certainly will never be in love with any one, with me least of all."
But as she read and reread the letter and mused upon it, Thérèse
feared lest she might deceive herself in seeking to convince herself
that Laurent incurred no danger with her.
"But what danger?" she said to herself; "the danger of suffering for an
unsatisfied caprice? Does one suffer much for a caprice? I have no idea
myself. I never had one."
But the clock marked half-past five in the afternoon; and Thérèse,
having put the key in her pocket, called for her hat, gave her servant
leave of absence for twenty-four hours, laid several special injunctions
upon her faithful old Catherine, and took a cab. Two hours later, she
returned accompanied by a short, slender woman, slightly bent and
closely veiled, whose face the driver did not see. She closeted herself
with this mysterious individual, and Catherine served them a dainty
little dinner. Thérèse waited upon and was most attentive to her
guest, who gazed at her with such agitation and ecstasy that she could
not eat.
Laurent, for his part, made his preparations for the projected trip to
the country; but when Prince D---- called for him with his carriage,
Laurent informed him that unexpected business would detain him two or
three hours, and that he would join him in the country during the
evening.
Laurent had no business, however. He had dressed himself in feverish
haste. He had caused his hair to be arranged with special care. Then he
had tossed his coat on a chair, and run his fingers through his too
symmetrical curls, heedless of the effect he might thus produce. He
paced the floor of his studio, now rapidly, now slowly. When Prince
D---- had gone, making him promise ten times over that he would soon
follow, he ran out to the stairs to ask him to wait and to say that he
would throw over his business and go with him; but he did not recall
him, but returned to his room, and threw himself on the bed.
"Why does she close her door to me for two days? There is something
behind it! And when she makes an appointment with me for the third day,
it is to make me meet an American or an Englishman whom I don't know!
But she must certainly know this Palmer whom she calls by his
diminutive! In that case, why in the deuce did he ask me for her
address? Is it a feint? Why should she feign with me? I am not
Thérèse's lover, I have no rights over her! Thérèse's lover! that I
certainly shall never be. God preserve me from it! A woman who is five
years older than I, perhaps more! Who can tell a woman's age, especially
this woman's, of whom nobody knows anything? So mysterious a past must
cover some monumental folly, perhaps a fully-matured disgrace. And for
all that, she is a prude, a devotee, or a philosopher perhaps, who
knows? She talks on every subject with such impartiality, or tolerance,
or indifference---- Does any one know what she believes, what she
doesn't believe, what she wants, what she loves, or even if she is
capable of loving?"
Mercourt, a young critic and friend of Laurent, entered the studio.
"I know," he said, "that you are going to Montmorency. So I have simply
looked in to ask you for an address, Mademoiselle Jacques's."
Laurent started.
"What the devil do you want of Mademoiselle Jacques?" he rejoined,
pretending to be looking for cigarette-papers.
"I? nothing--that is to say, yes, I would like to know her; but I know
her only by sight and reputation. I want her address for a person who is
anxious to be painted."
"You know Mademoiselle Jacques by sight, you say?"
"_Parbleu_! she is altogether famous now, and who has not noticed her?
She is made to be noticed!"
"You think so?"
"To be sure, and you?"
"I? I know nothing about it. I am very fond of her, so I am not a
competent judge."
"You are very fond of her?"
"Yes, I admit it, you see; which proves that I am not paying court to
her."
"Do you see her often?"
"Sometimes."
"Then you are her friend--seriously?"
"Well, yes, to some extent. Why do you laugh?"
"Because I don't believe a word of it; at twenty-four, one is not the
serious friend of a--young and beautiful woman!"
"Bah! she is neither so young nor so beautiful as you say. She is a good
comrade, not unpleasant to look at, that's all. But she belongs to a
type that I don't like, and I am obliged to forgive her for being a
blonde. I don't like blondes, except in painting."
"She is not so very light after all! her eyes are of a soft black, her
hair is neither light nor dark, and she arranges it in a peculiar way.
However, it's becoming to her: she has the look of an amiable sphinx."
"A very pretty comparison; but--you like tall women, it seems!"
"She is not very tall, and she has small feet and small hands. She is a
true woman. I have examined her very carefully, being in love with her."
"I say, what are you thinking about?"
"It makes no difference to you, since, viewed as a woman simply, she
doesn't attract you."
"My dear fellow, if she did attract me, it would be all the same. In
that case, I should try to be on a more intimate footing with her than I
am; but I should not be in love with her, that being a profession which
I do not practise; consequently, I should not be jealous. So press your
suit, if you think best."
"I shall, if I find the opportunity; but I have no time to seek it, and,
at heart, I am like you, Laurent, perfectly disposed to be patient,
since I am of an age and a society in which there is no lack of
pleasure. But, as we are speaking of that woman, and as you know her,
tell me--it is pure curiosity on my part--whether she is a widow or----"
"Or what?"
"I meant to say whether she is the widow of a lover or a husband."
"I have no idea."
"That isn't possible."
"On my word of honor, I never asked her. It makes no difference to me!"
"Do you know what people say?"
"No, I don't care at all. What is it that people say?"
"You see that you do care! They say that she was married to a rich man
with a title."
"Married----"
"Married as much as one can be, before the mayor and the priest."
"What nonsense! she would bear her husband's name and title."
"Ah! there you are! There's a mystery about her. When I have time, I
propose to investigate it, and I will tell you what I learn. They say
that she has no known lover, although she leads a very independent life.
But of course you know how that is, don't you?"
"I don't know the first thing about it. Come, come! do you suppose I
pass my life watching and questioning women? I am not an idler like you.
I find life hardly long enough to live and work."
"As to living, I don't say that you are not right. You seem to live hard
enough, my boy. But as to working,--they say that you don't work enough.
Let us see, what have you there? Let me look!"
"No, it's nothing; I have nothing started here."
"Yes, you have: that head--that is very fine, deuce take me! Let me
look, I say, or I'll give you the devil in my next _salon_."
"You are quite capable of it."
"Yes, when you deserve it; but as to that head, it is superb, and one
cannot help admiring it. What is it to be?"
"Do you suppose I know?"
"Do you want me to tell you?"
"You will confer a favor on me."
"Make a sibyl of it. Then you can arrange the hair as you please, it
doesn't make any difference."
"Stay! that's an idea."
"And then you don't compromise the person it resembles."
"Does it resemble any one?"
"_Parbleu_! wretched joker, do you think that I don't recognize it?
Come, come, my dear fellow, you must have meant to laugh at me, since
you deny everything, even the simplest things. You are the lover of that
face!"
"And to prove it, I am going to Montmorency!" said Laurent, coldly,
taking his hat.
"That doesn't prove anything!" replied Mercourt.
They went out together, and Mercourt saw Laurent enter a cab; but
Laurent went no farther than the Bois de Boulogne, where he dined all
alone at a small café, and returned at night-fall, on foot and lost in
his thoughts.
The Bois de Boulogne of that time was not what it is to-day. It was
smaller, more neglected, poorer, more mysterious, and more like the
country; one could reflect there.
On the Champs-Elysées, less splendid and less thickly settled than
to-day, were tracts of land newly thrown open to building, where one
could hire at a reasonable price small houses with gardens, where
perfect privacy was attainable. One could live quietly there and work.
It was in one of those neat white cottages, amid flowering lilacs, and
behind a tall hedge of hawthorn with a green gate, that Thérèse lived.
It was May. The weather was magnificent. How Laurent found himself, at
nine o'clock, behind that hedge, in the lonely, unfinished street where
no lanterns had as yet been placed, and where nettles and weeds still
flourished along the sides, he himself would have been embarrassed to
explain.
The hedge was very thick, and Laurent skirted it noiselessly on all
sides, but could see nothing save the golden reflection on the foliage
of a light which he supposed to be placed on a small table in the garden
by which he was accustomed to sit and smoke when he passed the evening
with Thérèse. Was somebody smoking in the garden, or were they taking
tea there, as sometimes happened? But Thérèse had informed Laurent
that she expected a whole family from the provinces, and he could hear
only two voices whispering mysteriously together, one of which seemed to
belong to Thérèse. The other voice spoke very low; was it a man's?
Laurent listened until he had a ringing in his ears, and at last he
heard, or thought he heard, Thérèse say:
"What does all this matter? I have but one love on earth, and that is
you!"
"Now," said Laurent to himself, hastily leaving the narrow, deserted
street, and returning to the noisy roadway of the Champs-Elysées, "now
my mind is at rest. She has a lover! After all, she was under no
obligation to tell me of it! But she needn't have talked to me on all
occasions in a way to make me think that she did not and never intended
to belong to any man. She is like all women: the longing to lie
supersedes all else. What difference does it make to me? And yet I would
never have believed it. Indeed, I must have been a little cracked over
her without realizing it, since I went there and played the spy, the
most dastardly of all trades, except when one is driven to it by
jealousy! I cannot regret it very much; it saves me from great
unhappiness and from a great imposition: that of desiring a woman who
has nothing that makes her desirable above other women, not even
sincerity."
Laurent stopped an empty cab that was passing, and went to Montmorency.
He proposed to pass a week there, and not to darken Thérèse's door for
a fortnight. But he remained in the country only forty-eight hours, and
arrived at Thérèse's cottage on the evening of the third day,
simultaneously with Monsieur Richard Palmer.
"Ah!" said the American, offering him his hand, "I am very glad to see
you!"
Laurent could not avoid taking the proffered hand; but he could not
refrain from asking Monsieur Palmer why he was so glad to see him.
The foreigner paid no heed to the artist's somewhat impertinent tone.
"I am glad because I am fond of you," he replied, with irresistible
cordiality, "and I am fond of you because I have a great admiration for
you!"
"What! are you here?" said Thérèse, surprised to see Laurent. "I had
given you up for this evening."
And it seemed to the young man that there was an unfamiliar coolness in
the tone in which those simple words were spoken.
"Indeed!" he replied in an undertone, "you had become reconciled to it
very readily, and I fear that I am disturbing a delightful
tête-à-tête."
"That is the more cruel of you," she rejoined in the same playful tone,
"because you seemed disposed to arrange it for me."
"You evidently counted upon it, as you did not cancel his appointment.
Shall I go?"
"No, stay. I will resign myself to endure your presence."
The American, after saluting Thérèse, had opened his portfolio and
taken from it a letter which had been given him to hand to her.
Thérèse read it with an unmoved air, and made no comment whatever upon
it.
"If you wish to answer," said Palmer, "I have an opportunity to forward
a letter to Havana."
"Thanks," Thérèse replied, opening the drawer of a little table by her
side, "I shall not answer it."
Laurent, who watched all her movements, saw that she put the letter with
several others, one of which he recognized by its shape and
superscription. It was the note he had written her two days before. For
some reason, I know not what, it vexed him to see that letter in company
with the one Monsieur Palmer had just handed her.
"She tosses me in there," he said to himself, "pellmell with her
cast-off lovers. And yet I have no claim to that honor. I have never
spoken to her of love."
Thérèse began to talk about Monsieur Palmer's portrait. Laurent was
deaf to their entreaties, keeping a close watch upon their every glance,
upon the slightest inflection of their voices, and imagining every
moment that he could detect a secret dread, on their part, of his
yielding; but their persistence was so manifestly sincere, that he
became calmer, and reproved himself for his suspicions. If Thérèse had
relations with this stranger, living alone and perfectly independent as
she did, apparently owing nothing to any one, and never seeming to pay
any heed to what people might say of her, had she any need of the
pretext of a portrait to receive the object of her love or her caprice
as often and for as long a time as she chose?
And as soon as he felt perfectly at ease, Laurent was no longer
restrained by a sense of shame from gratifying his curiosity.
"Are you an American, pray?" he asked Thérèse, who from time to time
repeated in English for Monsieur Palmer's benefit the remarks that he
did not clearly understand.
"An American?" replied Thérèse; "have I not told you that I have the
honor of being a compatriot of yours?"
"But you speak English so well!"
"You do not know whether I speak it well or ill, as you do not
understand it. But I see what is in the wind, for I know that you are an
inquisitive fellow. You are wondering whether Dick Palmer and I are
acquaintances of yesterday or of long standing. Well, ask him."
Palmer did not wait for a question which Laurent could not readily have
made up his mind to ask. He said that this was not his first visit to
France, and that he had known Thérèse when she was very young, at the
house of some relations of hers. He did not say what relations.
Thérèse was accustomed to say that she had never known either father
or mother.
Mademoiselle Jacques's past was an impenetrable mystery to the people of
fashion who went to her to have their portraits painted, and to the
small number of artists whom she received in private. She had come to
Paris, whence no one knew, when no one knew, with whom no one knew. She
had been known two or three years only, a portrait she had painted
having attracted the attention of connoisseurs and been suddenly lauded
as the work of a master. Thus, from the patronage of the humble and an
unknown existence, she had passed without transition to a reputation of
the first rank and to the enjoyment of an ample income; but she had
changed not a whit in her simple tastes, her love of independence, and
the playful austerity of her manners. She never posed, and never spoke
of herself except to declare her sentiments and opinions with much
frankness and courage. As for the facts of her life, she had a way of
evading questions and going off in another direction which saved her the
necessity of replying. If any one chose to insist, she was accustomed to
say, after some vague words:
"We are not talking about me. I have nothing interesting to tell, and if
I have had sorrows, I have forgotten all about them, as I have no time
to think of them. I am very happy now, for I have plenty of work, and I
love work above everything."
It was by pure chance, and as a result of being thrown together in an
assemblage of artists, that Laurent had made Mademoiselle Jacques's
acquaintance. Having been launched as a gentleman and an eminent artist
in two different social circles. Monsieur Fauvel possessed, at
twenty-four, an amount of experience which all men have not acquired at
forty. He prided himself upon it, and mourned over it by turns: but he
had no experience in matters of the heart, for that is not acquired in a
life of dissipation. Thanks to the scepticism which he affected, he had
begun by passing judgment in his own mind that all those whom Thérèse
treated as friends must be lovers, and not until he had heard them
affirm and demonstrate the purity of their relations with her, did he
reach the point of looking upon her as a young woman who might have had
passions, but not vulgar intrigues.
Thereupon, he had become intensely curious to ascertain the cause of the
anomaly: a young, intelligent, and lovely woman, absolutely free and
living alone of her own free will. He had begun to see her more
frequently, and of late almost every day; at first on all sorts of
pretexts, latterly representing himself as a friend of no consequence,
too fond of pleasure to care to talk with a serious-minded woman, but
too idealistic, after all, not to feel the craving for affection and the
value of disinterested friendship.
In theory that was quite true; but love had stolen into the young man's
heart, and we have seen that Laurent was struggling against the invasion
of a sentiment which he still desired to disguise from Thérèse and
from himself, especially as he felt it for the first time in his life.
"But, after all," he said, when he had promised Monsieur Palmer to
undertake his portrait, "why in the devil are you so bent on having a
thing that may not be good, when you know Mademoiselle Jacques, who
certainly will not refuse to paint a portrait of you that is sure to be
excellent?"
"She does refuse," replied Palmer, with much candor, "and I don't know
why. I promised my mother, who is weak enough to think me very handsome,
a portrait by a master, and she won't consider it a good likeness if it
is too true to life. That is why I have applied to you as being an
idealist. If you refuse me, I shall have either the grief of not
gratifying my mother, or the bother of looking farther."
"That will not take long; there are so many people more capable than I
am!"
"I do not think it; but, assuming it to be true, it doesn't follow that
they will have the time at once, and I am in a hurry to send the
portrait away. It should arrive for my birthday, four months hence, and
the transportation will take about two months."
"That is to say, Laurent," added Thérèse, "that you must finish the
portrait in six weeks at the outside; and as I know how much time you
will need, you must begin to-morrow. Come, it is understood, you
promise, don't you?"
Monsieur Palmer held out his hand to Laurent, saying:
"The bargain is made. I say nothing about money; Mademoiselle Jacques is
to arrange the terms, I shall not interfere. At what hour to-morrow?"
The hour being fixed, Palmer took his hat, and Laurent felt bound to do
the same out of respect to Thérèse; but Palmer paid no heed to him and
took his leave, after pressing Mademoiselle Jacques's hand without
kissing it.
"Shall I go, too?" said Laurent.
"It isn't necessary," she replied; "everybody whom I receive in the
evening, knows me well. But you must go at ten o'clock to-night; for
several times lately I have forgotten myself so far as to chatter with
you till nearly midnight, and as I can't sleep after five in the
morning, I have felt very tired."
"And yet you didn't turn me out!"
"No, it didn't occur to me."
"If I were a conceited donkey, I should be very proud of that!"
"But you are not conceited, thank God! you leave that to the fools. But,
despite the compliment, Master Laurent, I have a bone to pick with you.
They say you are not working."
"And it was for the purpose of forcing me to work that you held Palmer's
head at my throat like a pistol?"
"Well, why not?"
"You are kind, Thérèse, I know; you mean to make me earn my living in
spite of myself."
"I don't interfere with your means of existence, I have no right to do
it. I have not the good or ill fortune to be your mother; but I am your
sister,--_in Apollo_, as our classic Bernard says,--and it is impossible
for me not to be grieved by your spasms of indolence."
"But what difference can it make to you?" cried Laurent, with a mingling
of irritation and pleasure which Thérèse felt, and which impelled her
to reply frankly.
"Listen, my dear Laurent," she said, "we must have an understanding. I
have a very great friendship for you."
"I am very proud of it, but I do not know why! Indeed, I am of no use as
a friend, Thérèse. I have no more belief in friendship than in love
between a man and woman."
"You have told me that before, and it makes no difference to me what you
do or do not believe. For my own part, I believe in what I feel, and I
feel both interest and affection for you. I am like that: I cannot
endure to have any person whatsoever about me without becoming attached
to him and wishing that he might be happy. I am accustomed to do my
utmost in that direction, without caring whether the person in question
is grateful to me or not. Now you are not any person whatsoever, you are
a man of genius, and, what is more, a man of heart, I trust."
"I, a man of heart? Yes, if you use the term in the ordinary worldly
meaning. I know how to fight a duel, pay my debts, and defend the woman
to whom I offer my arm, whoever she may be. But if you consider me
tender-hearted, loving, artless----"
"I know that you affect to be old, blasé and corrupt. But your
affectation produces no effect on me. It is a very popular fashion at
the present time. In your case, it is a disease, genuine it may be and
painful, but it will pass away when you choose. You are a man of heart,
for the very reason that you suffer because of the emptiness of your
heart; a woman will come along who will fill it, if she knows how to go
about it and if you will let her. But this is outside of my subject; I
am speaking to the artist; the man in you is unhappy, only because the
artist is not satisfied with himself."
"Ah! you are wrong, Thérèse," rejoined Laurent earnestly. "The
opposite of what you say is true: it is the man who suffers in the
artist and stifles him. I do not know what to do with myself, you see.
Ennui is killing me. Ennui because of what? you will ask. Because of
everything! I cannot, like you, be tranquil and attentive during six
hours of work, take a turn in the garden and toss bread to the sparrows,
then go back to work again for four hours, and in the evening smile on
two or three tiresome creatures, like myself for example, until it is
time to go to sleep. My sleep is broken, my work is feverish, my walks
are agitated. Invention bewilders me and makes me tremble; execution,
always too slow to suit me, makes my heart beat violently, and I weep
and have to exert myself not to shriek when I give birth to an idea
which intoxicates me, but which I am mortally ashamed of and disgusted
with the next morning. If I change it, it is worse, for it leaves me; it
is much better to forget it and wait for another; but that arrives in
such confusion and of such enormous proportions, that my poor frame
cannot hold it. It weighs upon me and tortures me until it has assumed
measurable proportions and the other pain returns, the pain of
childbirth, a real physical suffering which I cannot describe. And that
is how my life goes when I allow myself to be vanquished by this giant
of an artist who is within me, and from whom the poor devil who is
speaking to you removes one by one, by the forceps of his will, meagre,
half-dead mice! So it is much better, Thérèse, that I should live as I
have chosen to live, that I should commit excesses of all sorts, and
kill this gnawing worm which my fellows modestly call their inspiration,
but which I call my infirmity, pure and simple."
"It is decided then," said Thérèse, smiling; "the die is cast, and you
are trying to drive your intelligence to suicide? Well, I do not believe
a word of it. If some one should propose to you to-morrow to change
places with Prince D---- or Comte de S----, with the millions of the
first and the fine horses of the other, you would say, referring to your
poor despised palette: _Give me back my love_!"
"My despised palette? You do not understand me, Thérèse! It is an
instrument of glory, I know that perfectly well; and what people call
glory is the esteem accorded to talent, purer and more delicious than
that accorded to titles and wealth. Therefore it is a very great
privilege and a very great pleasure for me to say to myself: 'I am only
a poor, penniless gentleman, and my equals, who do not derogate from
their station, lead the lives of gamekeepers and foregather with
gleaners of dead wood, whom they pay in fire-wood. But I have derogated,
I have adopted a profession, and the result is that when I, at
twenty-four years of age, ride a hired horse among the richest and
noblest of Paris, mounted on horses worth ten thousand francs, if there
happens to be a man of taste or a woman of intelligence among the idlers
seated along the Champs-Elysées, I am stared at and pointed out, and
not the others----' You laugh! do you think me very vain?"
"No, but very like a child, thank God! You won't kill yourself."
"Why, I have not the slightest inclination to kill myself. I love myself
as much as other men love themselves; indeed, I love myself with all my
heart, I swear! But I say that my palette, the instrument of my glory,
is the instrument of my torture, since I cannot work without suffering.
Thereupon I seek in dissipation, not death of body or mind, but to
fatigue and tranquillize my nerves. This is the whole of it, Thérèse.
What is there in that that is not reasonable? I cannot work decently
except when I am ready to drop with fatigue."
"That is true," said Thérèse, "I have noticed it, and I wonder at it
as an anomaly; but I am very much afraid that method of working will
kill you; indeed, I cannot imagine how it can be otherwise. Stay, answer
one question: did you begin life by hard work and abstinence, and did
you feel the necessity of seeking distraction for the sake of rest?"
"No; just the opposite. When I left school, I was very fond of painting,
but did not expect that I should ever be compelled to paint. I believed
that I was rich. My father died leaving only about thirty thousand
francs, which I made haste to devour, in order to have at least one year
of luxury in my life. When I found that I was stranded, I took to the
brush; I have been pulled to pieces, and lauded to the clouds, which, in
our day, constitutes the greatest possible success, and now I lead a
life of luxury and pleasure from time to time, for a few months or a few
weeks, so long as the money lasts. When it is all gone, I have no fault
to find, for I am always at the end of my strength and my desires alike.
Thereupon I go back to my work, frantically, with mingled sorrow and
ecstasy, and when the work is finished, idleness and extravagance begin
again."
"Have you been leading this life long?"
"Nothing can be long at my age! About three years."
"Ah! but that is long for your age, I tell you! And then you began
badly; you set fire to your vital spirits before they had taken their
flight; you drank vinegar to stunt your growth. Your head continued to
grow none the less, and genius developed in it in spite of everything;
but perhaps your heart has atrophied, perhaps you will never be complete
either as man or as artist."
These words, spoken with tranquil melancholy, irritated Laurent.
"So you despise me, do you?" he said, rising.
"No," she replied, holding out her hand, "I pity you!"
And he saw two great tears roll slowly down her cheeks.
Those tears produced a violent reaction in him; his own face was bathed
in tears as he threw himself at Thérèse's feet, not like a lover
declaring his passion, but like a child making his confession.
"Ah! my poor dear friend!" he cried, taking her hands, "you are quite
right to pity me, for I need it! I am unhappy, so unhappy that I am
ashamed to tell you! This indescribable something that I have in my
breast in place of a heart is crying incessantly for I know not what,
nor do I know what to give it to appease it. I love God, and I do not
believe in Him. I love all women, and I despise them all! I can say this
to you, who are my comrade and my friend! I surprise myself sometimes on
the point of idolizing a courtesan, whereas beside an angel I should
probably be colder than a marble statue. Everything is turned
topsy-turvy in my notions; it may be that everything has gone wrong in
my instincts. Suppose I should tell you that the time has already passed
when I can find cheerful ideas in wine! Yes, I am depressed when I am
drunk, it seems, and they told me that the day before yesterday, in that
debauch at Montmorency, I declaimed tragic things with a vehemence as
ghastly as it was absurd. What do you suppose will become of me,
Thérèse, if you do not have pity for me?"
"To be sure, I have pity for you, my poor child," said Thérèse, wiping
his eyes with her handkerchief; "but what good can that do you?"
"Ah! but if you should love me, Thérèse! Do not take your hands away!
Have you not given me leave to be a sort of friend to you?"
"I have told you that I was fond of you; you replied that you could not
believe in a woman's friendship."
"I might, perhaps, believe in yours; you must have a man's heart, since
you have a man's strength and talent. Give it to me."
"I have not taken yours, and I propose to try to be a man for you," she
replied; "but I don't quite know how to go about it. A man's friendship
should be more outspoken and authoritative than I feel capable of being.
In spite of myself, I shall pity you more than I shall scold you, as you
see already! I had made up my mind to humiliate you to-day, to make you
angry with me and yourself; instead of which, here I am weeping with
you, and that doesn't advance matters at all."
"Yes, it does! yes, it does!" cried Laurent. "These tears do me good,
they have watered the parched place; perhaps my heart will grow again
there! Ah! Thérèse, you told me once, when I boasted before you of
things that I should have blushed for, that I was a prison-wall. You
forgot only one thing: that there is a prisoner behind that wall! If I
could open the door, you would see him; but the door is closed, the wall
is of bronze, and not my will, nor my faith, nor my affection, nor even
my voice can penetrate it. Must I then live and die thus? What will it
avail me, I ask you, to have daubed the walls of my dungeon with a few
fanciful pictures, if the word _love_ is written nowhere there?"
"If I understand you," said Thérèse dreamily, "you think that your
work needs to be enlivened by sentiment."
"Do not you think so, too? Is not that what all your reproaches say?"
"Not precisely. There is only too much fire in your execution; the
critics blame you for it. For my part, I have always felt deep respect
for that youthful exuberance which makes great artists, and the beauties
of which prevent any one who has true enthusiasm from harping upon its
defects. Far from considering your work cold and positive, it seems to
me burning and impassioned; but I have tried to make out where the seat
of that passion was; I see now: it is in the craving of the heart. Yes,"
she added, still musing, as if she were seeking to pierce the veil of
her own thought, "desire certainly may be a passion."
"Well, what are you thinking about?" said Laurent, following her
absorbed glance.
"I am wondering if I ought to declare war on this power that is in you,
and if, by persuading you to be happy and tranquil, I should not quench
the sacred fire. And yet--I fancy that aspiration cannot be a durable
condition of the mind, and that, when it has been earnestly expressed
during its feverish stage, it must either subside of itself or overpower
us. What do you say? Has not each age its special force and
manifestation? Are not what we call the different _manners_ of a master,
simply the expression of the successive transformations of his being? At
thirty, will it be possible for you to have aspired to everything
without attaining anything? Will you not be compelled to adopt some
fixed theory touching some point or other? You are at the age of
caprice; but soon will come the age of light. Do you not wish to make
progress?"
"Does it depend upon me to do it?"
"Yes, if you do not attempt to disturb the equilibrium of your
faculties. You cannot persuade me that exhaustion is the proper remedy
for fever: it is simply its fatal result."
"What febrifuge do you suggest, then?"
"I don't know; marriage, perhaps."
"Horror!" cried Laurent, bursting with laughter.
And he added, still laughing, and without any very clear idea of the
source of that corrective:
"Unless I marry you, Thérèse. Ah! that is an idea, on my word!"
"Charming," she rejoined, "but altogether impossible."
This reply impressed Laurent by its conclusive tranquillity, and what he
had just said by way of jest suddenly assumed the guise of a buried
dream, as if the operation had taken place in his mind. That powerful
and ill-fated mind was so constituted that the word _impossible_ was all
that was necessary to make him desire a thing, and that was just the
word Thérèse had uttered.
Instantly his inclination to fall in love with her reawoke, and with it
his suspicions, his jealousy, and his anger. Hitherto the spell of
friendship had lulled and, as it were, intoxicated him; of a sudden he
became bitter, and cold as ice.
"Ah! yes, of course," he said, taking his hat to go, "that is the
key-word of my life, which constantly turns up on every occasion, at the
end of a jest, as well as at the end of every serious subject:
_impossible_! You do not know that foe, Thérèse; your love is tranquil
and undisturbed. You have a _lover_, or a _friend_, who is not jealous,
because he knows you to be cold or reasonable! That reminds me that it
is getting late, and that your _thirty-seven cousins_ are probably here,
waiting for me to go."
"What is that you are saying?" demanded Thérèse in utter amazement;
"what ideas have come into your head? Are you subject to attacks of
insanity?"
"Sometimes," he added, taking his leave. "You must excuse them."
II
The next day, Thérèse received the following letter from Laurent:
"MY DEAR GOOD FRIEND:
"How did I leave you last night? If I said some horrible thing to you,
forget it, I had no consciousness of it. I had an attack of vertigo
which did not leave me at your door; for I found myself at my own door,
in a cab, with no idea how I got there.
"It often happens with me, my dear friend, that my mouth says one thing
when my brain is saying another. Pity me and forgive me. I am ill, and
you were right in saying that the life I lead is detestable.
"By what right do I put questions to you? Do me the justice to admit
that this is the first time I have ever questioned you, in the three
months that I have known you intimately. What does it matter to me
whether you are engaged, married, or a widow? You do not choose that
anybody shall know, and have I tried to find out? Have I asked you? Ah!
Thérèse, my head is still in confusion this morning, and yet I feel
that I am lying, and I do not intend to lie to you. Friday evening I had
my first attack of curiosity with regard to you, and yesterday's was the
second; but it shall be the last, I swear, and to have done with the
subject once and for all, I propose to make a clean breast of
everything. I was at your door the other evening, that is to say, at
your garden gate. I looked, and saw nothing; I listened and I heard!
Even so, what does it matter to you? I do not know his name, I did not
see his face; but I know that you are my sister, my consolation, my
confidante, my mainstay. I know that I wept at your feet last night, and
that you wiped my eyes with your handkerchief, and said: 'What are we to
do, what are we to do, my poor boy?' I know that you, wise,
hard-working, placid, respected creature that you are, since you are
free and beloved, since you are happy, find time and charity to remember
that I exist, to pity me, and to try to make my life better. Dear
Thérèse, the man who would not bless you would be an ingrate, and,
although I am a miserable wretch, I do not know ingratitude. When will
you receive me, Thérèse? It seems to me that I insulted you? That only
was lacking! Shall I come to you this evening? If you say no, on my
word, I shall go to the devil!"
Laurent's servant brought back Thérèse's reply. It was very short:
_Come this evening_. Laurent was neither a _roué_ nor a puppy, although
he often thought of being, or was tempted to be, one or the other. He
was, as we have seen, a creature full of contrasts, whom we describe
without trying to explain, for that would not be possible; certain
characters elude logical analysis.
Thérèse's reply made him tremble like a child. She had never written
him in that tone. Was it meant as a command to him to come to receive
his dismissal upon stated grounds? or was she summoning him to a
love-meeting? Had those three words, cold or ardent as it happened, been
dictated by indignation or by passion?
[Illustration: _LAURENT PAINTS PALMER'S PORTRAIT._
_Laurent succeeded, therefore, in calming himself
sufficiently to study the American's regular, placid
features._]
Monsieur Palmer arrived, and Laurent, agitated and preoccupied as he
was, must needs begin his portrait. He had made up his mind to question
him with consummate art, and to extort all Thérèse's secrets from him.
He could devise no way of broaching the subject, and as the American
posed conscientiously, as motionless and dumb as a statue, hardly a word
was spoken on either side during the sitting.
Laurent succeeded, therefore, in calming himself sufficiently to study
the American's regular, placid features. His beauty was without a
blemish, a fact that imparted to his face at first sight the inanimate
air peculiar to absolutely regular faces. But, on examining him more
closely, you could detect a certain shrewdness in his smile and fire in
his glance. At the same time that Laurent made these observations, he
was trying to determine his model's age.
"I beg your pardon," he said abruptly, "but it would be well for me to
know whether you are a young man somewhat overworked, or a middle-aged
man wonderfully well preserved. It is of no use for me to look at you, I
do not understand what I see."
"I am forty years old," replied Monsieur Palmer simply.
"God save us!" exclaimed Laurent; "then you must enjoy robust health?"
"Excellent!" said Palmer.
And he resumed his graceful pose and his tranquil smile.
"It's the face of a happy lover," said the artist to himself, "or else
of a man who has never cared for anything but roast beef."
He could not resist the temptation to ask:
"So you knew Mademoiselle Jacques when she was very young?"
"She was fifteen years old when I first saw her."
Laurent had not the courage to ask him in what year that was. It seemed
to him that the blood rushed to his face when he mentioned Thérèse.
What did her age matter to him? It was her story that he would have
liked to hear. Thérèse did not appear thirty; Palmer might have been
no more than her friend. And then his voice was loud and penetrating. If
it had been he to whom Thérèse had said: _I love no one but you_, he
would have made some sort of a reply that Laurent would have heard.
At last, the evening came, and the artist, who was not in the habit of
being punctual, arrived before the time at which Thérèse usually
received him. He found her in her garden, unoccupied, contrary to her
custom, and walking back and forth in evident agitation. As soon as she
spied him, she went to meet him, and said, taking his hand with an air
of authority rather than affection:
"If you are a man of honor, you will tell me all that you heard through
this shrubbery. Come, speak; I am listening."
She sat down on a bench, and Laurent, irritated by this unusual
reception, tried to worry her by making evasive replies; but she cowed
him by her manifest displeasure, and by an expression of the face which
was entirely strange to him. The dread of a definitive rupture with her
led him to tell her the simple truth.
"So that was all you heard?" she said. "I said to a person whom you did
not even see: 'You are now my only love on earth?'"
"Did I dream it, Thérèse? I am ready to believe it, if you bid me."
"No, you did not dream it. I may have said it, nay, I probably did say
it. And what was the answer?"
"None that I heard," replied Laurent, upon whom Thérèse's admission
had the effect of a cold shower-bath; "I didn't even hear the sound of
his voice. Is your mind at rest?"
"No, I have other questions to ask you. To whom do you suppose that I
said that?"
"I suppose nothing. I know no one but Monsieur Palmer, with whom the
nature of your relations is not known."
"Ah!" cried Thérèse, with a strange air of satisfaction, "so you think
it was Monsieur Palmer?"
"Why should it not be he? Do I insult you by supposing the possibility
of an old liaison recently renewed? I know that your relations with all
those whom I have seen here for the past three months are as
disinterested on their part and as indifferent on yours as my own
relations with you. Monsieur Palmer is very handsome, and he has the
manners of a gallant man. I like him very much. I have neither the right
nor the presumption to examine you touching your private sentiments.
But--you will say that I have been watching you."
"I shall, indeed," rejoined Thérèse, who did not seem to think of
denying anything whatsoever; "why do you watch me? It seems to me a
wretched thing to do, although I don't understand it at all. Tell me how
you came to do it."
"Thérèse!" replied the young man eagerly, determined to rid himself of
all that he had on his mind, "tell me that you have a lover, and that
Palmer is the man, and I will love you truly, I will talk to you with
absolute frankness. I will ask your pardon for an outbreak of madness,
and you shall never have any reason to reproach me. Come, do you wish me
to be your friend? Despite all my boasting, I feel that I need your
friendship and that I am capable of being your friend. Be frank with me,
that is all that I ask of you!"
"My dear fellow," Thérèse replied, "you talk to me as if I were a
coquette who was trying to keep you by her side, and who had some
confession to make. I cannot accept that situation; it is in no respect
suited to me. Monsieur Palmer is not and never will be to me anything
more than a highly valued friend, with whom I am not even on intimate
terms, and whom I had lost sight of for a long time until recently. So
much I may say to you, but nothing more. My secrets, if I have any, do
not require a confidant, and I beg you to take no more interest in them
than I desire you to do. It is not for you to question me, therefore,
but to answer my questions. What were you doing here four days ago? Why
were you watching me? What is the _outbreak of madness_ which I am to
know about and pass judgment upon?"
"The tone in which you speak to me is not encouraging. Why should I
confess, when you no longer deign to treat me as a comrade and to have
confidence in me?"
"Do not confess then," said Thérèse, rising. "That will prove to me
that you did not deserve the esteem I felt for you, and that you did not
reciprocate it in the least, since you tried to find out my secrets."
"So you turn me out," said Laurent, "and it is all over between us?"
"It is all over, adieu!" replied Thérèse in a severe tone.
Laurent left the house in a rage which made it impossible for him to say
a word; but he had not taken thirty steps in the street, when he
returned, telling Catherine that he had forgotten to deliver a message
which somebody had given him for her mistress. He found Thérèse
sitting in a small salon; the garden door was still open; she seemed to
have gone so far, and to have paused there, grieved and downcast,
absorbed in her reflections. She received him frigidly.
"So you have come back?" she said; "what is it that you forgot?"
"I forgot to tell you the truth."
"I no longer care to hear it."
"But you asked me for it?"
"I thought that you might tell it spontaneously."
"And I might have, I should have; I was wrong not to do it. Look you,
Thérèse, do you think it possible for a man of my age to see you
without falling in love with you?"
"In love?" said Thérèse, with a frown. "So you were making sport of
me, were you, when you told me that you could not fall in love with any
woman?"
"No, indeed; I said what I thought."
"Then you were mistaken, and you are really in love! are you quite sure
of it?"
"Oh! don't be angry; great Heaven! I am not sure enough for that.
Thoughts of love have passed through my head, through my senses, if you
choose. Have you so little experience that you considered it
impossible?"
"I am old enough to have had experience," she replied; "but I have lived
alone for a long while. I have had no experience of certain situations.
Does that surprise you? It is true, none the less. I am very
simple-minded, although I have been deceived, like everybody else! You
have told me a hundred times that you respected me too much to look upon
me as a woman, for the reason that your love for women was altogether
gross. So I believed that I was in no danger from the outrage of your
desires; and of all that I esteemed in you, your sincerity upon that
point was what I esteemed most highly. I allowed myself to become
interested in your destiny with the greater freedom, because, you
remember, we said to each other, laughing, but with serious meaning:
'Between two persons, of whom one is an idealist and the other a
materialist, there is the Baltic Sea.'"
"I said it in all sincerity, and I walked confidently along the shore on
my side, without an idea of crossing; but it happened that the ice would
not bear. Is it my fault that I am twenty-four, and that you are
beautiful?"
"Am I still beautiful? I hoped not."
"I cannot say; I did not think so at first, and then, one fine day, you
seemed beautiful to me. So far as you are concerned, it is involuntary,
I know that perfectly well; but it was involuntary on my part, too, my
feeling this fascination, so involuntary that I fought against it and
tried to divert my mind from it. I rendered unto Satan what belongs to
Satan, that is to say, my poor soul, and I brought here unto Cæsar only
what belongs to Cæsar,--my respect and my silence. But for eight or ten
days this accursed emotion has reappeared in my dreams. It vanishes as
soon as I am with you. On my word of honor, Thérèse, when I see you,
when you speak to me, I am calm, I no longer remember that I cried out
for you in a moment of frenzy, which I cannot understand myself. When I
speak of you, I say that you are not young, or that I don't like the
color of your hair. I declare that you are my comrade, that is to say,
my brother, and I feel when I say it that I am perfectly loyal. And then
a few puffs of spring surprise the winter in my idiotic heart, and I
fancy that it is you who blow them. And it is you, in truth, Thérèse,
with your adoration of what you call real love! That sets me thinking,
whatever kind of love one may have!"
"I think that you are mistaken, I never speak of love."
"No, I know it. You follow a rigid rule in that respect. You have read
somewhere that even to speak of love was to give it or take it; but your
silence is most eloquent, your reticence gives one the fever, and your
excessive prudence has a diabolical fascination."
"In that case, let us meet no more," said Thérèse.
"Why not? what is it to you that I have had a few sleepless nights,
since it depends solely upon you to make me as tranquil as I used to
be."
"What must I do to bring that about?"
"What I told you: tell me that you belong to some one. I shall look upon
that as final, and as I am very proud, I shall be cured as by a fairy's
wand."
"And suppose I tell you that I belong to no one, because I no longer
care to love any one, will not that suffice?"
"No; I shall be conceited enough to think that you may change your
mind."
Thérèse could not help laughing at the adroitness with which Laurent
manœuvred.
"Very well," said she, "be cured, and give me back a friendship of which
I was proud, instead of a life for which I should have to blush. I love
some one."
"That is not enough, Thérèse: you must tell me that you belong to
him."
"Otherwise you would think that some one was yourself, eh? Well, so be
it, I have a lover. Are you satisfied?"
"Perfectly. As you see, I kiss your hand to thank you for your
frankness. Come, be a good girl, tell me that it is Palmer."
"I cannot do that: it would be false."
"Then--I don't know what to think!"
"It is no one whom you know; it is a person who is absent from Paris."
"But who comes sometimes?"
"Apparently, since you overheard an outpouring of sentiment."
"Thanks, thanks, Thérèse. Now I am fairly on my feet again; I know who
you are and who I am, and, if I must tell you the whole truth, I believe
that I love you better so, for you are a woman now, and not a sphinx.
Ah! why didn't you speak sooner?"
"Has this passion made such terrible ravages?" said Thérèse,
mockingly.
"Why, yes, perhaps! Ten years hence I will tell you about it, Thérèse,
and we will laugh together over it."
"Agreed; good-night."
Laurent went to bed in a very tranquil frame of mind and altogether
undeceived. He had really suffered on Thérèse's account. He had
passionately desired her, but had never dared to let her suspect it.
Certainly it was not a meritorious passion. There was as much vanity as
curiosity in it. That woman of whom all her friends said: "Whom does she
love? I wish it were I, but it is no one," had appeared to him in the
guise of a beautiful ideal to be grasped. His imagination had taken
fire, his pride had bled with the dread, the almost certainty, of
failure.
But this young man was not exclusively given over to pride. He had at
times a dazzling and dominating vision of the right, the good, and the
true.
He was an angel, gone astray and diseased, if not absolutely fallen like
so many others. The craving for love devoured his heart, and a hundred
times a day he asked himself in dismay if he had not abused life too
much already, and if he still had strength to be happy.
He awoke calm and depressed. He already regretted his chimera, his
beautiful sphinx, who read his thoughts with good-natured attention, who
admired him, scolded him, pitied him, and encouraged him by turns,
without ever revealing a corner of her own destiny, but affording a
foretaste of treasures of affection, devotion, perhaps of sensual
pleasure! At all events, it was in this way that it pleased Laurent to
interpret Thérèse's silence touching herself, and a certain smile, as
mysterious as Joconda's, which played about her lips and in the corner
of her eye, when he blasphemed in her presence. At such times, she
seemed to say to herself: "I could, if I chose, describe the paradise in
contrast with that villainous hell; but the poor fool would not
understand me."
When the mystery of her heart was once unveiled, Thérèse lost her
prestige in Laurent's eyes at first. She was no longer anything more
than a woman like other women. He was even tempted to degrade her in her
own esteem, and, although she had never allowed him to question her, to
accuse her of hypocrisy and prudery. But, from the moment that he knew
that she belonged to some one, he ceased to regret that he had respected
her, and he no longer desired anything of her, not even her friendship,
which, he thought, he would have no difficulty in supplying elsewhere.
This state of affairs lasted two or three days, during which Laurent
prepared several explanations, in the event that Thérèse should ask
him, to account for the time that had passed without his calling upon
her. On the fourth day, Laurent found himself in the clutches of a
savage attack of _spleen_. Harlots and courtesans made him ill; he found
in none of his friends the patient and delicate kindliness with which
Thérèse would detect his ennui, try to divert his mind, help him to
seek its cause and remedy, in a word, give her whole mind to him. She
alone knew what ought to be said to him, and seemed to understand that
the fate of an artist like him was not a matter of trifling importance,
as to which a more exalted mind had the right to declare that, if he
were unfortunate, it was so much the worse for him.
He ran to her house in such hot haste, that he forgot what he intended
to say by way of apology; but Thérèse showed neither displeasure nor
surprise because of his neglect, and spared him the necessity of lying
by asking him no questions. He was stung by her indifference, and
discovered that he was more jealous of her than before.
"She has probably seen her lover," he thought; "she has forgotten me."
However, he did not manifest his irritation, and kept such close watch
upon himself thereafter, that Thérèse was deceived.
Several weeks passed in alternations of frenzy, coldness, and affection.
Nothing else on earth was so necessary to him and so beneficent as that
woman's friendship, nothing so bitter and so galling as to be unable to
seek her love. The confession he had demanded, far from curing him as he
had flattered himself that it would, had intensified his suffering. It
was jealousy, which he could no longer conceal from himself, since it
had a definite and admitted cause. How, in Heaven's name, could he ever
have fancied that as soon as he knew that cause, he would scorn the idea
of striving to destroy it?
And yet he made no effort to supplant the invisible and happy rival. His
pride, which was excessive when he was with Thérèse, would not allow
him to do it. When he was alone, he hated him, decried him to himself,
attributing all sorts of absurdities to that phantom, insulting him and
challenging him ten times a day.
Then he would become disgusted with suffering, seek comfort in
debauchery, forget himself for a moment, but instantly relapse into
profound depression, and go to pass an hour or two with Thérèse,
overjoyed to see her, to breathe the air that she breathed, and to
contradict her in order to have the pleasure of listening to her voice,
scolding and caressing by turns.
Finally he detested her for not divining his torments; he despised her
for remaining faithful to that lover of hers, who could not be a man of
more than ordinary talent, since she did not feel the need of talking
about him; he would leave her, swearing that he would not go near her
again for a long while, and he would have returned an hour later if he
had had any hope that she would receive him.
Thérèse, who had caught a glimpse of his love for a moment, no longer
suspected it, so well did he play his part. She was sincerely attached
to the unhappy youth. Being an enthusiastic artist beneath her calm and
thoughtful exterior, she had set up a sort of altar, she said, _to what
he might have been_, and she still felt for him an indulgent pity,
blended with genuine respect for genius diseased and gone astray. If she
had been very certain of not arousing any evil desire, she would have
fondled him like a son, and there were times when she checked herself as
she was on the point of using the familiar form of address to him.
Was there a touch of love in that maternal sentiment? There surely was,
unknown to Thérèse; but a truly chaste woman, who has lived longer by
work than by passion, can keep from herself for a long while the secret
of a love which she has resolved to fight against. Thérèse believed
that she was certain of having no thought of her own satisfaction in
that attachment of which she bore all the burden; as soon as it was
evident that Laurent found tranquillity and contentment with her, she
found tranquillity and contentment to give him. She was well aware that
he was incapable of loving as she understood the word; so that she had
been hurt and alarmed at the momentary caprice which he had confessed.
That paroxysm past, she congratulated herself upon having found in a
harmless fib a means of preventing its recurrence; and, as on all
occasions, whenever he felt at all excited, Laurent hastened to proclaim
the impassable barrier of ice _of the Baltic Sea_, she was no longer
afraid, and accustomed herself to live amid flames without being burned.
All these sufferings and perils of the two friends were concealed and,
as it were, incubated beneath a habitual satirical gaiety, which is the
natural mood, the indelible seal, as it were, of French artists. It is a
sort of second nature, for which the people of more northern countries
blame us severely, and for which the serious English, above all, look
down upon us. Yet it is that which constitutes the charm of refined
liaisons, and often preserves us from many a mad or foolish step. To
seek the absurd side of things is to discover the weak and illogical
side. To laugh at the perils by which the heart is encompassed, is to
practise defying them, like our soldiers, who go into fire laughing and
singing. To make fun of a friend is often to save him from some weakness
in which our pity would have led him to gratify himself. And, finally,
to make fun of one's self is to rescue one's self from the foolish
intoxication of overweening self-esteem. I have noticed that people who
never jest are generally endowed with puerile and intolerable vanity.
Laurent's gaiety, like his talent, was dazzling with color and wit, and
was the more natural because it was original. Thérèse had less wit
than he, in the sense that she was naturally given to musing, and was an
indolent talker; but what she needed was a playful spirit in others;
then her own would gradually wake, and her quiet merriment was not
without charm.
The result of this habitual good humor was that love, a subject upon
which Thérèse never jested and did not like to have others jest in her
presence, found no opportunity to slip in a word, to utter a note.
One fine morning, Monsieur Palmer's portrait was finished, and Thérèse
handed to Laurent, in her friend's name, a snug little sum which the
young man promised to put aside, to be used in case of illness or of
some unforeseen and unavoidable expense.
Laurent had become intimate with Palmer while painting his portrait. He
had found him what he was: upright, just, generous, intelligent, and
well-informed. Palmer was a wealthy American of the middle class, whose
patrimonial fortune was derived from trade. He had been in business
himself and had travelled extensively in his younger days. At thirty, he
had had the excellent sense to consider himself rich enough, and to
determine to live for his own enjoyment. So he no longer travelled
except for pleasure, and after he had seen, as he said, many curious
things and extraordinary countries, he took delight in the sight of
beautiful things and in studying countries which were really interesting
by reason of their civilization.
Although he was not a very enlightened student of art, his judgment was
reasonably reliable, and on all subjects his ideas were as healthy as
his instincts. His French showed the effect of his timidity, to such a
degree that it was almost unintelligible and absurdly incorrect at the
beginning of a conversation; but when he felt at ease, one could see
that he knew the language, and that all he lacked was longer practice or
greater confidence to speak it very well.
Laurent had studied him with much curiosity and perturbation at the
outset. When it was proved by affirmative evidence that he was not
Mademoiselle Jacques's lover, he estimated his character more fairly,
and conceived a sort of friendship for him which resembled, albeit at a
long distance, his sentiment for Thérèse. Palmer was a tolerant
philosopher, strict enough in his dealings with himself and very
charitable to others. In his ideas, if not in his character, he
resembled Thérèse, and he was almost always in accord with her on all
points. Now and then Laurent still felt jealous of what he called, in
musical parlance, their imperturbable _unison_; and, as it was simply an
intellectual jealousy, he ventured to complain of it to Thérèse.
"Your definition amounts to nothing," she said. "Palmer is too placid
and too perfect for me. I have a little more fire, and I sing a little
louder than he does. Compared with him, I am the high note in the major
third."
"In that case, I am only a false note," said Laurent.
"No," said Thérèse, "with you I am modified and go down the scale to
form the minor third."
"Then with me you descend half a tone?"
"And I am half an interval nearer to you than to Palmer."
III
One day, at Palmer's request, Laurent went to the Hôtel Meurice, where
the American lived, to see that the portrait was suitably framed and
packed. The lid was nailed on in their presence, and Palmer himself
wrote his mother's name and address thereon with a brush; then, as the
porters carried the box away to dispatch it on its long journey, Palmer
grasped the artist's hand, and said:
"I owe it to you that my dear mother is soon to have a very great
pleasure, and I thank you again. Now will you allow me to talk with you
a few moments? I have something to say to you."
They went into a salon where Laurent saw several trunks.
"I start to-morrow for Italy," said the American, offering him some
excellent cigars and a taper, although he did not smoke himself; "and I
do not choose to part with you without a few words touching a delicate
matter, so delicate that, if you interrupt me, I shall not be able to
find the proper French words for what I want to say."
"I swear that I will be as mute as the tomb," said Laurent, with a
smile, surprised and considerably disturbed by this preamble.
"You love Mademoiselle Jacques," continued Palmer, "and I think that she
loves you. Perhaps you are her lover; if you are not, I feel certain
that you will be sooner or later. Ah! you promised not to speak! Say
nothing, for I ask you nothing. I consider you worthy of the honor I
attribute to you; but I am afraid that you are not well enough
acquainted with Thérèse to know that, if your love is an honor to her,
hers is no less an honor to you. I am afraid of that because of the
questions you asked me about her, and of certain remarks that have been
made about her before us two, by which I saw that you were more moved
than I was. That proves that you know nothing about her; now I, who know
the whole story, propose to tell you the whole story, so that your
attachment to Mademoiselle Jacques may be founded on the esteem and
respect which she deserves."
"Wait a moment, Palmer," cried Laurent, who was burning to hear what was
coming, but was restrained by an honorable scruple. "Do you propose to
tell me this with Mademoiselle Jacques's permission, or by her command?"
"Neither," replied Palmer. "Thérèse will never tell you the story of
her life."
"Then say no more! I do not wish to know anything except what she wishes
me to know."
"Good, very good!" rejoined Palmer, shaking his hand; "but suppose that
what I have to tell you clears her from all suspicion?"
"Then why does she conceal it?"
"From consideration for others."
"Well, go on," said Laurent, unable to resist the temptation.
"I shall mention no names," said Palmer. "I will simply tell you that,
in one of the large cities of France, there was once a rich banker who
seduced a charming girl, his own daughter's governess. He had by her a
female child who was born twenty-eight years ago on Saint Jacques's Day,
was entered on the municipal register as born of unknown parents, and
received no other family name than Jacques. Thérèse is that child.
"The governess received a sum of money from the banker, and, five years
later, married one of his clerks, an honest fellow who had no suspicion
of anything wrong, the whole affair having been kept very secret. The
child was brought up in the country. Her father had taken charge of her.
She was afterward placed in a convent, where she received a very fine
education and was the object of much care and affection. Her mother saw
her constantly during the first years; but after she was married, her
husband became suspicious, and, resigning his position with the banker,
took his wife to Belgium, where he went into business on his own account
and made a fortune. The poor mother had to force back her tears and
obey.
"That mother still lives a long way from her daughter; she has other
children, and her conduct since her marriage has been beyond reproach;
but she has never been happy. Her husband, who loves her dearly, keeps
her almost under lock and key, and has never ceased to be jealous of
her; which is in her eyes the merited penalty of her sin and her
falsehood.
"It would seem that age should have brought confession on the one hand
and forgiveness on the other. It would have been arranged so in a novel;
but there is nothing less logical than real life, and that household is
as disturbed as on the first day, the husband deep in love, uneasy and
rough, the wife penitent, but silent and down-trodden.
"And so, under the difficult circumstances in which Thérèse was
placed, she was deprived of the support, the assistance, the advice, and
the consolation of her mother. But the mother loves her all the more
dearly for being obliged to see her in secret, by stealth, when she
succeeds in coming to Paris alone for two or three days, as has happened
recently. But it is only within a few years that she has been able to
devise pretexts of one sort or another, and obtain these occasional
leaves of absence. Thérèse adores her mother, and will never make any
admission that can possibly compromise her. That is why she will never
endure a word of blame concerning the conduct of other women. You may
well have thought that at such times she was indirectly claiming
indulgence for herself. Nothing of the sort. Thérèse has nothing for
which to seek forgiveness; but she has forgiven her mother everything;
such is the story of their relations.
"I now have to tell you the story of the Comtesse de ---- _three stars_.
That is what you say in French, I believe, when you do not wish to call
people by name. This countess, who bears neither her title nor her
husband's name, is Thérèse again."
"So she is married? she is not a widow?"
"Patience! she is married, and she is not. You will see in a moment.
Thérèse was fifteen years old when her father, the banker, became a
widower and a free man; for his lawful children were all settled in
life. He was an excellent man, and, despite the misstep of which I have
told you and which I do not justify, it was impossible not to love him,
he was so entertaining and generous. I was very intimate with him. He
had told me in confidence the story of Thérèse's birth, and on several
occasions he took me with him when he went to see her at the convent
where she was. She was beautiful, intelligent, lovable, high-spirited.
He would have been glad, I think, to have me make up my mind to ask her
hand in marriage; but my heart was not free at that time; otherwise----
But I could not think of it.
"He then asked me some questions about a young Portuguese nobleman who
was a frequent visitor at his house, who had very large interests in
Havana, and who was very handsome. I had met this Portuguese in Paris,
but I did not really know him, and I abstained from giving any opinion
about him. He was very fascinating; but, for my part, I would never have
placed any confidence in his face. He was the Comte de ----, to whom
Thérèse was married a year later.
"I was obliged to go to Russia; when I returned, the banker had died of
apoplexy, and Thérèse was married, married to that foreigner, that
madman, I will not say that villain, because he was able to retain her
love, even after she discovered his crime: that man already had a wife
in the colonies when he had the incredible audacity to seek Thérèse's
hand and to marry her.
"Do not ask me how Thérèse's father, a man of sense and experience,
had allowed himself to be so deceived. I could but repeat to you what my
own experience has taught me, to wit: that in this world, the things
that happen are at least half of the time the direct opposite of what
seemed likely to happen.
"In the later years of his life the banker had done divers other foolish
things which would lead one to think that his reason was slightly
clouded. He had left Thérèse a legacy instead of giving her a
marriage-portion outright in his life-time. This legacy was of no effect
as against the lawful heirs, and Thérèse, who adored her father, would
not have applied to the courts even if there had been any chance of
success. She was left penniless, therefore, just as she became a mother,
and, at the same time, a frantic woman made a descent upon her,
demanding her rights and threatening to make a scandal: it was her
husband's first and only lawful wife.
"Thérèse had an extraordinary amount of courage: she pacified the
unfortunate creature, and persuaded her not to apply to the courts; she
induced the count to take back his wife and start for Havana with her.
Because of Thérèse's birth and the secrecy with which her father had
chosen to encompass the manifestations of his affection, her marriage
had taken place secretly, abroad, and the young couple had lived abroad
ever since. Indeed, their life had been most mysterious. The count,
unquestionably afraid of being unmasked if he should reappear in the
world, made Thérèse believe that he had a passion for living in
solitude with her, and the trustful young wife, in love with her husband
and naturally romantic, considered it altogether natural that her
husband should travel with her under a false name, to avoid meeting
people who were indifferent to him.
"Thus when Thérèse awoke to the horror of her situation, it was not
impossible that everything might be shrouded in silence. She consulted a
discreet lawyer, and, having acquired the certainty that her marriage
was null and void, but that it required a judgment to quash it, if she
wished ever to make use of her liberty, she instantly and irrevocably
made up her mind to be neither free nor married, rather than besmirch
her child's father with a degrading scandal and conviction. That made
the child a bastard beyond recall; but it was better that he should have
no name and should remain forever in ignorance of his birth, than that
he should claim a tarnished name and bring dishonor upon his father.
"Thérèse still loved the wretch! she confessed as much to me, and he
loved her with a diabolical passion. There were heart-rending struggles,
indescribable scenes, in which Thérèse fought with an energy beyond
her years, I will not say beyond her sex; a woman, when she is heroic,
is not heroic by halves.
"At last, she carried the day; she kept her child, expelled the culprit
from her arms, and saw him depart with her rival, who, although consumed
by jealousy, was so far overcome by her magnanimity that she kissed her
feet when they parted.
"Thérèse changed her abode and her name, passed as a widow, having
resolved to be forgotten by the few people who had known her, and began
to live for her child, with pitiful energy. The child was so dear to
her, that she thought that she could find consolation with him; but this
last joy was destined not to be of long duration.
"As the count was wealthy, and had no children by his first wife,
Thérèse had been persuaded, at her rival's earnest entreaty, to accept
a reasonable allowance, in order to enable her to give her son a
suitable education; but the count had no sooner taken his wife back to
Havana than he abandoned her again, made his escape, returned to Europe,
and threw himself at Thérèse's feet, imploring her to fly with him and
the child to the other side of the world.
"Thérèse was inexorable; she had reflected and prayed. Her heart had
become strong, she no longer loved the count. On her son's account, she
did not propose that such a man as the count should become the master of
her life. She had lost the right to be happy, but not the right to
respect herself; she repulsed him, without reproaches, but without
weakness. The count threatened to leave her penniless; she replied that
she was not afraid to work for a living.
"The wretched madman thereupon devised an execrable scheme, to place
Thérèse at his mercy, or to be revenged for her resistance. He
kidnapped the child and disappeared. Thérèse hurried after him; but he
had taken his measures so carefully that she went astray and did not
overtake him. It was at that crisis that I met her in England, dying of
despair and fatigue at an inn, almost insane, and so changed by
unhappiness that I hardly recognized her.
"I persuaded her to rest, and let me act for her. My investigations were
lamentably successful. The count had returned to America. The child had
died of fatigue on arriving there.
"When I was obliged to convey that horrible news to the unhappy
creature, I was terrified myself at the calmness she displayed. At last,
she wept, and I saw that she was saved. I was forced to leave her; she
told me that she proposed to settle where she was. I was distressed by
her destitution; she deceived me by telling me that her mother would not
allow her to lack anything. I learned later that her poor mother would
have been powerless to help her; she had not a centime at her disposal
for which she had not to account. Moreover, she was entirely ignorant of
all her daughter's misfortunes. Thérèse, who wrote to her in secret,
had concealed them in order not to drive her to desperation.
"Thérèse lived on in England, giving lessons in French, drawing, and
music, for she possessed talents which she had the courage to turn to
account, that she might not have to accept compassion from any one.
"After a year, she returned to France, and settled in Paris, where she
had never been, and where no one knew her. She was then but twenty years
old; she was married at sixteen. She was no longer at all pretty, and it
required eight years of repose and resignation to restore her health and
her gentle gaiety of long ago.
"During all that time, I saw her only at rare intervals, for I am always
travelling; but I always found her dignified and proud, working with
invincible courage, and concealing her poverty behind miraculous
neatness and cleanliness, never complaining of God, or of any mortal,
refusing to talk of the past, sometimes caressing children by stealth
and leaving them as soon as one looked at her, fearing, doubtless, that
she might betray some emotion.
"I had not seen her for three years, when I came to ask you to paint my
portrait, and I was trying to find her address, which I was on the point
of asking you for when you mentioned her to me. Having arrived only the
night before, I did not know that she had at last attained success,
celebrity, and a comfortable income.
"It was only on finding her under such conditions, that it occurred to
me that that heart, so long crushed, might live again, and suffer--or be
happy. Try to make her happy, my dear Laurent, she has well earned it!
And, if you are not sure that you will not make her suffer, blow out
your brains to-night rather than return to her. That is all that I had
to say to you."
"Stay," said Laurent, deeply moved; "this Comte de ----, is he still
alive?"
"Unfortunately, yes. These men who drive other people to despair are
always in good health and escape all dangers. They never hand in their
resignations; why, this fellow recently had the presumption to send me a
letter for Thérèse, which I handed to her in your presence, which she
treated as it deserved."
Laurent had thought of marrying Thérèse as he listened to Monsieur
Palmer's narrative. That narrative had produced a revolution in him. The
monotonous tone, the pronounced accent, and a few curious grammatical
lapses which we have not thought it worth our while to reproduce, had
imparted to it, in his auditor's vivid imagination, an indefinable
something as strange and terrible as Thérèse's destiny. That girl
without kindred, that mother without children, that wife without a
husband, was surely doomed to an exceptionally cruel fate! What
depressing notions of love and life she must have retained! The sphinx
reappeared before Laurent's dazzled eyes. Thérèse unveiled seemed to
him more mysterious than ever; had she ever been consoled? could she be
for a single instant?
He embraced Palmer effusively, swore to him that he loved Thérèse, and
that, if he ever succeeded in winning her love, he would remember every
hour of his life the hour that had just passed and the story he had just
heard. Then, having promised not to betray his knowledge of Mademoiselle
Jacques's history, he went home and wrote:
"THÉRÈSE:
"Do not believe a word of all I have been saying to you these last two
months. Do not believe either what I said to you when you were afraid
that I would fall in love with you. I am not amorous, it is not that; I
love you madly. It is absurd, it is insane, it is wretched; but I, who
thought that I never should or could say or write to a woman the words
_I love you!_ find them too cold and constrained to-day to express my
feeling for you. I can live no longer with this secret which is choking
me, and which you will not guess. I have tried a hundred times to leave
you, to go to the end of the world, to forget you. In an hour I am at
your door, and very often, at night, consumed with jealousy and almost
frantic with rage against myself, I pray God to deliver me from my
torment by summoning this unknown lover in whom I do not believe, and
whom you invented to disgust me with the thought of you. Show me that
man in your arms, or love me, Thérèse! Failing these alternatives, I
can conceive but one other, and that is to kill myself and have done
with it. This is cowardly, stupid, the commonplace threat worn
threadbare by all despairing lovers; but is it my fault if there is a
despair which makes all those who undergo it utter the same shriek, and
am I mad because I happen to be a man like other men?
"Of what avail has been all that I have invented to protect myself from
it, and to render my poor personality as harmless as it wished to be
free?
"Have you anything to reproach me for in my dealings with you,
Thérèse? Am I a conceited ass, a rake, I who prided myself upon making
myself stupid so as to give you confidence in my friendship? But why do
you wish that I should die without having loved, you who alone can teach
me what love is, and who know it well? You have a treasure in your
heart, and you smile as you sit beside a poor devil who is dying of
hunger and thirst. You toss him a small coin from time to time; that
means friendship in your eyes; it is not even pity, for you must know
that the drop of water increases the thirst.
"And why do you not love me? You may have loved some one who was a worse
man than I. I am not worth much, to be sure, but I love you, and is not
that everything?
"You will not believe it; you will say again that I am mistaken, as you
said before! No, you cannot say so, unless you lie to God and to
yourself. You see that my torment gets the better of me, and that I am
making an absurd declaration, I who dread nothing on earth so much as
being laughed at by you!
"Thérèse, do not think me corrupt. You know very well that the bottom
of my heart has never been sullied, and that from the abysses into which
I have cast myself I have always, in spite of myself, raised my voice to
Heaven. You know that with you I am as chaste as an infant, and you have
not feared to take my head in your hands sometimes, as if you were about
to kiss me on the forehead. And you would say: 'Bad head! you deserve to
be broken.'--And yet, instead of crushing it like the head of a snake,
you would try to make the pure and burning breath of your mind penetrate
it. Ah! well, you have succeeded only too well; and, now that you have
kindled the fire on the altar, you turn away and say to me: 'Place it in
somebody's else care! Marry; love some sweet, devoted, lovely girl; have
children, be ambitious for them, live a virtuous life, have a happy
home--have everything, except me!'
"But, Thérèse, it is you whom I love passionately, not myself. Since I
have known you, you have been striving to make me believe in happiness
and to cultivate my taste for it. It is not your fault if I have not
become as selfish as a spoiled child. But I am worthy of a better fate.
I do not ask if your love would mean happiness to me. I simply know that
it would be life, and that, good or bad, it is that life, or death, that
I must have."
IV
Thérèse was deeply distressed by this letter. She was, as it were,
struck by lightning. Her love bore so little resemblance to Laurent's,
that she fancied that she did not love him with love, especially when
she reread the expressions used by him. There was no delirium in
Thérèse's heart, or, if there were, it had entered there, drop by
drop, so slowly that she did not notice it, and believed that she was as
thoroughly mistress of herself as on the first day. The word _passion_
offended her.
"Passions! I?" she said to herself. "In Heaven's name, does he think
that I don't know what passion is, and that I want any more of that
poisoned draught? What have I done to him, I who have given him so much
affection and thought, that he should propose to me, by way of thanks,
despair, madness, and death?--After all," she thought, "it is not his
fault, poor creature! He doesn't know what he wants, nor what he asks
for. He seeks love like the philosopher's stone, in which one strives
all the more earnestly to believe because he cannot grasp it. He thinks
that I have it, and that I amuse myself by refusing to give it to him!
There is always a touch of frenzy in whatever he thinks. How can I
appease him, and turn him aside from a fancy that is rapidly making him
unhappy?
"It is my fault; he has some right to say so. While trying to wean him
from debauchery, I familiarized him too much with a virtuous attachment;
but he is a man, and he deems our affection incomplete. Why did he
deceive me? why did he make me believe that he was tranquil when he was
with me? What shall I do to repair the idiocy of my inexperience? I have
not been enough of a woman in the matter of presumption. I did not know
that a woman, however lukewarm and weary of life she may be, can still
disturb a man's brain. I ought to have believed that I was fascinating
and dangerous, as he once told me, and to have guessed that he afterward
contradicted himself on that point only to quiet my fears. So it is a
misfortune, then,--for it certainly cannot be a sin,--not to have the
instinct of coquetry?"
Thereupon, Thérèse, searching her memory, remembered that she had
instinctively been reserved and distrustful to defend herself from the
desires of other men who were not attractive to her; with Laurent she
felt no such instinct, because she esteemed him in his friendship for
her, because she could not believe that he would seek to deceive her,
and also, it must be admitted, because she cared more for him than for
any other. Alone in her studio, she paced the floor, oppressed by a
painful sense of discomfort, sometimes glancing at the fatal letter
which she had placed on a table as if she knew not what to do with it
and could neither decide to read it again nor to destroy it, and
sometimes looking at her unfinished work on the easel. She was working
with enthusiasm and pleasure when they brought her that letter, that is
to say, that doubt, that anxiety, that amazement, and that dread. It was
like a mirage which caused all the spectres of her former miseries to
reappear upon her unclouded, peaceful horizon. Every word written on
that paper was like a hymn of death which she had heard in the past, a
prophecy of fresh misfortunes to come.
She tried to recover her serenity by resuming her painting. That was her
great remedy for all the petty ills of external life; but it was
powerless that day; the terror which that passion aroused in her
assailed her in the purest and most private sanctuary of her present
life.
"Two pleasures disturbed or destroyed," she said to herself, throwing
away her brush and taking up the letter: "work and friendship."
She passed the rest of the day without making up her mind to anything.
But one point was perfectly clear in her mind, the determination to say
no; but she proposed that it should be no in reality, and was not bent
upon announcing her decision in hot haste, with the timorous abruptness
of the woman who is afraid of succumbing unless she makes haste to
barricade the door. How to say that no from which there should be no
appeal, which should leave no hope behind, yet should not be like a
red-hot iron on the sweet memory of friendship, was a hard and bitter
problem for her to solve. That memory was her own love; when one has the
body of a dearly loved one to bury, one cannot decide, without bitter
sorrow, to place a white cloth over the face and bestow the body in the
common grave. You would fain embalm it in a grave of its own, which you
could look upon from time to time, praying for the soul of him whose
dust it contains.
Darkness came upon her before she had hit upon any expedient for denying
herself without inflicting too much pain. Catherine, seeing that she
dined with little appetite, asked her anxiously if she were ill.
"No," she replied, "I have something on my mind."
"Ah! you work too hard," said the good old woman, "you do not think
about taking care of yourself."
Thérèse raised her finger; it was a gesture with which Catherine was
familiar, and which signified: "Don't speak of that."
The hour at which Thérèse received her few friends had, for some time
past, been taken advantage of by Laurent only. Although the door stood
open for whoever chose to come, he alone came, whether because the
others were away from Paris--it was the season for going into the
country or remaining there--or because they had detected in Thérèse a
certain preoccupation, an involuntary and poorly concealed desire to
talk exclusively with Monsieur de Fauvel.
Laurent usually arrived at eight, and Thérèse said to herself as she
glanced at the clock:
"I did not answer his letter; he won't come to-day."
There was a horrible void in her heart as she added:
"He must never come again."
How was she to pass that endless evening, which she was accustomed to
pass in conversation with her young friend, while she worked at some
little sketch or some fancy-work, and he smoked his cigar,
half-reclining lazily on the cushions of the couch? It occurred to her
to escape the impending ennui by calling upon a friend in Faubourg
Saint-Germain, with whom she sometimes went to the play; but her friend
always retired early, and it would be too late when she arrived. It was
such a long way, and the cabs moved so slowly! Then, too, she would have
to dress, and Thérèse, who lived in slippers, like all artists who
work with enthusiasm and cannot bear to be incommoded by their clothes,
was very indolent in the matter of arraying herself in visiting costume.
Suppose she should put on a veil and a shawl, send for a cab, and drive
slowly through the deserted avenues of the Bois de Boulogne? Thérèse
had sometimes taken such a drive with Laurent, when the evening heat was
so stifling that they sought a breath of fresh air under the trees. Such
excursions with anybody else would have compromised her seriously; but
Laurent guarded religiously the secret of her confidence, and they both
took delight in the unconventionality of those mysterious
tête-à-têtes, which concealed no mystery. She remembered them as if
they were already far away, and said to herself, sighing at the thought
that they would never return:
"Those were happy times! They can never come again for him who suffers,
or for me who am no longer in ignorance of it."
At nine o'clock, she at last attempted to answer Laurent's letter, but a
peal of the bell made her heart beat fast. It was he! She rose to tell
Catherine to say that she had gone out. Catherine returned: it was only
a letter from him. Thérèse had an involuntary thrill of regret that it
was not himself.
There were only these few words in the letter:
"Adieu, Thérèse! you do not love me, and I love you like a child!"
These two lines made Thérèse tremble from head to foot. The only
passion that she had never striven to extinguish in her heart was
maternal love. That wound, although apparently healed, was still
bleeding like unsatisfied love.
"Like a child!" she repeated, crumpling the letter in her quivering
hands. "He loves me like a child! _Mon Dieu_! what does he mean by that?
does he know how he hurts me? _Adieu_! My boy had learned to say
_adieu_! but he did not say it when they carried him away. I should have
heard him! and I shall never hear him again!"
Thérèse was overexcited, and, as her emotion seized upon the most
painful of pretexts for manifesting itself, she burst into tears.
"Did you call me?" said Catherine, entering the room. "_Mon Dieu_! what
is the matter? You are weeping as you used to in the old days!"
"Nothing, nothing, leave me," replied Thérèse. "If any one comes to
see me, say that I have gone to the theatre. I want to be alone. I am
ill."
Catherine left the room, but went into the garden. She had seen Laurent
creeping stealthily along the hedge.
"Do not sulk like this," she said. "I don't know why my mistress is
crying; but it must be your fault, you make her unhappy. She doesn't
want to see you. Go, ask her pardon!"
Catherine, despite all her respect for Thérèse and devotion to her,
was satisfied that Laurent was her lover.
"She is weeping?" he cried. "Oh! _mon Dieu_! why is she weeping?"
And he rushed across the little garden and threw himself at Thérèse's
feet, who was sobbing in the small salon, with her face in her hands.
Laurent would have been overjoyed to see her thus if he had been the
rake that he sometimes sought to appear; but in reality he was
wonderfully tender-hearted, and Thérèse possessed the secret power of
arousing his real nature. The tears with which her face was bathed
caused him genuine and profound grief. On his knees he implored her to
forget his madness, and to restore him to reason by her gentleness and
good sense.
"I wish only what you wish," he said, "and since you weep for our dead
and gone friendship, I swear that I will bring it to life again rather
than cause you fresh sorrow. But let us be frank with each other, my
sweet, kind Thérèse, my dearest sister, for I no longer feel the
strength to deceive you! do you summon the courage to accept my love as
a deplorable discovery that you have made, and as a disease of which you
propose to cure me by patience and pity. I will do my utmost in that
direction, I swear to you! I will not ask you for so much as a kiss, and
I think that will not cost me so much as you might fear, for I do not
yet know whether my senses are involved in all this. No, really I do not
think it. How could it be so, after the life I have led and am at
liberty to lead still? What I feel is a thirst of the heart; why should
it frighten you? Give me a little of your heart, and take all of mine.
Consent to be loved by me, and do not tell me again that it is an insult
to you, for what drives me to despair is to see that you despise me too
much to permit me, even in a dream, to aspire to you. That lowers me so
in my own eyes that it makes me long to kill the miserable devil who so
offends your moral sense. Raise me, rather, from the slough into which I
have fallen, and bid me expiate my evil life and become worthy of you.
Yes, leave me a ray of hope! however faint it may be, it will make
another man of me. You will see, you will see, Thérèse! The mere idea
of striving to seem a better man to you gives me strength already; I can
feel it! do not take it from me. What will become of me if you spurn me?
I shall descend again all the steps I have climbed up since I have known
you. All the fruit of our sacred friendship will be lost, so far as I am
concerned. You will have tried to cure a sick man, and will have killed
him instead! And then, too, will you yourself, who are so noble and so
good, be content with your work? will you not reproach yourself for not
having conducted it to a better end? Be to me a Sister of Charity, who
does not confine herself to dressing the hurts of a wounded man, but who
strives to reconcile his soul with Heaven. Come, Thérèse, do not
withdraw your faithful hands from mine, do not turn away your face, so
lovely in sorrow. I will not leave your feet until you have at least
forgiven me for loving you, if you have not authorized me to love you!"
Thérèse could but accept this effusion as serious, for Laurent was
perfectly honest. To hold him off with distrust would have been
equivalent to an avowal of the too warm affection which she had for him;
a woman who shows fear is already vanquished. So she assumed a brave
face, and perhaps it was not mere affectation, for she believed that her
strength was still equal to the task. Indeed, she was not ill-advised by
her very weakness.
To break with him at that moment would have been to arouse terrible
emotions which it was much better to appease, reserving the right to
relax the bond gently, with skill and prudence. That might be a matter
of some days. Laurent was so impressionable, and rushed so abruptly from
one extreme to the other!
So they both calmed down, assisting each other to forget the storm, and
even exerting themselves to laugh at it, in order to afford each other
mutual encouragement touching the future; but, do what they would, their
position was essentially changed, and their intimacy had taken a giant's
stride. The fear of losing each other had brought them nearer together,
and, while vowing that there had been no change in their friendship,
there was in all their words and thoughts a sort of languor of the
heart, a sort of rapturous fatigue, which was in effect the
enfranchisement of love!
Catherine, when she brought the tea, put them completely at their ease
by her artless, maternal solicitude.
"You would do much better," she said to Thérèse, "to eat the wing of a
chicken instead of making a hole in your stomach with this tea!--Do you
know," she said to Laurent, pointing at her mistress, "that she never
touched her dinner?"
"Then let her sup at once!" cried Laurent. "Don't say no, Thérèse; you
must do it! What in Heaven's name would become of me if you should be
taken sick?"
And as Thérèse refused to eat, for she really was not hungry, he
declared, at a sign from Catherine urging him to insist, that he was
hungry himself; and that was quite true, for he had forgotten to dine.
Thereupon Thérèse was delighted to give him some supper; and they ate
together for the first time, which was no trivial occurrence in
Thérèse's lonely and modest life. To eat together is one of the
greatest promoters of intimacy. It is the satisfaction in common of a
material necessity of existence, and if you seek a loftier meaning in
it, it is a communion, as the word indicates.
Laurent, whose ideas naturally took a poetic turn, even in the midst of
merriment, laughingly compared himself to the Prodigal Son, for whom
Catherine made haste to kill the fatted calf. This fatted calf, which
presented itself in the guise of a meagre chicken, naturally added to
the gaiety of the two friends. It was so little for the young man's
appetite to feed upon, that Thérèse was distressed. The quarter was
sadly lacking in resources, and Laurent insisted that Catherine should
not put herself out for him. In the depths of a closet they unearthed a
huge jar of guava jelly. It was a present from Palmer, which Thérèse
had forgotten to open, but which Laurent opened and attacked with great
zest, talking meanwhile with the utmost warmth of the excellent Dick, of
whom he had been foolish enough to be jealous, and whom he should love
thenceforth with all his heart.
"You see, Thérèse," he said, "how unjust disappointment makes us!
Believe me, children should be spoiled. Only those who are treated
gently, turn out well. So give me plenty of guavas, now and always!
Harshness is not simply a bitter gall, it is a deadly poison!"
When the tea arrived, Laurent discovered that he had devoured the
chicken like a selfish glutton, and that Thérèse had eaten nothing at
all. He rebuked himself for his heedlessness and confessed it; then he
dismissed Catherine, and insisted upon making the tea himself and
waiting on Thérèse. It was the first time in his life that he had ever
waited on any one, and he found therein an exquisite enjoyment which he
recognized with ingenuous surprise.
[Illustration: _THEIR FIRST SUPPER._
"_Now", said Laurent to Thérèse, as he knelt to
offer her her cup, "I can understand how one can be
a servant and enjoy his profession._"]
"Now," he said to Thérèse, as he knelt to offer her her cup, "I can
understand how one can be a servant and enjoy his profession."
From certain people, even the most trivial attentions have an
extraordinary value. There was in Laurent's manners, and even in his
attitudes, a certain stiffness which he never laid aside, even with
society women. He offered them attentions with the ceremonious coldness
of the most rigid etiquette. With Thérèse, who did the honors of her
little home like the excellent woman and good-humored artist that she
was, he had always been cared for and coddled without having to
reciprocate. He would have shown a lack of taste and of tact in assuming
to act as the man of the house. Suddenly, as a result of those tears and
mutual outpourings of the heart, he found himself, without in the least
understanding how it happened, invested with rights which did not belong
to him, but which he seized upon as if by inspiration, without
opposition on the part of the surprised and deeply moved Thérèse. It
seemed to him that he was under his own roof, and that he had won the
privilege of looking after the mistress of the house, like a loving
brother or an old friend. And Thérèse, without a thought of the danger
of this taking possession, watched him with wide-open, wondering eyes,
asking herself if she had not been radically mistaken hitherto in
regarding that affectionate and devoted child as a reserved and gloomy
man.
However, Thérèse reflected during the night; but, in the morning,
Laurent, who, although he had no premeditated plan, did not propose to
give her time to breathe,--for he had ceased to breathe himself,--sent
her magnificent flowers, rare sweetmeats, and a note so loving, so
gentle and respectful, that she could not fail to be touched by it. He
said that he was the happiest of men, that he desired nothing more
except her forgiveness, and that, as soon as he had obtained that, he
should be the king of the world. He would accept any deprivation, any
harsh decree, provided only that he was not forbidden to see and talk
with his friend. That alone would be beyond his strength; all the rest
was as nothing. He was well aware that Thérèse could have no love for
him; which fact did not deter him from saying, ten lines lower down: "Is
not our sanctified love indissoluble?"
And stating thus the pros and the con's, the false and the true, a
hundred times a day, with a candor by which he was unquestionably
deceived himself, encompassing Thérèse with delicate attentions,
striving with all his heart to give her confidence in the chastity of
their relations, and at every instant talking to her in a lofty strain
of his adoration for her, seeking to divert her when she was disturbed
in mind, to cheer her when she was sad, to melt her toward himself when
she was stern, he led her insensibly to the point where she had no other
will and no other existence than his.
Nothing is so perilous as those intimacies in which the parties have
exchanged a promise not to attack each other, when neither of the two
inspires a secret physical repulsion in the other. Artists, because of
their independent life and the nature of their occupations, which oblige
them often to depart from social conventions, are more exposed to these
perils than they who live by rule and whose imaginations are less
active. We should forgive them, therefore, for more sudden impressions
and more feverish impulses. Public opinion realizes this duty, for it is
generally more indulgent to those who go astray, perforce, in the
tempest than those whose lives are passed in a flat calm. And then the
world demands from artists the fire of inspiration, and that fire, which
overflows for the enjoyment and enthusiasm of the public, must
inevitably consume themselves in time. Then we pity them; and the honest
bourgeois, returning to his family at night, after learning of their
misfortunes and downfall, says to his excellent and gentle helpmeet:
"You remember that poor girl who sang so well? she is dead of a broken
heart. And that famous poet who wrote such fine verses has killed
himself. It's a great pity, wife. All those people end badly. We, the
simple creatures, are the happy ones."
And the honest bourgeois is right.
Thérèse had lived a long while, however, if not as an honest
bourgeois,--for one must have a family for that, and God had denied her
a family,--at all events as a hard-working young woman, working from
early morning, and not regaling herself with pleasure or sloth at the
end of her day's work. She constantly aspired to the joys of a regular,
domestic life; she loved order, and, far from displaying the childish
contempt which certain artists lavished upon what they called, in those
days, the grocer class, she bitterly regretted that she had not married
in that safe and modest social circle where she would have found
affection and security instead of talent and renown. But we do not
choose our own destinies, for fools and ambitious mortals are not the
only imprudent wights whom destiny overwhelms.
V
Thérèse had no weakness for Laurent in the ironical, libertine sense
in which that word is commonly used in love. It was by an effort of her
will that she said to him, after many nights of painful meditation:
"I wish what you wish, because we have reached the point where the sin
still to be committed is the inevitable reparation of a succession of
sins already committed. I have been culpable toward you, in not having
had the selfish prudence to fly from you; it is better that I should be
culpable toward myself by remaining your companion and your consolation,
at the price of my peace of mind and my pride.--Listen," she added,
grasping his hand with all the strength of which she was capable, "do
not withdraw this hand, and, whatever happens, always retain enough
honor and courage to remember that before being your mistress I was
_your friend_. I said it to myself on the first day of your passion: we
loved each other too well thus, not to love each other less well under
other circumstances; but that happiness could not last for me, because
you no longer share it, and pain has taken the upper hand in that
liaison, in which for you pain and pleasure are mingled. I simply ask
you, if you become weary of my love, as you become weary of my
friendship, to remember that it is not an instant of frenzy that has
driven me into your arms, but an impulse of my heart and a more loving
and lasting sentiment than voluptuous intoxication. I am not superior to
other women, and I do not assume the right to deem myself invulnerable;
but I love you so ardently and so purely that I should never have
transgressed with you, if you could have been saved by my strength.
After I had believed that strength was beneficial to you, that it would
teach you to discover your own strength and to purge yourself of an evil
past, I found that you were convinced of the contrary, so convinced that
to-day the contrary has actually happened: you are becoming bitter, and
it seems that, if I resist, you are ready to hate me and to return to
your life of debauchery, blaspheming even our poor friendship. And so I
offer to God the sacrifice of my life for you. If I am destined to
suffer because of your nature or your past, so be it. I shall be amply
repaid if I rescue you from the suicide you were in a fair way to commit
when I first knew you. If I do not succeed, I shall at least have made
the trial, and God, who knows how sincere my devotion is, will pardon me
if it is of no avail!"
In the early days of this union, Laurent's enthusiasm, gratitude, and
faith were admirable to see. He rose superior to himself, he had
outbursts of religious fervor, he blessed his dear mistress for having
made known to him at last the true, chaste, and noble love of which he
had dreamed so much, and of which he had thought that he was to be
deprived forever by his own fault. She dipped him anew, he said, in the
waters of his baptism, she wiped out even the memory of his evil days.
It was adoration, worship, ecstatic contemplation.
Thérèse ingenuously believed in him. She abandoned herself to the joy
of having caused all that happiness and restored all that grandeur of
soul to one of God's elect. She forgot all her apprehensions, or smiled
at them as meaningless dreams which she had mistaken for arguments. They
laughed at them together; they reproached themselves for having
misunderstood each other and for not having thrown themselves on each
other's neck the very first day, they were so perfectly adapted to
understand, appreciate, and cherish each other. There was no more talk
of prudence, no more sermons. Thérèse had grown ten years younger. She
was a child, more childish than Laurent himself; she devoted all her
energies to the task of arranging his existence so that he would not
feel the fold of a rose-leaf.
Poor Thérèse! Her intoxication did not last eight whole days.
Whence comes that terrible chastisement inflicted on those who have
abused the forces of youth, a chastisement which consists in making them
incapable of appreciating the joys of a harmonious and logical
existence? Is the young man a very great criminal who, being launched in
the world without a curb and with boundless aspirations, deems himself
capable of exterminating all the phantoms that pass, of mastering all
the pleasures that beckon to him? Is his sin anything else than
ignorance, and could he have learned in his cradle that life should be a
constant battle with one's self? There are some of these young men who
are really to be pitied, and whom it is difficult to condemn, some who
may have been without a guide, a careful mother, a judicious friend, a
sincere first mistress. Vertigo has seized them at the outset;
corruption has hurled itself upon them as upon its lawful prey, to make
brutes of those who have more senses than heart, to make madmen of those
who struggle, as Laurent did, between the mire of reality and the ideal
of their dreams.