AS early as the morrow, Octave commenced to occupy himself about
Valérie. He studied her habits, and ascertained the hour when he would
have a chance of meeting her on the stairs; and he arranged matters so
that he could frequently go up to his room, taking advantage of his
coming home to lunch at the Campardons’, and leaving “The Ladies’
Paradise” for a few minutes under some pretext or other. He soon
noticed that, every day towards two o’clock, the young woman, who took
her child to the Tuileries gardens, passed along the Rue Gaillon. Then
he would stand at the door, wait till she came, and greet her with one
of his handsome shopman’s smiles. At each of their meetings, Valérie
politely inclined her head and passed on; but he perceived her dark
glance to be full of passionate fire; he found encouragement in her
ravaged complexion and in the supple swing of her gait.
His plan was already formed, the bold plan of a seducer used to
cavalierly overcoming the virtue of shop-girls. It was simply a
question of luring Valérie inside his room on the fourth floor; the
staircase was always silent and deserted, no one would discover them up
there; and he laughed at the thought of the architect’s moral
admonitions; for taking a woman belonging to the house was not the same
as bringing one into it.
One thing, however, made Octave uneasy. The passage separated the
Pichons’ kitchen from their dining-room, and this obliged them to
constantly have their door open. At nine o’clock in the morning, the
husband started off for his office, and did not return home until about
five in the evening; and, on alternate days of the week, he went out
again after his dinner to do some bookkeeping, from eight to midnight.
Besides this, though, the young woman, who was very reserved—almost
wildly timid—would push her door to, directly she heard Octave’s
footsteps. He never caught sight of more than her back, which always
seemed to be flying away, with her light hair done up into a scanty
chignon. Through that door kept discreetly ajar, he had, up till then,
only beheld a small portion of the room: sad and clean looking
furniture, linen of a dull whiteness in the grey light admitted through
a window which he could not see, and the corner of a child’s crib
inside an inner room; all the monotonous solitude of a wife occupied
from morning to night with the recurring cares of a clerk’s home.
Moreover, there was never a sound; the child seemed dumb and worn-out
like the mother; one scarcely distinguished at times the soft murmur of
some ballad which the latter would hum for hours together in an
expiring voice. But Octave was none the less furious with the
disdainful creature as he called her. She was playing the spy upon him
perhaps. In any case, Valérie could never come up to him if the
Pichons’ door was thus being continually opened.
He was just beginning to think that things were taking the right
course. One Sunday when the husband was absent, he had manoeuvred in
such a way as to be on the first-floor landing at the moment the young
woman, wrapped in her dressing-gown, was leaving her sister-in-law’s to
return to her own apartments; and she being obliged to speak to him,
they had stood some minutes exchanging polite remarks. So he was hoping
that next time she would ask him in. With a woman with such a
temperament the rest would follow as a matter of course. That evening
during dinner, there was some talk about Valérie at the Campardons’.
Octave tried to draw the others out. But as Angèle was listening and
casting sly glances at Lisa, who was handing round some leg of mutton
and looking very serious, the parents at first did nothing but sing the
young woman’s praises. Moreover, the architect always stood up for the
respectability of the house, with the vain conviction of a tenant who
seemed to obtain from it a regular certificate of his own gentility.
“Oh! my dear fellow, most respectable people. You saw them at the
Josserands’. The husband is no fool; he is full of ideas, he will end
by discovering something very grand. As for the wife, she has some
style about her, as we artists say.”
Madame Campardon, who had been rather worse since the day before, and
who was half reclining, though her illness did not prevent her eating
thick underdone slices of meat, languidly murmured in her turn:
“That poor Monsieur Théophile, he is like me, he drags along. Ah! great
praise is due to Valérie, for it is not lively always having by one a
man trembling with fever, and whose infirmity usually makes him
quarrelsome and unjust.”
During dessert, Octave, seated between the architect and his wife
learnt more than he asked. They forgot Angèle, they spoke in hints,
with glances which underlined the double meanings of the words; and,
when they were at a loss for an expression, they bent towards him one
after the other, and coarsely whispered the rest of the disclosure in
his ear. In short, that Théophile was a stupid and impotent person, who
deserved to be what his wife made him. As for Valérie, she was not
worth much, she would have behaved just as badly even if her husband
had been different, for with her, nature had so much the mastery.
Moreover, no one was ignorant of the fact that, two months after her
marriage, in despair at recognising that she would never have a child
by her husband, and fearing she would lose her share of old Vabre’s
fortune if Théophile happened to die, she had her little Camille got
for her by a butcher’s man of the Rue Sainte-Anne.
Campardon bent down and whispered a last time in Octave’s ear:
“Well! you know, my dear fellow, a hysterical woman!”
And he put into the word all the middle-class wantonness of an
indelicacy combined with the blobber-lipped smile of a father of a
family whose imagination, abruptly let loose, revels in licentiousness.
The conversation then took a different turn, they were speaking of the
Pichons, and words of praise were not stinted.
“Oh! they are indeed worthy people!” repeated Madame Campardon.
“Sometimes, when Marie takes her little Lilitte out, I also let her
take Angèle. And I assure you, Monsieur Mouret, I do not trust my
daughter to everyone; I must be absolutely certain of the person’s
morality. You love Marie very much, do you not, Angèle?”
“Yes, mamma,” answered the child.
The details continued. It was impossible to find a woman better brought
up, or according to severer principles. And it was a pleasure to see
how happy the husband was! Such a nice little home, and so clean, and a
couple that adored each other, who never said one word louder than
another!
“Besides, they would not be allowed to remain in the house, if they did
not behave themselves properly,” said the architect gravely, forgetting
his disclosures about Valérie. “We will only have respectable people
here. On my word of honour! I would give notice, the day that my
daughter ran the risk of meeting disreputable women on the stairs.”
That evening, he had secretly arranged to take cousin Gasparine to the
Opéra-Comique. He therefore went and fetched his hat at once, talking
of a business matter which would keep him out till very late. Rose
though probably knew of the arrangement, for Octave heard her murmur,
in her resigned and maternal voice, when her husband came to kiss her
with his habitual effusive tenderness:
“Amuse yourself well, and do not catch cold on coming out.” On the
morrow, Octave had an idea: it was to become acquainted with Madame
Pichon, by rendering her a few neighbourly services; in this way, if
she ever caught Valeric, she would keep her eyes shut. And an
opportunity occurred that very day. Madame Pichon was in the habit of
taking Lilitte, then eighteen months old, out in a little basket-work
perambulator, which raised Monsieur Gourd’s ire; the doorkeeper would
never permit it to be carried up the principal staircase, so that she
had to take it up the servants’; and as the door of her apartment was
too narrow, she had to remove the wheels every time, which was quite a
job. It so happened that that day Octave was returning home, just as
his neighbour, incommoded by her gloves, was giving herself a great
deal of trouble to get the nuts off. When she felt him standing up
behind her, waiting till the passage was clear, she quite lost her
head, and her hands trembled.
“But, madame, why do you take all that trouble?” asked he at length.
“It would be far simpler to put the perambulator at the end of the
passage, behind my door.”
She did not reply, her excessive timidity kept her squatting there,
without strength to rise; and, beneath the curtain of her bonnet, he
beheld a hot blush invade the nape of her neck and her ears. Then he
insisted:
“I assure you, madame, it will not inconvenience me in the least.”
Without waiting, he lifted up the perambulator and carried it in his
easy way. She was obliged to follow him; but she remained so confused,
so frightened by this important adventure in her uneventful every-day
life, that she looked on, only able to stutter fragments of sentences.
“Dear me! sir, it is too much trouble—I feel quite ashamed—you will
find it very awkward. My husband will be very pleased—”
And she entered her room and locked herself in, this time hermetically,
with a sort of shame. Octave thought that she was stupid. The
perambulator was a great deal in his way for it prevented him opening
his door wide, and he had to slip into his room sideways. But his
neighbour seemed to be won over, more especially as Monsieur Gourd
consented to authorize the obstruction at that end of the passage,
thanks to Campardon’s influence.
Every Sunday, Marie’s parents, Monsieur and Madame Vuillaume, came to
spend the day. On the Sunday following, as Octave was going out, he
beheld all the family seated taking their coffee, and he was discreetly
hastening by, when the young woman, whispering quickly in her husband’s
ear, the latter jumped up, saying:
“Excuse me, sir, I am always out, I have not yet had an opportunity of
thanking you. But I wish to tell you how pleased I was—”
Octave protested. At length he was obliged to give in. Though he had
already had his coffee, they made him accept another cup. They gave him
the place of honour, between Monsieur and Madame Vuillaume. Opposite to
him, on the other side of the round table, Marie was again thrown into
one of those confused conditions which at any minute, without apparent
cause, brought all the blood from her heart to her face. He watched
her, never having seen her at his ease. But, as Trublot said, she was
not his fancy: she seemed to him wretched and washed out, with her flat
face and her thin hair, though her features were refined and pretty.
When she recovered herself a little, she laughed lightly as she again
talked of the perambulator, about which she found a great deal to say.
“Jules, if you had only seen Monsieur Mouret carry it in his arms. Ah
well! it did not take long!”
Pichon again uttered his thanks. He was tall and thin, with a doleful
look about him, already subdued to the routine of office life, his dull
eyes full of the apathetic resignation displayed by circus horses.
“Pray say no more about it!” Octave ended by observing, “it is really
not worth while. Madame, your coffee is exquisite. I have never drunk
any like it.”
She blushed again, and so much that her hands even became quite rosy.
“Do not spoil her, sir,” said Monsieur Vuillaume gravely, “Her coffee
is good, but there is better. And you see how proud she has become at
once!”
“Pride is worth nothing,” declared Madame Vuillaume. “We have always
taught her to be modest.”
They were both of them little and dried up, very old, and with
dark-looking countenances; the wife wore a tight black dress, and the
husband a thin frock-coat, on which only the mark of a big red ribbon
was to be seen.
“Sir,” resumed the latter, “I was decorated at the age of sixty, on the
day I was pensioned off, after having been for thirty-nine years
employed at the Ministry of Public Instruction. Well! sir, on that day
I dined the same as on other days, and did not let pride interfere with
any of my habits. The Cross was due to me, I knew it. I was simply
filled with gratitude.” His life was perfectly clear, he wished every
one to know it. After twenty-five years’ service, he had been promoted
to four thousand francs. His pension, therefore, was two thousand. But
he had had to re-engage himself in a subordinate position at fifteen
hundred francs, as they had had their little Marie late in life when
Madame Vuillaume was no longer expecting either son or daughter. Now
that the child was established in life, they were living on the
pension, by pinching themselves, in the Rue Durantin at Montmartre,
where things were cheaper.
“I am sixty-three,” said he, in conclusion, “and that is all about it,
and that is all about it, son-in-law!”
Pichon looked at him in a silent and weary way, his eyes fixed on his
red ribbon. Yes, it would be his own story if luck favoured him. He was
the last born of a greengrocer who had spent the entire worth of her
shop in her anxiety to make her son take a degree, just because all the
neighbourhood said he was very intelligent; and she had died bankrupt
eight days before his triumph at the Sorbonne. After three years of
hardships at his uncle’s, he had had the unexpected luck of getting a
berth at the Ministry, which was to lead him to everything, and on the
strength of which he had already married.
“When one does one’s duty, the government does the same,” murmured he,
mechanically reckoning that he still had thirty-six years to wait
before obtaining the right to wear a piece of red ribbon and to enjoy a
pension of two thousand francs.
Then he turned towards Octave.
“You see, sir, it is the children who are such a heavy weight.”
“No doubt,” said Madame Vuillaume. “If we had had another we should
never have made both ends meet. Therefore, remember Jules, what I
insisted upon when I gave you Marie: one child and no more, or else we
shall quarrel! It is only workpeople who have children like fowls lay
eggs, without troubling themselves as to what it will cost them. It is
true that they turn the youngsters out on to the streets, like flocks
of animals, which make me feel sick when I pass by.”
Octave had looked at Marie, thinking that this delicate subject would
make her cheeks crimson; but she remained pale, approving her mother’s
words with ingenuous serenity. He was feeling awfully bored, and did
not know how to retire. In the little cold dining-room these people
thus spent their afternoon, slowly muttering a few words every five
minutes, and always about their own affairs. Even dominoes disturbed
them too much.
Madame Vuillaume now explained her notions. At the end of a long
silence, which left all four of them in no way embarrassed as though
they had felt the necessity of rearranging their ideas, she resumed:
“You have no child, sir? It will come in time. Ah! it is a
responsibility, especially for a mother! When my little one was born I
was forty-nine, sir, an age when luckily one knows how to behave. A boy
will get on anyhow, but a girl! And I have the consolation of knowing
that I have done my duty, oh, yes!”
Then, she explained her plan of education, in short sentences. Honesty
first. No playing on the stairs, the little one always kept at home and
watched closely, for children think of nothing but evil. The doors and
windows shut, never any draughts, which bring the wicked things of the
street with them. Out of doors, never leave go of the child’s hand,
teach it to keep its eyes lowered to avoid seeing anything wrong. With
regard to religion, it should not be overdone, just sufficient as a
moral restraint. Then, when she has grown up, engage teachers instead
of sending her to school, where the innocent ones are corrupted; and
assist also at the lessons, see that she does not learn what she should
not know, hide all newspapers of course, and keep the bookcase locked.
“A young person always knows too much,” declared the old lady coming to
an end.
Whilst her mother spoke, Marie kept her eyes vaguely fixed on space.
She once more beheld the little convent-like lodging, those narrow
rooms in the Rue Durantin, where she was not even allowed to lean out
of a window. It was one prolonged childhood, all sorts of prohibitions
which she did not understand, lines which her mother inked out on their
fashion paper, the black marks of which made her blush, lessons
purified to such an extent that even her teachers were embarrassed when
she questioned them. A very gentle childhood, however, the soft warm
growth of a greenhouse, a waking dream in which the words uttered by
the tongue, and the facts of every day life acquired ridiculous
meanings. And, even at that hour as she gazed vacantly, and was filled
with these recollections, a childish smile hovered about her lips, as
though she had remained in ignorance spite even of her marriage.
“You will believe me if you like, sir,” said Monsieur Vuillaume, “but
my daughter had not read a single novel when she was past eighteen. Is
it not true, Marie?”
“Yes, papa.”
“I have George Sand’s works very handsomely bound,” he continued, “and
in spite of her mother’s fears I decided, a few months before her
marriage, to permit her to read ‘André,’ a perfectly innocent work,
full of imagination, and which elevates the soul. I am for a liberal
education. Literature has certainly its rights. The book produced an
extraordinary effect upon her, sir. She cried all night in her sleep:
which proves that there is nothing like a pure imagination to
understand genius.”
“It is so beautiful!” murmured the young woman, her eyes sparkling.
But Pichon having enunciated this theory: no novels before marriage,
and as many as one likes afterwards—Madame Vuillaume shook her head.
She never read, and was none the worse for it. Then, Marie gently spoke
of her loneliness.
“Well! I sometimes take up a book. Jules chooses them for me at the
library in the Passage Choiseul. If I only played the piano!”
For some time past, Octave had felt the necessity of saying something.
“What! madame,” exclaimed he, “you do not play!”
A slight awkwardness ensued. The parents talked of a succession of
unfortunate circumstances, not wishing to admit that they had not been
willing to incur the expense. Madame Vuillaume, moreover, affirmed,
that Marie sang in tune from her birth; when she was a child she knew
all sorts of very pretty ballads, she had only to hear the tunes once
to remember them; and the mother spoke of a song about Spain, the story
of a captive weeping for her lover, which the child gave out with an
expression that would draw tears from the hardest hearts. But Marie
remained disconsolate. She let this cry escape her, as she extended her
hand in the direction of the inner room, where her little one was
sleeping:
“Ah! I swear that Lilitte shall learn to play the piano, even though I
have to make the greatest sacrifices!”
“Think first of bringing her up as we brought you up,” said Madame
Vuillaume, severely. “I certainly do not condemn music, it develops
one’s feelings. But, above all, watch over your daughter, keep every
foul breath from her, strive that she may preserve her innocence.”
She started off again, giving even more weight to religion, settling
the number of times to go to confess each month, naming the masses that
it was absolutely necessary to attend, all from the point of view of
propriety. Then Octave, unable to bear any more of it, talked of an
appointment which obliged him to go out. He had a singing in his ears,
he felt that this conversation would continue in a like manner until
the evening. And he hastened away, leaving the Vuillaumes and the
Pichons telling one another, around the same cups of coffee slowly
emptied, what they told each other every Sunday. As he was bowing a
last time, Marie, suddenly and without any reason, became scarlet.
Ever since that afternoon, Octave hastened past the Pichons’ door
whenever he heard the slow tones of Monsieur and Madame Vuillaume on a
Sunday. Moreover, he was entirely absorbed in his conquest of Valérie.
In spite of the fiery glances of which he thought himself the object,
she maintained an inexplicable reserve; and in that he fancied he saw
the play of a coquette. He even met her one day, as though by chance,
in the Tuileries gardens, when she quietly began to talk of a storm of
the day before; which finally convinced him that she was devilish
smart. And he was constantly on the staircase, watching for an
opportunity of entering her apartments, decided if necessary upon being
positively rude.
Now, every time that he passed her, Marie smiled and blushed. They
exchanged the greetings of good neighbours. One morning, at lunch-time,
as he brought her up a letter, which Monsieur Gourd had given him, to
avoid having to go up the four flights of stairs himself, he found her
in a sad way: she had seated Lilitte in her chemise on the round table,
and was trying to dress her again.
“What is the matter?” asked the young man.
“Why, this child!” replied she. “I foolishly took her things off,
because she was complaining. And now I don’t know what to do, I don’t
know what to do!”
He looked at her in surprise. She was turning a skirt over and over,
looking for the hooks. Then, she added:
“You see, her father always helps me to dress her in the morning before
he goes out. I can never manage it by myself. It bothers me, it annoys
me.”
The child, meanwhile, tired of being in her chemise and frightened by
the sight of Octave, was struggling and tumbling about on the table.
“Take care!” cried he, “she will fall.”
It was quite a catastrophe. Marie looked as though she dare not touch
her child’s naked limbs. She continued contemplating her, with the
surprise of a virgin, amazed at having been able to produce such a
thing. However, assisted by Octave, who quieted the little one, she
succeeded in dressing her again.
“How will you manage when you have a dozen?” asked he, laughing.
“But we shall never have any more!” answered she in a fright.
Then, he joked: she was wrong to be so sure, a child comes so easily?
“No! no!” repeated she obstinately. “You heard what mamma said, the
other day. She forbade Jules to have any more. You do not know her; it
would lead to endless quarrels, if another came.”
Octave was amused by the quiet way in which she discussed this
question. He drew her out, without, however, succeeding in embarrassing
her. She, moreover, did as her husband wished. No doubt, she loved
children; had she been allowed to desire others, she would not have
said no. And, beneath this complacency, which was restricted to her
mother’s commands, the indifference of a woman whose maternity was
still slumbering could be recognized. Lilitte occupied her like her
home, which she looked after through duty. When she had washed up the
breakfast things and taken the child for her walk, she continued her
former young girl’s existence, of a somnolent emptiness, lulled by the
vague expectation of a joy which never came. Octave having remarked
that she must feel very dull, being always alone, she seemed surprised:
no, she was never dull, the days passed somehow or other, without her
knowing, when she went to bed, how she had employed her time. Then, on
Sundays, she sometimes went out with her husband; or her parents
called, or else she read. If reading did not give her headaches, she
would have read from morning till night, now that she was allowed to
read everything.
“What is really annoying,” resumed she, “is that they have scarcely
anything at the library in the Passage Choiseul. For instance, I wanted
‘André,’ to read it again, because it made me cry so much the other
time. Well! their copy has been stolen. Besides that, my father refuses
to lend me his, because Lilitte might tear the pictures.”
“But,” said Octave, “my friend Campardon has all George Sand’s works. I
will ask him to lend me ‘André’ for you.”
She blushed, and her eyes sparkled. He was really too kind! And, when
he left her, she stood before Lilitte, her arms hanging down by her
sides, without an idea in her head, in the attitude which she
maintained for whole afternoons together. She detested sewing, she did
crochet work, always the same piece, which she left lying about the
room.
Octave brought her the book on the morrow, a Sunday. Pichon had had to
go out, to leave his card on one of his superiors. And, as the young
man found her dressed for walking, she having just been on some errand
in the neighbourhood, he asked her out of curiosity whether she had
been to church, having the idea that she was religious. She answered
no. Before marrying her off, her mother used to take her regularly to
mass. During the six first months of her married life, she continued
going through force of habit, with the constant fear of being too late.
Then, she scarcely knew why, after missing a few times, she left off
going altogether. Her husband detested priests, and her mother never
even mentioned them now. Octave’s question, however, disturbed her, as
though it had awakened within her things that had been long buried
beneath the idleness of her existence.
“I must go to Saint-Roch one of these mornings,” said she. “An
occupation gone always leaves a void behind it.”
And, on the pale face of this late child, born of parents too old,
there appeared the unhealthy regret of another existence, dreamed of
once upon a time, in the land of chimeras. She could conceal nothing,
everything was reflected in her face, beneath her skin, which had the
softness and the transparency accompanying an attack of chlorosis.
Then, she gave way to her feelings, and caught hold of Octave’s hands
with a familiar gesture.
“Ah! let me thank you for having brought me this book! Come to-morrow
after lunch. I will return it to you and tell you the effect that it
produced on me. It will be amusing, will it not?”
On leaving her, Octave thought that she was funny all the same. She was
beginning to interest him, he contemplated speaking to Pichon so as to
make him rouse her up a bit; for the little woman, most decidedly, only
wanted a shaking. It so happened that on the morrow he came across the
clerk just as he was going off, and he accompanied him part of the way,
at the risk of being late himself at “The Ladies’ Paradise.” But Pichon
seemed to him to be even more benumbed than his wife, full of manias in
their early stage, and entirely occupied with the dread of getting mud
on his shoes in wet weather. He walked on his toes, and continually
talked of the second head-clerk of his office. Octave, who was only
animated by fraternal intentions in the matter, ended by leaving him in
the Rue Saint-Honoré, after advising him to take Marie to the theatre
frequently.
“Whatever for?” asked Pichon in amazement.
“Because it is good for women. It makes them nicer.”
“Ah! you really think so?”
He promised to give the matter his attention, and crossed the street,
eyeing the cabs with terror, the only thing in life which worried him
being the fear of getting splashed.
At lunch-time, Octave knocked at the Pichons’ door for the book. Marie
was reading, her elbows on the table, her hands buried in her
dishevelled hair. She had just eaten an egg cooked in a tin pan which
was lying in the centre of the hastily laid table without any cloth.
Lilitte, forgotten on the floor, was sleeping with her nose on the
pieces of a plate which she had no doubt broken.
“Well?”
Marie did not answer at once. She was still wrapped in her morning
dressing-gown, which, from the buttons being torn off, displayed her
throat, in all the disorder of a woman just risen from her bed.
“I have scarcely read a hundred pages,” she ended by saying. “My
parents came yesterday.”
And she spoke in a painful tone of voice, with a sourness about her
mouth. When she was younger, she longed to live in the midst of the
woods. She was for ever dreaming that she met a huntsman who was
sounding his horn. He approached her and knelt down. This took place in
a copse, very far away, where roses were blooming like in a park. Then,
suddenly, they had been married, and afterwards lived there, wandering
about till eternity. She, very happy, wished for nothing more; he, as
tender and submissive as a slave, was continually at her feet.
“I had a talk with your husband this morning,” said Octave. “You do not
go out enough, and I have persuaded him to take you to the theatre.”
But she shook her head, turning pale and shivering. A silence ensued.
She again beheld the narrow dining-room with its cold light. Jules’s
image, sullen and correct, had suddenly cast a shadow over the huntsman
of the romance whom she had been imagining, and the sound of whose horn
in the distance again rang in her ears. Every now and then she
listened: perhaps he was coming. Her husband had never taken her feet
in his hands to kiss them; he had never either knelt beside her to tell
her he adored her. Yet, she loved him well; but she was surprised that
love did not contain more sweetness.
“What stifles me, you know,” resumed she, returning to the book, “is
when there are passages in novels about the characters telling one
another of their love.”
Octave then sat down. He wished to laugh, not caring for such
sentimental trifling.
“I detest a lot of phrases,” said he. “When two persons adore each
other, the best thing is to prove it at once.”
But she did not seem to understand, her eyes remained undimmed. He
stretched out his hand, slightly touching hers, and leant over so close
to her to observe a passage in the book that his breath warmed her
shoulder through the open dressing-gown; yet she remained insensible.
Then, he rose up, full of a contempt mingled with pity. As he was
leaving, she said:
“I read very slowly, I shall not have finished it before tomorrow. It
will be amusing to-morrow! Look in during the evening.”
He certainly had no designs upon her, and yet he felt indignant. He
conceived a singular friendship for this young couple who exasperated
him, they seemed to take life so stupidly. And the idea came to him of
rendering them a service in spite of them; he would take them out to
dinner, make them tipsy, and then amuse himself by pushing them into
each other’s arms. When such fits of kindness got hold of him, he, who
would not have lent ten francs, delighted in flinging his money out of
the window, to bring two lovers together and give them joy.
Little Madame Pichon’s coldness, however, brought Octave back to the
ardent Valérie. This one, certainly, would not require to be breathed
upon twice on the back of her neck. He was advancing in her favour: one
day that she was going upstairs before him, he had ventured to
compliment her on her ankle, without her appearing displeased.
At length the opportunity so long watched for presented itself. It was
the evening that Marie had made him promise to look in; they would be
alone to talk about the novel, as her husband was not to be home till
very late. But the young man had preferred to go out, seized with
fright at the thought of this literary treat. However, he had decided
to venture upon it, towards ten o’clock, when he met Valérie’s maid on
the first-floor landing with a scared look on her face, and who said to
him:
“Madame has gone into hysterics, my master is out, and every one
opposite has gone to the theatre. Pray come in. I am all alone, I don’t
know what to do.”
Valérie was stretched out in an easy-chair in her bedroom, her limbs
rigid. The maid had unlaced her stays, and her bosom was heaving. The
attack subsided almost immediately. She opened her eyes, was surprised
to see Octave there, and acted moreover as she might have done in the
presence of a doctor.
“I must ask you to excuse me, sir,” murmured she, her voice still
choking. “I have only had this girl since yesterday, and she lost her
head.”
Her perfect coolness in adjusting her stays and fastening up her dress
again, embarrassed the young man. He remained standing, swearing not to
depart thus, yet not daring to sit down. She had sent away the maid,
the sight of whom seemed to irritate her; then she went to the window
to breathe the cool outdoor air in long nervous inspirations, her mouth
wide open. After a short silence, they commenced talking. She had first
suffered from these attacks when fourteen years old; Doctor Juillerat
was tired of prescribing for her; sometimes they seized her in the
arms, sometimes in the loins. However, she was getting used to them;
she might as well have them as anything else, as no one was really
perfectly well. And, whilst she talked, with scarcely any life in her
limbs, he excited himself with looking at her, he thought her provoking
in the midst of her disorder, with her leaden complexion, her face
upset by the attack as though by a whole night of love. Behind the
black mass of her loose hair, which hung over her shoulders, he fancied
he beheld the husband’s poor and beardless head. Then, stretching out
his hands, with the unrestrained gesture with which he would have
seized some harlot, he tried to take hold of her.
“Well! what now?” asked she, in a voice full of surprise.
In her turn she looked at him, whilst her eyes were so cold, her flesh
so calm, that he felt frozen and let his hands fall with an awkward
slowness, fully aware of the ridiculousness of his gesture. Then, in a
last nervous gape which she stifled, she slowly added:
“Ah! my dear sir, if you only knew!”
And she shrugged her shoulders, without getting angry, as though
crushed beneath her contempt for man and her weariness of him. Octave
thought she was about to have him turned out when he saw her move
towards a bell-pull, dragging her loosely fastened skirts along with
her. But she merely required some tea; and she ordered it to be very
weak and very hot. Altogether nonplussed, he muttered some excuses and
made for the door, whilst she again reclined in the depths of her
easy-chair, with the air of a chilly woman greatly in want of sleep.
On the stairs, Octave stopped at each landing. She did not like that
then? He had just seen how indifferent she was, without desire as
without indignation, as difficult to deal with as his employer, Madame
Hédouin. Why did Campardon say she was hysterical? it was absurd to
take him in by telling him such humbug; for had it not been for the
architect’s lie, he would never have risked such an adventure. And he
remained quite bewildered by the result, his ideas of hysteria
altogether upset, and thinking of the different stories that were going
about. He recalled Trublot’s words: one never knows what to expect,
with those crazy sort of people whose eyes shine like balls of fire.
Up on his landing Octave, annoyed with all women, walked as softly as
he could. But the Pichons’ door opened, and he had to resign himself.
Marie awaited him, standing in the narrow room, which the charred wick
of the lamp but imperfectly lighted. She had drawn the crib close to
the table, and Lilitte was sleeping there in the circle of the yellow
light. The lunch things had probably also served for the dinner, for
the closed book was lying beside a dirty plate full of radish ends.
“Have you finished it?” asked Octave, surprised at the young woman’s
silence.
She seemed intoxicated, her face was swollen as though she had just
awakened from a too heavy sleep.
“Yes, yes,” said she, with an effort. “Oh! I have passed the day, my
head in my hands, buried in it. When the fit takes one, one no longer
knows where one is. I have such a stiff neck.”
And, feeling pains all over her, she did not speak any more of the
book, but was so full of her emotion and of confused dreams engendered
by her reading, that she was choking. Her ears rang with the distant
calls of the horn, blown by the huntsman of her romances, in the blue
background of ideal loves. Then, without the least reason, she said
that she had been to Saint-Roch that morning to hear the nine o’clock
mass. She had wept a great deal, religion replaced everything.
“Ah! I feel better,” resumed she, heaving a deep sigh and standing
still in front of Octave.
A pause ensued. She smiled at him with her candid eyes. He had never
thought her so useless, with her scanty hair and her washed-out
features. But as she continued looking at him, she became very pale and
almost stumbled; and he was obliged to put out his hands to support
her.
“Good heavens! good heavens!” stuttered she, sobbing.
He continued to hold her, feeling considerably embarrassed.
“You should take a little infusion. You have been reading too much.”
“Yes, it upset me, when on closing the book I found myself alone. How
kind you are, Monsieur Mouret! I might have hurt myself, had it not
been for you.”
He looked for a chair on which to seat her.
“Shall I light a fire?”
“No, thank you, it would dirty your hands. I have noticed that you
always wear gloves.”
And choking again at the idea, and suddenly feeling faint, she launched
an awkward kiss into space as though in a dream, a kiss which slightly
touched the young man’s ear.
Octave received this kiss with amazement. The young woman’s lips were
as cold as ice. Then, when she had sank upon his breast in an
abandonment of her whole frame, he was seized with a sudden desire, and
sought to bear her into the inner room. But this brusque wooing roused
Marie; her womanly instinct revolted; she struggled and called upon her
mother, forgetting her husband, who was shortly to return; and her
daughter who was sleeping near her.
“No, oh! no, no. It is wrong.”
But he kept ardently repeating:
“No one will ever know—I shall never tell.”
“No, Monsieur Octave. Do not spoil the happiness I have in knowing you.
It will do no good I assure you, and I had dreamed things—”
Then he left off speaking, having a revenge to take on woman-kind, and
saying coarsely to himself: “You, at any rate, shall succumb!” The door
had not even been shut, the solemnity of the staircase seemed to ascend
in the midst of the silence. Lilitte was peacefully sleeping on the
pillow of her crib.
When Marie and Octave rose up, they could find nothing to say to each
other. She, mechanically, went and looked at her daughter, took up the
plate, and then laid it down again. He remained silent, a prey to
similar uneasiness, the adventure had been so unexpected; and he
recalled to mind how he had fraternally planned to restore the young
woman to her husband’s arms. Feeling the necessity of breaking that
intolerable silence he ended by murmuring:
“You did not shut the door, then?”
She glanced out on to the landing, and stammered:
“That is true, it was open.”
Her face wore an expression of disgust. The young man too was now
thinking that after all there was nothing the least funny in this
adventure with a helpless woman, in the midst of that solitude.
“Dear me! the book has fallen on the floor!” she continued, picking the
volume up.
A corner of the cover was broken. That drew them together, and afforded
some relief. Speech returned to them. Marie appeared quite distressed.
“It was not my fault. You see, I had covered it with paper for fear of
soiling it. We must have knocked it over, without doing so on purpose.”
“Was it there then?” asked Octave. “I did not notice it. Oh! for
myself, I don’t care a bit! But Campardon thinks so much of his books!”
They kept passing it from one to the other, trying to put the corner
straight again. Their fingers touched without a quiver. As they
inflected on the consequences, they were quite dismayed at the accident
which had happened to that handsome volume of George Sand.
“It was bound to end badly,” concluded Marie, with tears in her eyes.
Octave was obliged to console her. He would invent some story,
Campardon would not eat him. And their uneasiness returned, at the
moment of separation. They would have liked at least to have said
something amiable to eaeh other; but the words choked them.
Fortunately, a step was heard, it was the husband coming upstairs.
Octave silently took her in his arms again and kissed her in his turn
on the mouth. She once more complaisantly submitted, her lips iey cold
as before. When he had noiselessly regained his room, he asked himself,
as he took off his overcoat, whatever was it that she wanted? Women, he
said, were decidedly very peculiar.
On the morrow, at the Cam pardons’, just as lunch was finished, Octave
was once more explaining that he had clumsily knocked the book over,
when Marie entered the room. She was going to take Lilitte to the
Tuileries gardens, and she had called to ask if they would allow Angèle
to accompany her. And she smiled at Octave, without the least
confusion, and glanced in her innocent way at the book lying on a
chair.
“Why, I shall be only too pleased!” said Madame Campardon. “Angèle, go
and put your hat on. I have no fear in trusting her with you.”
Marie, looking very modest, in a simple dress of dark woollen stuff,
talked of her husband, who had caught a cold the night before, and of
the price of meat, which would soon prevent people buying it at all.
Then, when she had left with Angèle, they all leant out of the windows
to see them depart. Marie gently pushed Lilitte’s perambulator along
the pavement with her gloved hands; whilst Angèle, knowing that they
were looking at her, walked beside her friend, with her eyes fixed on
the ground.
“How respectable she looks!” exclaimed Madame Campardon. “And so
gentle! so decorous!”
Then, slapping Octave on the shoulder, the architect said:
“Education is everything in a family, my dear fellow; there is nothing
like it!”
[Illustration]