"Easy to find an excuse for this visit, though it will seem strange to
Chantelouve, whom I have neglected for months," said Durtal on his way
toward the rue Bagneux. "Supposing he is home this evening--and he
probably isn't, because surely Hyacinthe will have seen to that--I can
tell him that I have learned of his illness through Des Hermies and that
I have come to see how he is getting along."
He paused on the stoop of the building in which Chantelouve lived. At
each side and over the door were these antique lamps with reflectors,
surmounted by a sort of casque of sheet iron painted green. There was an
old iron balustrade, very wide, and the steps, with wooden sides, were
paved with red tile. About this house there was a sepulchral and also
clerical odour, yet there was also something homelike--though a little
too imposing--about it such as is not to be found in the cardboard
houses they build nowadays. You could see at a glance that it did not
harbour the apartment house promiscuities: decent, respectable couples
with kept women for neighbours. The house pleased him, and he considered
Hyacinthe the more desirable for her substantial environment.
He rang at a first-floor apartment. A maid led him through a long hall
into a sitting-room. He noticed, at a glance, that nothing had changed
since his last visit. It was the same vast, high-ceilinged room with
windows reaching to heaven. There was the huge fireplace; on the
mantelpiece the same reproduction, reduced, in bronze, of Fremiet's
Jeanne d'Arc, between the two globe lamps of Japanese porcelain. He
recognized the grand piano, the table loaded with albums, the divan, the
chairs in the style of Louis XV with tapestried covers. In front of
every window there were imitation Chinese vases, mounted on tripods of
imitation ebony and containing sickly palms. On the walls were religious
pictures, without expression, and a portrait of Chantelouve in his
youth, three-quarter length, his hand resting on a pile of his works. An
ancient Russian icon in nielloed silver and one of these Christs in
carved wood, executed in the seventeenth century by Bogard de Nancy, in
an antique frame of gilded wood backed with velvet, were the only things
that slightly relieved the banality of the decoration. The rest of the
furniture looked like that of a bourgeois household fixed up for Lent,
or for a charity dance or for a visit from the priest. A great fire
blazed on the hearth. The room was lighted by a very high lamp with a
wide shade of pink lace--
"Stinks of the sacristy!" Durtal was saying to himself at the moment the
door opened.
Mme. Chantelouve entered, the lines of her figure advantageously
displayed by a wrapper of white swanskin, which gave off a fragrance of
frangipane. She pressed Durtal's hand and sat down facing him, and he
perceived under the wrap her indigo silk stockings in little patent
leather bootines with straps across the insteps.
They talked about the weather. She complained of the way the winter hung
on, and declared that although the furnace seemed to be working all
right she was always shivering, was always frozen to death. She told him
to feel her hands, which indeed were cold, then she seemed worried about
his health.
"You look pale," she said.
"You might at least say that I _am_ pale," he replied.
She did not answer immediately, then, "Yesterday I saw how much you
desire me," she said. "But why, why, want to go so far?"
He made a gesture, indicating vague annoyance.
"How funny you are!" she went on. "I was re-reading one of your books
today, and I noticed this phrase, 'The only women you can continue to
love are those you lose.' Now admit that you were right when you wrote
that."
"It all depends. I wasn't in love then."
She shrugged her shoulders. "Well," she said, "I must tell my husband
you are here."
Durtal remained silent, wondering what rôle Chantelouve actually played
in this triangle.
Chantelouve returned with his wife. He was in his dressing-gown and had
a pen in his mouth. He took it out and put it on the table, and after
assuring Durtal that his health was completely restored, he complained
of overwhelming labours. "I have had to quit giving dinners and
receptions," he said, "I can't even go visiting. I am in harness every
day at my desk."
And when Durtal asked him the nature of these labours, he confessed to a
whole series of unsigned volumes on the lives of the saints, to be
turned out by the gross by a Tours firm for exportation.
"Yes," said his wife, laughing, "and these are _sadly neglected_ saints
whose biographies he is preparing."
And as Durtal looked at him inquiringly, Chantelouve, also laughing,
said, "It was their persons that were _sadly neglected_. The subjects
are chosen for me, and it does seem as if the publisher enjoyed making
me eulogize frowziness. I have to describe Blessed Saints most of whom
were deplorably unkempt: Labre, who was so lousy and ill-smelling as to
disgust the beasts in the stables; Saint Cunegonde who 'through
humility' neglected her body; Saint Oportune who never used water and
who washed her bed only with her tears; Saint Silvia who never removed
the grime from her face; Saint Radegonde who never changed her hair
shirt and who slept on a cinder pile; and how many others, around whose
heads I must draw a golden halo!"
"There are worse than those," said Durtal. "Read the life of Marie
Alacoque. You will see that she, to mortify herself, licked up with her
tongue the dejections of one sick person and sucked an abscess from the
toe of another."
"I know, but I must admit that I am less touched than revolted by these
tales."
"I prefer Saint Lucius the martyr," said Mme. Chantelouve. "His body was
so transparent that he could see through his chest the vileness of his
heart. His kind of 'vileness' at least we can stand. But I must admit
that this utter disregard of cleanliness makes me suspicious of the
monasteries and renders your beloved Middle Ages odious to me."
"Pardon me, my dear," said her husband, "you are greatly mistaken. The
Middle Ages were not, as you believe, an epoch of uncleanliness. People
frequented the baths assiduously. At Paris, for example, where these
establishments were numerous, the 'stove-keepers' went about the city
announcing that the water was hot. It is not until the Renaissance that
uncleanliness becomes rife in France. When you think that that delicious
Reine Margot kept her body macerated with perfumes but as grimy as the
inside of a stovepipe! and that Henri Quatre plumed himself on having
'reeking feet and a fine armpit.'"
"My dear, for heaven's sake," said madame, "spare us the details."
While Chantelouve was speaking, Durtal was watching him. He was small
and rotund, with a bay window which his arms would not have gone around.
He had rubicund cheeks, long hair very much pomaded, trailing in the
back and drawn up in crescents along his temples. He had pink cotton in
his ears. He was smooth shaven and looked like a pious but convivial
notary. But his quick, calculating eye belied his jovial and sugary
mien. One divined in his look the cool, unscrupulous man of affairs,
capable, for all his honeyed ways, of doing one a bad turn.
"He must be aching to throw me into the street," said Durtal to
himself, "because he certainly knows all about his wife's goings-on."
But if Chantelouve wished to be rid of his guest he did not show it.
With his legs crossed and his hands folded one over the other, in the
attitude of a priest, he appeared to be mightily interested in Durtal's
work. Inclining a little, listening as if in a theatre, he said, "Yes, I
know the material on the subject. I read a book some time ago about
Gilles de Rais which seemed to me well handled. It was by abbé Bossard."
"It is the most complete and reliable of the biographies of the
Marshal."
"But," Chantelouve went on, "there is one point which I never have been
able to understand. I have never been able to explain to myself why the
name Bluebeard should have been attached to the Marshal, whose history
certainly has no relation to the tale of the good Perrault."
"As a matter of fact the real Bluebeard was not Gilles de Rais, but
probably a Breton king, Comor, a fragment of whose castle, dating from
the sixth century, is still standing, on the confines of the forest of
Carnoet. The legend is simple. The king asked Guerock, count of Vannes,
for the hand of his daughter, Triphine. Guerock refused, because he had
heard that the king maintained himself in a constant state of
widowerhood by cutting his wives' throats. Finally Saint Gildas promised
Guerock to return his daughter to him safe and sound when he should
reclaim her, and the union was celebrated.
"Some months later Triphine learned that Comor did indeed kill his
consorts as soon as they became pregnant. She was big with child, so she
fled, but her husband pursued her and cut her throat. The weeping father
commanded Saint Gildas to keep his promise, and the Saint resuscitated
Triphine.
"As you see, this legend comes much nearer than the history of our
Bluebeard to the told tale arranged by the ingenious Perrault. Now, why
and how the name Bluebeard passed from King Comor to the Marshal de
Rais, I cannot tell. You know what pranks oral tradition can play."
"But with your Gilles de Rais you must have to plunge into Satanism
right up to the hilt," said Chantelouve after a silence.
"Yes, and it would really be more interesting if these scenes were not
so remote. What would have a timely appeal would be a study of the
Diabolism of the present day."
"No doubt," said Chantelouve, pleasantly.
"For," Durtal went on, looking at him intently, "unheard-of things are
going on right now. I have heard tell of sacrilegious priests, of a
certain canon who has revived the sabbats of the Middle Ages."
Chantelouve did not betray himself by so much as a flicker of the
eyelids. Calmly he uncrossed his legs and looking up at the ceiling he
said, "Alas, certain scabby wethers succeed in stealing into the fold,
but they are so rare as hardly to be worth thinking about." And he
deftly changed the subject by speaking of a book he had just read about
the Fronde.
Durtal, somewhat embarrassed, said nothing. He understood that
Chantelouve refused to speak of his relations with Canon Docre.
"My dear," said Mme. Chantelouve, addressing her husband, "you have
forgotten to turn up your lamp wick. It is smoking. I can smell it from
here, even through the closed door."
She was most evidently conveying him a dismissal. Chantelouve rose and,
with a vaguely malicious smile, excused himself as being obliged to
continue his work. He shook hands with Durtal, begged him not to stay
away so long in future, and gathering up the skirts of his dressing-gown
he left the room.
She followed him with her eyes, then rose, in her turn, ran to the
door, assured herself with a glance that it was closed, then returned to
Durtal, who was leaning against the mantel. Without a word she took his
head between her hands, pressed her lips to his mouth and opened it.
He grunted furiously.
She looked at him with indolent and filmy eyes, and he saw sparks of
silver dart to their surface. He held her in his arms. She was swooning
but vigilantly listening. Gently she disengaged herself, sighing, while
he, embarrassed, sat down at a little distance from her, clenching and
unclenching his hands.
They spoke of banal things: she boasting of her maid, who would go
through fire for her, he responding only by gestures of approbation and
surprise.
Then suddenly she passed her hands over her forehead. "Ah!" she said, "I
suffer cruelly when I think that he is there working. No, it would cost
me too much remorse. What I say is foolish, but if he were a different
man, a man who went out more and made conquests, it would not be so
bad."
He was irritated by the inconsequentiality of her plaints. Finally,
feeling completely safe, he came closer to her and said, "You spoke of
remorse, but whether we embark or whether we stand on the bank, isn't
our guilt exactly the same?"
"Yes, I know. My confessor talks to me like that--only more
severely--but I think you are both wrong."
He could not help laughing, and he said to himself, "Remorse is perhaps
the condiment which keeps passion from being too unappetizing to the
blasé." Then aloud he jestingly, "Speaking of confessors, if I were a
casuist it seems to me I would try to invent new sins. I am not a
casuist, and yet, having looked about a bit, I believe I _have_ found a
new sin."
"You?" she said, laughing in turn. "Can I commit it?"
He scrutinized her features. She had the expression of a greedy child.
"You alone can answer that. Now I must admit that the sin is not
absolutely new, for it fits into the known category of lust. But it has
been neglected since pagan days, and was never well defined in any
case."
"Do not keep me in suspense. What is this sin?"
"It isn't easy to explain. Nevertheless I will try. Lust, I believe, can
be classified into: ordinary sin, sin against nature, bestiality, and
let us add _demoniality_ and sacrilege. Well, there is, in addition to
these, what I shall call Pygmalionism, which embraces at the same time
cerebral onanism and incest.
"Imagine an artist falling in love with his child, his creation: with an
Hérodiade, a Judith, a Helen, a Jeanne d'Arc, whom he has either
described or painted, and evoking her, and finally possessing her in
dream.
"Well, this love is worse than normal incest. In the latter sin the
guilty one commits only a half-offence, because his daughter is not born
solely of his substance, but also of the flesh of another. Thus,
logically, in incest there is a quasi-natural side, almost licit,
because part of another person has entered into the engendering of the
_corpus delicti_; while in Pygmalionism the father violates the child of
his soul, of that which alone is purely and really his, which alone he
can impregnate without the aid of another. The offence is, then, entire
and complete. Now, is there not also disdain of nature, of the work of
God, since the subject of the sin is no longer--as even in bestiality--a
palpable and living creature, but an unreal being created by a
projection of the desecrated talent, a being almost celestial, since, by
genius, by artistry, it often becomes immortal?
"Let us go further, if you wish. Suppose that an artist depicts a saint
and becomes enamoured of her. Thus we have complications of crime
against nature and of sacrilege. An enormity!"
"Which, perhaps, is exquisite!"
He was taken aback by the word she had used. She rose, opened the door,
and called her husband. "Dear," she said, "Durtal has discovered a new
sin!"
"Surely not," said Chantelouve, his figure framed in the doorway. "The
book of sins is an edition _ne varietur_. New sins cannot be invented,
but old ones may be kept from falling into oblivion. Well, what is this
sin of his?"
Durtal explained the theory.
"But it is simply a refined expression of succubacy. The consort is not
one's work become animate, but a succubus which by night takes that
form."
"Admit, at any rate, that this cerebral hermaphrodism, self-fecundation,
is a distinguished vice at least--being the privilege of the artist--a
vice reserved for the elect, inaccessible to the mob."
"If you like exclusive obscenity--" laughed Chantelouve. "But I must get
back to the lives of the saints; the atmosphere is fresher and more
benign. So excuse me, Durtal. I leave it to my wife to continue this
Marivaux conversation about Satanism with you."
He said it in the simplest, most debonair fashion to be imagined, but
with just the slightest trace of irony.
Which Durtal perceived. "It must be quite late," he thought, when the
door closed after Chantelouve. He consulted his watch. Nearly eleven. He
rose to take leave.
"When shall I see you?" he murmured, very low.
"Your apartment tomorrow night at nine."
He looked at her with beseeching eyes. She understood, but wished to
tease him. She kissed him maternally on the forehead, then consulted his
eyes again. The expression of supplication must have remained unchanged,
for she responded to their imploration by a long kiss which closed them,
then came down to his lips, drinking their dolorous emotion.
Then she rang and told her maid to light Durtal through the hall. He
descended, satisfied that she had engaged herself to yield tomorrow
night.