AN OBSERVER'S LOGIC
René had entered the house in the Rue de Bagneux a prey to painful
impressions, and when he left it his impressions were more painful
still. Then he had been discontented with his surroundings--now he was
discontented with himself. He had called on Rosalie with the idea of
giving her a little pleasure, and sparing her the trifling pain of
hearing all about his success from the mouth of another; instead of
which his visit had only caused the girl fresh grief. Although the poet
had never harboured aught else than an imaginary love for this child
with the beautiful black eyes, that love had gone deep enough to implant
in his breast what is last to die in the break-up of any passion--an
extraordinary power of following the least movements of that virgin
heart, and a pity, as unavailing as it was distressing, for all the pain
he had caused it.
Once more he asked himself this question: 'Is it not my duty to tell her
I no longer love her?' An insoluble question, for it admits of only two
replies--both impossible ones--the first, cruel and brutal in its
egoism, if our feelings are plain; the second a frightful mixture of
pity and treachery, if they are complicated. The young man shook his
head as if to chase away the obtrusive thought, and muttering the
eternal 'We shall see--later on,' by which so many agonies have been
prolonged, forced himself to look about him. He had mechanically turned
his steps towards that portion of the Faubourg Saint-Germain where, in
younger days, he had loved to walk, and, inspired by Balzac, that
dangerous Iliad of poor plebeians, imagine that he saw the face of a
Duchesse de Langeais or de Maufrigneuse looking out from every window.
He was now in that wide but desolate thoroughfare called Rue
Barbet-de-Jouy, which, by reason of the total absence of shops, the
grandeur of its buildings, and the countrified look of its enclosed
gardens, seems a fitting frame for some fine lady of artificial
aristocracy. An inevitable association of ideas brought René's mind
back to the Komof mansion, and the thought of that lordly dwelling
conjured up, for the fourth time that day, but more clearly than ever,
the image of Madame Moraines. This time, however, worn-out by the
fretful emotions through which he had passed, he became entirely
absorbed in the contemplation of that image instead of trying to dispel
it. To think of Madame Moraines was to forget Rosalie, and experience,
moreover, a peculiarly sweet sensation.
After a few minutes of this mental contemplation the natural roamings of
his fancy led the young man to ask himself, 'When shall I see her
again?' He recalled the tone of her voice and her smile as she had said,
'On Opera days, before dinner.' Opera days? This novice of Society did
not even know them. He felt a childish pleasure, out of all proportion
to its ostensible cause--like that of a man who is realising his wildest
dreams--in gaining the Boulevard des Invalides as quickly as possible
and in finding one of the posts that display theatrical advertisements.
It was Friday, and the bills announced a performance of the _Huguenots_.
René's heart began to beat faster. He had forgotten Rosalie, his
remorse of a little while ago, and the question that he had put to
himself. That inner voice which whispers in our soul's ear such advice
as would, upon reflection, astonish us, had just said to him: 'Madame
Moraines will be at home to-day. What if you went?'
'What if I went?' he repeated aloud, and the bare idea of this visit
parched his throat and set him trembling. It is the facility with which
extreme emotions are brought into play upon the slightest provocation
that makes the inner life of young men full of such strange and rapid
transitions from the heights of joy to the depths of misery. René had
no sooner put the temptation that beset him into words than he shrugged
his shoulders and said, 'It's madness.' Having arrived at that decision,
he commenced to plead the cause of his own desire under pretence of
summing up the objections. 'How would she receive me?' The remembrance
of her beautiful eyes and of her sweet smile made him reply, 'But she
was so gentle and so indulgent.' Then he resumed his questioning. 'What
could I say to justify a visit less than twenty-four hours after having
left her?' 'Pooh!' replied the tempting voice, 'the occasion brings its
own inspiration.' 'But I am not even dressed.' Well, he had only to go
to the Rue Coëtlogon. 'But I don't even know her address.' 'Claude
knows it--I have only to ask him.'
The idea of calling on Larcher having once presented itself to his mind,
he felt that it would be impossible not to put at least that part of his
plan into execution. To call on Claude was the first step towards
reaching Madame Moraines; but, instead of confessing that, René was
hypocrite enough to pretend other reasons. Ought he not really to go and
obtain news of his friend? He had left him so unhappy, so truly
miserable, on the previous evening. Perhaps he was now fretting like a
child? Perhaps he was preparing to pick a quarrel with Salvaney? In this
way the poet excused himself for the haste with which he was now making
for the Rue de Varenne. It was not only Suzanne's address that he hoped
to obtain, but information about her too--and all the while he was
trying to persuade himself that he was simply fulfilling a duty of
friendship.
In a very short time he had reached the corner of the Rue de
Bellechasse, and a few moments later he found himself before the great
doors of the strange house in which Larcher had taken up his abode.
Pushing these open, he entered an immense courtyard in which everything
spoke of desolation, from the grass that grew between the stones to the
cobwebs that covered the windows of the deserted stables on the left. At
the bottom of the courtyard stood a noble mansion, built in the reign of
Louis XIV., and bearing the proud motto of the Saint-Euvertes, whose
town house this had been, _Fortiter._ The stones of this building,
already bearing traces of the ravages of time, its long shuttered
windows and its silence were all in harmony with the solitude of the
courtyard. The old Faubourg Saint-Germain contains many such houses,
strange as the destiny of their owners, and which will always prove
peculiarly attractive to minds in search of the psychologically
picturesque--if we may unite these two words to define an almost
indefinable shade of meaning.
René had heard the history of this mansion from his friend; how the old
Marquis de Saint-Euverte, reduced to despair by the almost simultaneous
loss of his wife, his three daughters, and their husbands, had, six
years ago, gone to live with his grandsons on his estates in Poitou. An
epidemic of typhoid fever suddenly breaking out in a small
watering-place where all the family were staying together had made this
happy old man the lonely guardian of a tribe of orphans. Even during the
lifetime of the Marquise--an excellent business woman--two small wings
in the house had been let to quiet tenants. These wings had also a
history of their own, the grandfather of the present Marquis having
placed them at the disposal of two cousins--Knights of Saint-Louis and
at one time political refugees--who, after a wretched, wandering
existence, had ended their days here. M. de Saint-Euverte had left
everything as his wife had arranged it. Claude therefore one day found
himself the only tenant in the whole of this silent, gloomy building,
for the occupant of the other wing had been scared away by the
loneliness of the place, and no one else had yet seemed anxious to bury
himself in this tomb, standing between a desolate courtyard and a still
more desolate garden.
But all these points, that were so displeasing to others, were a source
of delight to Larcher. The oddness of the place appealed particularly to
this dreamer and maker of paradoxes. It pleased him to set his irregular
existence as an artist and a swell clubman in this framework of imposing
solitude; and here, too, he could shut himself up with his secret
agonies. The love of analytical introspection with which he knew he was
infected, and which, like a doctor cultivating his own disease for the
sake of a fine 'case,' he carefully nurtured, could not have found a
better home. Then, again, here Larcher enjoyed absolute freedom. The
_concierge_, won over by a few theatre tickets and fascinated by the
reputation of his tenant, would have allowed him to hold a saturnalian
feast in every hall of the Saint-Euverte mansion had Claude felt any
desire to found another _Club de Haschischins_ or to reproduce some
scene of literary orgies out of love for the romanticism of 1830. The
_concierge_ was absent from his post when René arrived, so that the
poet walked straight across the courtyard to the house. Entering the
main hall, where the magnificent lamps bore testimony to the grandeur of
the receptions once held here, he mounted the stone staircase, whose
wrought-iron balustrade formed a splendid ornament to the huge well of
the house. On the second floor he turned down a corridor, at the end of
which heavy curtains of Oriental texture proclaimed a modern
installation hidden in the depths of a mansion that seemed to be peopled
only with the bewigged ghosts of _grands seigneurs._
The man-servant who answered his ring possessed that type of face
peculiar to nearly all custodians of old buildings; it is met with both
in the guides of ruined castles and in the vergers of cathedrals, and
shows how vast must be the influence which places have on human beings.
It is a face with a greenish tint and with a hawk-like expression about
the eyes and mouth; from its appearance one would suppose that it smelt
damp. Ferdinand--that was the name of this individual--differed from his
kind only in dress, which, consisting as it did of Claude's cast off
clothes, was fashionable and smart. He had been valet to the late Comte
de Saint-Euverte, and, in addition to his duties as Larcher's servant,
he was a kind of housekeeper for the whole mansion, from which he seldom
emerged more than once a month. The _concierge_ went on all the writer's
errands, and his wife did the cooking. This little world lived entirely
under the spell of Claude, who, through his knowledge of character and
his infantile goodness of heart, possessed in a rare degree the gift of
winning the attachment of his inferiors. When Ferdinand saw who the
caller was he could not help showing great uneasiness.
'They shouldn't have let you come up, sir!' he said. 'I shall get into
trouble.'
'Is Monsieur Larcher at work?' asked René, smiling at the man's terror.
'No,' replied Ferdinand in an undertone, and quite at a loss what to do
with a visitor whom his master had evidently not expected. 'But Madame
Colette is here.'
'Ask him whether he can see me for a minute,' said the poet, curious to
know how the two lovers stood after the scene of the preceding evening;
and, in order to conquer the valet's hesitation, he added: 'I'll take
all the responsibility.'
'You may come up, sir,' was the answer with which he returned, and,
preceding René through the ante-room, he took him up the small inner
staircase that led to the three apartments usually inhabited by Claude,
and which the writer either called his 'laboratory' or his
'torture-chamber,' according to the mood he was in.
The staircase and the first two of the three rooms were remarkable for
the richness of their carpets and hangings. The faint light that
filtered through the stained-glass windows on this dull February
afternoon scarcely cast a shadow, either in the smoking-room with its
morocco-covered furniture or in the large _salon_ lined with books.
Claude's favourite nook was a den at the end, the walls of which were
hung with some dark material and adorned with a few canvases and
_aquarelles_ of the most modern painters of the day--these being what
the writer's extravagant fancy preferred. There were two opera boxes by
Forain, a dancing girl by Degas, a rural scene by Raffaelli, a sea-piece
by Monet, four etchings by Félicien Rops, and on a draped pedestal a
bust of Larcher himself by Rodin. The bust was a splendid piece of work,
in which the great sculptor had reproduced with marvellous skill all
that might be read in his model's face--qualms of morality mingled with
libertinism, bold reflection allied to a weak will, innate idealism hand
in hand with an almost systematically acquired corruption. A low
bookcase, a desk in one corner, three fauteuils in Venetian style with
negroes supporting the arms, and a wide green leather couch completed
the furniture of this retreat, clouded at that moment with the smoke of
Colette's Russian cigarette.
The young lady was lying at full length on the couch, her fair hair
tumbling about her ears, and attired in somewhat masculine style, with a
stand-up collar and an open jacket. Her short plain cloth skirt revealed
a pair of neat ankles and long narrow feet encased in black silk
stockings and patent leather shoes. Her sunken cheeks were pale--that
pallor produced in most theatrical women by the constant use of paint,
by late hours, and by the fatigues of an arduous profession.
'_Ah! mon petit Vincy_,' she cried, holding out her hand to the visitor,
'you have come just in time to save me from a beating. I only wish you
knew how badly this boy treats me! Come, Claudie,' she added, shaking
her finger at her lover, who was seated at her feet, 'say it's not true
if you dare.' And with a graceful movement of her lithe and supple
body--she herself would confess that she scarcely ever wore a
corset--the charming creature rose to a sitting posture, laid her fair
head on Claude's shoulder, and placed between his lips the cigarette she
had just been smoking. The wretched man looked at his young friend with
shame and supplication written on his face; then, turning to Colette,
his eyes filled with tears. At this the actress's behaviour became more
wanton still, and leaning forward upon her lover's shoulder, she gazed
into his eyes until she saw in them the look of passion that she knew so
well how to turn to her own advantage.
A dead silence ensued. The fire burned brightly in the grate, and a
solitary sunbeam, making its way through the coloured glass, fell in a
long red streak upon the girl's face. René had been present at scenes
of this kind too often to feel surprised at the want of modesty of
either his friend or Colette. He was well acquainted with the strange
cynicism of their nature; but he also remembered Claude's terrible
language the night before, and the cruel words his mistress had uttered
after his disappearance. He was astounded to see to what depths of
degradation the writer's weakness dragged him down, and to witness such
proofs of this wretched woman's inconsistency. In the close atmosphere
of this room, impregnated with the perfume that Colette used, and before
the almost immodest attitude of the pair before him, there came over him
a feeling of sensuality with which he was already too familiar. The
sight of this depraved creature--though her depravity was generally
clothed in graceful forms--had often awakened in him ideas of a physical
passion very different from any he had hitherto known. She had
frequently received him in her dressing-room at the theatre, and as she
stood in careless dishabille before her glass putting the finishing
touches to her face, or completing, with unblushing indifference, the
more hidden details of her toilet, she had appeared to him like some
temptress personifying the highest forms of voluptuousness, and at such
times he would envy Claude as much as he sometimes pitied him. But these
feelings would soon be dispelled by the disgust with which the moral
degradation of the actress inspired him and by the burning scruples of
friendship that animate and restrain the young. René would have been
horrified to find himself, even for a moment, coveting what he
considered his friend's property, and perhaps the knowledge of this
delicacy of feeling went for something in Colette's behaviour. Out of
sheer wantonness she amused herself by displaying her beauty before him,
just as we hold up a flower to be smelt when we know the hands will not
be put out to seize it. Wantonness it was, too, that led the misguided
girl to dally with Claude and to lavish such caresses upon him before
René.
All this, however, produced in the poet a vague physical longing that he
could not repress; it grew upon him unconsciously, and, by an
association of desires, more difficult to interrupt in its secret
workings than an association of ideas, the vision of Madame Moraines was
once more before him, surrounded by the halo of seduction that had so
completely dazzled him on the previous evening. Two things were now
obvious to René: one was, that he must go and call on that woman
to-day; the other, that he would never be able to utter her name and ask
for her address before the lascivious creature who was torturing Claude
with her kisses.
'Get away,' said the writer, pushing her from him; 'I love you, and you
know it. Why, then, do you make me suffer so? Ask René what a state I
was in last night. Tell her, Vincy, and tell her she should not trifle
with me. After all,' he cried, burying his face in his hands, 'what does
it matter? If you became the most degraded wretch on earth, I should
still idolise you.'
'These are some of the pretty things I have to hear all day long,' cried
Colette, rolling back on the cushions with a laugh. 'Well, René, tell
him about me too. Tell him how angry I was last night because he went
home without saying a word. And then he didn't write, so I came here.
Yes, I came to _him_, if you please. You savage!' she cried, taking
Larcher by the hair, 'do you think I should trouble to run after you if
I didn't love you?'
Every feature of her face expressed the real nature of the feeling she
entertained for Claude--cruel sensuality, that sensuality which impels a
woman to make a martyr of the man from whose power she cannot free
herself. History tells of queens who loved in this fashion, and who
handed over to the headsman the men whom they hated and yet desired to
possess. René quietly observed:
'I was uneasy about him last night, it is true, and you were very
cruel.'
'That will do!' cried Colette, with a contemptuous laugh. 'I've already
told you that you swallow anything he says. I've given that up myself
long ago. One day he threatened to commit suicide, and when I came here
in my stage clothes, without even waiting to wash my paint off, I found
him--correcting proofs!'
'But that I'm obliged to do,' replied Claude; 'you often have to smile
on the stage yourself when you're really in trouble.'
'What does that prove?' she retorted sharply; 'that we are merely
acting. Only I take you for what you are, and you don't.'
Whilst she rattled on, rating Claude with that savage rancour that a
woman takes no pains to conceal from the man with whom she is on
intimate terms, René's glance, as it wandered round the room, fell upon
a directory containing the addresses of the 'upper ten' and the
hangers-on of Society.
Taking it up he turned over the leaves, and to offer some excuse for his
action, mendaciously remarked, 'Why, your name isn't here, Claude!'
'I should think not,' said Colette; 'I won't let him send it. He sees
quite enough of the swells as it is.'
'I thought you liked the society of that kind of man,' observed Claude.
'What a clever thing to say!' she replied, with a graceful shrug of her
shoulders. 'They're smart, it's true--it's their business to be. They
know how to dress, to play tennis, to ride, and to talk of horses,
whilst you, with all your brains, will never be anything but a cad. How
I wish you were now what you were eight years ago when I first met you
in that restaurant at the corner of the Rue des Saints-Pères! I had
just come from the Conservatoire with my mother and Farguet, my
professor, and we were having some lunch. You looked so good, sitting in
the corner--as though you had come from a monastery, and were having
your first peep at the world. It was that, I think, that made me like
you. Are you coming to the theatre to-night?' she asked René, as he
closed the book and rose to go. He had found what he wanted; Madame
Moraines lived in the Rue Murillo, near the Parc Monceau. 'No? Well,
to-morrow then, and mind you don't get gadding about like this boy! Such
fine ladies as they are, too, your Society women--I know something of
them! Oh, look at his face--won't he storm as soon as you're gone!
You're surely not going to be jealous of women?' she said, lighting a
fresh cigarette. 'Good-bye, René.'
'She is like that before you,' observed Claude, as he let his friend
out; 'but you wouldn't believe how gentle and affectionate she can be
when we are alone!'
'And how about Salvaney?' asked René unthinkingly.
Claude turned pale. 'She says that she merely went to his rooms to look
at some drawings for her next _rôle_: she swears that there was nothing
wrong in it With women, everything is possible--even what is good,' he
added, giving René a hand that was not very steady. 'I can't help it--I
must believe her when she looks at me in her peculiar way.'