MADAME DU BOYS
"... Quid agunt in corpore casto Cerussa
et minium, centumque venena colorum?
Mentis honor morumque decus sunt vincula
Conjugii...."
(Sancti Claudius Marius Victor, _De perversis_
_suae aetatis moribus_)
Hubert had left Rabodanges a few days after Sixtine's departure. The
unvaried green of the fields saddened him and, despite the ingenuity of
the countess, deprived of the company of the young woman who puzzled
him to the utmost, the château seemed to him as though plunged in a
funereal widowhood.
He did not even execute his plans of visiting the Mortagne Trappists,
but took the train and entered Paris one evening in a state of real
satisfaction.
For him, Paris was neither the streets nor the boulevards and theaters.
Paris, for Entragues, was confined within the somewhat narrow bounds
of his study, peopled with pleasant phantoms of his imagination.
There, sad and vague beings, pensive and formless, stirred restlessly,
imploring existence, Entragues lived with them in an almost disquieting
familiarity. He beheld them, heard them, repaired with them to
whatever sphere their activity necessitated. In short, he underwent the
keenest phenomena of hallucination.
Thus it was that, on the morrow of his return, Madame du Boys came to
occupy him with her adventures. It was a matter of reconciling her
in a logical way with her husband whom she had abandoned, to follow
to Geneva a Polish count, retired there after sundry nihilistic
adventures. Artémise du Boys was how she spelled her name after her
adulterous lark, the while her husband, secretary-cashier of the
_Union de la Bonne-Science_, the simple Monsieur Dubois, bewailed his
irreparable misfortune.
He groaned and Madame du Boys grew bored, an excellent occasion for
once more renewing the bond and putting into practice several verses
from the Gospels. Irreparable? And the pardon? One was on the point of
agreeing to ask it, the other waited for her to force his hand.
"Ah! Madame du Boys," mused Entragues, gazing upon his fair visitor,
"You do not know your husband. Write to him again. Just say: 'I was
a little lark of a woman and I was lured away!' Repeat this simple
idea through four beautiful pages in a tiny slanting handwriting that
trembles and is steeped in tears (Oh! but true tears, scientific tears,
acidulated and proportioned with the desired salt of grief),--do this,
O my love, and you will see."
Without awaiting her reply, and while Madame du Boys meditated, a
modest and very agreeable sinner, Entragues went to comfort the
secretary of the _Bonne-Science_. A simple and quite suitable office:
journals, brochures, registers, a general list of the founding members,
patrons, donors, residents, foreigners, honorary members, orders
depending on the results of preliminary payments, sums deposited, sums
due, and different titles.
"You are sad? Yes, a broken life. But, Monsieur Dubois, all lives are
broken, just as all sticks thrown in the water are broken. Existence
bends souls, we are not made for life. A deception gives it to us,
trickery conserves it for us. Ah! I know that philosophy is not your
forte; neither founder nor patron, nothing but an appointed secretary.
If you are not a philosopher, why did you marry such a pretty woman as
Madame du Boys? Only a philosopher could be justified in committing
such imprudences, for he knows how to make an abstraction at the proper
time. Figures have taught you other duties. Everything is calculated on
the register page, and what is absent is called memory. Isn't it the
pure truth, stripped of all symbols, that you still love her? Act as a
Christian, not as a coward enslaved to habits. So! you have charge of
this weak soul and you should, like the Good Shepherd, bear her on your
shoulders and save her from the devouring lion. But why do you not go
after her, since she has lost her way? Pride chains you to your books.
You think you are a Christian, but you are a stoic. Monsieur Dubois,
modern Good Shepherds use railroads and telegraphs without shame. Go!
Ah! the donors? Well, telegraph! No, it is at least necessary that the
sinful sheep go half way, that the sinner behave like a Magdalene and
weep. Well, I will bring her to you. Thus, your wife left you to follow
her pleasure; she returns somewhat atremble, but confident, and you
will pardon her? Will you open your door to her, your arms, your bed?
Will you write 'Memory' in the debit side of past days, under days of
marital solitude, meaning, in this instance, oblivion. And will the
first repast together be a holiday feast, and the first night together
a night of happiness? You will do all this, Monsieur Dubois, because
you are a Christian and not a stoic. I slandered you. And you will
tell me of the interview, of the noble pardon, in low tones for my
personal edification, and I will be able to narrate it, aloud, for the
edification of the age?"
Having ended these reveries, Entragues, to amuse himself, recopied in
ink the note book leaves on which he had scribbled while on the train,
during evenings, in his bed, during mornings, or in the solitude of the
avenues.