"Is Arnoux there?"
The chambermaid answered:
"No; but come in all the same."
And, abruptly opening a door:
"Madame, it is Monsieur Moreau!"
She arose, whiter than the collar round her neck.
"To what do I owe the honour—of a visit—so unexpected?"
"Nothing. The pleasure of seeing old friends once more."
And as he took a seat:
"How is the worthy Arnoux going on?"
"Very well. He has gone out."
"Ah, I understand! still following his old nightly practices. A little distraction!"[219]
"And why not? After a day spent in making calculations, the head needs a rest."
She even praised her husband as a hard-working man. Frederick was irritated at hearing this eulogy; and pointing towards a piece of black cloth with a narrow blue braid which lay on her lap:
"What is it you are doing there?"
"A jacket which I am trimming for my daughter."
"Now that you remind me of it, I have not seen her. Where is she, pray?"
"At a boarding-school," was Madame Arnoux's reply.
Tears came into her eyes. She held them back, while she rapidly plied her needle. To keep himself in countenance, he took up a number of L'Illustration which had been lying on the table close to where she sat.
"These caricatures of Cham are very funny, are they not?"
"Yes."
Then they relapsed into silence once more.
All of a sudden, a fierce gust of wind shook the window-panes.
"What weather!" said Frederick.
"It was very good of you, indeed, to come here in the midst of this dreadful rain."
"Oh! what do I care about that? I'm not like those whom it prevents, no doubt, from going to keep their appointments."
"What appointments?" she asked with an ingenuous air.
"Don't you remember?"
A shudder ran through her frame and she hung down her head.[220]
He gently laid his hand on her arm.
"I assure you that you have given me great pain."
She replied, with a sort of wail in her voice:
"But I was frightened about my child."
She told him about Eugène's illness, and all the tortures which she had endured on that day.
"Thanks! thanks! I doubt you no longer. I love you as much as ever."
"Ah! no; it is not true!"
"Why so?"
She glanced at him coldly.
"You forget the other! the one you took with you to the races! the woman whose portrait you have—your mistress!"
"Well, yes!" exclaimed Frederick, "I don't deny anything! I am a wretch! Just listen to me!"
If he had done this, it was through despair, as one commits suicide. However, he had made her very unhappy in order to avenge himself on her with his own shame.
"What mental anguish! Do you not realise what it means?"
Madame Arnoux turned away her beautiful face while she held out her hand to him; and they closed their eyes, absorbed in a kind of intoxication that was like a sweet, ceaseless rocking. Then they stood face to face, gazing at one another.
"Could you believe it possible that I no longer loved you?"
She replied in a low voice, full of caressing tenderness:
"No! in spite of everything, I felt at the bottom of my heart that it was impossible, and that one day the obstacle between us two would disappear!"[221]
"So did I; and I was dying to see you again."
"I once passed close to you in the Palais-Royal!"
"Did you really?"
And he spoke to her of the happiness he experienced at coming across her again at the Dambreuses' house.
"But how I hated you that evening as I was leaving the place!"
"Poor boy!"
"My life is so sad!"
"And mine, too! If it were only the vexations, the anxieties, the humiliations, all that I endure as wife and as mother, seeing that one must die, I would not complain; the frightful part of it is my solitude, without anyone."
"But you have me here with you!"
"Oh! yes!"
A sob of deep emotion made her bosom swell. She spread out her arms, and they strained one another, while their lips met in a long kiss.
A creaking sound on the floor not far from them reached their ears. There was a woman standing close to them; it was Rosanette. Madame Arnoux had recognised her. Her eyes, opened to their widest, scanned this woman, full of astonishment and indignation. At length Rosanette said to her:
"I have come to see Monsieur Arnoux about a matter of business."
"You see he is not here."
"Ah! that's true," returned the Maréchale. "Your nurse is right! A thousand apologies!"
And turning towards Frederick:
"So here you are—you?"
The familiar tone in which she addressed him, and[222] in her own presence, too, made Madame Arnoux flush as if she had received a slap right across the face.
"I tell you again, he is not here!"
Then the Maréchale, who was looking this way and that, said quietly:
"Let us go back together! I have a cab waiting below."
He pretended not to hear.
"Come! let us go!"
"Ah! yes! this is a good opportunity! Go! go!" said Madame Arnoux.
They went off together, and she stooped over the head of the stairs in order to see them once more, and a laugh—piercing, heart-rending, reached them from the place where she stood. Frederick pushed Rosanette into the cab, sat down opposite her, and during the entire drive did not utter a word.
The infamy, which it outraged him to see once more flowing back on him, had been brought about by himself alone. He experienced at the same time the dishonour of a crushing humiliation and the regret caused by the loss of his new-found happiness. Just when, at last, he had it in his grasp, it had for ever more become impossible, and that through the fault of this girl of the town, this harlot. He would have liked to strangle her. He was choking with rage. When they had got into the house he flung his hat on a piece of furniture and tore off his cravat.
"Ha! you have just done a nice thing—confess it!"
She planted herself boldly in front of him.
"Ah! well, what of that? Where's the harm?"
"What! You are playing the spy on me?"
"Is that my fault? Why do you go to amuse yourself with virtuous women?"[223]
"Never mind! I don't wish you to insult them."
"How have I insulted them?"
He had no answer to make to this, and in a more spiteful tone:
"But on the other occasion, at the Champ de Mars——"
"Ah! you bore us to death with your old women!"
"Wretch!"
He raised his fist.
"Don't kill me! I'm pregnant!"
Frederick staggered back.
"You are lying!"
"Why, just look at me!"
She seized a candlestick, and pointing at her face:
"Don't you recognise the fact there?"
Little yellow spots dotted her skin, which was strangely swollen. Frederick did not deny the evidence. He went to the window, and opened it, took a few steps up and down the room, and then sank into an armchair.
This event was a calamity which, in the first place, put off their rupture, and, in the next place, upset all his plans. The notion of being a father, moreover, appeared to him grotesque, inadmissible. But why? If, in place of the Maréchale——And his reverie became so deep that he had a kind of hallucination. He saw there, on the carpet, in front of the chimney-piece, a little girl. She resembled Madame Arnoux and himself a little—dark, and yet fair, with two black eyes, very large eyebrows, and a red ribbon in her curling hair. (Oh, how he would have loved her!) And he seemed to hear her voice saying: "Papa! papa!"[224]
Rosanette, who had just undressed herself, came across to him, and noticing a
tear in his eyelids, kissed him gravely on the forehead.
He arose, saying:
"By Jove, we mustn't kill this little one!"
Then she talked a lot of nonsense. To be sure, it would be a boy, and its name would be Frederick. It would be necessary for her to begin making its clothes; and, seeing her so happy, a feeling of pity for her took possession of him. As he no longer cherished any anger against her, he desired to know the explanation of the step she had recently taken. She said it was because Mademoiselle Vatnaz had sent her that day a bill which had been protested for some time past; and so she hastened to Arnoux to get the money from him.
"I'd have given it to you!" said Frederick.
"It is a simpler course for me to get over there what belongs to me, and to pay back to the other one her thousand francs."
"Is this really all you owe her?"
She answered:
"Certainly!"
On the following day, at nine o'clock in the evening (the hour specified by the doorkeeper), Frederick repaired to Mademoiselle Vatnaz's residence.
In the anteroom, he jostled against the furniture, which was heaped together. But the sound of voices and of music guided him. He opened a door, and tumbled into the middle of a rout. Standing up before a piano, which a young lady in spectacles was fingering, Delmar, as serious as a pontiff, was declaiming a humanitarian poem on prostitution; and his hollow voice rolled to the accompaniment of the[225] metallic chords. A row of women sat close to the wall, attired, as a rule, in dark colours without neck-bands or sleeves. Five or six men, all people of culture, occupied seats here and there. In an armchair was seated a former writer of fables, a mere wreck now; and the pungent odour of the two lamps was intermingled with the aroma of the chocolate which filled a number of bowls placed on the card-table.
Mademoiselle Vatnaz, with an Oriental shawl thrown over her shoulders, sat at one side of the chimney-piece. Dussardier sat facing her at the other side. He seemed to feel himself in an embarrassing position. Besides, he was rather intimidated by his artistic surroundings. Had the Vatnaz, then, broken off with Delmar? Perhaps not. However, she seemed jealous of the worthy shopman; and Frederick, having asked to let him exchange a word with her, she made a sign to him to go with them into her own apartment. When the thousand francs were paid down before her, she asked, in addition, for interest.
"'Tisn't worth while," said Dussardier.
"Pray hold your tongue!"
This want of moral courage on the part of so brave a man was agreeable to Frederick as a justification of his own conduct. He took away the bill with him, and never again referred to the scandal at Madame Arnoux's house. But from that time forth he saw clearly all the defects in the Maréchale's character.
She possessed incurable bad taste, incomprehensible laziness, the ignorance of a savage, so much so that she regarded Doctor Derogis as a person of great celebrity, and she felt proud of entertaining himself and his wife, because they were "married people."[226] She lectured with a pedantic air on the affairs of daily life to Mademoiselle Irma, a poor little creature endowed with a little voice, who had as a protector a gentleman "very well off," an ex-clerk in the Custom-house, who had a rare talent for card tricks. Rosanette used to call him "My big Loulou." Frederick could no longer endure the repetition of her stupid words, such as "Some custard," "To Chaillot," "One could never know," etc.; and she persisted in wiping off the dust in the morning from her trinkets with a pair of old white gloves. He was above all disgusted by her treatment of her servant, whose wages were constantly in arrear, and who even lent her money. On the days when they settled their accounts, they used to wrangle like two fish-women; and then, on becoming reconciled, used to embrace each other. It was a relief to him when Madame Dambreuse's evening parties began again.
There, at any rate, he found something to amuse him. She was well versed in the intrigues of society, the changes of ambassadors, the personal character of dressmakers; and, if commonplaces escaped her lips, they did so in such a becoming fashion, that her language might be regarded as the expression of respect for propriety or of polite irony. It was worth while to watch the way in which, in the midst of twenty persons chatting around her, she would, without overlooking any of them, bring about the answers she desired and avoid those that were dangerous. Things of a very simple nature, when related by her, assumed the aspect of confidences. Her slightest smile gave rise to dreams; in short, her charm, like the exquisite scent which she usually carried about with her, was complex and indefinable.[227]
While he was with her, Frederick experienced on each occasion the pleasure of a new discovery, and, nevertheless, he always found her equally serene the next time they met, like the reflection of limpid waters.
But why was there such coldness in her manner towards her niece? At times she even darted strange looks at her.
As soon as the question of marriage was started, she had urged as an objection to it, when discussing the matter with M. Dambreuse, the state of "the dear child's" health, and had at once taken her off to the baths of Balaruc. On her return fresh pretexts were raised by her—that the young man was not in a good position, that this ardent passion did not appear to be a very serious attachment, and that no risk would be run by waiting. Martinon had replied, when the suggestion was made to him, that he would wait. His conduct was sublime. He lectured Frederick. He did more. He enlightened him as to the best means of pleasing Madame Dambreuse, even giving him to understand that he had ascertained from the niece the sentiments of her aunt.
As for M. Dambreuse, far from exhibiting jealousy, he treated his young friend with the utmost attention, consulted him about different things, and even showed anxiety about his future, so that one day, when they were talking about Père Roque, he whispered with a sly air:
"You have done well."
And Cécile, Miss John, the servants and the porter, every one of them exercised a fascination over him in this house. He came there every evening, quitting Rosanette for that purpose. Her approaching maternity rendered her graver in manner, and[228] even a little melancholy, as if she were tortured by anxieties. To every question put to her she replied:
"You are mistaken; I am quite well."
She had, as a matter of fact, signed five notes in her previous transactions, and not having the courage to tell Frederick after the first had been paid, she had gone back to the abode of Arnoux, who had promised her, in writing, the third part of his profits in the lighting of the towns of Languedoc by gas (a marvellous undertaking!), while requesting her not to make use of this letter at the meeting of shareholders. The meeting was put off from week to week.
Meanwhile the Maréchale wanted money. She would have died sooner than ask Frederick for any. She did not wish to get it from him; it would have spoiled their love. He contributed a great deal to the household expenses; but a little carriage, which he hired by the month, and other sacrifices, which were indispensable since he had begun to visit the Dambreuses, prevented him from doing more for his mistress. On two or three occasions, when he came back to the house at a different hour from his usual time, he fancied he could see men's backs disappearing behind the door, and she often went out without wishing to state where she was going. Frederick did not attempt to enquire minutely into these matters. One of these days he would make up his mind as to his future course of action. He dreamed of another life which would be more amusing and more noble. It was the fact that he had such an ideal before his mind that rendered him indulgent towards the Dambreuse mansion.
It was an establishment in the neighbourhood of the Rue de Poitiers. There he met the great M. A.,[229] the illustrious B., the profound C., the eloquent Z., the immense Y., the old terrors of the Left Centre, the paladins of the Right, the burgraves of the golden mean; the eternal good old men of the comedy. He was astonished at their abominable style of talking, their meannesses, their rancours, their dishonesty—all these personages, after voting for the Constitution, now striving to destroy it; and
they got into a state of great agitation, and launched forth manifestoes, pamphlets, and biographies. Hussonnet's biography of Fumichon was a masterpiece. Nonancourt devoted himself to the work of propagandism in the country districts; M. de Grémonville worked up the clergy; and Martinon brought together the young men of the wealthy class. Each exerted himself according to his resources, including Cisy himself. With his thoughts now all day long absorbed in matters of grave moment, he kept making excursions here and there in a cab in the interests of the party.
M. Dambreuse, like a barometer, constantly gave expression to its latest variation. Lamartine could not be alluded to without eliciting from this gentleman the quotation of a famous phrase of the man of the people: "Enough of poetry!" Cavaignac was, from this time forth, nothing better in his eyes than a traitor. The President, whom he had admired for a period of three months, was beginning to fall off in his esteem (as he did not appear to exhibit the "necessary energy"); and, as he always wanted a savior, his gratitude, since the affair of the Conservatoire, belonged to Changarnier: "Thank God for Changarnier.... Let us place our reliance on Changarnier.... Oh, there's nothing to fear as long as Changarnier——"[230]
M. Thiers was praised, above all, for his volume against Socialism, in which he showed that he was quite as much of a thinker as a writer. There was an immense laugh at Pierre Leroux, who had quoted passages from the philosophers in the Chamber. Jokes were made about the phalansterian tail. The "Market of Ideas" came in for a meed of applause, and its authors were compared to Aristophanes. Frederick patronised the work as well as the rest.
Political verbiage and good living had an enervating effect on his morality. Mediocre in capacity as these persons appeared to him, he felt proud of knowing them, and internally longed for the respectability that attached to a wealthy citizen. A mistress like Madame Dambreuse would give him a position.
He set about taking the necessary steps for achieving that object.
He made it his business to cross her path, did not fail to go and greet her with a bow in her box at the theatre, and, being aware of the hours when she went to church, he would plant himself behind a pillar in a melancholy attitude. There was a continual interchange of little notes between them with regard to curiosities to which they drew each other's attention, preparations for a concert, or the borrowing of books or reviews. In addition to his visit each night, he sometimes made a call just as the day was closing; and he experienced a progressive succession of pleasures in passing through the large front entrance, through the courtyard, through the anteroom, and through the two reception-rooms. Finally, he reached her boudoir, which was as quiet as a tomb, as warm as an alcove, and in which one jostled against the upholstered edging of furniture in the[231] midst of objects of every sort placed here and there—chiffoniers, screens, bowls, and trays made of lacquer, or shell, or ivory, or malachite, expensive trifles, to which fresh additions were frequently made. Amongst single specimens of these rarities might be noticed three Etretat rollers which were used as paper-presses, and a Frisian cap hung from a Chinese folding-screen. Nevertheless, there was a harmony between all these things, and one was even impressed by the noble aspect of the entire place, which was, no doubt, due to the loftiness of the ceiling, the richness of the portières, and the long silk fringes that floated over the gold legs of the stools.