He was tired of these things, and of restaurants at thirty-two sous, of travelling in omnibuses, of enduring want and making futile efforts. He took up the papers again; there were others near them. They were prospectuses of the coal-mining company, with a list of the mines and the particulars as to their contents, Frederick having left all these matters in his hands in order to have his opinion about them.
An idea occurred to him—that of presenting himself at M. Dambreuse's house and applying for the post of secretary. This post, it was perfectly certain, could not be obtained without purchasing a certain number of shares. He recognised the folly of his project, and said to himself:[48]
"Oh! no, that would be a wrong step."
Then he ransacked his brains to think of the best way in which he could set about recovering the fifteen thousand francs. Such a sum was a mere trifle to Frederick. But, if he had it, what a lever it would be in his hands! And the ex-law-clerk was indignant at the other being so well off.
"He makes a pitiful use of it. He is a selfish fellow. Ah! what do I care for his fifteen thousand francs!"
Why had he lent the money? For the sake of Madame Arnoux's bright eyes. She was his mistress! Deslauriers had no doubt about it. "There was another way in which money was useful!"
And he was assailed by malignant thoughts.
Then he allowed his thoughts to dwell even on Frederick's personal appearance. It had always exercised over him an almost feminine charm; and he soon came to admire it for a success which he realised that he was himself incapable of achieving.
"Nevertheless, was not the will the main element in every enterprise? and, since by its means we may triumph over everything——"
"Ha! that would be funny!"
But he felt ashamed of such treachery, and the next moment:
"Pooh! I am afraid?"
Madame Arnoux—from having heard her spoken about so often—had come to be depicted in his imagination as something extraordinary. The persistency of this passion had irritated him like a problem. Her austerity, which seemed a little theatrical, now annoyed him. Besides, the woman of the world—or, rather, his own conception of her—dazzled the[49] advocate as a symbol and the epitome of a thousand pleasures. Poor though he was, he hankered after luxury in its more glittering form.
"After all, even though he should get angry, so much the worse! He has behaved too badly to me to call for any anxiety about him on my part! I have no assurance that she is his mistress! He has denied it. So then I am free to act as I please!"
He could no longer abandon the desire of taking this step. He wished to make a trial of his own strength, so that one day, all of a sudden, he polished his boots himself, bought white gloves, and set forth on his way, substituting himself for Frederick, and almost imagining that he was the other by a singular intellectual evolution, in which there was, at the same time, vengeance and sympathy, imitation and audacity.
He announced himself as "Doctor Deslauriers."
Madame Arnoux was surprised, as she had not sent for any physician.
"Ha! a thousand apologies!—'tis a doctor of law! I have come in Monsieur Moreau's interest."
This name appeared to produce a disquieting effect on her mind.
"So much the better!" thought the ex-law-clerk.
"Since she has a liking for him, she will like me, too!" buoying up his courage with the accepted idea that it is easier to supplant a lover than a husband.
He referred to the fact that he had the pleasure of meeting her on one occasion at the law-courts; he even mentioned the date. This remarkable power of memory astonished Madame Arnoux. He went on in a tone of mild affectation:
"You have already found your affairs a little embarrassing?"[50]
She made no reply.
"Then it must be true."
He began to chat about one thing or another, about her house, about the works; then, noticing some medallions at the sides of the mirror:
"Ha! family portraits, no doubt?"
He remarked that of an old lady, Madame Arnoux's mother.
"She has the appearance of an excellent woman, a southern type."
And, on being met with the objection that she was from Chartres:
"Chartres! pretty town!"
He praised its cathedral and public buildings, and coming back to the portrait, traced resemblances between it and Madame Arnoux, and cast flatteries at her indirectly. She did not appear to be offended at this. He took confidence, and said that he had known Arnoux a long time.
"He is a fine fellow, but one who compromises himself. Take this mortgage, for example—one can't imagine such a reckless act——"
"Yes, I know," said she, shrugging her shoulders.
This involuntary evidence of contempt induced Deslauriers to continue. "That kaolin business of his was near turning out very badly, a thing you may not be aware of, and even his reputation——"
A contraction of the brows made him pause.
Then, falling back on generalities, he expressed his pity for the "poor women whose husbands frittered away their means."
"But in this case, monsieur, the means belong to him. As for me, I have nothing!"[51]
No matter, one never knows. A woman of experience might be useful. He made offers of devotion, exalted his own merits; and he looked into her face through his shining spectacles.
She was seized with a vague torpor; but suddenly said:
"Let us look into the matter, I beg of you."
He exhibited the bundle of papers.
"This is Frederick's letter of attorney. With such a document in the hands of a process-server, who would make out an order, nothing could be easier; in twenty-four hours——" (She remained impassive; he changed his manœuvre.)
"As for me, however, I don't understand what impels him to demand this sum, for, in fact, he doesn't want it."
"How is that? Monsieur Moreau has shown himself so kind."
"Oh! granted!"
And Deslauriers began by eulogising him, then in a mild fashion disparaged him, giving it out that he was a forgetful individual, and over-fond of money.
"I thought he was your friend, monsieur?"
"That does not prevent me from seeing his defects. Thus, he showed very little recognition of—how shall I put it?—the sympathy——"
Madame Arnoux was turning over the leaves of a large manuscript book.
She interrupted him in order to get him to explain a certain word.
He bent over her shoulder, and his face came so close to hers that he grazed her cheek. She blushed. This heightened colour inflamed Deslauriers, he hungrily kissed her head.[52]
"What are you doing, Monsieur?" And, standing up against the wall, she compelled him to remain perfectly quiet under the glance of her large blue eyes glowing with anger.
"Listen to me! I love you!"
She broke into a laugh, a shrill, discouraging laugh. Deslauriers felt himself suffocating with anger. He restrained his feelings, and, with the look of a vanquished person imploring mercy:
"Ha! you are wrong! As for me, I would not go like him."
"Of whom, pray, are you talking?"
"Of Frederick."
"Ah! Monsieur Moreau troubles me little. I told you that!"
"Oh! forgive me! forgive me!" Then, drawling his words, in a sarcastic tone:
"I even imagined that you were sufficiently interested in him personally to learn with pleasure——"
She became quite pale. The ex-law-clerk added:
"He is going to be married."
"He!"
"In a month at latest, to Mademoiselle Roque, the daughter of M. Dambreuse's agent. He has even gone down to Nogent for no other purpose but that."
She placed her hand over her heart, as if at the shock of a great blow; but immediately she rang the bell. Deslauriers did not wait to be ordered to leave. When she turned round he had disappeared.
Madame Arnoux was gasping a little with the strain of her emotions. She drew ne
ar the window to get a breath of air.
On the other side of the street, on the footpath, a packer in his shirt-sleeves was nailing down a[53] trunk. Hackney-coaches passed. She closed the window-blinds and then came and sat down. As the high houses in the vicinity intercepted the sun's rays, the light of day stole coldly into the apartment. Her children had gone out; there was not a stir around her. It seemed as if she were utterly deserted.
"He is going to be married! Is it possible?"
And she was seized with a fit of nervous trembling.
"Why is this? Does it mean that I love him?"
Then all of a sudden:
"Why, yes; I love him—I love him!"
It seemed to her as if she were sinking into endless depths. The clock struck three. She listened to the vibrations of the sounds as they died away. And she remained on the edge of the armchair, with her eyeballs fixed and an unchanging smile on her face.
The same afternoon, at the same moment, Frederick and Mademoiselle Louise were walking in the garden belonging to M. Roque at the end of the island.
Old Catherine was watching them, some distance away. They were walking side by side and Frederick said:
"You remember when I brought you into the country?"
"How good you were to me!" she replied. "You assisted me in making sand-pies, in filling my watering-pot, and in rocking me in the swing!"
"All your dolls, who had the names of queens and marchionesses—what has become of them?"
"Really, I don't know!"
"And your pug Moricaud?"[54]
"He's drowned, poor darling!"
"And the Don Quixote of which we coloured the engravings together?"
"I have it still!"
He recalled to her mind the day of her first communion, and how pretty she had been at vespers, with her white veil and her large wax-taper, whilst the girls were all taking their places in a row around the choir, and the bell was tinkling.
These memories, no doubt, had little charm for Mademoiselle Roque. She had not a word to say; and, a minute later:
"Naughty fellow! never to have written a line to me, even once!"
Frederick urged by way of excuse his numerous occupations.
"What, then, are you doing?"
He was embarrassed by the question; then he told her that he was studying politics.
"Ha!"
And without questioning him further:
"That gives you occupation; while as for me——!"
Then she spoke to him about the barrenness of her existence, as there was nobody she could go to see, and nothing to amuse her or distract her thoughts. She wished to go on horseback.
"The vicar maintains that this is improper for a young lady! How stupid these proprieties are! Long ago they allowed me to do whatever I pleased; now, they won't let me do anything!"
"Your father, however, is fond of you!"
"Yes; but——"
She heaved a sigh, which meant: "That is not enough to make me happy."[55]
Then there was silence. They heard only the noise made by their boots in the sand, together with the murmur of falling water; for the Seine, above Nogent, is cut into two arms. That which turns the mills discharges in this place the superabundance of its waves in order to unite further down with the natural course of the stream; and a person coming from the bridge could see at the right, on the other bank of the river, a grassy slope on which a white house looked down. At the left, in the meadow, a row of poplar-trees extended, and the horizon in front was bounded by a curve of the river. It was flat, like a mirror. Large insects hovered over the noiseless water. Tufts of reeds and rushes bordered it unevenly; all kinds of plants which happened to spring up there bloomed out in buttercups, caused yellow clusters to hang down, raised trees in distaff-shape with amaranth-blossoms, and made green rockets spring up at random. In an inlet of the river white water-lilies displayed themselves; and a row of ancient willows, in which wolf-traps were hidden, formed, on that side of the island, the sole protection of the garden.
In the interior, on this side, four walls with a slate coping enclosed the kitchen-garden, in which the square patches, recently dug up, looked like brown plates. The bell-glasses of the melons shone in a row on the narrow hotbed. The artichokes, the kidney-beans, the spinach, the carrots and the tomatoes succeeded each other till one reached a background where asparagus grew in such a fashion that it resembled a little wood of feathers.
All this piece of land had been under the Directory what is called "a folly." The trees had, since[56] then, grown enormously. Clematis obstructed the hornbeams, the walks were covered with moss, brambles abounded on every side. Fragments of statues let their plaster crumble in the grass. The feet of anyone walking through the place got entangled in iron-wire work. There now remained of the pavilion only two apartments on the ground floor, with some blue paper hanging in shreds. Before the façade extended an arbour in the Italian style, in which a vine-tree was supported on columns of brick by a rail-work of sticks.
Soon they arrived at this spot; and, as the light fell through the irregular gaps on the green herbage, Frederick, turning his head on one side to speak to Louise, noticed the shadow of the leaves on her face.
She had in her red hair, stuck in her chignon, a needle, terminated by a glass bell in imitation of emerald, and, in spite of her mourning, she wore (so artless was her bad taste) straw slippers trimmed with pink satin—a vulgar curiosity probably bought at some fair.
He remarked this, and ironically congratulated her.
"Don't be laughing at me!" she replied.
Then surveying him altogether, from his grey felt hat to his silk stockings:
"What an exquisite you are!"
After this, she asked him to mention some works which she could read. He gave her the names of several; and she said:
"Oh! how learned you are!"
While yet very small, she had been smitten with one of those childish passions which have, at the same time, the purity of a religion and the violence of a natural instinct. He had been her comrade, her[57] brother, her master, had diverted her mind, made her heart beat more quickly, and, without any desire for such a result, had poured out into the very depths of her being a latent and continuous intoxication. Then he had parted with her at the moment of a tragic crisis in her existence, when her mother had only just died, and these two separations had been mingled together. Absence had idealised him in her memory. He had come back with a sort of halo round his head; and she gave herself up ingenuously to the feelings of bliss she experienced at seeing him once more.
For the first time in his life Frederick felt himself beloved; and this new pleasure, which did not transcend the ordinary run of agreeable sensations, made his breast swell with so much emotion that he spread out his two arms while he flung back his head.
A large cloud passed across the sky.
"It is going towards Paris," said Louise. "You'd like to follow it—wouldn't you?"
"I! Why?"
"Who knows?"
And surveying him with a sharp look:
"Perhaps you have there" (she searched her mind for the appropriate phrase) "something to engage your affections."
"Oh! I have nothing to engage my affections there."
"Are you perfectly certain?"
"Why, yes, Mademoiselle, perfectly certain!"
In less than a year there had taken place in the young girl an extraordinary transformation, which astonished Frederick. After a minute's silence he added:
"We ought to 'thee' and 'thou' each other, as we used to do long ago—shall we do so?"[58]
"No."
"Why?"
"Because——"
He persisted. She answered, with downcast face:
"I dare not!"
They had reached the end of the garden, which was close to the shell-bank. Frederick, in a spirit of boyish fun, began to send pebbles skimming over the water. She bade him sit down. He obeyed; then, looking at the waterfall
:
"'Tis like Niagara!" He began talking about distant countries and long voyages. The idea of making some herself exercised a fascination over her mind. She would not have been afraid either of tempests or of lions.
Seated close beside each other, they collected in front of them handfuls of sand, then, while they were chatting, they let it slip through their fingers, and the hot wind, which rose from the plains, carried to them in puffs odours of lavender, together with the smell of tar escaping from a boat behind the lock. The sun's rays fell on the cascade. The greenish blocks of stone in the little wall over which the water slipped looked as if they were covered with a silver gauze that was perpetually rolling itself out. A long strip of foam gushed forth at the foot with a harmonious murmur. Then it bubbled up, forming whirlpools and a thousand opposing currents, which ended by intermingling in a single limpid stream of water.
Louise said in a musing tone that she envied the existence of fishes:
"It must be so delightful to tumble about down there at your ease, and to feel yourself caressed on every side."
She shivered with sensuously enticing movements;[59] but a voice exclaimed:
"Where are you?"
"Your maid is calling you," said Frederick.
"All right! all right!" Louise did not disturb herself.
"She will be angry," he suggested.
"It is all the same to me! and besides——" Mademoiselle Roque gave him to understand by a gesture that the girl was entirely subject to her will.
She arose, however, and then complained of a headache. And, as they were passing in front of a large cart-shed containing some faggots:
"Suppose we sat down there, under shelter?"
He pretended not to understand this dialectic expression, and even teased her about her accent. Gradually the corners of her mouth were compressed, she bit her lips; she stepped aside in order to sulk.
Frederick came over to her, swore he did not mean to annoy her, and that he was very fond of her.
"Is that true?" she exclaimed, looking at him with a smile which lighted up her entire face, smeared over a little with patches of bran.
He could not resist the sentiment of gallantry which was aroused in him by her fresh youthfulness, and he replied: