"It means that you pleased me, you old dear, and that we will begin
again whenever you please."
"To-day, if you like."
"Yes, I am quite willing."
"Good, but--" He hesitated, a little ashamed of what he was going to do.
"The fact is that this time I have not a penny; I have just come from
the club, where I have dropped everything."
She looked him full in the eyes, scenting a lie with the instinct and
habit of a girl accustomed to the tricks and bargainings of men, and
remarked: "Bosh! That is not a nice sort of thing to try on me."
He smiled in an embarrassed way. "If you will take ten francs, it is all
I have left."
She murmured, with the disinterestedness of a courtesan gratifying a
fancy: "What you please, my lady; I only want you."
And lifting her charming eyes towards the young man's moustache, she
took his arm and leant lovingly upon it.
"Let us go and have a grenadine first of all," she remarked. "And then
we will take a stroll together. I should like to go to the opera like
this, with you, to show you off. And we will go home early, eh?"
* * * * *
He lay late at this girl's place. It was broad day when he left, and the
notion occurred to him to buy the _Vie Francaise_. He opened the paper
with feverish hand. His article was not there, and he stood on the
footpath, anxiously running his eye down the printed columns with the
hope of at length finding what he was in search of. A weight suddenly
oppressed his heart, for after the fatigue of a night of love, this
vexation came upon him with the weight of a disaster.
He reached home and went to sleep in his clothes on the bed.
Entering the office some hours later, he went on to see Monsieur Walter.
"I was surprised at not seeing my second article on Algeria in the paper
this morning, sir," said he.
The manager raised his head, and replied in a dry tone: "I gave it to
your friend Forestier, and asked him to read it through. He did not
think it up to the mark; you must rewrite it."
Duroy, in a rage, went out without saying a word, and abruptly entering
his old comrade's room, said:
"Why didn't you let my article go in this morning?"
The journalist was smoking a cigarette with his back almost on the seat
of his armchair and his feet on the table, his heels soiling an article
already commenced. He said slowly, in a bored and distant voice, as
though speaking from the depths of a hole: "The governor thought it
poor, and told me to give it back to you to do over again. There it is."
And he pointed out the slips flattened out under a paperweight.
Duroy, abashed, could find nothing to say in reply, and as he was
putting his prose into his pocket, Forestier went on: "To-day you must
first of all go to the Prefecture." And he proceeded to give a list of
business errands and items of news to be attended to.
Duroy went off without having been able to find the cutting remark he
wanted to. He brought back his article the next day. It was returned to
him again. Having rewritten it a third time, and finding it still
refused, he understood that he was trying to go ahead too fast, and
that Forestier's hand alone could help him on his way. He did not
therefore say anything more about the "Recollections of a Chasseur
d'Afrique," promising himself to be supple and cunning since it was
needful, and while awaiting something better to zealously discharge his
duties as a reporter.
He learned to know the way behind the scenes in theatrical and political
life; the waiting-rooms of statesmen and the lobby of the Chamber of
Deputies; the important countenances of permanent secretaries, and the
grim looks of sleepy ushers. He had continual relations with ministers,
doorkeepers, generals, police agents, princes, bullies, courtesans,
ambassadors, bishops, panders, adventurers, men of fashion,
card-sharpers, cab drivers, waiters, and many others, having become the
interested yet indifferent friend of all these; confounding them
together in his estimation, measuring them with the same measure,
judging them with the same eye, though having to see them every day at
every hour, without any transition, and to speak with them all on the
same business of his own. He compared himself to a man who had to drink
off samples of every kind of wine one after the other, and who would
soon be unable to tell Chateau Margaux from Argenteuil.
He became in a short time a remarkable reporter, certain of his
information, artful, swift, subtle, a real find for the paper, as was
observed by Daddy Walter, who knew what newspaper men were. However, as
he got only centimes a line in addition to his monthly screw of two
hundred francs, and as life on the boulevards and in _cafes_ and
restaurants is costly, he never had a halfpenny, and was disgusted with
his poverty. There is some knack to be got hold of, he thought, seeing
some of his fellows with their pockets full of money without ever being
able to understand what secret methods they could make use of to procure
this abundance. He enviously suspected unknown and suspicious
transactions, services rendered, a whole system of contraband accepted
and agreed to. But it was necessary that he should penetrate the
mystery, enter into the tacit partnership, make himself one with the
comrades who were sharing without him.
And he often thought of an evening, as he watched the trains go by from
his window, of the steps he ought to take.
V
Two months had gone by, September was at hand, and the rapid fortune
which Duroy had hoped for seemed to him slow in coming. He was, above
all, uneasy at the mediocrity of his position, and did not see by what
path he could scale the heights on the summit of which one finds
respect, power, and money. He felt shut up in the mediocre calling of a
reporter, so walled in as to be unable to get out of it. He was
appreciated, but estimated in accordance with his position. Even
Forestier, to whom he rendered a thousand services, no longer invited
him to dinner, and treated him in every way as an inferior, though still
accosting him as a friend.
From time to time, it is true, Duroy, seizing an opportunity, got in a
short article, and having acquired through his paragraphs a mastery over
his pen, and a tact which was lacking to him when he wrote his second
article on Algeria, no longer ran any risk of having his descriptive
efforts refused. But from this to writing leaders according to his
fancy, or dealing with political questions with authority, there was as
great a difference as driving in the Bois de Boulogne as a coachman, and
as the owner of an equipage. That which humiliated him above everything
was to see the door of society closed to him, to have no equal relations
with it, not to be able to penetrate into the intimacy of its women,
although several well-known actresses had occasionally received him with
an interested familiarity.
He knew, moreover, from experience that all the sex, ladies or
actresses, felt a singular attraction towards him, an instantaneous
sympathy, and he experienced the impatience of a hobbled horse at not
knowing those whom his future may depend on.
He had often thought of calling on Madame Forestier, but the
recollection of their last meeting checked and humiliated him; and
besides, he was awaiting an invitation to do so from her husband. Then
the recollection of Madame de Marelle occurred to him, and recalling
that she had asked him to come and see her, he called one afternoon when
he had nothing to do.
"I am always at home till three o'clock," she had said.
He rang at the bell of her residence, a fourth floor in the Rue de
Verneuil, at half-past two.
At the sound of the bell a servant opened the door, an untidy girl, who
tied her cap strings as she replied: "Yes, Madame is at home, but I
don't know whether she is up."
And she pushed open the drawing-room door, which was ajar. Duroy went
in. The room was fairly large, scantily furnished and neglected looking.
The chairs, worn and old, were arranged along the walls, as placed by
the servant, for there was nothing to reveal the tasty care of the woman
who loves her home. Four indifferent pictures, representing a boat on a
stream, a ship at sea, a mill on a plain, and a wood-cutter in a wood,
hung in the center of the four walls by cords of unequal length, and all
four on one side. It could be divined that they had been dangling thus
askew ever so long before indifferent eyes.
Duroy sat down immediately. He waited a long time. Then a door opened,
and Madame de Marelle hastened in, wearing a Japanese morning gown of
rose-colored silk embroidered with yellow landscapes, blue flowers, and
white birds.
"Fancy! I was still in bed!" she exclaimed. "How good of you to come and
see me! I had made up my mind that you had forgotten me."
She held out both her hands with a delighted air, and Duroy, whom the
commonplace appearance of the room had put at his ease, kissed one, as
he had seen Norbert de Varenne do.
She begged him to sit down, and then scanning him from head to foot,
said: "How you have altered! You have improved in looks. Paris has done
you good. Come, tell me the news."
And they began to gossip at once, as if they had been old acquaintances,
feeling an instantaneous familiarity spring up between them; feeling one
of those mutual currents of confidence, intimacy, and affection, which,
in five minutes, make two beings of the same breed and character good
friends.
Suddenly, Madame de Marelle exclaimed in astonishment: "It is funny how
I get on with you. It seems to me as though I had known you for ten
years. We shall become good friends, no doubt. Would you like it?"
He answered: "Certainly," with a smile which said still more.
He thought her very tempting in her soft and bright-hued gown, less
refined and delicate than the other in her white one, but more exciting
and spicy. When he was beside Madame Forestier, with her continual and
gracious smile which attracted and checked at the same time; which
seemed to say: "You please me," and also "Take care," and of which the
real meaning was never clear, he felt above all the wish to lie down at
her feet, or to kiss the lace bordering of her bodice, and slowly inhale
the warm and perfumed atmosphere that must issue from it. With Madame de
Marelle he felt within him a more definite, a more brutal desire--a
desire that made his fingers quiver in presence of the rounded outlines
of the light silk.
She went on talking, scattering in each phrase that ready wit of which
she had acquired the habit just as a workman acquires the knack needed
to accomplish a task reputed difficult, and at which other folk are
astonished. He listened, thinking: "All this is worth remembering. A man
could write charming articles of Paris gossip by getting her to chat
over the events of the day."
Some one tapped softly, very softly, at the door by which she had
entered, and she called out: "You can come in, pet."
Her little girl made her appearance, walked straight up to Duroy, and
held out her hand to him. The astonished mother murmured: "But this is a
complete conquest. I no longer recognize her."
The young fellow, having kissed the child, made her sit down beside him,
and with a serious manner asked her pleasant questions as to what she
had been doing since they last met. She replied, in her little
flute-like voice, with her grave and grown-up air.
The clock struck three, and the journalist arose.
"Come often," said Madame de Marelle, "and we will chat as we have done
to-day; it will always give me pleasure. But how is it one no longer
sees you at the Forestiers?" He replied: "Oh! for no reason. I have been
very busy. I hope to meet you there again one of these days."
He went out, his heart full of hope, though without knowing why.
He did not speak to Forestier of this visit. But he retained the
recollection of it the following days, and more than the recollection--a
sensation of the unreal yet persistent presence of this woman. It seemed
to him that he had carried away something of her, the reflection of her
form in his eyes, and the smack of her moral self in his heart. He
remained under the haunted influence of her image, as it happens
sometimes when we have passed pleasant hours with some one.
He paid a second visit a few days later.
The maid ushered him into the drawing-room, and Laurine at once
appeared. She held out no longer her hand, but her forehead, and said:
"Mamma has told me to request you to wait for her. She will be a
quarter-of-an-hour, because she is not dressed yet. I will keep you
company."
Duroy, who was amused by the ceremonious manners of the little girl,
replied: "Certainly, Mademoiselle. I shall be delighted to pass a
quarter-of-an-hour with you, but I warn you that for my part I am not at
all serious, and that I play all day long, so I suggest a game at
touch."
The girl was astonished; then she smiled as a woman would have done at
this idea, which shocked her a little as well as astonished her, and
murmured: "Rooms are not meant to be played in."