Then they spoke of the coming session. Laroche-Mathieu began to spout,
rehearsing the phrases that he was about to pour forth on his colleagues
a few hours later. He waved his right hand, raising now his knife, now
his fork, now a bit of bread, and without looking at anyone, addressing
himself to the invisible assembly, he poured out his dulcet eloquence,
the eloquence of a good-looking, dandified fellow. A tiny, twisted
moustache curled up at its two ends above his lip like scorpion's tails,
and his hair, anointed with brilliantine and parted in the middle, was
puffed out like his temples, after the fashion of a provincial
lady-killer. He was a little too stout, puffy, though still young, and
his stomach stretched his waistcoat.
The private secretary ate and drank quietly, no doubt accustomed to
these floods of loquacity; but Du Roy, whom jealousy of achieved success
cut to the quick, thought: "Go on you proser. What idiots these
political jokers are." And comparing his own worth to the frothy
importance of the minister, he said to himself, "By Jove! if I had only
a clear hundred thousand francs to offer myself as a candidate at home,
near Rouen, and dish my sunning dullards of Normandy folk in their own
sauce, what a statesman I should make beside these short-sighted
rascals!"
Monsieur Laroche-Mathieu went on spouting until coffee was served; then,
seeing that he was behind hand, he rang for his brougham, and holding
out his hand to the journalist, said: "You quite understand, my dear
fellow?"
"Perfectly, my dear minister; you may rely upon me."
And Du Roy strolled leisurely to the office to begin his article, for he
had nothing to do till four o'clock. At four o'clock he was to meet, at
the Rue de Constantinople, Madame de Marelle, whom he met there
regularly twice a week--on Mondays and Fridays. But on reaching the
office a telegram was handed to him. It was from Madame Walter, and ran
as follows: "I must see you to-day. Most important. Expect me at two
o'clock, Rue de Constantinople. Can render you a great service. Till
death.--Virginie."
He began to swear: "Hang it all, what an infernal bore!" And seized with
a fit of ill-temper, he went out again at once too irritated to work.
For six weeks he had been trying to break off with her, without being
able to wear out her eager attachment. She had had, after her fall, a
frightful fit of remorse, and in three successive rendezvous had
overwhelmed her lover with reproaches and maledictions. Bored by these
scenes and already tired of this mature and melodramatic conquest, he
had simply kept away, hoping to put an end to the adventure in that way.
But then she had distractedly clutched on to him, throwing herself into
this amour as a man throws himself into a river with a stone about his
neck. He had allowed himself to be recaptured out of weakness and
consideration for her, and she had enwrapt him in an unbridled and
fatiguing passion, persecuting him with her affection. She insisted on
seeing him every day, summoning him at all hours to a hasty meeting at a
street corner, at a shop, or in a public garden. She would then repeat
to him in a few words, always the same, that she worshiped and idolized
him, and leave him, vowing that she felt so happy to have seen him. She
showed herself quite another creature than he had fancied her, striving
to charm him with puerile glances, a childishness in love affairs
ridiculous at her age. Having remained up till then strictly honest,
virgin in heart, inaccessible to all sentiment, ignorant of sensuality,
a strange outburst of youthful tenderness, of ardent, naive and tardy
love, made up of unlooked-for outbursts, exclamations of a girl of
sixteen, graces grown old without ever having been young, had taken
place in this staid woman. She wrote him ten letters a day, maddeningly
foolish letters, couched in a style at once poetic and ridiculous, full
of the pet names of birds and beasts.
As soon as they found themselves alone together she would kiss him with
the awkward prettiness of a great tomboy, pouting of the lips that were
grotesque, and bounds that made her too full bosom shake beneath her
bodice. He was above all, sickened with hearing her say, "My pet," "My
doggie," "My jewel," "My birdie," "My treasure," "My own," "My
precious," and to see her offer herself to him every time with a little
comedy of infantile modesty, little movements of alarm that she thought
pretty, and the tricks of a depraved schoolgirl. She would ask, "Whose
mouth is this?" and when he did not reply "Mine," would persist till she
made him grow pale with nervous irritability. She ought to have felt, it
seemed to him, that in love extreme tact, skill, prudence, and exactness
are requisite; that having given herself to him, she, a woman of mature
years, the mother of a family, and holding a position in society, should
yield herself gravely, with a kind of restrained eagerness, with tears,
perhaps, but with those of Dido, not of Juliet.
She kept incessantly repeating to him, "How I love you, my little pet.
Do you love me as well, baby?"
He could no longer bear to be called "my little pet," or "baby," without
an inclination to call her "old girl."
She would say to him, "What madness of me to yield to you. But I do not
regret it. It is so sweet to love."
All this seemed to George irritating from her mouth. She murmured, "It
is so sweet to love," like the village maiden at a theater.
Then she exasperated him by the clumsiness of her caresses. Having
become all at once sensual beneath the kisses of this young fellow who
had so warmed her blood, she showed an unskilled ardor and a serious
application that made Du Roy laugh and think of old men trying to learn
to read. When she would have gripped him in her embrace, ardently gazing
at him with the deep and terrible glance of certain aging women,
splendid in their last loves, when she should have bitten him with
silent and quivering mouth, crushing him beneath her warmth and weight,
she would wriggle about like a girl, and lisp with the idea of being
pleasant: "Me love 'ou so, ducky, me love 'ou so. Have nice lovey-lovey
with 'ittle wifey."
He then would be seized with a wild desire to take his hat and rush out,
slamming the door behind him.
They had frequently met at the outset at the Rue de Constantinople; but
Du Roy, who dreaded a meeting there with Madame de Marelle, now found a
thousand pretexts for refusing such appointments. He had then to call on
her almost every day at her home, now to lunch, now to dinner. She
squeezed his hand under the table, held out her mouth to him behind the
doors. But he, for his part, took pleasure above all in playing with
Susan, who amused him with her whimsicalities. In her doll-like frame
was lodged an active, arch, sly, and startling wit, always ready to show
itself off. She joked at everything and everybody with biting readiness.
George stimulated her imagination, excited it to irony and they
understood one another marvelously. She kept appealing to him every
moment, "I say, Pretty-boy. Come here, Pretty-boy."
He would at once leave the mother and go to the daughter, who would
whisper some bit of spitefulness, at which they would laugh heartily.
However, disgusted with the mother's love, he began to feel an
insurmountable repugnance for her; he could no longer see, hear, or
think of her without anger. He ceased, therefore, to visit her, to
answer her letters, or to yield to her appeals. She understood at length
that he no longer loved her, and suffered terribly. But she grew
insatiable, kept watch on him, followed him, waited for him in a cab
with the blinds drawn down, at the door of the office, at the door of
his dwelling, in the streets through which she hoped he might pass. He
longed to ill-treat her, swear at her, strike her, say to her plainly,
"I have had enough of it, you worry my life out." But he observed some
circumspection on account of the _Vie Francaise_, and strove by dint of
coolness, harshness, tempered by attention, and even rude words at
times, to make her understand that there must be an end to it. She
strove, above all, to devise schemes to allure him to a meeting in the
Rue de Constantinople, and he was in a perpetual state of alarm lest the
two women should find themselves some day face to face at the door.
His affection for Madame de Marelle had, on the contrary, augmented
during the summer. He called her his "young rascal," and she certainly
charmed him. Their two natures had kindred links; they were both members
of the adventurous race of vagabonds, those vagabonds in society who so
strongly resemble, without being aware of it, the vagabonds of the
highways. They had had a summer of delightful love-making, a summer of
students on the spree, bolting off to lunch or dine at Argenteuil,
Bougival, Maisons, or Poissy, and passing hours in a boat gathering
flowers from the bank. She adored the fried fish served on the banks of
the Seine, the stewed rabbits, the arbors in the tavern gardens, and the
shouts of the boating men. He liked to start off with her on a bright
day on a suburban line, and traverse the ugly environs of Paris,
sprouting with tradesmen's hideous boxes, talking lively nonsense. And
when he had to return to dine at Madame Walter's he hated the eager old
mistress from the mere recollection of the young one whom he had left,
and who had ravished his desires and harvested his ardor among the grass
by the water side.
He had fancied himself at length pretty well rid of Madame Walter, to
whom he had expressed, in a plain and almost brutal fashion, his
intentions of breaking off with her, when he received at the office of
the paper the telegram summoning him to meet her at two o'clock at the
Rue de Constantinople. He re-read it as he walked along, "Must see you
to-day. Most important. Expect me two o'clock, Rue de Constantinople.
Can render you a great service. Till death.--Virginie."
He thought, "What does this old screech-owl want with me now? I wager
she has nothing to tell me. She will only repeat that she adores me. Yet
I must see what it means. She speaks of an important affair and a great
service; perhaps it is so. And Clotilde, who is coming at four o'clock!
I must get the first of the pair off by three at the latest. By Jove,
provided they don't run up against one another! What bothers women are."
And he reflected that, after all, his own wife was the only one who
never bothered him at all. She lived in her own way, and seemed to be
very fond of him during the hours destined to love, for she would not
admit that the unchangeable order of the ordinary occupations of life
should be interfered with.
He walked slowly towards the rendezvous, mentally working himself up
against Madame Walter. "Ah! I will just receive her nicely if she has
nothing to tell me. Cambronne's language will be academical compared to
mine. I will tell her that I will never set foot in her house again, to
begin with."
He went in to wait for Madame Walter. She arrived almost immediately,
and as soon as she caught sight of him, she exclaimed, "Ah, you have had
my telegram! How fortunate."
He put on a grumpy expression, saying: "By Jove, yes; I found it at the
office just as I was going to start off to the Chamber. What is it you
want now?"
She had raised her veil to kiss him, and drew nearer with the timid and
submissive air of an oft-beaten dog.
"How cruel you are towards me! How harshly you speak to me! What have I
done to you? You cannot imagine how I suffer through you."