But he went on, "No, but tell me now, he must have been a duffer to
sleep with?" And he always wound up with, "What a donkey he was."
One evening, towards the end of June, as he was smoking a cigarette at
the window, the fineness of the evening inspired him with a wish for a
drive, and he said, "Made, shall we go as far as the Bois de Boulogne?"
"Certainly."
They took an open carriage and drove up the Champs Elysees, and then
along the main avenue of the Bois de Boulogne. It was a breezeless
night, one of those stifling nights when the overheated air of Paris
fills the chest like the breath of a furnace. A host of carriages bore
along beneath the trees a whole population of lovers. They came one
behind the other in an unbroken line. George and Madeleine amused
themselves with watching all these couples, the woman in summer toilet
and the man darkly outlined beside her. It was a huge flood of lovers
towards the Bois, beneath the starry and heated sky. No sound was heard
save the dull rumble of wheels. They kept passing by, two by two in each
vehicle, leaning back on the seat, silent, clasped one against the
other, lost in dreams of desire, quivering with the anticipation of
coming caresses. The warm shadow seemed full of kisses. A sense of
spreading lust rendered the air heavier and more suffocating. All the
couples, intoxicated with the same idea, the same ardor, shed a fever
about them.
George and Madeleine felt the contagion. They clasped hands without a
word, oppressed by the heaviness of the atmosphere and the emotion that
assailed them. As they reached the turning which follows the line of the
fortification, they kissed one another, and she stammered somewhat
confusedly, "We are as great babies as on the way to Rouen."
The great flood of vehicles divided at the entrance of the wood. On the
road to the lake, which the young couple were following, they were now
thinner, but the dark shadow of the trees, the air freshened by the
leaves and by the dampness arising from the streamlets that could be
heard flowing beneath them, and the coolness of the vast nocturnal vault
bedecked with stars, gave to the kisses of the perambulating pairs a
more penetrating charm.
George murmured, "Dear little Made," as he pressed her to him.
"Do you remember the forest close to your home, how gloomy it was?" said
she. "It seemed to me that it was full of horrible creatures, and that
there was no end to it, while here it is delightful. One feels caresses
in the breeze, and I know that Sevres lies on the other side of the
wood."
He replied, "Oh! in the forest at home there was nothing but deer,
foxes, and wild boars, and here and there the hut of a forester."
This word, akin to the dead man's name, issuing from his mouth,
surprised him just as if some one had shouted it out to him from the
depths of a thicket, and he became suddenly silent, assailed anew by
the strange and persistent uneasiness, and gnawing, invincible, jealous
irritation that had been spoiling his existence for some time past.
After a minute or so, he asked: "Did you ever come here like this of an
evening with Charles?"
"Yes, often," she answered.
And all of a sudden he was seized with a wish to return home, a nervous
desire that gripped him at the heart. But the image of Forestier had
returned to his mind and possessed and laid hold of him. He could no
longer speak or think of anything else and said in a spiteful tone, "I
say, Made?"
"Yes, dear."
"Did you ever cuckold poor Charles?"