* I believe in love as I believe in God.
[Illustration: p045-56]
Mark you, I strongly suspect the rascal cares as little for God, as for
the rest; but women do not look so closely. They are easily caught by
a birdlime of words, and every time Amaury recites his _Credo of Love_,
you are certain to see all round the drawing-room rows upon rows of
little rosy mouths, eagerly opening, ready to swallow the taking bait
of mawkish sentimentality. Just fancy! A poet who has such beautiful
moustaches and who believes in love as he believes in God.
For the nurseryman's wife this proved indeed irresistible. In three
sittings she was conquered. Only, as at the bottom of this elegiac
nature there was some honesty and pride, she would not stoop to any
paltry fault. Moreover the poet himself declared in his _Credo_, that
he only understood one way of erring: that which was openly declared and
ready to defy both law and society. Taking therefore the _Credo of Love_
for her guide, the young woman one fine day escaped from the garden at
Auteuil and went off to throw herself into her poet's arms.--"I can no
longer live with that man! Take me away!"
In such cases the husband is always _that man_, even when he is a
horticulturist.
For a moment Amaury was staggered. How on earth could he have imagined
that an ordinary little housewife of thirty would have taken in earnest
a love poem, and followed it out literally? However he put the best face
he could on his over-good fortune, and as the lady had, thanks to her
little Auteuil garden, remained fresh and pretty, he carried her off
without a murmur. The first days, all was delightful. They feared lest
the husband should track them. They thought it advisable to hide under
fictitious names, change hotels, inhabit the most remote quarters of the
town, the suburbs of Paris, the outlying districts.
[Illustration: p047-058]
In the evening they stealthily sallied forth and took sentimental walks
along the fortifications. Oh the wonderful power of romance! The more
she was alarmed, the more precautions, window blinds and lowered veils,
were necessary, the greater did her poet seem. At night, they opened the
little window of their room and gazing at the stars rising on high above
the signal lights of the neighbouring railway, she made him repeat again
and again his wonderful verses:
Moi, je crois à l'amour comme je crois en Dieu.
And it was delightful!
[Illustration: p048-059]
Unfortunately it did not last. The husband left them too much
undisturbed. The fact is, _that man_ was a philosopher. His wife gone,
he had closed the green door of his oasis and quietly set about trimming
his roses again, happy in the thought that these at least, attached
to the soil by long roots, would not be able to run away from him. Our
reassured lovers returned to Paris and then suddenly the young woman
felt that some change had come over her poet. Their flight, fear of
detection, and constant alarms,--all these things which had fed
her passion existing no longer, she began to understand and see the
situation clearly.
[Illustration: p049-060]
Moreover, at every moment, in the settling of their little household,
in the thousand paltry details of every day life, the man she was living
with showed himself more thoroughly.
The few and scarce generous, heroic or delicate feelings he possessed
were spun out in his verses, and he kept none for his personal use.
He was mean, selfish, above all very niggardly, a fault love seldom
forgives. Then he had cut off his moustaches, and was disfigured by
the loss. How different from that fine gloomy fellow with his carefully
curled locks, as he appeared one evening declaiming his _Credo_, in the
blaze of two chandeliers! Now, in the enforced retreat he was undergoing
on her account, he gave way to all his crotchets, the greatest of which
was fancying himself always ill. Indeed, from constantly playing at
consumption, one ends by believing in it. The poet Amaury was fond of
decoctions, wrapped himself up in plaisters, and covered his chimney
piece with phials and powders. For some time the little woman took up
quite seriously her part of a nursing sister. Her devotion seemed to
excuse her fault and give an object to her life. But she soon tired of
it. In spite of herself, in the stuffy room where the poet sat wrapped
in flannel, she could not help thinking of her little garden so sweetly
scented, and the kind nurseryman seen from afar in the midst of
his shrubs and flowerbeds, appeared to her as simple, touching and
disinterested, as this other one was exacting and egotistical.
At the end of a month, she loved her husband, really loved him, not with
the affection induced by habit, but with a real and true love. One day
she wrote him a long letter full of passion and repentance. He did
not vouchsafe a reply. Perhaps he thought she was not yet sufficiently
punished. Then she despatched letter after letter, humbled herself,
begged him to allow her to return, saying she would die rather than
continue to live with that man. It was now the lover's turn to be called
"that man." Strange to say, she hid herself from him to write; for
she believed him still in love, and while imploring her husband's
forgiveness, she feared the exaltation of her lover.
"He will never allow me to leave," she said to herself.
Accordingly, when by dint of supplications she obtained forgiveness
and the nurseryman--I have already mentioned that he was a
philosopher,--consented to take her back, the return to her own home
bore all the mysterious and dramatic aspect of flight. She literally
eloped with her husband. It was her last culpable pleasure. One evening
as the poet, tired of their dual existence, and proud of his regrown
moustaches, had gone to an evening party to recite his _Credo of Love_,
she jumped into a cab that was awaiting her at the end of the street and
returned with her old husband to the little garden at Auteuil, for ever
cured of her ambition to be the wife of a poet. It is true that this
fellow was not much of a poet!
[Illustration: p055-066]