But he would not abandon the idea.
"Come, Made, dear, be frank and acknowledge it. You cuckolded him, eh?
Come, admit that you cuckolded him?"
She was silent, shocked as all women are by this expression.
He went on obstinately, "Hang it all, if ever anyone had the head for a
cuckold it was he. Oh! yes. It would please me to know that he was one.
What a fine head for horns." He felt that she was smiling at some
recollection, perhaps, and persisted, saying, "Come out with it. What
does it matter? It would be very comical to admit that you had deceived
him, to me."
He was indeed quivering with hope and desire that Charles, the hateful
Charles, the detested dead, had borne this shameful ridicule. And
yet--yet--another emotion, less definite. "My dear little Made, tell me,
I beg of you. He deserved it. You would have been wrong not to have
given him a pair of horns. Come, Made, confess."
She now, no doubt, found this persistence amusing, for she was laughing
a series of short, jerky laughs.
He had put his lips close to his wife's ear and whispered: "Come, come,
confess."
She jerked herself away, and said, abruptly: "You are crazy. As if one
answered such questions."
She said this in so singular a tone that a cold shiver ran through her
husband's veins, and he remained dumbfounded, scared, almost breathless,
as though from some mental shock.
The carriage was now passing along the lake, on which the sky seemed to
have scattered its stars. Two swans, vaguely outlined, were swimming
slowly, scarcely visible in the shadow. George called out to the driver:
"Turn back!" and the carriage returned, meeting the others going at a
walk, with their lanterns gleaming like eyes in the night.
What a strange manner in which she had said it. Was it a confession? Du
Roy kept asking himself. And the almost certainty that she had deceived
her first husband now drove him wild with rage. He longed to beat her,
to strangle her, to tear her hair out. Oh, if she had only replied: "But
darling, if I had deceived him, it would have been with yourself," how
he would have kissed, clasped, worshiped her.
He sat still, his arms crossed, his eyes turned skyward, his mind too
agitated to think as yet. He only felt within him the rancor fermenting
and the anger swelling which lurk at the heart of all mankind in
presence of the caprices of feminine desire. He felt for the first time
that vague anguish of the husband who suspects. He was jealous at last,
jealous on behalf of the dead, jealous on Forestier's account, jealous
in a strange and poignant fashion, into which there suddenly entered a
hatred of Madeleine. Since she had deceived the other, how could he have
confidence in her himself? Then by degrees his mind became calmer, and
bearing up against his pain, he thought: "All women are prostitutes. We
must make use of them, and not give them anything of ourselves." The
bitterness in his heart rose to his lips in words of contempt and
disgust. He repeated to himself: "The victory in this world is to the
strong. One must be strong. One must be above all prejudices."
The carriage was going faster. It repassed the fortifications. Du Roy
saw before him a reddish light in the sky like the glow of an immense
forge, and heard a vast, confused, continuous rumor, made up of
countless different sounds, the breath of Paris panting this summer
night like an exhausted giant.
George reflected: "I should be very stupid to fret about it. Everyone
for himself. Fortune favors the bold. Egotism is everything. Egotism as
regards ambition and fortune is better than egotism as regards woman and
love."
The Arc de Triomphe appeared at the entrance to the city on its two tall
supports like a species of shapeless giant ready to start off and march
down the broad avenue open before him. George and Madeleine found
themselves once more in the stream of carriages bearing homeward and
bedwards the same silent and interlaced couples. It seemed that the
whole of humanity was passing by intoxicated with joy, pleasure, and
happiness. The young wife, who had divined something of what was passing
through her husband's mind, said, in her soft voice: "What are you
thinking of, dear? You have not said a word for the last half hour."
He answered, sneeringly: "I was thinking of all these fools cuddling one
another, and saying to myself that there is something else to do in
life."