A LIVING LIE
(MENSONGES)
BY
PAUL BOURGET
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
BY
JOHN DE VILLIERS
NEW YORK
R. F. FENNO & COMPANY
112 FIFTH AVENUE
LONDON: CHATTO & WINDUS
CONTENTS
I. A Provincial Corner of Paris
II. Simple Souls
III. A Lover and a Snob
IV. The 'Sigisbée'
V. The Dawn of Love
VI. An Observer's Logic
VII. The Face of a Madonna
VIII. The Other Side of the Picture
IX. An Actress in Real Life
X. In the Toils
XI. Declarations
XII. Cruel to be Kind
XIII. At Home
XIV. Happy Days
XV. Colette's Spite
XVI. The Story of a Suspicion
XVII. Proofs
XVIII. The Happiest of the Four
XIX. All or Nothing
XX. The Abbé Taconet
MY DEAR DE VILLIERS,
In the first place, you must let me thank you for having undertaken the
task of introducing 'Mensonges' to the English-reading public; and also
express the hope that this novel, which is no longer new, may not cause
a recurrence of that misconception which too often arises when a work
written in and for a Latin country is suddenly transplanted to
Anglo-Saxon soil.
One of the most grievous results of such misconception, and one which
French writers--I speak from experience--feel most keenly, is the
reproach of immorality. Balzac spent a lifetime in defending himself
against that charge; so it was with Flaubert; so it is with Emile Zola.
I well remember how hurt I felt myself when, in the course of an action
brought some ten years since against a publishing firm in London--who
had, by the way, issued a translation of the work without my
permission--'Un Crime d'Amour' was harshly spoken of by one of your
judges. Not only then, but on many occasions, have I had an opportunity
of remarking that the English regard the novelist's art from a
standpoint differing entirely from that taken up by French writers. That
difference is well worth dwelling upon here, for the problem it raises
is neither more nor less than the problem of the whole art of
novel-writing.
To French writers--and I refer more particularly to the great school
which follows Balzac and Stendhal--the first quality of that art is
analytical precision. Balzac called himself 'a doctor of social
sciences.' Stendhal-Beyle, when asked his profession, used to reply,
'Observer of the human heart'; and upon the title-page of 'Rouge et
Noir' he wrote as a motto the significant words, 'The truth, the ugly
truth.' Every word of Flaubert's correspondence breathes forth the
conviction that the novelist must always and before all else paint life
as it is. These writers and their disciples do but follow, consciously
or unconsciously, the scientific movement of the age. They are
sociologists and psychologists who write in an imaginative form. The
attitude they usually take up towards the object they are studying is
explained by the fact that, as analysts, they are obliged to assume that
absolute indifference to morality or immorality which should animate
every _savant_ whilst pursuing his investigations.
For them the whole question resolves itself into this: they must look
the bare realities of life full in the face, reproduce them with
absolute fidelity, and reject nothing they find; it should be their aim
to produce a work of truth rather than a work of beauty. That is why
Balzac, for example, did not hesitate, in 'Splendeurs et Misères des
Courtisanes,' and in 'La Cousine Bette,' to lay bare with the brutal
bluntness of a police report the lowest depths of Parisian vice. That,
too, is why Flaubert had no compunction in placing before the readers of
his 'Madame Bovary' the repulsive picture of Emma and Léon meeting in a
house of ill-fame in Rouen. In his conception of imaginative literature
the writer takes no heed of what will please or displease, what will
comfort or afflict, what will affect or disgust. His aim is to add one
document more to the mass of information concerning mankind and society
collected by physiology, psychology, and the history of languages,
creeds, and institutions. The novelist is merely a chronicler of actual
life, and the value of his testimony lies in its truth.
It is easy to see, as I shall presently prove, that these æsthetics are
intimately related to that great principle of intellectual
conscientiousness which, under the name of science, animates the present
age; and this relationship would in itself endow with idealism an art
which has apparently no ideal. But a big objection to these theories has
long been formulated--an objection that seems to spring up most readily
in English minds when confronted with the bold utterances such theories
authorise. The novel, it is said, necessarily appeals to the popular
taste and places its impress upon the imagination of readers who are
totally devoid of the ideal impartiality of those who take up a
scientific standpoint. When such readers dip into a work like
'Splendeurs et Misères' or 'Madame Bovary,' they at once enter into the
very life and spirit with which these books are permeated. The author's
genius, reproducing in vivid colours scenes of questionable morality,
makes them almost real, and to man, naturally imitative, such studies
form a standing danger. If a bad example is contagious in real life,
surely, it is urged, it is none the less so when enhanced by the magic
of a master's style.
I do not think that, in stating the case for the other side I have
weakened their argument. At the first glance, it seems irrefutable. I
think, however, that novelists of the school of Balzac and Flaubert may
justly reply that the morality of a book is something totally distinct
from the danger that its perusal presents. Before deciding whether the
total effect of a certain class of literature is worth the danger it
incurs, it would be necessary to ascertain how far a work has been
properly or improperly understood by all its readers. I, for my part, am
fully convinced that the safety of society is absolutely dependent upon
a true knowledge of human life, and that every work composed in a spirit
of truth is on that account alone conducive of good. If the work
occasionally shocks or offends a reader, it is none the less certain
that it adds to the knowledge of the laws governing the minds and
passions of men. Now, it is impossible to cite an example where the
general conclusions drawn by a novelist of the analytical school have
ever been contrary to the eternal laws set forth in the Decalogue.
Balzac might well have headed the last part of his 'Splendeurs et
Misères' with this prophetic admonition from the Scriptures, _The way
of the ungodly shall perish._ Flaubert could have chosen no better
epigraph for the title-page of 'Madame Bovary' than the Seventh
Commandment; and, if a modest disciple may be permitted to compare
himself with these great masters, and his humble productions with their
superior works, the novel now presented to the English public has its
moral in the words addressed by the Abbé Taconet to Claude Larcher and
in the lesson of social Christianity they teach.
These few remarks are necessary for the comprehension of passages in the
following pages that might be considered crude outside the Parisian
circle in which they were written. When 'Mensonges' was first published,
nearly ten years ago, it was generally admitted that the picture was
very faithfully drawn. On the other hand, it evoked a lively discussion
in the Press concerning the value of the process by which this study had
been produced--in other words, the value of psychological analysis.
Eminent critics reproached me with carrying the dissection of motives
too far, and with too frequently laying bare the exquisitely delicate
fibres of the heart. I well remember that amongst my masters Alexandre
Dumas was most assiduous in warning me of the dangers of my method. 'It
is a very fine thing to show how a watch works,' he would say to me,
'but not if by doing so you prevent it from telling the time.'
That all life is, to a great extent, unconscious is perfectly true, and
a psychological analyst may therefore imperil the beauty of the
particular life he proposes to describe by bringing into undue
prominence and bestowing too much care upon its hidden workings. So far
as I am concerned, I am quite willing to own that in so doing I may have
deserved reproach; but I am persuaded that, if such be the case, the
fault is mine and not that of the method employed. Every work of art, if
critically considered, will be found to contain incongruities which the
genius of the artist must conceal. The drama, for instance, in its use
of dialogue, must compress into a few minutes conversations that would,
in reality, occupy whole hours. It would therefore seem _a priori_ as if
all semblance of truth were in that case impossible. In the same way a
lyric poet, by attempting to express in scholarly rhyme and in verse of
complicated structure the most simple and spontaneous feelings of the
heart, would seem to undertake a most paradoxical, I had almost said an
absurd, task. And yet the dialogue of a Shakespeare or of a Molière has
all the movement and colour of life itself. Heine's _Lieder_ and
Shelley's lyrics are real vibrations of the heart; and, to come back to
the psychological novel, I may surely hold up the works of George Eliot,
Tourguenieff, and Tolstoi in reply to the objection that a too minute
analysis of character and feeling substitutes a dry anatomical study for
the glow and ardour of passion. If 'Mensonges' may not be added to the
list, it can only be because its author has not the necessary skill to
wield what is, after all, a most excellent instrument.
These are a few of the ideas which I beg you to lay before the readers
of the English version of my story in order that their hearts may be
inclined to indulgence before they turn to the work itself. Allow me to
thank you, as well as MM. Chatto and Windus, once more for having
thought this study of Parisian life worthy the distinction of such a
careful and masterly translation as yours.
Believe me,
Yours very faithfully,
PAUL BOURGET.
HYÈRES, _January_ 30, 1896.
A LIVING LIE
CHAPTER I
A PROVINCIAL CORNER OF PARIS
'The gates are closed, sir,' said the driver, bending down from his box.
'Closed at half-past nine!' exclaimed a voice from the interior of the
cab. 'What a place to live in! You needn't trouble to get down. The
pavement's dry--I'll walk.'
The door of the vehicle swung open, and a young man stepped gingerly
out, pulling the collar of his fur-lined coat a little more closely
about his throat. The dainty patent-leather shoes that left just an inch
of the embroidered silk socks visible, the plain black trousers and
opera hat, showed that the wearer was in evening dress. The cab was one
of those superior conveyances that ply for hire outside the Paris clubs,
and the driver, little accustomed to this provincial corner of the city,
began to peer, with almost as much interest as his fare, into the
strange street that, although situated on the borders of the Faubourg
Saint-Germain, had such an old-world look about it. At the time we write
of--the beginning of February, 1879--the Rue Coëtlogon, running from
the Rue d'Assas to the Rue de Rennes, still possessed the peculiarity of
being shut off from the rest of the world by gates, while at night it
was lit up by an oil lamp, hanging, in the old-fashioned way, from a
rope swung right across the roadway. Since then the appearance of the
place has changed a good deal. The mysterious-looking house on the
right, standing in its own bit of garden, and affording no doubt a quiet
retreat to some retiring old dame, has disappeared. The vacant land,
that rendered the Rue Coëtlogon as inaccessible to vehicles on the one
side as did the iron gates on the other, has been cleared of its heaps
of stones. Gas jets have taken the place of the oil lamp, and only a
slight unevenness in the pavement now marks the position of the posts
upon which the gates hung. These were never locked, but only swung to at
night; there was therefore no necessity for the young man to pull the
bell, but before entering the narrow lane he stopped for a few moments
to take in the strange scene presented by the dark outline of the houses
on the left, the garden on the right, a confused mass of unfinished
buildings at the bottom, and the old oil lamp in the middle. Overhead a
bright wintry moon hung in the vast expanse of the heavens, through
which sped a few swift-sailing clouds. As they scudded across the face
of the moon, and flew off into the dark immensity beyond, they seemed
only to enhance the metallic brilliancy of the luminary by the momentary
shadow they cast in sweeping by.
'What a scene it would make for a parting!' murmured the young man,
adding, in a somewhat louder tone:
Until the hour when from the vault above us
Glares down the frowning visage of the moon . . .
Had any observant passer-by happened to hear these two lines from Victor
Hugo he would have recognised a man of letters by the way in which they
were delivered. The solitary speaker bore indeed a name well to the fore
in the literature of the day. But names so quickly disappear and get
forgotten in the incessant onward rush of new works, self-assertive
claims, and fleeting reputations that the successes of ten years ago
seem as distant and as vague as those of another age. Two dramas of
modern life, a little too directly inspired by the younger Dumas, had
brought this young man--he was thirty-five or more, but he looked barely
thirty--momentary renown, and he had not yet spoilt his name by putting
it at the bottom of hastily written articles or upon the covers of
indifferent novels. He was known only as the author of 'La Goule' and
'Entre Adultères,' two plays of unequal merit, full of a pessimism
frequently conventional, but powerful in their trenchant analysis, their
smart dialogue, and their painful striving after the Ideal. In 1879
these plays were already three years old, and Claude Larcher, who had
allowed himself to drift into a life of idle pleasure, was beginning to
accept lucrative and easy work, being no longer fit to make any fresh
and long-sustained effort.
Like many analytical writers, he was accustomed to study and probe
himself incessantly, though all his introspection had not the least
influence upon his actions. The most trifling occurrences served as a
pretext for indulging in examination of himself and his destiny, but
long-continued dualism of this kind only resulted in keeping his
perceptive faculties uselessly and painfully alert. The sight of this
peaceful street and the thought of Victor Hugo immediately reminded him
of the resolutions he had been vainly formulating for some months past
to lead a retired life of regular work. He reflected that he had a novel
on order for a magazine, a play to write that had already been accepted,
and reviews to send to a 'daily,' whilst, instead of being seated at his
table in the Rue de Varenne, here he was gadding about at ten o'clock at
night dressed like an idler and a snob. He would pass the remainder of
the evening and a part of the night at a _soirée_ given by the Comtesse
Komof, a Russian lady of fashion living in Paris, whose receptions at
the grand mansion in the Rue de Bel-Respiro were as magnificent as they
were mixed. He was about to do even worse. He had come to fetch another
writer, ten years younger than himself, who had till that moment led
precisely the noble life of hard work for which he himself so longed, in
one of the houses in this modest and quiet Rue Coëtlogon.
René Vincy--that was the name of his young colleague--had just leapt
with one bound into the full glare of publicity, thanks to one of those
strokes of literary luck which do not occur twice in a generation. The
'Sigisbée,' a comedy in one act and in verse, a fanciful, dreamy work,
written without any hopes of practical success, had brought him sudden
fame. Like our dear François Coppée's 'Le Passant,' it had taken the
_blasé_ capital by storm, and had called forth not only unanimous
applause in the Théâtre Français, but a chorus of praise in the
newspapers next day. Of this astonishing success Claude could claim a
share. Was he not the first in whose hands the manuscript of the
'Sigisbée' had been placed? Had he not taken it to Colette Rigaud, the
famous actress of the House of Molière? And Colette, having fallen in
love with the principal part, had smoothed away all obstacles. It was
he, Claude Larcher, who, consulted by Madame Komof upon the choice of a
play to be performed in her _salon_, had suggested the 'Sigisbée;' the
Comtesse had acted upon his suggestion, and the performance was to take
place that evening. Claude, who had undertaken to chaperon the young
poet, had come at the appointed hour to the Rue Coëtlogon, where René
Vincy lived with his married sister.
This extreme kindness of an already successful author towards a mere
novice was not entirely devoid of a tinge of irony and pride. Claude
Larcher, who spent his time in slandering the wealthy and cosmopolitan
world in which the Comtesse Komof moved, and in which he himself was
always mixing, felt his vanity slightly tickled by being able to dazzle
his friend with the glamour of his fashionable connections. At the same
time the malicious cynic was amused by the simplicity of the poet and by
his childish awe of that magic and meaningless word--Society. He had
already enjoyed, as much as a play, Vincy's shyness during their first
visit to the Comtesse a few days before, and thoughts of the fever of
expectancy in which René must now be made him smile as he approached
the house in which his young friend lived.
'And to think that I was just as foolish as that once!' he murmured,
remembering that he, too, as well as René, had had his _début_; then
he thought, 'That is a feeling of which those who have always lived in
that kind of world have no idea; and how absurd it is for us to go and
visit these people!'
Whilst philosophising in this manner Claude had stopped before another
gate on the left, and, finding it locked, had rung the bell. The passage
to which this gate gave access belonged to a three-storeyed house
separated from the street by a narrow strip of garden. The porter's
lodge was under the arch at the end of the passage, but either the
_concierge_ was absent or the pull at the bell had not been sufficiently
vigorous, for Claude was obliged to tug a second time at the rusty ring
that hung at the end of a long chain. He had time, therefore, to examine
this dull, dismal-looking house, in which there was only one window lit
up. This was on the ground floor, and belonged to the suite of rooms
occupied by the Fresneaus, four windows of which looked out upon the
little garden.
Mademoiselle Emilie Vincy, the poet's sister, had married one Maurice
Fresneau, a teacher, whose colleague Claude had been upon first coming
to Paris--a _début_ of which the pampered author of 'La Goule' was weak
enough to be ashamed. How happy he would have been had he been able to
say that he had frittered away his patrimony at cards or upon women! He,
however, kept up a close acquaintance with his former colleague, out of
gratitude for pecuniary services rendered long ago. He had at first
interested himself in René chiefly for the sake of this old comrade of
less happy days, but had afterwards yielded to the charm of the young
man's nature. How often, when tired of his artificial life and tortured
by painful indolence and bitter passions, had he not come to obtain an
hour's rest in René's modest room, next to that in which the light was
now burning, and which was the dining-room. In the short interval that
elapsed between his two rings, and thanks to the swift imagination of
his artistic mind, this room suddenly rose up before him--symbolical of
the purity of soul hitherto preserved by his friend. The poet and his
sister had with their own hands nailed to the wall some thin red cloth
adorned here and there with a few engravings, chosen with the consummate
taste of a lonely thinker--some studies by Albert Dürer, Gustave
Moreau's 'Hélène' and 'Orphée,' and one or two etchings by Goya. The
iron bedstead, the neatly kept table, the bookcase filled with
well-bound books, the red parquetting of the floor forming a frame to
the carpet in the centre--how Claude had loved this familiar scene, with
these words from the 'Imitatio' written over the door by René in his
boyish days: _Cella continuata dulcescit!_ Larcher's thoughts, at first
ironical, had become suddenly modified by the images his brain had
conjured up, and he felt moved by the idea that this entry into society
through the portals of the Komof mansion was after all a great event for
a child of twenty-five who had always lived in this house. What a heart
full of ideals he was about to carry into that pleasure-loving and
artificial Society that crowded the Comtesse's _salons!_
'What a pity he should have to go!' he exclaimed, his reverie broken by
the click of the lock, adding, as he pushed the gate open, 'But it was I
who advised him to accept the invitation, and who got him dressed for
to-night.' He had, indeed, taken René to his tailor, his hosier, his
bootmaker, and even his hatter, in order to proceed to what he jestingly
called his investiture. 'The dangers of contact with the world ought to
have been thought of before. . . . But how foolish of me to meet
troubles half way! He will be presented to four or five women, he will
be invited to dinner two or three times, he will forget to call again,
he will forget--and he will be forgotten.'
By this time he was half way down the passage, and had knocked at the
first door on the right before coming to the porter's lodge, which it
was not necessary to pass. His knock was answered by a big fat maid of
about thirty, with a short waist, square shoulders, and a great round
face surmounted by a huge Auvergne cap and lit up by two brown eyes
betraying animal simplicity. Instinctive distrust was expressed not only
in the woman's physiognomy, but also by the manner in which she held the
door instead of opening it wide, and by the way she blinked her eyes as
she raised the lamp to throw the light upon the visitor's features. On
recognising Claude her big face expressed a degree of satisfaction that
told plainly how welcome the writer was in the Fresneau household.
'Good evening, Françoise,' said the young man; 'is your master ready?'
'Oh!--it's Monsieur Larcher,' exclaimed the maid, with a joyful smile,
showing all her sharp little white teeth, of which she had lost one on
each side of the top row. 'He is quite ready,' she added, 'and looks
like an angel. You will find _la compagnie_ in the dining-room. Let me
take your coat for you . . . Saints preserve us! My dear gentleman, what
a weight this must be on your back!'
The familiarity of this maid-of-all-work, who had come straight to the
Fresneaus from the professor's native village in Auvergne, and who had
made herself thoroughly at home with them for the past fifteen years,
was a constant source of amusement to Claude Larcher. He was one of
those deep thinkers who worship utter simplicity, no doubt because they
find in it a relief from the incessant and exhaustive labour of their
own brain. Françoise would sometimes speak to him of his works in most
droll and grotesque terms, or with great ingenuousness express the fear
with which she was always haunted--that the author was going to put her
into one of his plays; or, again, she would, after the manner of her
kind, give a most ludicrous turn to some literary phrase she had picked
up in waiting at table. Claude remembered how he had once heard her say,
in praising René's ardour for work: 'He dentifries himself with his
heroes.' He could not help laughing at it even now. She would say
_ceuiller_ for _cuiller_, _engratigner_ for _égratigner_, _archeduc_
for _aqueduc_, to travel in _coquelicot_ for _incognito_, and a heap of
other similar slips which the writer would amuse himself by jotting down
in one of his innumerable notebooks for a novel that he would never
finish. He was therefore as a rule glad to provoke the woman's gossip;
but that evening he was not in a mood for it, being suddenly filled with
melancholy at the idea that he was playing the part of a vulgar worldly
tempter. Whilst Françoise was hanging up his coat for him he looked
down the corridor that he knew so well, with its doors on each side.
René's bedroom was on the right at the end of the passage, facing the
south; the Fresneaus were satisfied with a smaller apartment looking
north, the room next to this being occupied by their son Constant, a boy
six years old, of whom Emilie thought a good deal less than of René.
Claude was fully acquainted with all the reasons for this tender
sisterly love, as he was indeed with the whole history of this family.
It was that history, so touching in its modest simplicity, which amply
justified his remorse in dragging from this peaceful retreat the one in
whom all was centred.
The father of Emilie and René, an attorney of Vouziers, had died a
wretched death from the effects of intemperate habits. The practice
having been sold and what little property there was realised, the widow,
after paying all debts, found herself in possession of about fifty
thousand francs. Feeling that life in Vouziers would recall too many
bitter memories, Madame Vincy went to live in Paris with her two young
children. She had a brother there, the Abbé Taconet, a priest of some
eminence, who, though educated in the Ecole Normale, had suddenly, and
without giving any reasons, entered into holy orders; the astonishment
of his former comrades was, if possible, increased when they saw him,
soon after leaving Saint-Sulpice, set up a school in the Rue Casette. A
conscientious but very liberal Catholic, with strong leanings to
Gallicanism, the Abbé Taconet had seen many families of the upper
middle class hesitate between purely secular and purely religious
colleges, not finding in either that combination of traditional
Christianity and modern development they sought, and he had taken orders
for the express purpose of carrying into effect a plan he had formed for
realising that combination. The height of his ambition was reached on
the day that he and two younger priests opened an ecclesiastical day
school, which he christened the Ecole Saint-André, after his patron
saint. The success that attended the Abbé's enterprise was so rapid
that already, in the third year, two small one-horse omnibuses were
required to fetch the pupils and take them back to their homes.
This opportunity of giving her son, then ten years old, an exceptional
education, was one of the reasons that led Madame Vincy to choose Paris
for her residence, especially since Emilie's sixteen years promised the
mother valuable aid in the discharge of her household duties. By the
advice of the Abbé Taconet, whom the management of the school funds had
made quite a business man, she invested her fifty thousand francs in
Italian stocks, which at that time could be bought at sixty-five francs,
thus securing her an income of two thousand eight hundred francs per
year. The secret of the idolatrous affection which Emilie lavished upon
her young brother lay almost entirely in the innumerable daily
sacrifices entailed by the inadequacy of this amount, for in matters of
love we pursue our sufferings as at cards we pursue our losses.
Almost immediately after her arrival in Paris--she had taken rooms in
this very house in the Rue Coëtlogon, but on the third floor--Madame
Vincy had become an invalid, so that from 1863 to 1871, when the poor
woman died, Emilie had discharged the triple duty of nursing her mother,
of carefully tending a household where fifty centimes meant much, and of
superintending step by step her brother's education. All this, too, she
had done without allowing the fatigue that stole the colour from her
cheeks to wring from her lips a single complaint. She resembled those
sempstresses in the old songs of Paris who consoled themselves in their
rude, incessant toil by cultivating some tender flower upon their window
sill. Her flower was her brother, a timid, loving child with wistful
eyes, and he had well repaid Emilie's devotion by his successes at
college--a source of great joy to women whose lives were so entirely
devoid of all pleasure. It was not long before René began to write
poems, and Emilie had been the happy confidante of the young man's first
attempts. Then, when Fresneau asked her to be his wife, not six months
after the death of her mother, she consented only on condition that the
professor, who had just passed his examinations, would not leave Paris,
and that René was to live with them, and devote himself to writing.
Fresneau joyfully acceded to these demands. He was one of those very
good and very simple men who are peculiarly fitted to be lovers,
granting blindly all that the object of their love desires. He had been
enamoured of Emilie, without daring to declare his passion, since first
making the acquaintance of the Vincys as René's master at the Ecole
Saint-André in 1865. This man, who was not far from forty, felt drawn
towards the girl by the strange similarity of their destinies. Had he
not also renounced all selfish ambition and all personal aspirations in
order to liquidate the debts which his father--a ruined
schoolmaster--had left behind? From 1851 to 1872, when he married, the
professor had paid twenty thousand francs to his father's creditors, and
that by giving lessons at five francs each, taking one with the other!
If we add to the number of working hours that produced this result the
time required for preparing the lessons, correcting exercises, and going
about from one place to another--Fresneau would sometimes have lessons
at all points of the Parisian compass on the same day--we shall have the
sketch of an existence, not uncommon in the profession of teaching, that
is capable of wearing out the strongest constitutions. His love for
Emilie had formed the one romance of Fresneau's life, too occupied as he
had been during his youth to find time for such sentiments. The Abbé
Taconet had given his blessing to their union, and an addition had been
made to the slaves of René's genius.
Claude Larcher was not ignorant of any of these facts, which had all
been of importance in developing the character and talent of the young
poet. Whilst Françoise was hanging up his overcoat his rapid glance
travelled round the dimly-lighted passage and took in all those material
details which for him had a deeper and a moral signification. He knew
why, in the corner near the door, side by side with the professor's
stout alpaca umbrella with its clumsy handle, there stood a neat English
frame with an elegant stick, chosen by Madame Fresneau for her brother.
He knew, too, that it was the sister's love that had provided the dainty
Malacca that adorned the hall-stand, and which had probably cost thirty
times as much as the plain heavy stick carried by Fresneau when it was
fine. He knew that the professor's books, after having for a long time
been exposed to the dirt and dust on the blackened shelves of a bookcase
in this passage, had at length been banished even from that place to a
dark cupboard, and that the passage had then been given up to René's
decorative fancies. The walls were adorned with engravings of his
choosing--a whole row of Raffet's splendid studies of the great
Napoleon, which must have been very obnoxious to the Republican tastes
of the professor. But Claude knew well enough that Fresneau would be the
very last to notice the constant sacrifice of the whole household to
this brother, whom he, too, worshipped, out of love for Emilie, as
blindly as did the servant and even the uncle--the uncle, for the Abbé
Taconet had not been able to resist the influence of the young man's
disposition and talent. The Abbé did not forget that his nephew
possessed a modest income--the amount invested, by his advice, in
Italians, and afterwards transferred to safe French stocks, now bringing
in three thousand francs--and that he himself would double it at his
death. Was not René's Christian education a guarantee that his literary
talents would help to propagate the views of the Church? The priest had
therefore done what he could to start the poet on that difficult path of
letters where the fortunate youth had so far only met with happiness.
Of this happiness, consisting of pure devotion, silent affection, loving
indulgence, and hearty, comforting confidence, Claude Larcher knew the
value better than anyone--he who, bereft of both his parents, had, from
his twentieth year, been compelled to battle alone against the
hardships, the disenchantments, and the contamination of a struggling
author's life in Paris. He never visited the Fresneaus without
experiencing a feeling of sadness, and to-night was no exception to the
rule. It was a feeling which generally made him laugh the louder and
exercise his most withering sarcasm. Too enervated to bear the slightest
emotion without feeling pain, he was, on such occasions, within an ace
of proclaiming his agony, and in view of the hopelessness of ever
conquering this excessive sensibility, ready, like a child, to be judged
by his words whilst uttering the most atrocious libels on his own heart.