through the iron gateway of the Corps Legislatif, his mother on his arm;
but, painful as was the drama that was being enacted there, this one far
surpassed it in that respect, being more sudden, more unforeseen, devoid
of the slightest solemnity, one of the private domestic dramas which
Paris improvises every hour in the day; and it may be that that gives to
the air we breathe in Paris that vibrating, quivering quality which
excites the nerves. The weather was superb. The streets in those wealthy
quarters, as broad and straight as avenues, shone resplendent in the
light, which was already beginning to fade, enlivened by open windows,
by flower-laden balconies, by glimpses of verdure toward the boulevards,
light and tremulous between the harsh, rigid lines of stone. Madame
Jenkins' hurried steps were bent in that direction, as she hastened
along at random in a pitiable state of bewilderment. What a horrible
downfall! Five minutes ago, rich, encompassed by all the respect and
comforts of a luxurious existence. Now, nothing! Not even a roof to
shelter her, not even a name! The street.
Where was she to go? What would become of her?
At first she had thought of her son. But to confess her sin, to blush
before the child who respected her, to weep before him while depriving
herself of the right to be consoled, was beyond her strength. No, there
was nothing left for her but death. To die as soon as possible, to avoid
shame by disappearing utterly, the inevitable end of situations from
which there is no escape. But where to die? And how? There were so many
ways of turning one's back on life! And as she walked along she reviewed
them all in her mind. All around her was overflowing life, the charm
that Paris lacks in winter, the open-air display of its splendor, its
refined elegance, visible at that hour of the day and that season of the
year around the Madeleine and its flower-market, in a space marked off
by the fragrance of the roses and carnations. On the broad sidewalk,
where gorgeous toilets were displayed, blending their rustling with the
cool quivering of the leaves, there was something of the pleasure of a
meeting in a salon, an air of acquaintance among the promenaders, smiles
and quiet greetings as they passed. And suddenly Madame Jenkins, anxious
concerning the distress depicted on her features, and concerning what
people might think to see her hurrying along with that heedless,
preoccupied manner, slackened her pace to the saunter of a simple
promenader, and stopped to look at the shop windows. The bright-colored,
gauzy window displays all spoke of travelling, of the country: light
trains for the fine gravel of the park, hats wrapped about with gauze as
a protection against the sun at the seashore, fans, umbrellas, purses.
Her eyes gazed at all those gewgaws without seeing them; but an
indistinct, pale reflection in the clear glass showed her her own body
lying motionless on a bed in a furnished lodging, the leaden sleep of a
narcotic in her head, or outside the walls yonder, displacing the mud
beneath some boat. Which was the better?
She hesitated, comparing the two; then, having formed her decision,
walked rapidly away with the resolute stride of the woman who tears
herself regretfully from the artful temptations of the shop-window. As
she hurried along, the Marquis de Monpavon, vivacious and superb, with a
flower in his buttonhole, saluted her at a distance with the grand
flourish of the hat so dear to the vanity of woman, the acme of elegance
in the way of street salutations, the hat raised high in air above a
rigid head. She answered with the polite greeting of the true Parisian,
hardly expressed by an imperceptible movement of the figure and a smile
in the eyes; and, seeing that exchange of worldly courtesies amid the
springtime merrymaking, no one would have suspected that the same
sinister thought guided the footsteps of those two, who met by chance on
the road they were both following, in opposite directions, but aiming
for the same goal.
The prediction of Mora's valet with regard to the marquis was fulfilled:
"We may die or lose our power, then you will be called to account and it
will be a terrible time." It was a terrible time. With the utmost
difficulty the ex-receiver-general had obtained an extension of a
fortnight in which to reimburse the Treasury, clinging to one last
chance, that Jansoulet's election would be confirmed, and that, having
recovered his millions, he would come once more to his assistance. The
decision of the Chamber had deprived him of that supreme hope. As soon
as he heard of it, he returned very calmly to the club and went up to
his room where Francis was impatiently waiting to hand him an important
paper that had arrived during the day. It was a notice to Sieur
Louis-Marie-Agenor de Monpavon to appear the next day at the office of
the examining magistrate. Was that addressed to the director of the
_Caisse Territoriale_ or to the defaulting ex-receiver-general? In any
event, the employment at the outset of the brutal method of formal
summons, instead of a quiet notification, was sufficiently indicative of
the seriousness of the affair and the firm determination of the
authorities.
In the face of such an extremity, which he had long foreseen and
expected, the old beau's course was determined in advance. A Monpavon in
the police-court, a Monpavon librarian at Mazas! Never! He put all his
affairs in order, destroyed papers, carefully emptied his pockets, in
which he placed only a few ingredients taken from his toilet-table, and
all in such a perfectly calm and natural way that when he said to
Francis as he left the room: "Going to take a bath. Beastly Chamber.
Poisonous dirt," the servant believed what he said. Indeed, the marquis
did not lie. After standing through that long and exciting sitting of
the Chamber in the dust of the gallery, his legs ached as if he had spent
two nights in a railway carriage; and as his resolve to die blended with
his longing for a good bath, it occurred to the old sybarite to go to
sleep in a bath-tub like What's-his-name--Thingamy--ps--ps--ps--and
other famous characters of antiquity. It is doing him no more than
justice to say that not one of those Stoics went forth to meet death
more tranquilly than he.
Adorned with a white camellia with which, as he passed, the pretty
flower-girl at the club decorated the buttonhole above his rosette as an
officer of the Legion of Honor, he was walking lightly up Boulevard des
Capucines, when the sight of Madame Jenkins disturbed his serenity for a
moment. He noticed a youthful air about her, a flame in her eyes, a
something so alluring that he stopped to look at her. Tall and lovely,
her long black gauze dress trailing behind, her shoulders covered by a
lace mantle over which a garland of autumn leaves fell from her hat, she
passed on, disappeared amid the throng of other women no less stylish
than she, in a perfumed atmosphere; and the thought that his eyes were
about to close forever on that attractive spectacle, which he enjoyed as
a connoisseur, saddened the old beau a little and diminished the
elasticity of his walk. But a few steps farther on a meeting of another
sort restored all his courage.
A shabby, shamefaced man, dazzled by the bright light, was crossing the
boulevard; it was old Marestang, ex-senator, ex-minister, who was so
deeply compromised in the affair of the _Tourteaux de Malte_, that,
notwithstanding his age, his services, and the great scandal of such a
prosecution, he had been sentenced to two years' imprisonment and
stricken from the rolls of the Legion of Honor, where he was numbered
among the great dignitaries. The affair was already ancient history, and
the poor devil, a portion of his sentence having been remitted, had just
come from prison, dejected, ruined, lacking even the wherewithal to gild
his mental distress, for he had been compelled to disgorge. Standing on
the edge of the sidewalk, he waited, hanging his head, until there
should be an opportunity to cross the crowded street, sorely embarrassed
by that enforced halt on the most frequented corner of the boulevards,
caught between the foot-passengers and the stream of open carriages
filled with familiar faces. Monpavon, passing near him, surprised his
restless, timid glance, imploring recognition and at the same time
seeking to avoid it. The idea that he might some day be reduced to that
degree of humiliation caused him to shudder with disgust. "Nonsense! As
if it were possible!" And, drawing himself up, inflating his
breastplate, he walked on, with a firmer and more determined stride than
before.
Monsieur de Monpavon is walking to his death. He goes thither by the
long line of the boulevards, all aflame in the direction of the
Madeleine, treading once more the springy asphalt like any loiterer, his
nose in the air, his hands behind his back. He has plenty of time, there
is nothing to hurry him,--the hour for the rendezvous is within his
control. At every step he smiles, wafts a patronizing little greeting
with the ends of his fingers, or performs the great flourish of the hat
of a moment ago. Everything charms him, fascinates him, from the
rumbling of the watering-carts to the rattle of the blinds at the doors
of cafes which overflow to the middle of the sidewalk. The approach of
death gives him the acute faculties of a convalescent, sensitive to all
the beauties, all the hidden poesy of a lovely hour in summer in the
heart of Parisian life,--of a lovely hour which will be his last, and
which he would like to prolong until night. That is the reason,
doubtless, why he passes the sumptuous establishment where he usually
takes his bath; nor does he pause at the Chinese Baths. He is too well
known hereabout. All Paris would know what had happened the same
evening. There would be a lot of ill-bred gossip in clubs and salons,
much spiteful comment on his death; and the old fop, the man of
breeding, wishes to spare himself that shame, to plunge and be swallowed
up in the uncertainty and anonymity of suicide, like the soldiers who,
on the day after a great battle, are reported neither as living, wounded
or dead, but simply as missing. That is why he had been careful to keep
nothing upon him that might lead to his identification or furnish any
precise information for the police reports, and why he seeks the
distant, out-of-the-way quarters of the vast city, where the ghastly but
comforting confusion of the common grave will protect him. Already the
aspect of the boulevards has changed greatly. The crowd has become
compact, more active and engrossed, the houses smaller and covered with
business signs. When he has passed Portes Saint-Martin and Saint-Denis,
through which the swarming overflow of the faubourgs streams at all
hours of the day, the provincial character of the city becomes
accentuated. The old beau no longer sees any one whom he knows and can
boast of being a stranger to all.
The shopkeepers, who stare curiously at him, with his display of linen,
his fine frock-coat, his erect figure, take him for some famous actor
out for a little healthful exercise before the play, on the old
boulevard, the scene of his earliest triumphs. The wind is cooler, the
twilight darkens distant objects, and while the long street is still
flooded with light in those portions through which he has passed, the
light fades at every step. So it is with the past when its rays fall
upon him who looks back and regrets. It seems to Monpavon that he is
entering the darkness. He shivers a little, but does not lose courage,
and walks on with head erect and unfaltering gait.
Monsieur de Monpavon is walking to his death. Now he enters the
complicated labyrinth of noisy streets where the rumble of the
omnibuses blends with the thousand and one industries of the working
quarters, where the hot smoke from the factories is mingled with the
fever of a whole population struggling against hunger. The air quivers,
the gutters smoke, the buildings tremble as the heavy drays pass and
collide at the corners of the narrow streets. Suddenly the marquis
stops; he has found what he wanted. Between a charcoal dealer's dark
shop and an undertaker's establishment, where the spruce boards leaning
against the wall cause him to shudder, is a porte-cochere surmounted by
a sign, the word "BATHS" on a dull lantern. He enters and crosses a damp
little garden where a fountain weeps in a basin of artificial rockwork.
That is just the dismal retreat he has been seeking. Who will ever dream
of thinking that the Marquis de Monpavon came to that place to cut his
throat? The house is at the end of the garden, a low house with green
shutters, a glass door, and the false villa-like air that they all have.
He orders a bath, plenty of towels, walks along the narrow corridor, and
while the bath is being prepared, listening to the running water behind
him, he smokes his cigar at the window, gazes at the flower-garden with
its spindling lilacs, and the high wall that incloses it.
Adjoining it is a great yard, the yard of a fire-engine house with a
gymnasium, whose poles and swings and horizontal bars, seen indistinctly
over the wall, have the look of gibbets. A bugle rings out in the yard,
and that blast carries the marquis back thirty years, reminds him of his
campaigns in Algeria, the lofty ramparts of Constantine, Mora's arrival
in the regiment, and duels, and select card-parties. Ah! how well life
began! What a pity that those infernal cards--Ps--ps--ps--However, it's
worth something to have saved one's breeding.
"Monsieur," said the attendant, "your bath is ready."
* * * * *
At that moment Madame Jenkins, pale and gasping for breath, entered
Andre's studio, drawn thither by an instinct stronger than her will, by
the feeling that she must embrace her child before she died. And yet,
when she opened the door--he had given her a duplicate key--it was a
relief to her to see that he had not returned, that her excitement,
increased by a long walk, an unusual experience in her luxurious life as
a woman of wealth, would have time to subside. No one in the room. But
on the table the little note that he always left when he went out, so
that his mother, whose visits, because of Jenkins' tyranny, had become
more and more infrequent and brief, might know where he was, and either
wait for him or join him. Those two had not ceased to love each other
dearly, profoundly, despite the cruel circumstances which compelled them
to introduce into their relations as mother and son the precautions, the
clandestine mystery of a different kind of love.
"I am at my rehearsal," said the little note to-day, "I shall return
about seven."
That attention from her son, whom she had not been to see for three
weeks, and who persisted in expecting her none the less, brought to the
mother's eyes a flood of tears which blinded her. One would have said
that she had entered a new world. It was so light, so peaceful, so high,
that little room which caught the last gleam of daylight on its windows,
which was all aflame with the last rays of the sun already sinking below
the horizon, and which seemed, like all attic rooms, carved out of a
piece of sky, with its bare walls, decorated only by a large portrait,
her own; nothing but her own portrait smiling in the place of honor and
another in a gilt frame on the table. Yes, in very truth, the humble
little lodging, which was still so light when all Paris was becoming
dark, produced a supernatural impression upon her, despite the poverty
of its scanty furniture, scattered through two rooms, its common chintz
coverings, and its mantel adorned with two great bunches of hyacinths,
the flowers that are drawn through the streets by cartloads in the
morning. What a lovely, brave, dignified life she might have led there
with her Andre! And in a moment, with the rapidity of a dream, she
placed her bed in one corner, her piano in another, saw herself giving
lessons, taking charge of the house, to which she brought her share of
enthusiasm and courageous cheerfulness. How could she have failed to
understand that that should be the duty, the pride of her widowhood?
What blindness, what shameful weakness!
A sad mistake, doubtless, but one for which much extenuation might have
been found in her easily influenced, affectionate nature, in the
adroitness and knavery of her accomplice, who talked constantly of
marriage, concealing from her the fact that he was not free himself, and
when at last he was obliged to confess, drawing such a picture of the
unrelieved gloom of his life, of his despair, of his love, that the poor
creature, already so seriously involved in the eyes of the world,
incapable of one of those heroic efforts which place one above false
situations, had yielded at last, had accepted that twofold existence, at
once so brilliant and so wretched, resting everything upon a lie that
had lasted ten years. Ten years of intoxicating triumphs and
indescribable anxiety, ten years during which she had never sung without
the fear of being betrayed between two measures, during which the
slightest remark concerning irregular establishments wounded her like an
allusion to her own case, during which the expression of her face had
gradually assumed that air of gentle humility, of a culprit demanding
pardon. Then the certainty of being abandoned at some time had ruined
even those borrowed joys, had caused her luxurious surroundings to
wither and fade; and what agony, what suffering she had silently
undergone, what never-ending humiliations, down to the last and most
horrible of all!
While she reviews her life thus sorrowfully in the cool evening air and
the peaceful calm of the deserted house, ringing laughter, an outburst
of joyous youthful spirits ascends from the floor below; and
remembering Andre's confidences, his last letter, in which he told her
the great news, she tries to distinguish among those unfamiliar,
youthful voices that of her daughter Elise, her son's fiancee, whom she
does not know, whom she will never know. That thought, which completes
the voluntary disherison of the mother, adds to the misery of her last
moments and fills them with such a flood of remorse and regret that,
notwithstanding her determination to be brave, she weeps and weeps.
The night falls gradually. Great streaks of shadow strike the sloping
windows, while the sky, immeasurable in its depth, becomes colorless,
seems to recede into the darkness. The roofs mass for the night as
soldiers do for an attack. The clocks gravely tell each other the hour,
while the swallows circle about in the neighborhood of a hidden nest and
the wind makes its usual incursion among the ruins in the old
lumber-yard. Tonight it blows with a wailing noise like the sea, with a
shudder of fog; it blows from the river as if to remind the wretched
woman that that is where she must go. Oh! how she shivers in her lace
mantle at the thought! Why did she come here to revive her taste for
life, which would be impossible after the confession she would be forced
to make? Swift footsteps shake the staircase, the door is thrown open;
it is Andre. He is singing, he is happy, and in a great hurry, for he is
expected to dine with the Joyeuses. A glimmer of light, quick, so that
the lover may beautify himself. But, as he scratches the match, he
divines the presence of some one in the studio, a shadow moving among
the motionless shadows.
"Who's there?"
Something answers, something like a stifled laugh or a sob. He thinks it
is his young neighbors, a scheme of the "children" to amuse themselves.
He draws near. Two hands, two arms seize him, are wound about him.
"It is I."
And in a feverish voice, which talks hurriedly in self-defence, she
tells him that she is about to start on a long journey, and that before
starting--
"A journey. Where are you going, pray?"
"Oh! I don't know. We are going ever so far away,--to his own country on
some business of his."
"What! you won't be here for my play? It's to be given in three days.
And then, right after it, my wedding. Nonsense! he can't prevent your
being present at my wedding."
She excuses herself, invents reasons, but her burning hands, which her
son holds in his, her unnatural voice, convince Andre that she is not
telling the truth. He attempts to light the candles, but she prevents
him.
"No, no, we don't need a light. It is better this way. Besides, I have
so many preparations still to make; I must go."
They are both standing, ready for the parting; but Andre will not let
her go until he has made her confess what the matter is, what tragic
anxiety causes the wrinkles on that lovely face, in which the eyes--is
it an effect of the twilight?--gleam with fierce brilliancy.
"Nothing--no, nothing, I promise you. Only the thought that I cannot
share in your joys, your triumphs. But you know that I love you, you do
not doubt your mother, do you? I have never passed a day without
thinking of you. Do you do as much; keep a place in your heart for me.
And now kiss me, and let me go at once. I have delayed too long."
A moment more and she will not have strength to do what she still has to
do. She rushes toward the door.
"I say no, you shall not go. I have a feeling that some extraordinary
thing is taking place in your life that you don't wish to tell me. You
are in great sorrow, I am sure of it. That man has done some shameful
thing to you."
"No, no; let me go, let me go."
But on the contrary, he holds her, holds her fast.
"Come, what is the matter? Tell me, tell me--"
Then, under his breath, in a low, loving voice, like a kiss:
"He has left you, has he not?"
The unhappy creature shudders, struggles.
"Don't ask me any questions. I will not tell you anything. Adieu!"
And he rejoins, straining her to his heart:
"What can you tell me that I do not know already, my poor mother? Didn't
you understand why I left his house six months ago?"
"You know?"
"Everything. And this that has happened to you to-day I have long
foreseen and hoped for."
"Oh! wretched, wretched woman that I am, why did I come?"
"Because this is your proper place, because you owe me ten years of my
mother. You see that I must keep you."
He says this kneeling in front of the couch upon which she has thrown
herself in a flood of tears and with the last plaintive outcries of her
wounded pride. For a long while she weeps thus, her son at her feet. And
lo! the Joyeuses, anxious at Andre's non-appearance, come up in a body
in search of him. There is a veritable invasion of innocent faces,
waving curls, modest costumes, rippling gayety, and over the whole group
shines the great lamp, the good old lamp with the huge shade, which M.
Joyeuse solemnly holds aloft as high and as straight as he can, in the
attitude of a _canephora_. They halt abruptly, dumbfounded, at sight of
that pale, sad woman who gazes, deeply moved, at all those smiling,
charming creatures, especially at Elise, who stands a little behind the
others, and whose embarrassment in making that indiscreet visit stamps
her as the _fiancee_.
"Elise, kiss our mother and thank her. She has come to live with her
children."
Behold her entwined in all those caressing arms, pressed to four little
womanly hearts which have long lacked a mother's support, behold her
made welcome with sweet cordiality in the circle of light cast by the
family lamp, broadened a little so that she can find room there, can dry
her eyes, obtain warmth and light for her heart at that sturdy flame
which rises without a flicker, even in that little artist's studio under
the roof, where the storm howled so fiercely just now, the terrible
storm that must be at once forgotten.
The man who is breathing his last yonder, lying in a heap in the bloody
bath-tub, has never known that sacred flame. Selfish and hard-hearted,
he lived to the last for show, puffing out his superficial breastplate
with a blast of vanity. And that vanity was the best that there was in
him. It was that which kept him on his feet and jaunty and swaggering so
long, that which clenched his teeth on the hiccoughs of his death agony.
In the damp garden the fountain drips sadly. The firemen's bugle sounds
the curfew. "Just go up to number 7," says the mistress of the
establishment, "he's a long while over his bath." The attendant goes up
and utters a shriek of horror: "O Madame, he 's dead--but it isn't the
same man." They run to the spot, and no one, in truth, can recognize the
fine gentleman who entered just now in this lifeless doll, with its head
hanging over the side of the bath-tub, the rouge mingling with the blood
that moistens it, and every limb relaxed in utter weariness of the part
played to the very end, until it killed the actor. Two slashes of the
razor across the magnificent, unwrinkled breastplate, and all his
factitious majesty has burst like a bubble, has resolved itself into
this nameless horror, this mass of mud and blood and ghastly, streaked
flesh, wherein lies unrecognizable the model of good-breeding, Marquis
Louis-Marie-Agenor de Monpavon.
XXIII.
MEMOIRS OF A CLERK.--LAST SHEETS.