It was ten o'clock in the forenoon. The April sun bathed the tender
leafage of the trees in light. A storm had cleared the air during the
night and it was deliciously fresh and sweet. At long intervals a
horseman passing along the Allée des Veuves broke the silence and
solitude. On the outskirts of the shady avenue, over against a rustic
cottage known as _La Belle Lilloise_, Évariste sat on a wooden bench
waiting for Élodie. Since the day their fingers had met over the
embroidery and their breaths had mingled, he had never been back to the
_Amour peintre_. For a whole week his proud stoicism and his timidity,
which grew more extreme every day, had kept him away from Élodie. He had
written her a letter conceived in a key of gravity, at once sombre and
ardent, in which, explaining the grievance he had against the _citoyen_
Blaise, but saying no word of his love and concealing his chagrin, he
announced his intention of never returning to her father's shop, and was
now showing greater steadfastness in keeping this resolution than a
woman in love was quite likely to approve.
A born fighter whose bent was to defend her property under all
circumstances, Élodie instantly turned her mind to the task of winning
back her lover. At first she thought of going to see him at the studio
in the Place de Thionville. But knowing his touchy temper and judging
from his letter that he was sick and sore, she feared he might come to
regard daughter and father with the same angry displeasure and make a
point of never seeing her again; so she deemed it wiser to invite him to
a sentimental, romantic rendezvous which he could not well decline,
where she would have ample time to cajole and charm him and where
solitude would be her ally to fascinate his senses and overcome his
scruples.
At this period, in all the English gardens and all the fashionable
promenades, rustic cottages were to be found, built by clever
architects, whose aim it was to flatter the taste of the city folk for a
country life. The _Belle Lilloise_ was occupied as a house of light
refreshment; its exterior bore a look of poverty that was part of the
_mise en scène_ and it stood on the fragments, artistically imitated, of
a fallen tower, so as to unite with the charm of rusticity the
melancholy appeal of a ruined castle. Moreover, as though a peasant's
cot and a shattered donjon were not enough to stir the sensibilities of
his customers, the owner had raised a tomb beneath a weeping-willow,--a
column surmounted by a funeral urn and bearing the inscription:
"Cléonice to her faithful Azor." Rustic cots, ruined keeps, imitation
tombs,--on the eve of being swept away, the aristocracy had erected in
its ancestral parks these symbols of poverty, of decadence and of death.
And now the patriot citizen found his delight in drinking, dancing,
making love in sham hovels, under the broken vaults, a sham in their
very ruin, of sham cloisters and surrounded by a sham graveyard; for was
not he too, like his betters, a lover of nature, a disciple of
Jean-Jacques? was not his heart stuffed as full as theirs with
sensibility and the philosophy of humanity?
Reaching the rendezvous before the appointed time, Évariste waited,
measuring the minutes by the beating of his heart as by the pendulum of
a clock. A patrol passed, guarding a convoy of prisoners. Ten minutes
after a woman dressed all in pink, carrying a bouquet as the fashion
was, escorted by a gentleman in a three-cornered hat, red coat, striped
waistcoat and breeches, slipped into the cottage, both so very like the
gallants and dames of the ancien régime one was bound to think with the
_citoyen_ Blaise that mankind possesses characteristics Revolutions
cannot change.
A few minutes later, coming from Rueil or Saint-Cloud, an old woman
carrying a cylindrical box, painted in brilliant colours, arrived and
sat down beside Gamelin, on his bench. She put down her box in front of
her, and he saw that the lid had a turning needle fixed on it; the poor
woman's trade was to hold a lottery in the public gardens for the
children to try their luck at. She also dealt in "ladies' pleasures," an
old-fashioned sweetmeat which she sold under a new name; whether because
the time-honoured title of "forget-me-nots" called up inappropriate
ideas of unhappiness and retribution or that folks had just got tired of
it in course of time, "forget-me-nots" were now yclept "ladies'
pleasures."
The old dame wiped the sweat from her forehead with a corner of her
apron and broke out into railings against heaven, upbraiding God for
injustice when he made life so hard for his creatures. Her husband kept
a tavern on the river-bank at Saint-Cloud, while she came in every day
to the Champs Élysées, sounding her rattle and crying: "_Ladies'
pleasures_, come buy, come buy!" And with all this toil the old couple
could not scrape enough together to end their days in comfort.
Seeing the young man beside her disposed to commiserate with her, she
expounded at great length the origin of her misfortunes. It was all the
Republic; by robbing the rich, it was taking the bread out of poor
people's mouths. And there was no hoping for a better state of affairs.
Things would only go from bad to worse,--she knew that from many tokens.
At Nanterre a woman had had a baby born with a serpent's head; the
lightning had struck the church at Rueil and melted the cross on the
steeple; a were-wolf had been seen in the woods of Chaville. Masked men
were poisoning the springs and throwing plague powders in the air to
cause diseases....
Évariste saw Élodie spring from a carriage and run forward. The girl's
eyes flashed in the clear shadow cast by her straw hat; her lips, as red
as the carnations she held in her hand, were wreathed in smiles. A scarf
of black silk, crossed over the bosom, was knotted behind the back. Her
yellow gown displayed the quick movements of the knees and showed a pair
of low-heeled shoes below the hem. The hips were almost entirely
unconfined; the Revolution had enfranchised the waists of its
_citoyennes_. For all that, the skirts, still puffed out below the
loins, marked the curves by exaggerating them and veiled the reality
beneath an artificial amplitude of outline.
He tried to speak but could not find his voice, and was chagrined at his
failure, which Élodie preferred to the most eloquent greeting. She
noticed also and looked upon it as a good omen, that he had tied his
cravat with more than usual pains.
She gave him her hand.
"I wanted to see you," she began, "and talk to you. I did not answer
your letter; I did not like it and I did not think it worthy of you. It
would have been more to my taste if it had been more outspoken. It would
be to malign your character and common sense to suppose you do not mean
to return to the _Amour peintre_ because you had a trifling altercation
there about politics with a man many years your senior. Rest assured you
have no cause to fear my father will receive you ill whenever you come
to see us again. You do not know him; he has forgotten both what he said
to you and what you said in reply. I do not say there is any great bond
of sympathy between you two; but he bears no malice; I tell you frankly
he pays no great heed to you ... nor to me. He thinks only of his own
affairs and his own pleasures."
She stepped towards the shrubberies surrounding the _Belle Lilloise_,
and he followed her with something of repugnance, knowing it to be the
trysting-place of mercenary lovers and amours of a day. She selected the
table furthest out of sight.
"How many things I have to tell you, Évariste. Friendship has its
rights; you do not forbid me to exercise them? I have much to say about
you ... and something about myself, if you will let me."
The landlord having brought a carafe of lemonade, she filled their
glasses herself with the air of a careful housewife; then she began to
tell him about her childhood, described her mother's beauty, which she
loved to dilate upon both as a tribute to the latter's memory and as
the source of her own good looks, and boasted of her grandparents'
sturdy vigour, for she was proud of her bourgeois blood. She related how
at sixteen she had lost this mother she adored and had entered on a life
without anyone to love or rely upon. She painted herself as she was, a
vehement, passionate nature, full of sensibility and courage, and
concluded:
"Oh, Évariste, my girlhood was so sad and lonely I cannot but know what
a prize is a heart like yours, and I will not surrender, I give you fair
warning, of my own free will and without an effort to retain it, a
sympathy on which I trusted I might count and which I held dear."
Évariste gazed at her tenderly.
"Can it be, Élodie, that I am not indifferent to you? Can I really
think...?"
He broke off, fearing to say too much and thereby betray so trusting a
friendliness.
She gave him a little confiding hand that half-peeped out of the long
narrow sleeve with its lace frillings. Her bosom rose and fell in
long-drawn sighs.
"Credit me, Évariste, with all the sentiments you would have me feel for
you, and you will not be mistaken in the dispositions of my heart."
"Élodie, Élodie, you say that? will you still say it when you know
..."--he hesitated.
She dropped her eyes; and he finished the sentence in a whisper:
"... when you know I love you?"
As she heard the declaration, she blushed,--with pleasure. Yet, while
her eyes still spoke of a tender ecstasy, a quizzical smile flickered in
spite of herself about one corner of her lips. She was thinking:
"And he imagines he proposed first!... and he is afraid perhaps of
offending me!..."
Then she said to him fondly:
"So you had never seen, dear heart, that I loved you?"
They seemed to themselves to be alone, the only two beings in the
universe. In his exaltation, Évariste raised his eyes to the firmament
flashing with blue and gold:
"See, the sky is looking down at us! It is benign; it is adorable, as
you are, beloved; it has your brightness, your gentleness, your smile."
He felt himself one with all nature, it formed part and parcel of his
joy and triumph. To his eyes, it was to celebrate his betrothal that the
chestnut blossoms lit their flaming candles, the poplars burned aloft
like giant torches.
He exulted in his strength and stature. She, with her softer as well as
finer nature, more pliable and more malleable, rejoiced in her very
weakness and, his subjection once secured, instantly bowed to his
ascendancy; now she had brought him under her slavery, she acknowledged
him for the master, the hero, the god, burned to obey, to admire, to
offer her homage. In the shade of the shrubbery he gave her a long,
ardent kiss, which she received with head thrown back and, clasped in
Évariste's arms, felt all her flesh melt like wax.
They went on talking a long time of themselves, forgetful of the
universe. Évariste abounded mainly in vague, high thoughts, which filled
Élodie with ecstasy. She spoke sweetly of things of practical utility
and personal interest. Then, presently, when she felt she could stay no
longer, she rose with a decided air, gave her lover the three red
carnations from the flower in her balcony and sprang lightly into the
cabriolet in which she had driven there. It was a hired carriage,
painted yellow, hung on very high wheels and certainly had nothing out
of the common about it, or the coachman either. But Gamelin was not in
the habit of hiring carriages and his friends were hardly more used to
such an indulgence. To see the great wheels whirling her away gave him a
strange pang and a painful presentiment assailed him; by a sort of
hallucination of the mind, the hack horse seemed to be carrying Élodie
away from him beyond the bounds of the actual world and present time
towards a city of wealth and pleasure, towards abodes of luxury and
enjoyment, which he would never be able to enter.
The carriage disappeared. Évariste recovered his calm by degrees; but a
dull anguish remained and he felt that the hours of tender abandonment
he had just lived would never be his again.
He returned by the Champs Élysées, where women in light summer dresses
were sitting on wooden chairs, talking or sewing, while their children
played under the trees. A woman selling "ladies' pleasures,"--_her_ box
was shaped like a drum--reminded him of the one he had spoken to in the
Allée des Veuves, and it seemed as if a whole epoch of his life had
elapsed between the two encounters. He crossed the Place de la
Révolution. In the Tuileries gardens he caught the distant roar of a
host of men, a sound of many voices shouting in accord, so familiar in
those great days of popular enthusiasm which the enemies of the
Revolution declared would never dawn again. He quickened his pace as the
noise grew louder and louder, reached the Rue Honoré and found it
thronged with a crowd of men and women yelling: "Vive la République!
Vive la Liberté!" The walls of the gardens, the windows, the balconies,
the very roofs were black with lookers-on waving hats and handkerchiefs.
Preceded by a sapper, who cleared a way for the procession, surrounded
by Municipal Officers, National Guards, gunners, gendarmes, huzzars,
advanced slowly, high above the backs of the citizens, a man of a
bilious complexion, a wreath of oak-leaves about his brow, his body
wrapped in an old green surtout with an ermine collar. The women threw
him flowers, while he cast about him the piercing glance of his
jaundiced eyes, as though, in this enthusiastic multitude he was still
searching out enemies of the people to denounce, traitors to punish. As
he went by, Gamelin bent his head and joining his voice to a hundred
thousand others, shouted his:
"Vive Marat!"
The triumphant hero entered the Hall of the Convention like Fate
personified. While the crowd slowly dispersed Gamelin sat on a stone
post in the Rue Honoré and pressed his hand over his heart to check its
wild beating. What he had seen filled him with high emotion and burning
enthusiasm.
He loved and worshipped Marat, who, sick and fevered, his veins on fire,
eaten up by ulcers, was wearing out the last remnants of his strength in
the service of the Republic, and in his own poor house, closed to no
man, welcomed him with open arms, conversed eagerly with him of public
affairs, questioned him sometimes on the machinations of evil-doers. He
rejoiced that the enemies of _the Just_, conspiring for his ruin, had
prepared his triumph; he blessed the Revolutionary Tribunal, which
acquitting the Friend of the People had given back to the Convention
the most zealous and most immaculate of its legislators. Again his eyes
could see the head racked with fever, garlanded with the civic crown,
the features instinct with virtuous pride and pitiless love, the worn,
ravaged, powerful face, the close-pressed lips, the broad chest, the
strong man dying by inches who, raised aloft in the living chariot of
his triumph, seemed to exhort his fellow-citizens: "Be ye like
me,--patriots to the death!"
The street was empty, darkening with the shadows of approaching night;
the lamplighter went by with his cresset, and Gamelin muttered to
himself:
"Yes, to the death!"
V
By nine in the morning Évariste reached the gardens of the Luxembourg,
to find Élodie already there seated on a bench waiting for him.
It was a month ago they had exchanged their vows and since then they had
seen each other every day, either at the _Amour peintre_ or at the
studio in the Place de Thionville. Their meetings had been very tender,
but at the same time characterized by a certain reserve that checked
their expansiveness,--a reserve due to the staid and virtuous temper of
the lover, a theist and a good citizen, who, while ready to make his
beloved mistress his own before the law or with God alone for witness
according as circumstances demanded, would do nothing save publicly and
in the light of day. Élodie knew the resolution to be right and
honourable; but, despairing of a marriage that seemed impossible from
every point of view and loath to outrage the prejudices of society, she
contemplated in her inmost heart a liaison that could be kept a secret
till the lapse of time gave it sanction. She hoped one day to overcome
the scruples of a lover she could have wished less scrupulous, and
meantime, unwilling to postpone some necessary confidences as to the
past, she had asked him to meet her for a lover's talk in a lonely
corner of the gardens near the Carthusian Priory.
She threw him a tender look, took his hand frankly, invited him to share
the bench and speaking slowly and thoughtfully:
"I esteem you too well, Évariste, to hide anything from you. I believe
myself worthy of you; I should not be so were I not to tell you
everything. Hear me and be my judge. I have no act to reproach myself
with that is degrading or base, or even merely selfish. I have only been
weak and credulous.... Do not forget, dear Évariste, the difficult
circumstances in which I found myself. You know how it was with me; I
had lost my mother, my father, still a young man, thought only of his
own amusement and neglected me. I had a feeling heart, nature has
dowered me with a loving temper and a generous soul; it was true she had
not denied me a firm will and a sound judgment, but in those days what
ruled my conduct was passion, not reason. Alas! it would be the same
again to-day, if the two were not in harmony; I should be driven to give
myself to you, beloved, heart and soul, and for ever!"
She expressed herself in firm, well-balanced phrases. She had well
thought over what she would say, having long ago made up her mind to
this confession for several reasons--because she was naturally candid,
because she found pleasure in following Rousseau's example, and because,
as she told herself reasonably enough:
"One day Évariste must fathom a secret which is known to others as well
as myself. A frank avowal is best. It is unforced and therefore to my
credit, and only tells him what some time or other he would discover to
my shame."
Soft-hearted as she was and amenable to nature's promptings, she did
not feel herself to be very much to blame, and this made her confession
the easier; besides which, she had no intention of telling more than was
absolutely requisite.
"Ah!" she sighed, "why did I not know you, Évariste, in the days when I
was alone and forsaken?"
Gamelin had taken her request quite literally when Élodie asked him to
be her judge. Primed at once by nature and the education of books for
the exercise of domestic justice, he sat ready to receive Élodie's
admissions.
As she still hesitated, he motioned to her to proceed. Then she began
speaking very simply:
"A young man, who with many defects of character combined some good
qualities, and only showed the latter, found me to his taste and courted
me with a perseverance that was surprising in such a case; he was in the
flower of his youth, full of charm and the idol of a bevy of charming
women who made no attempt to hide their adoration. It was not his good
looks nor even his brilliance that appealed to me.... He touched my
heart by the tokens of true love he gave me, and I do think he loved me
truly. He was tender, impassioned. I asked no pledge save of his heart,
and alas! his heart was fickle.... I blame no one but myself; it is my
confession I am making, not his. I lay nothing to his charge, for indeed
he is become a stranger to me. Ah! believe me, Évariste, I swear it, he
is no more to me than if he had never existed."
She had finished, but Gamelin vouchsafed no answer. He folded his arms,
a steadfast, sombre look settling in his eyes. His mistress and his
sister Julie were running together in his thoughts. Julie too had
hearkened to a lover; but, unlike, altogether unlike, he thought, the
unhappy Élodie, _she_ had let him have his will and carry her off, not
misled by the promptings of a tender heart, but to enjoy, far from her
home and friends, the sweets of luxury and pleasure. He was a stern
moralist; he had condemned his sister and he was half inclined to
condemn his mistress.
Élodie resumed in a very pleading voice:
"I was full of Jean-Jacques' philosophy; I believed men were naturally
honest and honourable. My misfortune was to have encountered a lover who
was not formed in the school of nature and natural morality, and whom
social prejudice, ambition, self-love, a false point of honour had made
selfish and treacherous."
The words produced the effect she had calculated on. Gamelin's eyes
softened. He asked:
"Who was your seducer? Is he a man I know?"
"You do not know him."
"Tell me his name."
She had foreseen the question and was firmly resolved not to answer it.
She gave her reasons:
"Spare me, I beseech you. For your peace of mind as for my own, I have
already said too much."
Then, as he still pressed her:
"In the sacred name of our love, I refuse to tell you anything to give
you a definite notion of this stranger. I will not give your jealousy a
shape to feed on; I will not bring a harassing shadow between you and
me. I have not forgotten the man's name, but I will never let you know
it."
Gamelin insisted on knowing the name of the seducer,--that was the word
he employed all through, for he felt no doubt Élodie had been seduced,
cajoled, trifled with. He could not so much as conceive any other
possibility,--that she had obeyed an overmastering desire, an
irresistible craving, listened to the tempter's voice in the shape of
her own flesh and blood; he could not find it credible that the fair
victim, a creature of hot passion and a fond heart, had offered herself
a willing sacrifice; to satisfy his ideal, she must needs have been
overborne by force or fraud, constrained by sheer violence, caught in
snares spread about her steps on every side. He questioned her in
guarded terms, but with a close, searching, embarrassing persistency. He
asked her how the liaison began, if it was long or short, tranquil or
troubled, under what circumstances it was broken off. And his enquiries
came back again and again to the means the fellow had used to cajole
her, as if these must surely have been extraordinary and unheard of. But
all his cross-examination was in vain. She kept her own counsel with a
gentle, deprecatory obstinacy, her lips tightly pressed together and
tears welling in her eyes.
Presently, however, Évariste having asked where the man was now, she
told him:
"He has left the Kingdom--France, I mean," she corrected herself in an
instant.
"An _émigré_!" ejaculated Gamelin.
She looked at him, speechless, at once reassured and disheartened to see
him create in his own mind a truth in accordance with his political
passions and of his own motion give his jealousy a Jacobin complexion.
In actual fact Élodie's lover was a little lawyer's clerk, a very pretty
lad, half Adonis, half guttersnipe, whom she had adored and the thought
of whom, though three years had gone by since, still thrilled her
nerves. Rich old women were his particular game, and he deserted Élodie
for a woman of the world of a certain age who could and did recompense
his merits. Having, after the abolition of offices, attained a post in
the Mairie of Paris, he was now a _sansculotte_ dragoon and the
hanger-on of a _ci-devant_ Countess.
"A noble! an _émigré_!" muttered Gamelin, whom she took good care not to
undeceive, never having been desirous he should know the whole truth.
"And he deserted you like a dastard?"
She nodded in answer. He clasped her to his heart:
"Dear victim of the vile corruption of monarchies, my love shall avenge
his villainy! Heaven grant, I may meet the scoundrel! I shall not fail
to know him!"
She turned away, at one and the same time saddened and smiling,--and
disappointed. She would fain have had him wiser in the lore of love,
with more of the natural man about him, more perhaps even of the brute.
She felt he forgave so readily only because his imagination was cold and
the secret she had revealed awoke in him none of the mental pictures
that torture sensuous natures,--in a word, that he saw her seduction
solely under a moral and social aspect.
They had risen, and while they walked up and down the shady avenues of
the gardens, he informed her that he only esteemed her the more because
she had suffered wrong, Élodie entertained no such high claims; however,
take him as he was, she loved him, and admired the brilliant artistic
genius she divined in him.
As they left the Luxembourg, they came upon crowds thronging the Rue de
l'Égalité and the whole neighbourhood of the Théâtre de la Nation. There
was nothing to surprise them in this; for several days great excitement
had prevailed in the most patriotic Sections; denunciations were rife
against the Orleans faction and the Brissotin plotters, who were
conspiring, it was said, to bring about the ruin of Paris and the
massacre of good Republicans. Gamelin himself a short time back had
signed a petition from the Commune demanding the expulsion of the
Twenty-one.
Just before passing under the arcade, joining the theatre to the
neighbouring house, they had to find their way through a group of
citizens _en carmagnole_ who were listening to a harangue from a young
soldier mounted on the top of the gallery. He looked as beautiful as the
Eros of Praxiteles in his helmet of panther-skin. This fascinating
warrior was charging the People's Friend with indolence:
"Marat, you are asleep," he was crying, "and the federalists are forging
fetters to bind us."
Hardly had Élodie cast eyes on the orator before she turned rapidly to
Évariste and begged him to get her away. The crowd, she declared,
frightened her and she was afraid of fainting in the crush.
They parted in the Place de la Nation, swearing an oath of eternal
fidelity.
* * * * *
That same morning early the _citoyen_ Brotteaux had made the _citoyenne_
Gamelin the magnificent present of a capon. It would have been an act of
indiscretion for him to mention how he had come by it; as a fact, he had
it of a _Dame de la Halle_ at the Pointe Eustache for whom he sometimes
acted as amanuensis, and as everybody knows, these "Ladies of the
Market" cherished Royalist sympathies and were in correspondence with
the _émigrés_. The _citoyenne_ Gamelin had received the gift with
heartfelt gratitude. Such dainties were scarce ever seen then; victuals
grew dearer every day. The people feared a famine; the aristocrats, they
said, wished it, and the "corner" makers were at work to bring it about.
The _citoyen_ Brotteaux, being invited to eat his share of the capon at
the midday dinner, appeared in due course and congratulated his hostess
on the rich aroma of cooking that assailed his nostrils. Indeed a noble
smell of rich, savoury broth filled the painter's studio.
"You are very obliging, sir," replied the good dame. "To prepare the
digestion for your capon, I have made a vegetable soup with a slice of
fat bacon and a big beef bone. There's nothing like a marrowbone, sir,
to give soup a flavour."
"The maxim does you honour, _citoyenne_," returned the old man. "And you
will be doing wisely to put back again to-morrow and the day after, all
the week, in fact, to put back again, I say, this precious bone in the
pot, which it will continue to flavour. The wise woman of Panzoust
always did so; she used to make a soup of green cabbages with a rind of
rusty bacon and an old _savorados_. That is what in her country, which
is also mine, they call the medullary bone, the most tasty and most
succulent of all bones."
"This lady you speak of, sir," remarked the _citoyenne_ Gamelin, "was
she not rather a saving soul, to make the same bone serve so many times
over?"
"Oh! she lived in a small way," explained Brotteaux, "she was poor,
albeit a prophetess."
At that moment, Évariste Gamelin returned, agitated by the confession he
had heard and determined to know who was Élodie's betrayer, to avenge at
one and the same time the Republic's wrong and his own on the miscreant.
After the usual greetings had been exchanged, the _citoyen_ Brotteaux
resumed the thread of his discourse:
"It is seldom those who make a trade of foretelling the future grow
rich. Their impostures are too soon found out and their trickery renders
them odious. But indeed we should be bound to detest them much worse if
they prophesied truly. A man's life would be intolerable if he knew what
is to befall him. He would be aware of calamities to come and suffer
their pains in advance, while he would get no joy of present blessings
whose end he would foresee. Ignorance is a necessary condition of human
happiness, and it must be owned that in most cases we fulfil it well. We
know almost nothing about ourselves; absolutely nothing about our
neighbours. Ignorance constitutes our peace of mind; self-deception our
felicity."
The _citoyenne_ Gamelin set the soup on the table, said the Benedicite
and seated her son and her guest at the board. She stood up herself to
eat, declining the chair the _citoyen_ Brotteaux offered her beside him;
she said she knew what good manners required of a woman.