but every minute the book would fall from her hands, and she would daydream, her eyes staring vacantly. Her face had grown softer again, from time to time a pallid smile passed over it.
She sat up with a start. There had been a knock at the door.
‘Who is it?’
‘Open the door,’ replied Nantas.
It was such a great surprise for her that she opened the door automatically. Never before had her husband turned up at her apartment like this. He came in, in a real state; anger had overcome him again as he was climbing the stairs. Mlle Chuin, who had been watching out for him on the landing, had just murmured in his ear that M. des Fondettes had been there for two hours. So he did not mince his words.
‘Madame,’ he said, ‘there is a man hidden in your room.’
Flavie did not reply at once, her thoughts were so distracted. Finally she understood.
‘You are crazy, monsieur,’ she murmured.
But, without stopping to argue, he was already walking towards the bedroom. Then, she leapt in front of the door, shouting, ‘You’re not going in… I am in my own home here, and I forbid you to go in!’
Quivering, seeming taller than usual, she blocked the door. For a moment they stood there, motionless, without a word, staring straight into each other’s eyes. He, his neck straining, his hands outstretched, was about to throw himself on her and force his way past.
‘Get out of my way,’ he murmured hoarsely. ‘I’m stronger than you, I’ll get in whether you like it or not.’
‘No you won’t, I won’t let you.’
Frenziedly he repeated, ‘There’s a man in there, there’s a man in there…’
She, not even deigning to deny his accusation, shrugged. Then, as he took another step forward: ‘All right! Say there is a man in there, what’s it got to do with you? Aren’t I free?’
He recoiled at that word which stung him like a slap in the face. She was indeed free. A cold chill took him by the shoulders, he felt clearly that she had the superior role and that he was playing the part of a sick and illogical child. He wasn’t observing the treaty, his stupid passion was making him hateful. Why hadn’t he stayed in his study, working? The blood drained from his cheeks, his face turned the dark ashen hue of unspeakable suffering. When Flavie noticed the depth of his emotion, she moved away from the door, while her eyes grew softer and more tender.
‘See,’ she said simply.
And she herself went into the room, holding a lamp, while Nantas remained in the doorway. He had gestured to her, saying it was useless, that he didn’t want to see. But she was now the one to insist. As she came up to the bed, she lifted the curtains, and M. des Fondettes appeared, hiding behind them. She was so stupefied by this that she cried out in horror.
‘It’s true,’ she stammered, distraught, ‘it’s true, this man was here… I didn’t know, oh! on my life I swear it!’
Then, making an effort of will, she calmed down, she even seemed to regret this first instinct which had just driven her to defend herself.
‘You were right, monsieur, and I ask your pardon,’ she said to Nantas, trying to find her usual cold voice.
But meanwhile, M. des Fondettes was feeling ridiculous. He looked a real fool, he would have given a great deal for the husband to lose his temper. But Nantas remained silent. He had simply gone very pale. When he had turned his gaze from M. des Fondettes back to Flavie, he bowed to the latter, uttering this one sentence: ‘Madame, forgive me, you are free.’
And he turned round and walked away. In him, something had just broken; only the machinery of his muscles and bones was still functioning. When he found himself back in his study, he walked straight over to a drawer where he kept a revolver hidden. After examining this weapon, he said aloud, as if making a formal arrangement with himself: ‘Right, that’s enough, I’ll kill myself a little later.’
He turned up the flickering lamp, sat down at his desk and calmly set to work again. Without a hesitation, in the middle of the great silence, he continued the sentence he had started. One by one, methodically, the pages piled up. Two hours later, when Flavie, who had sent M. des Fondettes away, came down barefoot to listen at the study door, she could hear nothing but the faint scratching of pen on paper. Then she bent down and put her eye to the keyhole. Nantas was still writing with the same tranquillity, his face expressed the peace and satisfaction of work, while a ray from the lamp lit up the barrel of the revolver next to him.
5
The house adjacent to the garden of the residence was now the property of Nantas, who had bought it from his father-in-law. On a whim, he had forbidden the narrow garret to be let, the one in which he had spent two months struggling against poverty when he first arrived in Paris. Since making his huge fortune, he had, on several occasions, felt the need to go and shut himself away up there for a few hours. It was there he had suffered, it was there he wanted to triumph. Whenever an obstacle got in his way, he also liked to go there to reflect, to take the great decisions of his life. There he could revert to the person he had been before. And so, faced with the necessity of suicide, it was in this garret that he had resolved to die.
It was only at about eight o’clock in the morning that Nantas had finished his work. Afraid that weariness might make him drowsy, he washed himself with plenty of cold water. Then, he summoned several employees in succession, to give them orders. When his secretary had arrived, he talked things over with him: the secretary was to take the draft budget straight away to the Tuileries, and provide certain explanations if the Emperor were to raise further objections. After that, Nantas thought he had done enough. He was leaving everything in good order, he would not be departing like a bankrupt man in a fit of frenzy. He was master of himself, in the final tally, he could do what he wanted with himself, without being accused of egoism and cowardice.
Nine o’clock struck. It was time. But, as he was about to leave his study, taking the revolver with him, he had one last bitter draught to drain. Mlle Chuin turned up to claim the ten thousand francs he had promised her. He paid her, and had to endure her familiarity. She adopted a maternal tone, treating him rather as if he were a successful pupil. If he had still been hesitating, this shameful complicity would have made him resolve on suicide. He went swiftly upstairs and, in his haste, left the key in the door.
Nothing had changed. The wallpaper was still torn in the same places, the bed, the table, and the chair were still there, with their old smell of poverty. For a moment he breathed in that air which reminded him of his struggles of former times. Then, he went across to the window and had the same vista over Paris, the trees of the residence, the Seine, the river-banks, a whole stretch of the right bank, along which the torrent of houses unfurled, rising and then fading away into the distance where the Père Lachaise cemetery lay.
The revolver was on the rickety table, within reach. Now he was no longer in such a hurry, he was certain that no one would come and he would be able to kill himself as and when he wanted. He grew reflective, and told himself that he was at the same point as once long ago – he had been brought back to the same place, with the same desire to kill himself. One evening, once already, right here, he had wanted to dash his brains out; he was too poor then to afford a pistol, he had only the cobbled street, but death was waiting for him down there just the same. And so, in life, only death never deceived you, showing itself ever ready and ever reliable. Death was the only thing he could count on, however hard he had looked, everything else had continually crumbled away beneath him, death alone remained a certainty. And he was filled with regret at having lived ten years too long. The experience he had had of life, on his upward path to fortune and power, seemed to him puerile. What was the use of that expenditure of will-power, what was the use of all that strength he had developed, since,
obviously, will and strength were not everything? It had taken just a single passion to destroy him, he had stupidly fallen in love with Flavie, and the monument he was erecting started to crack, and came tumbling down like a house of cards, blown over by the breath of a child. It was a wretched situation, it was like the punishment of a schoolboy stealing fruit, discovering that the branch is breaking beneath him, and dying for his crime by the same means he had used to commit it. Life was absurd, superior men came to the same banal end as idiots.
Nantas had picked the revolver up from the table and started slowly to load it. One last regret made him soften for a second, at this supreme moment. How many great things he would have achieved if Flavie had understood him! The day she flung her arms about his neck, telling him, ‘I love you!’, would be the day he found a lever to move the world. And his final thought was one of great disdain for strength, since strength, which was supposed to give him everything, had not given him Flavie.
He lifted his weapon. It was a splendid morning. Through the wide-open window the sun shone in, spreading a sense of youthful awakening through the garret. In the distance, Paris was settling down to the labours of a gigantic city. Nantas pressed the barrel of the pistol to his temple.
But the door had been flung violently open, and Flavie entered. She swiftly turned aside the shot, the bullet lodged in the ceiling. The two gazed at each other. She was so out of breath, so choked, that she could not speak. Finally, addressing Nantas with familiarity and affection for the very first time, she came out with the words he was waiting for, the only ones capable of persuading him to live: ‘I love you!’ she cried, flinging her arms round his neck, sobbing, and wresting this confession from her broken pride, from her entire being, vanquished at last, ‘I love you because you’re strong!’
Fasting
1
When the curate went up into the pulpit, wearing his broad surplice – angelic in its whiteness – the little Baroness was sitting blissfully in her customary place, near a hot-air vent, next to the chapel of the Holy Angels.
After the usual moment of recollection, the curate delicately passed a fine cambric handkerchief over his lips; then, he opened his arms, like a seraph about to take flight, bent his head, and spoke. His voice was at first, in the vast nave, like a distant murmur of running water, like the amorous plaint of the wind amid the foliage. And, little by little, the low sounds grew louder, the breeze turned into a tempest, the voice rolled round the vaults with the majestic rumble of thunder. But now and again, even in the midst of his most formidable thunderbolts, the curate’s voice would keep growing suddenly gentle, shedding a clear ray of sunlight across the dark hurricane of his eloquence.
The little Baroness, at the sound of the first whisperings amid the leaves, had adopted the greedy, spellbound posture of someone with a delicate sense of hearing preparing to savour all the subtleties of a well-loved symphony. She appeared ravished by the exquisite softness of the musical phrases at the beginning; then she followed, with the attention of a connoisseur, the swelling voice and the way the final storm broke out, so cunningly contrived; and when the voice had risen to its maximum volume, when its thunder was magnified by the echoes of the nave, the little Baroness was unable to repress a discreet bravo, nodding her head with satisfaction.
At that moment she was flooded with a heavenly ecstasy. All the devout ladies were swooning.
2
But the curate had something to say, too; his music was there as an accompaniment to his words. He was giving a sermon on fasting, he was saying how pleasing to God were the mortifications of the creature. Leaning against the edge of the pulpit, in the posture of a great white bird, he was sighing: ‘The hour has come, my brothers and sisters, in which we must all, like Jesus, carry our cross, crown ourselves with thorns, climb up to our calvary, barefoot among the rocks and brambles.’
The little Baroness doubtless found the phrase smoothly moulded, for she blinked gently as if her heart-strings had been tickled. Then, as the curate’s symphony lulled her, while she continued to follow the melodic phrases, she let herself drift into a half-dreaming state filled with intimate voluptuousness.
Opposite her, she could see one of the tall chancel windows, grey with fog. It was evidently still raining. The poor girl had braved some dreadful weather to come to the sermon. You have to suffer a bit for your religion. Her coachman had got thoroughly drenched, and she herself, as she jumped down onto the cobbles, had got her toes slightly wet. Her coupé, it was true, was excellent, sealed and padded like an alcove. But it’s so sad to see, through the streaming windows, a line of umbrellas scurrying along every pavement! And she reflected that if the weather had been fine, she would have been able to come in a victoria. That would have been much jollier.
Basically, her main worry was that the curate might dispatch his sermon too quickly. Then she’d have to wait for her carriage, for she would certainly not put up with splashing about in weather like this. And she calculated that, at his present rate, the curate would never have enough voice to keep going for two hours; her coachman would arrive too late. This anxiety somewhat spoilt her pious raptures.
3
The curate, with sudden outbursts of wrath that made him stand upright, his hair unkempt, clenching his fists, like a man in prey to the spirit of vengeance, was threatening:
‘And above all, woe unto you, sinful women, if you do not shed on the feet of Jesus Christ the perfume of your remorse, the sweet-smelling balm of your repentance. Believe what I am telling you – tremble, and fall to your knees on the stones. Only if you come to seclude yourselves in the purgatory of penitence, thrown open by the Church during these days of universal contrition; only if you wear away the stone slabs beneath brows made pale by fasting, and sink into the anguish of hunger and cold, of silence and night, will you deserve divine forgiveness, on the glorious day of victory!’
The little Baroness, startled out of her preoccupations by this terrible explosion, slowly and gently nodded her head, as if she entirely agreed with the wrathful curate. You had to take birch rods, withdraw to some really dark, damp, ice-cold corner, and there lash yourself; there was no doubt about it, she thought.
Then she drifted back into her daydreams; she became absorbed in a deep sense of well-being, of yielding ecstasy. She was sitting comfortably on a low broad-backed chair, and under her feet she had an embroidered cushion, which stopped her feeling the cold from the stone slab. Half reclining, she took pleasure in the church, that great vessel in which wisps of incense were floating and whose mysterious, shadowy depths were filled with adorable visions. The nave, with its red velvet hangings, its gold and marble decorations, its atmosphere of a huge boudoir full of disturbing fragrances, lit by the gentle gleam of night-lights, closeted and seemingly ready to be the scene of superhuman love, had little by little enveloped her in the magic of its solemnity. It was a feast for her senses. Her plump, pretty body abandoned itself, stroked, cradled, caressed. And her pleasure came, above all, from feeling herself so small in such a great beatitude.
But, without her being aware of it, what was really tickling her so deliciously was the warm breath of the hot-air vent open almost right under her skirts. The little Baroness was really sensitive to the cold. The air vent discreetly breathed its hot caresses from top to bottom of her silk stockings. She started to drowse, bathing in this soft smooth warmth.
4
The curate was still waxing wrathful. He was plunging all the devout ladies present into the boiling oil of hell.
‘If you do not heed the voice of God, if you do not heed my voice which is that of God himself, verily I say unto you, one day you will hear your bones cracking with anguish, you will feel your flesh splitting open over burning coals, and then it will be in vain that you will cry, “Have pity, Lord, have pity, I repent!” God will be merciless, and with his foot he will spurn you deep into the pit of hell!’
At this last sally there was a shudder in the audience. The little
Baroness, who was definitely being lulled into somnolence by the hot air playing around her skirts, smiled vacantly. Our little Baroness was well acquainted with the curate. The evening before, he had dined at her house. He loved salmon pâté with truffles, and Pommard was his favourite wine. He was, to be sure, a handsome man, thirty-five to forty years old, with brown hair, and a face so round and pink that you could easily have mistaken his priestly countenance for the merry face of a servant-girl on a farm. What’s more, he was a man of the world, a hearty eater with a ready tongue. Women adored him, the Baroness was crazy about him. He would tell her in such adorably honeyed tones: ‘Ah, madame, dressed in your finery like that, you’re enough to damn a saint!’
And the dear man didn’t get himself damned. He would run round to the countess and the Marquise and his other penitent magdalens and spout the same gallantries, which made him the spoiled child of all those ladies.
When he went to dine at the little Baroness’ on Thursdays, she would fuss over him as a dear creature who might catch cold at the slightest draught, and who would infallibly get indigestion if a morsel of his food wasn’t just right. In the salon, his armchair was placed right next to the fireplace; at table, the servers had been given orders to keep particular watch over his plate, to pour out for him alone a certain twelve-year-old Pommard, which he drank eyes closed with fervour, as if taking communion.