Monsieur de Maulincour was all the more anxious to go to this ball
because he knew that Madame Jules would be present. The fete was given
by the Prefect of the Seine, in whose salons the two social worlds of
Paris met as on neutral ground. Auguste passed through the rooms without
finding the woman who now exercised so mighty an influence on his fate.
He entered an empty boudoir where card-tables were placed awaiting
players; and sitting down on a divan he gave himself up to the most
contradictory thoughts about her. A man presently took the young officer
by the arm, and looking up the baron was stupefied to behold the pauper
of the rue Coquilliere, the Ferragus of Ida, the lodger in the rue Soly,
the Bourignard of Justin, the convict of the police, and the dead man of
the day before.
“Monsieur, not a sound, not a word,” said Bourignard, whose voice he
recognized. The man was elegantly dressed; he wore the order of the
Golden-Fleece, and a medal on his coat. “Monsieur,” he continued, and
his voice was sibilant like that of a hyena, “you increase my efforts
against you by having recourse to the police. You will perish, monsieur;
it has now become necessary. Do you love Madame Jules? Are you beloved
by her? By what right do you trouble her peaceful life, and blacken her
virtue?”
Some one entered the card-room. Ferragus rose to go.
“Do you know this man?” asked Monsieur de Maulincour of the new-comer,
seizing Ferragus by the collar. But Ferragus quickly disengaged himself,
took Monsieur de Maulincour by the hair, and shook his head rapidly.
“Must you have lead in it to make it steady?” he said.
“I do not know him personally,” replied Henri de Marsay, the spectator
of this scene, “but I know that he is Monsieur de Funcal, a rich
Portuguese.”
Monsieur de Funcal had disappeared. The baron followed but without
being able to overtake him until he reached the peristyle, where he
saw Ferragus, who looked at him with a jeering laugh from a brilliant
equipage which was driven away at high speed.
“Monsieur,” said Auguste, re-entering the salon and addressing de
Marsay, whom he knew, “I entreat you to tell me where Monsieur de Funcal
lives.”
“I do not know; but some one here can no doubt tell you.”
The baron, having questioned the prefect, ascertained that the Comte de
Funcal lived at the Portuguese embassy. At this moment, while he still
felt the icy fingers of that strange man in his hair, he saw Madame
Jules in all her dazzling beauty, fresh, gracious, artless, resplendent
with the sanctity of womanhood which had won his love. This creature,
now infernal to him, excited no emotion in his soul but that of hatred;
and this hatred shone in a savage, terrible look from his eyes. He
watched for a moment when he could speak to her unheard, and then he
said:--
“Madame, your _bravi_ have missed me three times.”
“What do you mean, monsieur?” she said, flushing. “I know that you
have had several unfortunate accidents lately, which I have greatly
regretted; but how could I have had anything to do with them?”
“You knew that _bravi_ were employed against me by that man of the rue
Soly?”
“Monsieur!”
“Madame, I now call you to account, not for my happiness only, but for
my blood--”
At this instant Jules Desmarets approached them.
“What are you saying to my wife, monsieur?”
“Make that inquiry at my own house, monsieur, if you are curious,” said
Maulincour, moving away, and leaving Madame Jules in an almost fainting
condition.
There are few women who have not found themselves, once at least in
their lives, _a propos_ of some undeniable fact, confronted with
a direct, sharp, uncompromising question,--one of those questions
pitilessly asked by husbands, the mere apprehension of which gives
a chill, while the actual words enter the heart like the blade of a
dagger. It is from such crises that the maxim has come, “All women
lie.” Falsehood, kindly falsehood, venial falsehood, sublime falsehood,
horrible falsehood,--but always the necessity to lie. This necessity
admitted, ought they not to know how to lie well? French women do it
admirably. Our manners and customs teach them deception! Besides,
women are so naively saucy, so pretty, graceful, and withal so true
in lying,--they recognize so fully the utility of doing so in order
to avoid in social life the violent shocks which happiness might not
resist,--that lying is seen to be as necessary to their lives as the
cotton-wool in which they put away their jewels. Falsehood becomes to
them the foundation of speech; truth is exceptional; they tell it, if
they are virtuous, by caprice or by calculation. According to individual
character, some women laugh when they lie; others weep; others are
grave; some grow angry. After beginning life by feigning indifference
to the homage that deeply flatters them, they often end by lying to
themselves. Who has not admired their apparent superiority to everything
at the very moment when they are trembling for the secret treasures of
their love? Who has never studied their ease, their readiness, their
freedom of mind in the greatest embarrassments of life? In them, nothing
is put on. Deception comes as the snow from heaven. And then, with what
art they discover the truth in others! With what shrewdness they employ
a direct logic in answer to some passionate question which has revealed
to them the secret of the heart of a man who was guileless enough to
proceed by questioning! To question a woman! why, that is delivering
one’s self up to her; does she not learn in that way all that we seek to
hide from her? Does she not know also how to be dumb, through speaking?
What men are daring enough to struggle with the Parisian woman?--a woman
who knows how to hold herself above all dagger thrusts, saying: “You are
very inquisitive; what is it to you? Why do you wish to know? Ah! you
are jealous! And suppose I do not choose to answer you?”--in short, a
woman who possesses the hundred and thirty-seven methods of saying _No_,
and incommensurable variations of the word _Yes_. Is not a treatise on
the words _yes_ and _no_, a fine diplomatic, philosophic, logographic,
and moral work, still waiting to be written? But to accomplish this
work, which we may also call diabolic, isn’t an androgynous genius
necessary? For that reason, probably, it will never be attempted. And
besides, of all unpublished works isn’t it the best known and the best
practised among women? Have you studied the behavior, the pose, the
_disinvoltura_ of a falsehood? Examine it.
Madame Desmarets was seated in the right-hand corner of her carriage,
her husband in the left. Having forced herself to recover from her
emotion in the ballroom, she now affected a calm demeanor. Her husband
had then said nothing to her, and he still said nothing. Jules looked
out of the carriage window at the black walls of the silent houses
before which they passed; but suddenly, as if driven by a determining
thought, when turning the corner of a street he examined his wife, who
appeared to be cold in spite of the fur-lined pelisse in which she was
wrapped. He thought she seemed pensive, and perhaps she really was
so. Of all communicable things, reflection and gravity are the most
contagious.
“What could Monsieur de Maulincour have said to affect you so keenly?”
said Jules; “and why does he wish me to go to his house and find out?”
“He can tell you nothing in his house that I cannot tell you here,” she
replied.
Then, with that feminine craft which always slightly degrades virtue,
Madame Jules waited for another question. Her husband turned his face
back to the houses, and continued his study of their walls. Another
question would imply suspicion, distrust. To suspect a woman is a crime
in love. Jules had already killed a man for doubting his wife. Clemence
did not know all there was of true passion, of loyal reflection, in her
husband’s silence; just as Jules was ignorant of the generous drama that
was wringing the heart of his Clemence.
The carriage rolled on through a silent Paris, bearing the couple,--two
lovers who adored each other, and who, gently leaning on the same
silken cushion, were being parted by an abyss. In these elegant coupes
returning from a ball between midnight and two in the morning, how
many curious and singular scenes must pass,--meaning those coupes with
lanterns, which light both the street and the carriage, those with their
windows unshaded; in short, legitimate coupes, in which couples can
quarrel without caring for the eyes of pedestrians, because the civil
code gives a right to provoke, or beat, or kiss, a wife in a carriage
or elsewhere, anywhere, everywhere! How many secrets must be revealed in
this way to nocturnal pedestrians,--to those young fellows who have gone
to a ball in a carriage, but are obliged, for whatever cause it may be,
to return on foot. It was the first time that Jules and Clemence had
been together thus,--each in a corner; usually the husband pressed close
to his wife.
“It is very cold,” remarked Madame Jules.
But her husband did not hear her; he was studying the signs above the
shop windows.
“Clemence,” he said at last, “forgive me the question I am about to ask
you.”
He came closer, took her by the waist, and drew her to him.
“My God, it is coming!” thought the poor woman. “Well,” she said aloud,
anticipating the question, “you want to know what Monsieur de Maulincour
said to me. I will tell you, Jules; but not without fear. Good God! how
is it possible that you and I should have secrets from one another? For
the last few moments I have seen you struggling between a conviction of
our love and vague fears. But that conviction is clear within us, is
it not? And these doubts and fears, do they not seem to you dark and
unnatural? Why not stay in that clear light of love you cannot doubt?
When I have told you all, you will still desire to know more; and yet I
myself do not know what the extraordinary words of that man meant. What
I fear is that this may lead to some fatal affair between you. I would
rather that we both forget this unpleasant moment. But, in any case,
swear to me that you will let this singular adventure explain itself
naturally. Here are the facts. Monsieur de Maulincour declared to me
that the three accidents you have heard mentioned--the falling of a
stone on his servant, the breaking down of his cabriolet, and his duel
about Madame de Serizy--were the result of some plot I had laid against
him. He also threatened to reveal to you the cause of my desire to
destroy him. Can you imagine what all this means? My emotion came from
the sight of his face convulsed with madness, his haggard eyes, and also
his words, broken by some violent inward emotion. I thought him mad.
That is all that took place. Now, I should be less than a woman if I had
not perceived that for over a year I have become, as they call it, the
passion of Monsieur de Maulincour. He has never seen me except at a
ball; and our intercourse has been most insignificant,--merely that
which every one shares at a ball. Perhaps he wants to disunite us, so
that he may find me at some future time alone and unprotected. There,
see! already you are frowning! Oh, how cordially I hate society! We were
so happy without him; why take any notice of him? Jules, I entreat you,
forget all this! To-morrow we shall, no doubt, hear that Monsieur de
Maulincour has gone mad.”
“What a singular affair!” thought Jules, as the carriage stopped under
the peristyle of their house. He gave his arm to his wife and together
they went up to their apartments.
To develop this history in all its truth of detail, and to follow its
course through many windings, it is necessary here to divulge some of
love’s secrets, to glide beneath the ceilings of a marriage chamber, not
shamelessly, but like Trilby, frightening neither Dougal nor Jeannie,
alarming no one,--being as chaste as our noble French language requires,
and as bold as the pencil of Gerard in his picture of Daphnis and Chloe.
The bedroom of Madame Jules was a sacred plot. Herself, her husband,
and her maid alone entered it. Opulence has glorious privileges, and the
most enviable are those which enable the development of sentiments to
their fullest extent,--fertilizing them by the accomplishment of even
their caprices, and surrounding them with a brilliancy that enlarges
them, with refinements that purify them, with a thousand delicacies that
make them still more alluring. If you hate dinners on the grass, and
meals ill-served, if you feel a pleasure in seeing a damask cloth that
is dazzlingly white, a silver-gilt dinner service, and porcelain of
exquisite purity, lighted by transparent candles, where miracles of
cookery are served under silver covers bearing coats of arms, you must,
to be consistent, leave the garrets at the tops of the houses, and the
grisettes in the streets, abandon garrets, grisettes, umbrellas, and
overshoes to men who pay for their dinners with tickets; and you must
also comprehend Love to be a principle which develops in all its grace
only on Savonnerie carpets, beneath the opal gleams of an alabaster
lamp, between guarded walls silk-hung, before gilded hearths in chambers
deadened to all outward sounds by shutters and billowy curtains. Mirrors
must be there to show the play of form and repeat the woman we would
multiply as love itself multiplies and magnifies her; next low
divans, and a bed which, like a secret, is divined, not shown. In this
coquettish chamber are fur-lined slippers for pretty feet, wax-candles
under glass with muslin draperies, by which to read at all hours of the
night, and flowers, not those oppressive to the head, and linen, the
fineness of which might have satisfied Anne of Austria.
Madame Jules had realized this charming programme, but that was nothing.
All women of taste can do as much, though there is always in the
arrangement of these details a stamp of personality which gives to this
decoration or that detail a character that cannot be imitated. To-day,
more than ever, reigns the fanaticism of individuality. The more our
laws tend to an impossible equality, the more we shall get away from it
in our manners and customs. Thus, rich people are beginning, in France,
to become more exclusive in their tastes and their belongings, than they
have been for the last thirty years. Madame Jules knew very well how
to carry out this programme; and everything about her was arranged in
harmony with a luxury that suits so well with love. Love in a cottage,
or “Fifteen hundred francs and my Sophy,” is the dream of starvelings to
whom black bread suffices in their present state; but when love
really comes, they grow fastidious and end by craving the luxuries of
gastronomy. Love holds toil and poverty in horror. It would rather die
than merely live on from hand to mouth.
Many women, returning from a ball, impatient for their beds, throw off
their gowns, their faded flowers, their bouquets, the fragrance of which
has now departed. They leave their little shoes beneath a chair, the
white strings trailing; they take out their combs and let their hair
roll down as it will. Little they care if their husbands see the puffs,
the hairpins, the artful props which supported the elegant edifices
of the hair, and the garlands or the jewels that adorned it. No more
mysteries! all is over for the husband; no more painting or decoration
for him. The corset--half the time it is a corset of a reparative
kind--lies where it is thrown, if the maid is too sleepy to take it away
with her. The whalebone bustle, the oiled-silk protections round the
sleeves, the pads, the hair bought from a coiffeur, all the false woman
is there, scattered about in open sight. _Disjecta membra poetae_, the
artificial poesy, so much admired by those for whom it is conceived and
elaborated, the fragments of a pretty woman, litter every corner of the
room. To the love of a yawning husband, the actual presents herself,
also yawning, in a dishabille without elegance, and a tumbled night-cap,
that of last night and that of to-morrow night also,--“For really,
monsieur, if you want a pretty cap to rumple every night, increase my
pin-money.”
There’s life as it is! A woman makes herself old and unpleasing to her
husband; but dainty and elegant and adorned for others, for the rival of
all husbands,--for that world which calumniates and tears to shreds her
sex.
Inspired by true love, for Love has, like other creations, its instinct
of preservation, Madame Jules did very differently; she found in the
constant blessing of her love the necessary impulse to fulfil all those
minute personal cares which ought never to be relaxed, because they
perpetuate love. Besides, such personal cares and duties proceed from a
personal dignity which becomes all women, and are among the sweetest of
flatteries, for is it not respecting in themselves the man they love?
So Madame Jules denied to her husband all access to her dressing-room,
where she left the accessories of her toilet, and whence she issued
mysteriously adorned for the mysterious fetes of her heart. Entering
their chamber, which was always graceful and elegant, Jules found a
woman coquettishly wrapped in a charming _peignoir_, her hair simply
wound in heavy coils around her head; a woman always more simple, more
beautiful there than she was before the world; a woman just refreshed in
water, whose only artifice consisted in being whiter than her muslins,
sweeter than all perfumes, more seductive than any siren, always loving
and therefore always loved. This admirable understanding of a wife’s
business was the secret of Josephine’s charm for Napoleon, as in former
times it was that of Caesonia for Caius Caligula, of Diane de Poitiers
for Henri II. If it was largely productive to women of seven or eight
lustres what a weapon is it in the hands of young women! A husband
gathers with delight the rewards of his fidelity.
Returning home after the conversation which had chilled her with fear,
and still gave her the keenest anxiety, Madame Jules took particular
pains with her toilet for the night. She wanted to make herself, and she
did make herself enchanting. She belted the cambric of her dressing-gown
round her waist, defining the lines of her bust; she allowed her hair to
fall upon her beautifully modelled shoulders. A perfumed bath had given
her a delightful fragrance, and her little bare feet were in velvet
slippers. Strong in a sense of her advantages she came in stepping
softly, and put her hands over her husband’s eyes. She thought him
pensive; he was standing in his dressing-gown before the fire, his elbow
on the mantel and one foot on the fender. She said in his ear, warming
it with her breath, and nibbling the tip of it with her teeth:--
“What are you thinking about, monsieur?”
Then she pressed him in her arms as if to tear him away from all evil
thoughts. The woman who loves has a full knowledge of her power; the
more virtuous she is, the more effectual her coquetry.
“About you,” he answered.
“Only about me?”
“Yes.”
“Ah! that’s a very doubtful ‘yes.’”
They went to bed. As she fell asleep, Madame Jules said to herself:--
“Monsieur de Maulincour will certainly cause some evil. Jules’ mind is
preoccupied, disturbed; he is nursing thoughts he does not tell me.”
It was three in the morning when Madame Jules was awakened by a
presentiment which struck her heart as she slept. She had a sense both
physical and moral of her husband’s absence. She did not feel the
arm Jules passed beneath her head,--that arm in which she had slept,
peacefully and happy, for five years; an arm she had never wearied. A
voice said to her, “Jules suffers, Jules is weeping.” She raised her
head, and then sat up; felt that her husband’s place was cold, and saw
him sitting before the fire, his feet on the fender, his head resting
against the back of an arm-chair. Tears were on his cheeks. The poor
woman threw herself hastily from her bed and sprang at a bound to her
husband’s knees.
“Jules! what is it? Are you ill? Speak, tell me! Speak to me, if you
love me!” and she poured out a hundred words expressing the deepest
tenderness.
Jules knelt at her feet, kissed her hands and knees, and answered with
fresh tears:--
“Dear Clemence, I am most unhappy! It is not loving to distrust the
one we love. I adore you and suspect you. The words that man said to me
to-night have struck to my heart; they stay there in spite of myself,
and confound me. There is some mystery here. In short, and I blush to
say it, your explanations do not satisfy me. My reason casts gleams
into my soul which my love rejects. It is an awful combat. Could I
stay there, holding your head, and suspecting thoughts within it to me
unknown? Oh! I believe in you, I believe in you!” he cried, seeing her
smile sadly and open her mouth as if to speak. “Say nothing; do not
reproach me. Besides, could you say anything I have not said myself for
the last three hours? Yes, for three hours, I have been here, watching
you as you slept, so beautiful! admiring that pure, peaceful brow. Yes,
yes! you have always told me your thoughts, have you not? I alone am in
that soul. While I look at you, while my eyes can plunge into yours I
see all plainly. Your life is as pure as your glance is clear. No, there
is no secret behind those transparent eyes.” He rose and kissed their
lids. “Let me avow to you, dearest soul,” he said, “that for the last
five years each day has increased my happiness, through the knowledge
that you are all mine, and that no natural affection even can take any
of your love. Having no sister, no father, no mother, no companion, I
am neither above nor below any living being in your heart; I am alone
there. Clemence, repeat to me those sweet things of the spirit you have
so often said to me; do not blame me; comfort me, I am so unhappy. I
have an odious suspicion on my conscience, and you have nothing in your
heart to sear it. My beloved, tell me, could I stay there beside you?
Could two heads united as ours have been lie on the same pillow when
one was suffering and the other tranquil? What are you thinking of?”
he cried abruptly, observing that Clemence was anxious, confused, and
seemed unable to restrain her tears.
“I am thinking of my mother,” she answered, in a grave voice. “You
will never know, Jules, what I suffer in remembering my mother’s dying
farewell, said in a voice sweeter than all music, and in feeling the
solemn touch of her icy hand at a moment when you overwhelm me with
those assurances of your precious love.”
She raised her husband, strained him to her with a nervous force greater
than that of men, and kissed his hair, covering it with tears.
“Ah! I would be hacked in pieces for you! Tell me that I make you happy;
that I am to you the most beautiful of women--a thousand women to you.
Oh! you are loved as no other man ever was or will be. I don’t know the
meaning of those words ‘duty,’ ‘virtue.’ Jules, I love you for yourself;
I am happy in loving you; I shall love you more and more to my dying
day. I have pride in my love; I feel it is my destiny to have one sole
emotion in my life. What I shall tell you now is dreadful, I know--but
I am glad to have no child; I do not wish for any. I feel I am more wife
than mother. Well, then, can you fear? Listen to me, my own beloved,
promise to forget, not this hour of mingled tenderness and doubt, but
the words of that madman. Jules, you _must_. Promise me not to see him,
not to go to him. I have a deep conviction that if you set one foot in
that maze we shall both roll down a precipice where I shall perish--but
with your name upon my lips, your heart in my heart. Why hold me so high
in that heart and yet so low in reality? What! you who give credit to so
many as to money, can you not give me the charity of faith? And on the
first occasion in our lives when you might prove to me your boundless
trust, do you cast me from my throne in your heart? Between a madman
and me, it is the madman whom you choose to believe? oh, Jules!” She
stopped, threw back the hair that fell about her brow and neck, and
then, in a heart-rending tone, she added: “I have said too much; one
word should suffice. If your soul and your forehead still keep this
cloud, however light it be, I tell you now that I shall die of it.”
She could not repress a shudder, and turned pale.
“Oh! I will kill that man,” thought Jules, as he lifted his wife in his
arms and carried her to her bed.
“Let us sleep in peace, my angel,” he said. “I have forgotten all, I
swear it!”
Clemence fell asleep to the music of those sweet words, softly repeated.
Jules, as he watched her sleeping, said in his heart:--
“She is right; when love is so pure, suspicion blights it. To that young
soul, that tender flower, a blight--yes, a blight means death.”
When a cloud comes between two beings filled with affection for each
other and whose lives are in absolute unison, that cloud, though it
may disperse, leaves in those souls a trace of its passage. Either
love gains a stronger life, as the earth after rain, or the shock still
echoes like distant thunder through a cloudless sky. It is impossible
to recover absolutely the former life; love will either increase or
diminish.
At breakfast, Monsieur and Madame Jules showed to each other those
particular attentions in which there is always something of affectation.
There were glances of forced gaiety, which seemed the efforts of persons
endeavoring to deceive themselves. Jules had involuntary doubts, his
wife had positive fears. Still, sure of each other, they had slept. Was
this strained condition the effect of a want of faith, or was it only a
memory of their nocturnal scene? They did not know themselves. But they
loved each other so purely that the impression of that scene, both cruel
and beneficent, could not fail to leave its traces in their souls; both
were eager to make those traces disappear, each striving to be the first
to return to the other, and thus they could not fail to think of the
cause of their first variance. To loving souls, this is not grief; pain
is still far-off; but it is a sort of mourning, which is difficult to
depict. If there are, indeed, relations between colors and the emotions
of the soul, if, as Locke’s blind man said, scarlet produces on the
sight the effect produced upon the hearing by a blast of trumpets, it is
permissible to compare this reaction of melancholy to mourning tones of
gray.
But even so, love saddened, love in which remains a true sentiment
of its happiness, momentarily troubled though it be, gives enjoyments
derived from pain and pleasure both, which are all novel. Jules studied
his wife’s voice; he watched her glances with the freshness of feeling
that inspired him in the earliest days of his passion for her. The
memory of five absolutely happy years, her beauty, the candor of her
love, quickly effaced in her husband’s mind the last vestiges of an
intolerable pain.
The day was Sunday,--a day on which there was no Bourse and no business
to be done. The reunited pair passed the whole day together, getting
farther into each other’s hearts than they ever yet had done, like two
children who in a moment of fear, hold each other closely and cling
together, united by an instinct. There are in this life of two-in-one
completely happy days, the gift of chance, ephemeral flowers, born
neither of yesterday nor belonging to the morrow. Jules and Clemence
now enjoyed this day as though they forboded it to be the last of their
loving life. What name shall we give to that mysterious power which
hastens the steps of travellers before the storm is visible; which makes
the life and beauty of the dying so resplendent, and fills the parting
soul with joyous projects for days before death comes; which tells the
midnight student to fill his lamp when it shines brightest; and makes
the mother fear the thoughtful look cast upon her infant by an observing
man? We all are affected by this influence in the great catastrophes of
life; but it has never yet been named or studied; it is something more
than presentiment, but not as yet clear vision.
All went well till the following day. On Monday, Jules Desmarets,
obliged to go to the Bourse on his usual business, asked his wife, as
usual, if she would take advantage of his carriage and let him drive her
anywhere.
“No,” she said, “the day is too unpleasant to go out.”
It was raining in torrents. At half-past two o’clock Monsieur Desmarets
reached the Treasury. At four o’clock, as he left the Bourse, he came
face to face with Monsieur de Maulincour, who was waiting for him with
the nervous pertinacity of hatred and vengeance.
“Monsieur,” he said, taking Monsieur Desmarets by the arm, “I have
important information to give you. Listen to me. I am too loyal a man to
have recourse to anonymous letters with which to trouble your peace of
mind; I prefer to speak to you in person. Believe me, if my very life
were not concerned, I should not meddle with the private affairs of any
household, even if I thought I had the right to do so.”
“If what you have to say to me concerns Madame Desmarets,” replied
Jules, “I request you to be silent, monsieur.”
“If I am silent, monsieur, you may before long see Madame Jules on the
prisoner’s bench at the court of assizes beside a convict. Now, do you
wish me to be silent?”
Jules turned pale; but his noble face instantly resumed its calmness,
though it was now a false calmness. Drawing the baron under one of the
temporary sheds of the Bourse, near which they were standing, he said to
him in a voice which concealed his intense inward emotion:--
“Monsieur, I will listen to you; but there will be a duel to the death
between us if--”
“Oh, to that I consent!” cried Monsieur de Maulincour. “I have the
greatest esteem for your character. You speak of death. You are unaware
that your wife may have assisted in poisoning me last Saturday night.
Yes, monsieur, since then some extraordinary evil has developed in me.
My hair appears to distil an inward fever and a deadly languor through
my skull; I know who clutched my hair at that ball.”
Monsieur de Maulincour then related, without omitting a single fact, his
platonic love for Madame Jules, and the details of the affair in the rue
Soly which began this narrative. Any one would have listened to him with
attention; but Madame Jules’ husband had good reason to be more amazed
than any other human being. Here his character displayed itself; he
was more amazed than overcome. Made a judge, and the judge of an
adored woman, he found in his soul the equity of a judge as well as the
inflexibility. A lover still, he thought less of his own shattered life
than of his wife’s life; he listened, not to his own anguish, but to
some far-off voice that cried to him, “Clemence cannot lie! Why should
she betray you?”
“Monsieur,” said the baron, as he ended, “being absolutely certain
of having recognized in Monsieur de Funcal the same Ferragus whom the
police declared dead, I have put upon his traces an intelligent man. As
I returned that night I remembered, by a fortunate chance, the name of
Madame Meynardie, mentioned in that letter of Ida, the presumed mistress
of my persecutor. Supplied with this clue, my emissary will soon get to
the bottom of this horrible affair; for he is far more able to discover
the truth than the police themselves.”
“Monsieur,” replied Desmarets, “I know not how to thank you for this
confidence. You say that you can obtain proofs and witnesses; I shall
await them. I shall seek the truth of this strange affair courageously;
but you must permit me to doubt everything until the evidence of
the facts you state is proved to me. In any case you shall have
satisfaction, for, as you will certainly understand, we both require
it.”
Jules returned home.
“What is the matter, Jules?” asked his wife, when she saw him. “You look
so pale you frighten me!”
“The day is cold,” he answered, walking with slow steps across the room
where all things spoke to him of love and happiness,--that room so calm
and peaceful where a deadly storm was gathering.
“Did you go out to-day?” he asked, as though mechanically.
He was impelled to ask the question by the last of a myriad of thoughts
which had gathered themselves together into a lucid meditation, though
jealousy was actively prompting them.
“No,” she answered, in a tone that was falsely candid.
At that instant Jules saw through the open door of the dressing-room the
velvet bonnet which his wife wore in the mornings; on it were drops of
rain. Jules was a passionate man, but he was also full of delicacy. It
was repugnant to him to bring his wife face to face with a lie. When
such a situation occurs, all has come to an end forever between certain
beings. And yet those drops of rain were like a flash tearing through
his brain.
He left the room, went down to the porter’s lodge, and said to the
porter, after making sure that they were alone:--
“Fouguereau, a hundred crowns if you tell me the truth; dismissal if you
deceive me; and nothing at all if you ever speak of my question and your
answer.”
He stopped to examine the man’s face, leading him under the window. Then
he continued:--
“Did madame go out this morning?”
“Madame went out at a quarter to three, and I think I saw her come in
about half an hour ago.”
“That is true, upon your honor?”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“You will have the money; but if you speak of this, remember, you will
lose all.”
Jules returned to his wife.
“Clemence,” he said, “I find I must put my accounts in order. Do not be
offended at the inquiry I am going to make. Have I not given you forty
thousand francs since the beginning of the year?”
“More,” she said,--“forty-seven.”
“Have you spent them?”
“Nearly,” she replied. “In the first place, I had to pay several of our
last year’s bills--”
“I shall never find out anything in this way,” thought Jules. “I am not
taking the best course.”
At this moment Jules’ own valet entered the room with a letter for his
master, who opened it indifferently, but as soon as his eyes had lighted
on the signature he read it eagerly. The letter was as follows:--
Monsieur,--For the sake of your peace of mind as well as ours, I
take the course of writing you this letter without possessing the
advantage of being known to you; but my position, my age, and the
fear of some misfortune compel me to entreat you to show
indulgence in the trying circumstances under which our afflicted
family is placed. Monsieur Auguste de Maulincour has for the last
few days shown signs of mental derangement, and we fear that he
may trouble your happiness by fancies which he confided to
Monsieur le Vidame de Pamiers and myself during his first attack
of frenzy. We think it right, therefore, to warn you of his
malady, which is, we hope, curable; but it will have such serious
and important effects on the honor of our family and the career of
my grandson that we must rely, monsieur, on your entire
discretion.
If Monsieur le Vidame or I could have gone to see you we would not
have written. But I make no doubt that you will regard this prayer
of a mother, who begs you to destroy this letter.
Accept the assurance of my perfect consideration.
Baronne de Maulincour, _nee_ de Rieux.
“Oh! what torture!” cried Jules.
“What is it? what is in your mind?” asked his wife, exhibiting the
deepest anxiety.
“I have come,” he answered, slowly, as he threw her the letter, “to
ask myself whether it can be you who have sent me that to avert my
suspicions. Judge, therefore, what I suffer.”
“Unhappy man!” said Madame Jules, letting fall the paper. “I pity him;
though he has done me great harm.”
“Are you aware that he has spoken to me?”
“Oh! have you been to see him, in spite of your promise?” she cried in
terror.
“Clemence, our love is in danger of perishing; we stand outside of the
ordinary rules of life; let us lay aside all petty considerations
in presence of this great peril. Explain to me why you went out this
morning. Women think they have the right to tell us little falsehoods.
Sometimes they like to hide a pleasure they are preparing for us. Just
now you said a word to me, by mistake, no doubt, a no for a yes.”
He went into the dressing-room and brought out the bonnet.
“See,” he said, “your bonnet has betrayed you; these spots are
raindrops. You must, therefore, have gone out in a street cab, and these
drops fell upon it as you went to find one, or as you entered or left
the house where you went. But a woman can leave her own home for many
innocent purposes, even after she has told her husband that she did
not mean to go out. There are so many reasons for changing our plans!
Caprices, whims, are they not your right? Women are not required to be
consistent with themselves. You had forgotten something,--a service
to render, a visit, some kind action. But nothing hinders a woman from
telling her husband what she does. Can we ever blush on the breast of a
friend? It is not a jealous husband who speaks to you, my Clemence; it
is your lover, your friend, your brother.” He flung himself passionately
at her feet. “Speak, not to justify yourself, but to calm my horrible
sufferings. I know that you went out. Well--what did you do? where did
you go?”
“Yes, I went out, Jules,” she answered in a strained voice, though her
face was calm. “But ask me nothing more. Wait; have confidence; without
which you will lay up for yourself terrible remorse. Jules, my Jules,
trust is the virtue of love. I owe to you that I am at this moment too
troubled to answer you: but I am not a false woman; I love you, and you
know it.”
“In the midst of all that can shake the faith of man and rouse his
jealousy, for I see I am not first in your heart, I am no longer thine
own self--well, Clemence, even so, I prefer to believe you, to believe
that voice, to believe those eyes. If you deceive me, you deserve--”
“Ten thousand deaths!” she cried, interrupting him.
“I have never hidden a thought from you, but you--”
“Hush!” she said, “our happiness depends upon our mutual silence.”
“Ha! I _will_ know all!” he exclaimed, with sudden violence.
At that moment the cries of a woman were heard,--the yelping of a shrill
little voice came from the antechamber.
“I tell you I will go in!” it cried. “Yes, I shall go in; I will see
her! I shall see her!”
Jules and Clemence both ran to the salon as the door from the
antechamber was violently burst open. A young woman entered hastily,
followed by two servants, who said to their master:--
“Monsieur, this person would come in in spite of us. We told her that
madame was not at home. She answered that she knew very well madame had
been out, but she saw her come in. She threatened to stay at the door of
the house till she could speak to madame.”
“You can go,” said Monsieur Desmarets to the two men. “What do you want,
mademoiselle?” he added, turning to the strange woman.
This “demoiselle” was the type of a woman who is never to be met with
except in Paris. She is made in Paris, like the mud, like the pavement,
like the water of the Seine, such as it becomes in Paris before human
industry filters it ten times ere it enters the cut-glass decanters and
sparkles pure and bright from the filth it has been. She is therefore a
being who is truly original. Depicted scores of times by the painter’s
brush, the pencil of the caricaturist, the charcoal of the etcher, she
still escapes analysis, because she cannot be caught and rendered in all
her moods, like Nature, like this fantastic Paris itself. She holds to
vice by one thread only, and she breaks away from it at a thousand other
points of the social circumference. Besides, she lets only one trait
of her character be known, and that the only one which renders her
blamable; her noble virtues are hidden; she prefers to glory in her
naive libertinism. Most incompletely rendered in dramas and tales where
she is put upon the scene with all her poesy, she is nowhere really
true but in her garret; elsewhere she is invariably calumniated or
over-praised. Rich, she deteriorates; poor, she is misunderstood. She
has too many vices, and too many good qualities; she is too near to
pathetic asphyxiation or to a dissolute laugh; too beautiful and too
hideous. She personifies Paris, to which, in the long run, she supplies
the toothless portresses, washerwomen, street-sweepers, beggars,
occasionally insolent countesses, admired actresses, applauded singers;
she has even given, in the olden time, two quasi-queens to the monarchy.
Who can grasp such a Proteus? She is all woman, less than woman, more
than woman. From this vast portrait the painter of manners and morals
can take but a feature here and there; the _ensemble_ is infinite.
She was a grisette of Paris; a grisette in all her glory; a grisette
in a hackney-coach,--happy, young, handsome, fresh, but a grisette; a
grisette with claws, scissors, impudent as a Spanish woman, snarling as
a prudish English woman proclaiming her conjugal rights, coquettish as
a great lady, though more frank, and ready for everything; a perfect
_lionne_ in her way; issuing from the little apartment of which she
had dreamed so often, with its red-calico curtains, its Utrecht velvet
furniture, its tea-table, the cabinet of china with painted designs, the
sofa, the little moquette carpet, the alabaster clock and candlesticks
(under glass cases), the yellow bedroom, the eider-down quilt,--in
short, all the domestic joys of a grisette’s life; and in addition,
the woman-of-all-work (a former grisette herself, now the owner of a
moustache), theatre-parties, unlimited bonbons, silk dresses, bonnets to
spoil,--in fact, all the felicities coveted by the grisette heart except
a carriage, which only enters her imagination as a marshal’s baton into
the dreams of a soldier. Yes, this grisette had all these things in
return for a true affection, or in spite of a true affection, as some
others obtain it for an hour a day,--a sort of tax carelessly paid under
the claws of an old man.
The young woman who now entered the presence of Monsieur and Madame
Jules had a pair of feet so little covered by her shoes that only a slim
black line was visible between the carpet and her white stockings. This
peculiar foot-gear, which Parisian caricaturists have well-rendered,
is a special attribute of the grisette of Paris; but she is even more
distinctive to the eyes of an observer by the care with which her
garments are made to adhere to her form, which they clearly define.
On this occasion she was trigly dressed in a green gown, with a white
chemisette, which allowed the beauty of her bust to be seen; her shawl,
of Ternaux cashmere, had fallen from her shoulders, and was held by its
two corners, which were twisted round her wrists. She had a delicate
face, rosy cheeks, a white skin, sparkling gray eyes, a round, very
promising forehead, hair carefully smoothed beneath her little bonnet,
and heavy curls upon her neck.
“My name is Ida,” she said, “and if that’s Madame Jules to whom I have
the advantage of speaking, I’ve come to tell her all I have in my
heart against her. It is very wrong, when a woman is set up and in her
furniture, as you are here, to come and take from a poor girl a man
with whom I’m as good as married, morally, and who did talk of making it
right by marrying me before the municipality. There’s plenty of handsome
young men in the world--ain’t there, monsieur?--to take your fancy,
without going after a man of middle age, who makes my happiness. Yah! I
haven’t got a fine hotel like this, but I’ve got my love, I have. I hate
handsome men and money; I’m all heart, and--”
Madame Jules turned to her husband.
“You will allow me, monsieur, to hear no more of all this,” she said,
retreating to her bedroom.
“If the lady lives with you, I’ve made a mess of it; but I can’t help
that,” resumed Ida. “Why does she come after Monsieur Ferragus every
day?”
“You are mistaken, mademoiselle,” said Jules, stupefied; “my wife is
incapable--”
“Ha! so you’re married, you two,” said the grisette showing some
surprise. “Then it’s very wrong, monsieur,--isn’t it?--for a woman who
has the happiness of being married in legal marriage to have relations
with a man like Henri--”
“Henri! who is Henri?” said Jules, taking Ida by the arm and pulling her
into an adjoining room that his wife might hear no more.
“Why, Monsieur Ferragus.”
“But he is dead,” said Jules.
“Nonsense; I went to Franconi’s with him last night, and he brought me
home--as he ought. Besides, your wife can tell you about him; didn’t
she go there this very afternoon at three o’clock? I know she did, for
I waited in the street, and saw her,--all because that good-natured
fellow, Monsieur Justin, whom you know perhaps,--a little old man with
jewelry who wears corsets,--told me that Madame Jules was my rival. That
name, monsieur, sounds mighty like a feigned one; but if it is yours,
excuse me. But this I say, if Madame Jules was a court duchess, Henri is
rich enough to satisfy all her fancies, and it is my business to protect
my property; I’ve a right to, for I love him, that I do. He is my
_first_ inclination; my happiness and all my future fate depends on
it. I fear nothing, monsieur; I am honest; I never lied, or stole the
property of any living soul, no matter who. If an empress was my rival,
I’d go straight to her, empress as she was; because all pretty women are
equals, monsieur--”
“Enough! enough!” said Jules. “Where do you live?”
“Rue de la Corderie-du-Temple, number 14, monsieur,--Ida Gruget,
corset-maker, at your service,--for we make lots of corsets for men.”
“Where does the man whom you call Ferragus live?”
“Monsieur,” she said, pursing up her lips, “in the first place, he’s not
a man; he is a rich monsieur, much richer, perhaps, than you are. But
why do you ask me his address when your wife knows it? He told me not
to give it. Am I obliged to answer you? I’m not, thank God, in a
confessional or a police-court; I’m responsible only to myself.”
“If I were to offer you ten thousand francs to tell me where Monsieur
Ferragus lives, how then?”
“Ha! n, o, _no_, my little friend, and that ends the matter,” she said,
emphasizing this singular reply with a popular gesture. “There’s no
sum in the world could make me tell you. I have the honor to bid you
good-day. How do I get out of here?”
Jules, horror-struck, allowed her to go without further notice. The
whole world seemed to crumble beneath his feet, and above him the
heavens were falling with a crash.
“Monsieur is served,” said his valet.
The valet and the footman waited in the dining-room a quarter of an hour
without seeing master or mistress.
“Madame will not dine to-day,” said the waiting-maid, coming in.
“What’s the matter, Josephine?” asked the valet.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “Madame is crying, and is going to bed.
Monsieur has no doubt got some love-affair on hand, and it has been
discovered at a very bad time. I wouldn’t answer for madame’s life. Men
are so clumsy; they’ll make you scenes without any precaution.”
“That’s not so,” said the valet, in a low voice. “On the contrary,
madame is the one who--you understand? What times does monsieur have to
go after pleasures, he, who hasn’t slept out of madame’s room for five
years, who goes to his study at ten and never leaves it till breakfast,
at twelve. His life is all known, it is regular; whereas madame goes out
nearly every day at three o’clock, Heaven knows where.”
“And monsieur too,” said the maid, taking her mistress’s part.
“Yes, but he goes straight to the Bourse. I told him three times that
dinner was ready,” continued the valet, after a pause. “You might as
well talk to a post.”
Monsieur Jules entered the dining-room.
“Where is madame?” he said.
“Madame is going to bed; her head aches,” replied the maid, assuming an
air of importance.
Monsieur Jules then said to the footmen composedly: “You can take away;
I shall go and sit with madame.”
He went to his wife’s room and found her weeping, but endeavoring to
smother her sobs with her handkerchief.
“Why do you weep?” said Jules; “you need expect no violence and no
reproaches from me. Why should I avenge myself? If you have not been
faithful to my love, it is that you were never worthy of it.”
“Not worthy?” The words were repeated amid her sobs and the accent in
which they were said would have moved any other man than Jules.
“To kill you, I must love more than perhaps I do love you,” he
continued. “But I should never have the courage; I would rather kill
myself, leaving you to your--happiness, and with--whom!--”
He did not end his sentence.
“Kill yourself!” she cried, flinging herself at his feet and clasping
them.
But he, wishing to escape the embrace, tried to shake her off, dragging
her in so doing toward the bed.
“Let me alone,” he said.
“No, no, Jules!” she cried. “If you love me no longer I shall die. Do
you wish to know all?”
“Yes.”
He took her, grasped her violently, and sat down on the edge of the bed,
holding her between his legs. Then, looking at that beautiful face now
red as fire and furrowed with tears,--
“Speak,” he said.
Her sobs began again.
“No; it is a secret of life and death. If I tell it, I--No, I cannot.
Have mercy, Jules!”
“You have betrayed me--”
“Ah! Jules, you think so now, but soon you will know all.”
“But this Ferragus, this convict whom you go to see, a man enriched by
crime, if he does not belong to you, if you do not belong to him--”
“Oh, Jules!”
“Speak! Is he your mysterious benefactor?--the man to whom we owe our
fortune, as persons have said already?”
“Who said that?”
“A man whom I killed in a duel.”
“Oh, God! one death already!”
“If he is not your protector, if he does not give you money, if it
is you, on the contrary, who carry money to him, tell me, is he your
brother?”
“What if he were?” she said.
Monsieur Desmarets crossed his arms.
“Why should that have been concealed from me?” he said. “Then you and
your mother have both deceived me? Besides, does a woman go to see her
brother every day, or nearly every day?”
His wife had fainted at his feet.
“Dead,” he said. “And suppose I am mistaken?”
He sprang to the bell-rope; called Josephine, and lifted Clemence to the
bed.
“I shall die of this,” said Madame Jules, recovering consciousness.
“Josephine,” cried Monsieur Desmarets. “Send for Monsieur Desplein; send
also to my brother and ask him to come here immediately.”
“Why your brother?” asked Clemence.
But Jules had already left the room.