From 8.57 a.m. till the hour of 6 p.m., when she rang at his door, M.
Hervart had precisely one idea, a single one: he must meet Gratienne.
She had been in Paris since the day before, and she had just written to
him when she got his telegram from Caen. Her delight was very great.
She fulfilled her lover's desire with joy.
"I love you, my old darling!"
M. Hervart spent two days without thinking of Rose except as something
very remote. He was thrilled to re-discover the Louvre: he looked at
the colonnade before he went in; even the "fighting Hero" seemed a
novelty to him: he went and meditated in front of the crouching Venus,
of which he was especially fond. It was there that he had often met
Gratienne. How he loved her! What a pleasure it had been to come back
to his "ephebe."
On the third day after his arrival he received Gratienne's letter
forwarded from Robinvast. That disturbed him a little--Rose's writing
superimposed on Gratienne's.
"But aren't they superimposed in life? No, I mean, mingled together.
Rose is much too ignorant of the way things go to have any suspicion.
And besides, I must have got at least ten letters in women's
handwriting while I was at Robinvast and I never made any attempt at
concealment.... Rose--it's true I went rather far with her. But whose
fault was that? If she had resisted my first attacks, I shouldn't have
insisted. What an egoist she is!... However, I ought to write to her.
No, not to-day. It's my turn to be cross."
During the day he thought several more times of Rose. The scenes in
the garden and the wood came back into his mind and unnerved him. Then
a question posed itself in his mind: Do I love her? But he would not
answer. Others presented themselves yet insistently: How shall I draw
back. He did not understand. He had no intention of drawing back. Well,
then, should the marriage take place? He really didn't know.
"I must have a breathing space. I come back, I have arrears of work and
friends to sec. Everything must be done properly. For the little dryad
of the Robinvast wood, there is only one thing in the world and that is
I. For me there are a dozen things, a thousand...."
He rang the bell, gave unnecessary orders, asked futile questions. It
was only at about three o'clock that he opened the door to an image
which had been prowling round his head since the morning: Gratienne was
coming to pick him up at four and they were to go to St. Cloud. That
was one of his great pleasures.
"Will Rose be able to understand these profoundly civilised landscapes,
this well-tamed nature, these hills with their harmonious lines like
the body of a lovely sleeping woman?"
M. Hervart felt in very good form. The uncomfortable symptoms which had
disquieted him in the country had disappeared since his return.... He
found in Gratienne a favourable reception and to the realisation of his
desires. She knew his tastes and she shared them. In short, he promised
himself several delightful hours after this familiar outing. However
a very disagreeable surprise was in store for him. After the preludes
of passion, when his whole being was bent on realisation, M. Hervart
had a moment of weakness. Gratienne's skilful tenderness had certainly
overcome it, the self-esteem of both parties had been preserved.
In the morning, he thought of Stendhal, carried the volume to his
office and read chapter LX of _L'Amour_ with the greatest attention.
He found nothing there to enlighten him. Gratienne, certainly, did
not inspire, and indeed no woman had ever inspired, in him that kind
of ill-balanced passion in which the body recoils, alarmed at its own
boldness.
"Stendhal no doubt had discovered one of the reasons for an absence
of apropos, but he had found only one. And besides, all this doesn't
belong to psychology; it is physiology. There's nothing but physiology.
Bouret will tell me about it."
Bouret, who knew M. Hervart's life, made him relate, point by point,
the whole history of his last year. Finally he said: "Well it's very
simple."
Bouret employed no circumlocutions. He was clear and brutal. After a
moment's reflection he continued!
"The inevitable accompaniment of Platonic love is secret vice. Simple
flirtation leads to the same consequences. Double flirtation is secret
vice _à deux_, discreet and hypocritical. Triple flirtation, if it
exists, would still be secret vice _à deux_, but avowed, frank. It
would perhaps be less dangerous than double flirtation, which is
simply realisation artificially provoked. No virility can stand that.
Women, for another reason less easy to explain, are destroyed by it
just like men. Men are fools. If you want a woman, take a woman and
behave like a fine animal fulfilling its functions! And above all
beware of young girls. Young girls have destroyed the virility of more
men than all the Messalinas in the world. Sentimental conversations,
furtive kisses and hand-squeezings are almost always accompanied in
an impressionable man, especially if he has several months or even a
few weeks of chastity behind him, by loss of vigor. Then do you know
what happens? One gets used to it. I believe that our organs, despite
their close interdependence, have a certain autonomy. The first thing
you must do is to preserve perfect chastity for an indefinite period.
Active occupations, fatigue; you must procure sheer brute sleep. Then,
in two or three months make a few direct attempts, absolutely direct.
If that's all right, you must marry and set your mind to producing
children. There."
"Then you condemn me to conjugal duty."
"That's it precisely."
"One should marry a woman one doesn't love?
"That would be true wisdom."
"And be faithful to her?"
"Obviously."
"Or else renounce everything?"
"I won't go as far as that. Your case isn't desperate. You have fled in
time."
"I didn't fly. I was driven away."
"Bless her cruel heart. Tell me, did she permit indiscretions?"
"Yes, I should almost have said willingly."
"She will be a dangerous wife."
"She is so innocent!"
"There are no innocent women. They know by instinct all that we claim
to teach them."
"That's just what innocence is."
"Perhaps. But a delicate voluptuary with an innocent and amorous girl
is a lost man."
"I begin to realise the fact."
"There are not," Bouret went on, "several kinds of love. There is only
one kind. Love is physical. The most ethereal reverberates through the
organism with as much certainty as the most brutal. Nature knows only
one end, procreation, and if the road you take does not lead there, she
stops you and condemns you at least to some simulacrum; that is her
vengeance. Every intersexual sentiment tends towards love, unless its
initial character be well defined or unless the partners are in a phase
of life in which love is impossible.... But I am treating you too much
as a friend and too little as a patient. You seem to be pensive. You're
not as much interested in questions as Leonor Varin. He is my pupil
in the physiology of morals. How is Lanfranc? He doesn't Platonise,
doesn't flirt...."
"Oh! no."
"Varin interests me. Do you know him?"
"Very little."
"The loss is yours. One of his days he will become a fine mind, if he
gets over the sensual crisis. I'd like to marry him to some one."
"That's your panacea."
"Perhaps it is one, my friend, on condition that marriage is taken
seriously. It's only in marriage that one can find stability. By the
way, have you seen Des Boys' daughter? He writes to me from time to
time. We have remained friends because, though he's a fool, he's a
laconic fool. And then he's a very decent sort of fellow and a man to
whom I owe my position. He seems to be almost embarrassed with his
daughter. He has no connections in the world. What's she like? Pretty?
"Yes."
"Intelligent? I mean, of course, as far as a woman can be intelligent."
"Yes."
"And now the principal thing--her health?"
"Good as far as one can see."
"Ho, ho! I shall unloose Varin in pursuit of this nymph."
"Unnecessary; he knows her."
"Ah, he knows her?"
M. Hervart got up. He was afraid that some unforeseen question might
make him say something silly. Suppose Bouret, who was a friend of Des
Boys, guessed something? He tried to think of an ambiguous phrase and
found one:
"I spent a day at the Des Boys' with Varin. I don't know if he's a
familiar of the house."
And with that he went away.
"What a bad business!" he said to himself, as he thought of his health,
for the rest was of secondary importance to him now. "No more women! No
more Gratienne! No libidinous thoughts! Am I master of my thoughts? Why
not a course of pious reading?"
He spent several black days, then gave orders, in one of the galleries
of his museum, for one of those untimely upheavals which drive the
amateur wild. M. Hervart needed to distract himself. After a week,
Gratienne grown anxious, sent him an express letter. He yielded to the
suggestion and that evening made an attempt which Bouret would have
considered premature. However, it succeeded marvellously well and M.
Hervart felt new life spring within him.
The next day, as he was in excellent spirits, he wrote to Rose, whose
prolonged silence had ended by pricking his self-satisfaction.