Rose had laid her plans in such a fashion that the young man had
found her in his path. Not to see her was too deliberately to avoid
her. If he saw her, he had to take off his hat. And this was what
had happened. Rose had answered his salutation by a word of welcome;
conversation had then passed to the old house at Barnavast, finally to
Mme. Suif. But Leonor was discreet and vague, so much so that at one of
Rose's questions the conversation had switched off on to sentimental
commonplaces. But, for Rose, nothing in the world was commonplace yet.
"Isn't she rather old to marry again?" she asked.
"Ah, but Mme. Suif is one of those whose hearts are always young."
"Then there are some hearts that grow old more slowly than others?"
"Some never grow old at all, just as some have never been young."
"All the same, I see a great difference, when I look around me, between
the feelings of young and old people."
"Do you know many people?"
"No, very few; but I have always seen a correspondence between people's
hearts and faces."
"Certainly; but a general truth, although it may represent the average
of particular truths, is hardly ever the same as a single particular
case selected by chance...."
Rose looked at Leonor with a mixture of admiration and shame: she did
not understand. Leonor perceived the fact and went on:
"I mean that there are, in all things, exceptions. I also mean that
there are rules which admit of a great number of exceptions. It even
happens in life, just as in grammar, that the exceptional are more
numerous than the regular cases. Do you follow?"
"Oh, perfectly."
"But that," he concluded, emphasising his words, "does not prevent the
rule's being the rule, even though there were only two normal cases as
against ten exceptions."
Rose liked this magisterial tone. M. Hervart had, for some time, done
nothing but agree with her opinions.
"But how does one recognise the rule?" she went on.
"Rules," said Leonor, "always satisfy the reason."
Rose looked at him in alarm; then, pretending she had understood, made
a sign of affirmation.
"Women never understand that very well," Leonor continued. "It doesn't
satisfy them. They yield only to their feelings. So do men, for that
matter, but they don't admit it. So that women accused of hypocrisy
and vanity have less of these vices, it may be, than men.... At any
rate the rule is the rule. The rule demands that Marguerite should give
up...."
"Who's Marguerite?"
"Mme. Suif."
"Do you know her well?"
Leonor smiled. "Am I not the nephew and lieutenant of her architect?
The rule, then, would demand that Marguerite should give up love; and
the rule further demands, Mademoiselle, that you should begin to think
of it."
"The rule is the rule," said Rose sententiously, suppressing the shouts
of laughter that exploded silently in her heart.
"The rule's not so stupid after all," she thought. "I don't ask
anything better than to obey it...."
At this moment M. Hervart came face to face with them at the turn of
a path. Rose welcomed him with a happy smile, a smile of delicious
frankness.
"Good," thought M. Hervart, "he isn't my rival yet. My rôle for the
moment is to act the part of the man who is sure of himself, the
man who possesses, dominates, the lord who is above all changes and
chances...."
And he began to talk of his stay at Robinvast and of the pleasure he
found in the midst of this rich disorderly scene of nature.
"But you," he said, "have come to put it in order. You have come
to whiten these walls, scrape off this moss and ivy, cut clearings
through these dark masses, and you will make M. Des Boys a present of a
brand-new castle with a charming and equally brand-new park."
"Who's going to touch my ivy?" exclaimed Rose, indignantly.
"Why should it be touched," said Leonor. "Isn't ivy the glory of the
walls of Tourlaville? Ivy--why, it's the only architectural beauty
that can't be bought. At Barnavast, which is in a state of ruin, we
always respect it when the wall can be consolidated from inside. To my
mind, restoration means giving back to a monument the appearance that
the centuries would have given it if it had been well looked after.
Restoration doesn't mean making a thing look new; it doesn't consist in
giving an old man the hair, beard, complexion and teeth of a youth; it
consists in bringing a dying man back to life and giving him the health
and beauty of his age."
"How glad I am to hear you talk like this," said Rose. "I hope M.
Lanfranc shares your ideas."
"M. Lanfranc is completely converted to my ideas."
"My father will do nothing without consulting me, but I shall feel
more certain of getting my way if you are my ally."
"I will be your ally then."
"Yours is a sensible method," said M. Hervart. "You may know that I
am the keeper of the Greek sculpture at the Louvre. I entered that
necropolis at a time when the old system of restoration had begun to
be abandoned. They were oscillating between two methods--re-making or
doing nothing. The second has prevailed. You will have noticed that our
marbles can be divided into two groups: those which have no antiquity
but in the name, and those which have no antiquity except in the
material. In old days, when they had found a bust, they manufactured
a new head for it, new arms and new legs; then they wrote underneath:
'Artemis (restored), Minerva (restored), Nymph with a bow (restored),'
according to the fancy of the cast-maker or as they were guided by a
somnolent archæology. I think that they certainly filled some gaps in
this way. If the system had gone on being followed, we should doubtless
be in possession at the present time of a complete Olympus; while as
it is there are plenty of empty places left in the assembly of our
gods. Since we decided to do nothing, our galleries have grown rich
in curious anatomical odds and ends--legs and hands that look like
those ex-voto offerings that used, as a matter of fact, to hang in
Greek sanctuaries; heads that look as though they had, like Orpheus's
head, been rolled by storms among the pebbles of the sea; busts so
full of holes that they seem to have served as targets for drunken
soldiers. In short nothing comes to us now but fragments--fragments
of great archæological interest, but whose value as works of art is
almost nothing. Wouldn't some intermediate method be preferable? By
intermediate I mean intelligent. Intelligence is the art of reconciling
ideas and producing a harmony. A head of Aphrodite with a broken nose
ceases to be a head of Aphrodite. I ask for beauty and they give me a
museum specimen. If they want me to admire it, they must make a new
nose; if they don't want to make a new nose, then they must divide up
the Louvre into two museums, the æsthetic museum and the archæological
museum."
Having finished speaking, he looked first of all at Rose, thus showing
that he had need, before everything else, of her approbation. Rose's
face lit up with happiness. Her eyes answered, "My dear, I admire you.
You're a god."
These movements were understood by Leonor, who had been trying for some
few moments to guess what were the relations between Rose and Hervart.
"They are in love," he said to himself. "Hervart has a genius for
making love. I am twenty-eight, which is my only point of superiority
over him. And even that is very illusory, for it is only women who
know something about life, whether through experience or through the
confidences of some one else, who pay any attention to a man's age. A
woman is as old as her face: a man is as old as his eyes. Hervart has a
pair of fine blue eyes, gentle and lively, ardent. But what do I care?
I don't desire the good graces of this innocent."
While reflecting thus, he had answered M. Hervart, "I quite agree with
you. People tend too much to-day to confound the curious, rare or
antique with the beautiful. The æsthetic sense has been replaced by a
feeling of respect."
"The process was perhaps inevitable," said M. Hervart. "In any case it
suits a democracy. People have no time to learn to admire, but one can
very quickly learn to respect. The intelligence is docile, but taste is
recalcitrant."
"But aren't there such things," Rose asked, "as spontaneous
admirations?"
"Yes," said Leonor, "there's love."
"Then is admiration the same as love?"
"If they don't yet love, people come very near loving when they admire."
"And is love admiration?"
"Not always."
"Love," said M. Hervart, "is compatible with almost all other feelings,
even with hatred."
"Yes," replied Leonor, "that has the appearance of being true, for
there are many kinds of love. The love that struggles with hatred can
only be a love inspired by interest or sensuality."
"One never knows. I hold that love, just as it is capable of taking
any shape or form, can devour all other feelings and install itself
in their place. It comes and it goes, without one's ever being able
to understand the mechanism of its movements. It lasts two hours or a
whole life....
"You are mixing up the different species," said Leonor. "You must, if
we are to understand one another, allow words to keep their traditional
sense with all its shades of meaning. Love is at the base of all
emotions either as a negative or positive principle; one can say that,
and when one has said it one is no forwarder. Do you think there's no
point in the way verbal usage employs the words 'passion, caprice,
inclination, taste, curiosity' and other words of the kind? It would
surely be better to create new shades, rather than set one's wits to
work to dissolve all the colours and shades of sensation and emotion
into a single hue."
Like a village musician plunged into the midst of a discussion on
counterpoint and orchestration, Rose listened, a little disquieted, a
little irritated, but at the same time fascinated. They were speaking
of something that filled her heart and set her nerves tingling; she did
not understand, she felt. She would have liked to understand.
"Xavier will explain it all to me. How silly I look in the middle of
the conversations where I can't put in a word."
She pretended to desire a rose out of reach of her hand. M. Hervart
darted forward, reached the flower and set to work to strip the branch
of its thorns and its superfluous wood and leaves.
"That was not the one I wanted," said Rose.
M. Hervart began again and the girl looked on, happy at having been
able to interrupt a serious conversation by a mere whim.
Leonor examined them with a certain irony. Rose noticed his look, felt
herself blushing and slipped away.
M. Hervart and Leonor continued their stroll and their chat; but they
talked no more about love.