That is what Thérèse said to herself in order to keep on loving that

suffering soul, and why she endured the outrages we are about to

describe.

The seventh day of their happiness was irrevocably the last. That

ill-fated figure was never absent from Thérèse's mind. Fortuitous

circumstances combined to prolong that eternity of joy throughout a

whole week; no one with whom she was intimate had come to see Thérèse,

she had no work that was urgent; Laurent promised to set to work afresh

as soon as he could resume possession of his studio, then in the hands

of workmen who were making certain repairs. The heat in Paris was most

oppressive; he proposed to Thérèse that they should pass forty-eight

hours in the country, in the woods. It was the seventh day.

They set off by boat, and arrived at night-fall at a hotel. After

dinner, they went out to ride in the forest in the lovely moonlight.

They hired horses and a guide, who soon wearied them by his boastful

loquacity. They had ridden about two leagues when they came to the foot

of a cliff with which Laurent was familiar. He proposed to dismiss the

horses and the guide, and to return on foot, even if it were a little

late.

"I am sure," said Thérèse, "I don't know why we should not pass the

whole night in the forest. There are no wolves or thieves here. Let us

stay as long as you choose, and never go back, if you say so."

They were left alone; and thereupon a strange, almost impossible scene

occurred, which we must describe just as it happened. They had climbed

to the top of the cliff, and were sitting on the thick moss, which was

burned and withered by the intense heat. Laurent was gazing at the

magnificent spectacle of the sky, where the moon dimmed the brilliancy

of the stars. Only two or three of the largest could be distinguished in

the zenith. Laurent, lying on his back, gazed at them.

"I would like to know," he said, "the name of this one almost over my

head; it seems to be looking at me."

"That is Vega," said Thérèse.

"So you know the names of all the stars, do you, my learned lady?"

"Of almost all. It isn't difficult, and in fifteen minutes you shall

know as many as I do, if you choose."

"No, thanks; I much prefer not to know them; I prefer to give them names

of my own."

"And you are right."

"I prefer to roam at random among those lines up yonder, and arrange

combinations of groups according to my own ideas, rather than walk

according to the whims of other people. After all, perhaps I am wrong,

Thérèse! You prefer the beaten paths, don't you?"

"They are softer for tender feet. I haven't seven-league boots like

you!"

"What sarcasm! you know very well that you are a stronger and better

walker than I!"

"That is easily understood: it is because I have no wings to fly."

"See to it that you don't get hold of any and leave me behind! But let

us not talk about parting: that word would make the heavens weep!"

"What! who has any idea of such a thing? Don't say that ghastly word

again!"

"No, no! let's not think of it!" he cried, springing suddenly to his

feet.

"What's the matter, and where are you going?" she said.

"I don't know," he replied. "Ah! by the way----There's an extraordinary

echo here, and the last time I came here with little--you don't care to

know her name, do you? I enjoyed listening to it here, while she sang on

yonder little hillock, just opposite us."

Thérèse made no reply. He saw that this unseasonable evocation of one

of his undesirable acquaintances was not a very delicate contribution to

the joys of a romantic midnight expedition with the queen of his heart.

Why had it come into his head? how was it that the name of some foolish

virgin or other had come to his lips? He was mortified by his blunder;

but, instead of ingenuously blaming himself for it and wooing oblivion

by torrents of loving words which he was quite capable of pouring forth

when passion inspired his heart, he determined to brazen it out, and

asked Thérèse if she would sing for him.

"I could not do it," she replied, gently. "It is a long while since I

have ridden, and it has made me a little oppressed."

"If it is only a little, make an effort, Thérèse; it will give me so

much pleasure!"

Thérèse was too proud to be angry, she was only grieved. She turned

her face away, and pretended to cough.

"Well, well," said he, laughingly, "you are only a poor weak woman! And

then you don't believe in my echo, I can see that. I propose that you

shall hear it. Stay here. I will climb up to the top of the hill. You

are not afraid to remain alone for five minutes, I trust?"

"No," replied Thérèse, "I am not at all afraid."

To climb to the other height, he had to go down into the little ravine

which separated it from that on which they were; but the ravine was

deeper than it seemed. When Laurent, having gone down half-way, saw how

far he still had to go, he stopped, reluctant to leave Thérèse alone

so long, and called to her, asking if she had called him.

"No, indeed I did not!" she shouted, not wishing to thwart his caprice.

It is impossible to describe what took place in Laurent's brain; he took

that _indeed I did not_ for a rebuke, and continued to descend, but less

quickly, and musing as he walked.

"I have wounded her," he said, "and now she is sulky, as in the days

when we played at being brother and sister. Is she going to continue to

have these moody fits, now that she is my mistress? But why did I wound

her? I was wrong, certainly, but it was unintentional. It is impossible

that some scrap of my past should not come to my mind now and then. Is

it to be an insult to her and a mortification to me every time? What

does my past matter to her, since she has accepted me as I am? And yet I

was wrong! yes, I was wrong; but will she never happen to mention the

wretch whom she loved and thought she had married? In spite of herself,

Thérèse when she is with me will remember the days she lived without

me, and shall I twist it into a crime?"

He instantly answered his own question:

"Oh! yes, it would be intolerable! So I have done very wrong, and I

ought to have asked her pardon at once."

But he had already reached that stage of mental fatigue when the mind is

sated with enthusiasm, and when the weak and shrinking creature that

every one of us is, to a greater or less extent, feels that he must

resume possession of himself.

"Must humble myself again, promise again, persuade again, shed tears

again?" he said to himself. "Great God! can't she be happy and trustful

for a single week? It's my fault, I agree, but it's hers still more for

making so much out of so little, and spoiling this lovely poetic night

which I had planned to pass with her in one of the loveliest spots on

earth. I have been here before with rakes and wantons, it is true; but

to what corner of the outskirts of Paris could I have taken her where I

was not likely to run against some such unpleasant reminiscence? Surely

they can hardly be said to enchant me, and it is almost cruel to

reproach me with them."

As he replied thus in his heart to the reproaches with which Thérèse

was probably upbraiding him in hers, he reached the bottom of the

ravine, where he felt disturbed and fatigued as after a quarrel, and

threw himself on the grass in a fit of annoyance and weariness. For

seven whole days he had not belonged to himself; he was conscious of a

longing to reconquer his liberty, and to fancy himself alone and

unsubdued for a moment.

Thérèse, for her part, was heart-broken and terrified at the same

time. Why had the word _parting_ been suddenly hurled at her like a

shrill cry amid that tranquil atmosphere that they were breathing

together? what was the occasion of it? how had she provoked it? She

tried in vain to determine. Laurent himself could not have explained it

to her. All that had followed was grossly cruel, and how angry he must

have been, that man of exquisite breeding, to have said it! But what was

the cause of his anger? Had he a serpent within him that gnawed his

heart and extorted from him wild and blasphemous words?

She had followed him with her eyes down the slope until he had entered

the dark shadow of the ravine. Then she saw him no more, and was

surprised at the time that elapsed before he appeared on the slope of

the other hill. She was frightened at last--he might have fallen over

some precipice. In vain did her eager glances question the grass-grown

depths, bristling with huge, dark rocks. She rose, intending to call to

him, when an indescribable cry of distress reached her ears, a hoarse,

ghastly, desperate shriek, which made her hair stand on end.

She darted away like an arrow in the direction of the voice. If there

had really been a precipice, she would have rushed over the edge without

reflection; but there was only a steep incline, where she slipped

several times on the moss and tore her dress on the bushes. Nothing

stopped her; she reached Laurent's side, how, she knew not, and found

him on his feet, with haggard eyes and trembling convulsively.

"Ah! here you are," he said, grasping her arm; "you did well to come! I

should have died!"

And, like Don Juan after the reply of the statue, he added in a sharp,

abrupt tone: "_Let us go away from here_!"

He led her to the road, walking at random, and unable to tell what had

happened to him.

He became calmer at last, after ten or fifteen minutes, and sat down

beside her in a clearing. They had no idea where they were; the ground

was strewn with flat rocks which resembled tombs, and among them grew

juniper-trees, which one might well have mistaken at night for

cypresses.

"_Mon Dieu_!" said Laurent, suddenly, "are we in a cemetery? Why did you

bring me here?"

"It is simply a tract of untilled land," she replied. "We passed through

many similar ones this evening. If you don't like it, let's not stop

here, but go back under the large trees."

"No, let us stay here," he rejoined. "Since chance or destiny brings

these thoughts of death into my mind, I may as well face them and

exhaust their horror. They have their charm, like everything else, have

they not, Thérèse? Everything that moves the imagination powerfully,

affords us enjoyment, more or less painful. When a head is to fall on

the scaffold, the multitude goes to see, and it is altogether natural.

We cannot live upon mild emotions alone; we need terrible emotions to

make us realize the intensity of life."

He spoke thus, as if at random, for some moments. Thérèse dared not

question him, and strove to divert his thoughts; she saw that he had had

an attack of delirium. At last, he recovered sufficiently to desire and

to be able to describe it to her.

He had had an hallucination. As he lay on the grass, in the ravine, his

brain had become confused. He had heard the echo sing all by itself, and

its song was an obscene refrain. Then, as he raised himself on his elbow

to seek an explanation of the phenomenon, he had seen a man rush toward

him over the grass, a pale-faced man, with torn garments, and his hair

flying in the wind.

"I saw him so plainly," he said, "that I had time to say to myself that

he was some belated citizen who had been surprised and pursued by

robbers, and I even looked for my cane to go to his assistance, but my

cane was lost in the grass, and the man was still running toward me.

When he was close to me, I saw that he was drunk and that no one was

chasing him. As he passed me, he cast a stupid, hideous glance at me,

and made a fiendish grimace of hatred and contempt. Then I was afraid,

and threw myself face downward on the ground, for that man--was

myself!--Yes, it was my ghost, Thérèse. Don't be frightened, don't

think me mad, it was a vision. I realized it when I found myself alone

in the darkness. I could not have distinguished the features of any

human face, I had seen that one only in my imagination; but how

distinct, how ghastly, how horrible it was. It was myself twenty years

older, with features wasted by debauchery or disease, wild eyes, a

brutalized mouth, and, despite the total wiping out of my vitality,

there was enough energy remaining in that phantom to insult and defy the

creature that I am now. Thereupon, I said to myself: 'O my God! is that

what I shall be in my mature years?' This evening, there came into my

mind the memory of some miserable past experiences of mine, and I

blurted them out involuntarily; is it because I still bear within me

that old man from whom I believed that I was free? The spectre of

debauchery will not release his victims, and even in Thérèse's arms he

will mock at me and cry: '_It is too late_!'

"Then I rose to go back to you, my poor Thérèse. I intended to ask

your pardon for my vileness and to beg you to save me; but I don't know

how many minutes or centuries I should have turned round and round,

unable to take a step forward, if you had not come to me at last. I

recognized you instantly, Thérèse; I was not afraid of you, and I felt

that I was saved."

It was difficult to determine, when Laurent talked thus, whether he was

telling of something that had really happened, or whether he had

confused in his brain an allegory born of his bitter reflections and a

vision which he had seen indistinctly in a sort of half-sleep. He swore,

however, that he did not fall asleep on the grass, and that he had not

once lost consciousness of the place where he was or of the passage of

time; but even that was difficult to decide. Thérèse had lost sight of

him, and to her the time had seemed mortally long.

She asked him if he were subject to these hallucinations.

"Yes," he said, "when I am drunk; but I have been drunk with love only,

in the fortnight that you have been mine."

"The fortnight!" echoed Thérèse in amazement.

"No, less than that," he replied; "don't split hairs with me about

dates; you see that I have not my wits as yet. Let us walk, that will

fix me all right."

"But you need rest; we must think of returning to the hotel."

"Well, what are we doing?"

"We are not going in the right direction; our backs are turned to our

starting-point."

"Do you want me to go back over that infernal rock?"

"No, but let us go to the right."

"That is just the wrong direction."

Thérèse insisted that she was not mistaken. Laurent refused to yield;

he even lost his temper, and spoke in an irritated tone, as if that were

a subject for quarrelling. Thérèse yielded at last, and followed where

he chose to go. She was completely crushed by emotion and sadness.

Laurent had spoken to her in a tone which she had never dreamed of

assuming with Catherine, even when the old servant angered her. She

forgave him because she felt that he was ill; but his state of painful

excitement alarmed her so much the more.

Thanks to Laurent's obstinacy, they lost themselves in the forest,

walked about four hours, and did not return to the hotel until daybreak.

The walking in the fine, heavy sand of the forest is very fatiguing.

Thérèse could hardly drag herself along, and Laurent, revivified by

that violent exercise, did not think of slackening his pace out of

regard for her. He walked ahead, constantly asserting that he had found

the right path, asking her from time to time if she were tired, and

never suspecting that, when she answered no, her purpose was to spare

him any regret for having caused the misadventure.

The next day, Laurent had forgotten all about it; he had suffered a

severe shock, however, from that strange attack, but it is a peculiarity

of excessively nervous temperaments that they recover from such shocks

as if by magic. Indeed, Thérèse had occasion to notice, that on the

day following that lamentable experience it was she who was utterly

exhausted, while he seemed to have acquired fresh strength.

She had not slept, expecting to find him suffering from some serious

illness; but he took a bath, and felt quite disposed to repeat the

excursion. He seemed to have forgotten how disastrous that nocturnal

experience had been to the honeymoon! The melancholy impression soon

wore away, so far as Thérèse was concerned. When they returned to

Paris, she imagined that nothing had changed between them; but that same

evening Laurent chose to draw a caricature of Thérèse and himself

wandering through the forest by moonlight, he with his wild, distraught

look, she with her torn gown and her fatigue-stricken body. Artists are

so accustomed to make caricatures of one another, that Thérèse was

amused by this one; but, although she, too, had plenty of facility and

humor at the end of her pencil, she would not have caricatured Laurent

for anything in the world; and when she saw him sketch from a comical

standpoint that nocturnal scene which had so tortured her, she was

deeply grieved. It seemed to her that there are certain sorrows of the

heart which can never have a ridiculous side.

Laurent, instead of understanding her feeling, became still more

satirical. He wrote under his own figure: _Lost in the forest and in his

mistress's heart_; and under Thérèse's: _Her heart is as sadly rent as

her gown_. The picture was entitled: _Honeymoon in a Cemetery_.

Thérèse forced herself to smile; she praised the drawing, which,

despite its buffoonery, revealed the hand of the master, and she made no

reflection on the unfortunate choice of a subject. She made a mistake:

she would have done better to demand at the outset that Laurent should

not let his hilarity run about at random in long boots. She allowed him

to tread on her toes because she was still afraid that he might be ill

and might be seized with delirium in the midst of his dismal jesting.

Two or three other incidents of this nature having put her on her guard,

she began to wonder whether the unexciting, regular life which she

sought to give her friend was the regimen best adapted to that

exceptional nature. She had said to him:

"Perhaps you will be bored sometimes; but ennui is a welcome rest from

vertigo, and when your mental health has fully returned, you will be

amused by trifles and will know what real cheerfulness is."

But matters turned out differently. Laurent did not admit his ennui, but

it was impossible for him to endure it, and he vented it in strange and

bitter caprices. He lived a life of constant ups and downs. Abrupt

transitions from reverie to wild excitement, and from absolute

indifference to noisy extravagance, became with him a normal condition,

and he could not live without them. The happiness that he had found so

delicious for a few days, began to irritate him like the sight of the

sea during a flat calm.

"You are lucky," he said to Thérèse, "to wake every morning with your

heart in the same place. You see, I lose mine while I am asleep. It is

like the night-cap my nurse used to put on my head when I was a baby;

sometimes she found it at my feet and sometimes on the floor."

Thérèse said to herself that it was impossible that serenity could

come to that troubled soul all at once, and that it must become

accustomed to it by degrees. To that end, he must not be prevented from

returning sometimes to active life; but how could she arrange it so that

activity would not be a blemish, a deadly blow dealt at their ideal?

Thérèse could not be jealous of the mistresses Laurent had had

previously; but she could not understand how she could kiss his brow on

the morrow of a debauch. She must, therefore, since the work, which he

had resumed with great ardor, excited him instead of calming him, seek

with him a vent for that surplus energy. The natural vent would have

been the enthusiasm of love; but that was an additional source of

excitement, after which Laurent would fain have scaled the third heaven;

lacking the strength for that, he turned his eyes in the direction of

hell, and his brain, sometimes his very face, received a diabolical

reflection therefrom.

Thérèse studied his tastes and his caprices, and was surprised to find

them easy to satisfy. Laurent was greedy of diversion and of surprises;

it was not necessary to take him among scenes of enchantment that could

never exist in real life; it was enough to take him no matter where, and

provide some amusement for him which he did not expect. If, instead of

giving him a dinner at home, Thérèse informed him, putting on her hat

the while, that they were to dine together at a restaurant, and if she

suddenly asked him to take her to an entirely different sort of play

from the one to which she had previously asked him to take her, he was

overjoyed by that unexpected diversion and took the keenest pleasure in

it; whereas, if they simply carried out a plan marked out beforehand, he

was certain to feel an insurmountable distaste for it and a disposition

to sneer at everything. So Thérèse treated him as a convalescent

child, to whom one refuses nothing, and she chose to pay no heed to the

resultant inconveniences to which she was subjected.

The first and most serious was the danger of compromising her

reputation. She was commonly said to be, and known to be, virtuous.

Everybody was not convinced that she had never had any other lover than

Laurent; indeed, some person having reported that she had been seen in

Italy years before with the Comte de ----, who had a wife in America,

she was supposed to have been kept by the man whom she had actually

married, and we have seen that Thérèse preferred to endure that blot

upon her fame rather than engage in a scandalous contest with the

miserable wretch whom she had loved; but every one was agreed in

considering her a prudent and sensible woman.

"She keeps up appearances," people said; "there is never any rivalry or

scandal about her; all her friends respect her and speak well of her.

She is a clever woman, and seeks nothing more than to pass unnoticed;

which fact adds to her merit."

When she was seen away from home, on Laurent's arm, people began to be

surprised, and the blame was all the more severe because she had kept

clear of it so long. Laurent's talent was highly esteemed by artists

generally, but he had very few real friends among them. They took it ill

of him that he played the gentleman with fashionable young men of

another class, and, on the other hand, his friends in that other class

could not understand his conversion and did not believe in it. So that

Thérèse's fond and devoted love was regarded as a frenzied caprice.

Would a chaste woman have chosen for her lover, in preference to all the

serious men of her acquaintance, the only one who had led a dissolute

life with all the vilest harlots in Paris? And, in the eyes of those who

did not choose to condemn Thérèse, Laurent's violent passion seemed to

be simply a successful piece of lechery, of which he was shrewd enough

to shake himself clear when he was weary of it.

Thus on all sides Mademoiselle Jacques lost caste on account of the

choice which she had made and which she seemed desirous to advertise.

Such, unquestionably, was not Thérèse's purpose; but with Laurent,

although he had resolved to encompass her with respect, it was hardly

possible to conceal her mode of life. He could not renounce the outside

world, and she must either let him return thither alone to his

destruction or go with him to preserve him from destruction. He was

accustomed to see the crowd and to be seen by it. When he had lived in

retirement a single day, he fancied that he had fallen into a cellar,

and shouted lustily for gas and sunlight.

In addition to this loss of consideration, Thérèse was called upon to

make another sacrifice: she was no longer sure of her footing

pecuniarily. Hitherto she had earned enough money by her work to live

comfortably, but only by observing strict regularity in her habits, by

looking carefully after her expenses, and by working faithfully and

regularly. Laurent's passion for the unexpected soon straitened her. She

concealed her position from him, being unwilling to refuse to sacrifice

to him that priceless time which constitutes the larger part of the

artist's capital.

But all this was simply the frame of a much gloomier picture, over which

Thérèse threw a veil so thick that no one suspected her unhappiness,

and her friends, scandalized or distressed by her situation, held aloof

from her, saying:

"She is intoxicated. Let us wait until she opens her eyes; that will

come very soon."

It had already come. Thérèse acquired more and more thoroughly every

day the sad certainty that Laurent no longer loved her, or loved her so

little that there was no further hope of happiness, either for him or

for her, in their union. It was in Italy that they both became

absolutely certain of the fact, and we are now to describe their journey

thither.

VI

Laurent had long wanted to see Italy; it had been his dream from

childhood, and the unhoped-for sale of certain of his paintings made it

possible at last for him to realize that dream. He offered to take

Thérèse, proudly displaying his little fortune, and swearing by all he

held dear that, if she would not go with him, he would abandon the trip.

Thérèse knew well that he would not abandon it without regret and

without bitterly reproaching her. So she exerted her utmost ingenuity to

obtain some money herself. She succeeded by pledging her future work;

and they set out late in the autumn.

Laurent had formed some very erroneous ideas concerning Italy, and

expected to find spring in December as soon as he caught sight of the

Mediterranean. He had to acknowledge his error, and to suffer from a

very sharp attack of frosty weather on the trip from Marseille to Genoa.

Genoa pleased him immensely, and as there were many pictures to see

there, as it was the principal object of the journey so far as he was

concerned, he readily agreed to stay there one or two months, and hired

furnished apartments.

After a week, Laurent had seen everything, and Thérèse was just

beginning to settle down to painting; for it should be said here that

she was obliged to work. In order to obtain a few thousand-franc notes,

she had made an agreement with a dealer in pictures to bring him copies

of several unpublished portraits, which he proposed to have engraved. It

was not an unpleasant task; the dealer, being a man of taste, had

specified a number of portraits by Van Dyck, one at Genoa, one at

Florence, etc. The copying of that master required a special gift, by

virtue of which Thérèse had developed her own talent and earned a

livelihood before she undertook to paint portraits on her own account;

but she must needs begin by obtaining permission from the owners of

those masterpieces; and, although she exerted herself to the utmost, a

whole week passed before she was able to begin to copy the portrait at

Genoa.

Laurent felt in nowise disposed to copy anything under heaven. His

individuality was too pronounced and too fiery for that sort of work. He

was benefited in other ways by the sight of great works. That was his

right. And yet, many a great master, having so excellent an opportunity,

would have been likely to take advantage of it. Laurent was not yet

twenty-five years of age, and might still learn. That was Thérèse's

opinion, who also saw an opportunity for him to increase his pecuniary

resources. If he would have condescended to copy a Titian,--who was his

favorite among the masters,--there was no doubt that the same dealer who

had commissioned Thérèse would have bought it or found a purchaser for

it. Laurent considered that an absurd idea. So long as he had money in

his pocket, he could not conceive how one could descend from the lofty

realms of art so far as to think of gain. He left Thérèse absorbed in

contemplation of her model, joking her a little in anticipation on the

Van Dyck she was going to paint, and trying to dishearten her with the

terrible task she had the courage to undertake. Then he roamed about the

city, sorely perplexed as to how he should employ the six weeks which

Thérèse had asked for the completion of her work.

Certainly, she had no time to spare with the short, dark, December days,

and facilities for working not to be compared with those of her own

studio in Paris: a wretched light, an enormous room heated very slightly

or not at all, and swarms of chattering tourists who, on the pretext of

looking at her work, planted themselves in front of her, or annoyed her

with their absurd or impertinent reflections. Ill with a severe cold,

depressed, and, above all, alarmed by the traces of ennui which she

spied in Laurent's eyes, she returned to their apartments at night to

find him out of temper, or to wait for him until hunger drove him home.

Two days did not pass without his reproaching her for having accepted a

degrading task, and urging her to abandon it. Had not he money enough

for both, and why should his mistress refuse to share it with him?

Thérèse held firm; she knew that money would not last in Laurent's

hands, and that he very likely would not have enough to return home when

he was tired of Italy. She begged him to let her work, and to work

himself according to his own ideas, but as every artist can and should

work when he has his future to build.

He agreed that she was right, and resolved to set to work. He unpacked

his boxes, found a studio, and made several sketches; but, whether

because of the change of air and of habits, or because of the too recent

sight of so many chefs-d'œuvres which had moved him deeply and which he

required time to digest, he was conscious of a temporary impotence, and

fell into one of those fits of the blues which he could not throw off

alone. It would have required some excitement coming from without,

superb music descending from the ceiling, an Arabian steed coming

through the key-hole, an unfamiliar literary masterpiece at his hand,

or, still better, a naval engagement in the harbor of Genoa, an

earthquake, or any other exciting event, pleasurable or terrible, which

would take him out of himself, and under the spell of which he would

feel lifted up and revivified.

Suddenly, amid his vague and confused aspirations, an evil idea sought

him out in spite of himself.

"When I think," he reflected, "that _formerly_" (that was the way he

referred to the time when he did not love Thérèse) "the slightest

pleasure was enough to restore me to life! I have to-day many things of

which I used to dream--money, that is to say, six months of leisure and

liberty, Italy under my feet, the sea at my door, a mistress as loving

as a mother, and at the same time a serious and intelligent friend; and

all these are not enough to rekindle my energy! Whose fault is it? Not

mine, surely. I was not spoiled, and formerly it did not require so much

to divert me. When I think that the lightest wine used to go to my head

as quickly as the most generous vintage; that any saucy minx, with a

provoking glance and a problematical costume, was enough to raise my

spirits and to persuade me that such a conquest made me like one of the

heroes of the Regency! Did I need an ideal creature like Thérèse? How

in the devil did I ever persuade myself that both moral and physical

beauty were necessary to me in love? I used to be able to content myself

with the _least_; therefore the _most_ was certain to crush me, since

better is the enemy of good. And then, too, is there such a thing as

true beauty to the passions? The true is that which pleases. That with

which one is sated is as if it had never been. And then there is the

pleasure of changing, and therein, perhaps, lies the whole secret of

life. To change is to renew one's self; to be able to change is to be

free. Is the artist born to be a slave, and is it not slavery to remain

faithful, or simply to pledge one's faith?"

Laurent allowed himself to be persuaded by these old sophistries, always

new to minds that are adrift. He soon felt that he must express them to

some one, and that some one was Thérèse. So much the worse for her,

since Laurent saw no one else.

The evening conversation always began in about the same way:

"What a frightfully stupid place this is!"

One evening, he added:

"It must be a ghastly bore to be in a picture. I shouldn't like to be

that model you are copying. That poor lovely countess in the black and

gold dress, who has been hanging there two hundred years, must have

damned herself in heaven--if her soft eyes didn't damn her here--to see

her image buried in this dismal country."

"And yet," Thérèse replied, "she still has the privilege of beauty,

the triumph which survives death and which the hand of a master

perpetuates. Although she has crumbled to dust in her grave, she still

has lovers; every day I see young men, utterly insensible to the merits

of the painting, stand in ecstatic contemplation before that beauty

which seems to breathe and smile with triumphant tranquillity."

"She resembles you, Thérèse, do you know it? She has a little of the

sphinx, and I am not surprised at your admiration of her mysterious

smile. They say that artists always create after their own nature; it

was perfectly natural that you should select Van Dyck's portraits for

your apprenticeship. He made women tall and slender and elegant and

proud, like your figure."

"You have reached the stage of compliment! Stop there, for I know that

mockery will come next."

"No, I am in no mood for jesting. You know well enough that I no longer

jest. With you one must take everything seriously, and I follow the

prescription. I simply have one depressing remark to make. It is that

your dead and gone countess must be tired of being beautiful always in

the same way.--An idea, Thérèse! a fantastic vision suggested by what

you said just now. Listen."

[Illustration: _A FANTASTIC VISION._

"_A young man, who presumably had some idea

of sculpture, conceived a passion for a marble statue

on a tomb. He went mad over it, and one day the

poor devil raised the stone to see what was left of

that lovely creature in the sarcophagus._"]

"A young man, who presumably had some idea of sculpture, conceived a

passion for a marble statue on a tomb. He went mad over it, and one day

the poor devil raised the stone to see what was left of that lovely

creature in the sarcophagus. He found there--what he was certain to find

there, the idiot!--a mummy! Thereupon, his reason returned, and he

kissed the mummy, saying: 'I love you better so; at least, you are

something that has lived, while I was enamored of a stone that has never

been aware of its own existence.'"

"I don't understand," said Thérèse.

"Nor do I; but it may be that in love the statue is what one builds in

his head, and the mummy what he takes into his heart."

Another day, he sketched Thérèse, in a pensive, melancholy attitude,

in an album which she then looked through, finding there a dozen

sketches of women whose insolent attitudes and shameless expressions

made her blush. They were phantoms of the past which had passed through

Laurent's memory, and had clung to those white pages, perhaps, in spite

of him. Thérèse, without a word, tore out the leaf upon which she was

given a place in that vile company, threw it into the fire, closed the

album, and placed it on the table; then she sat down by the fire, put

her foot on the andiron, and attempted to talk of something else.

Laurent did not reply, but said to her:

"You are too proud, my dear! If you had burned all the leaves that

offended you and left only your own image in the album, I should have

understood, and I should have said: 'You do well;' but to withdraw and

leave the others there, signifies that you will never dispute possession

of me with any one."

"I disputed possession of you with debauchery," Thérèse replied; "I

shall never do so much with any of those creatures."

"Well, that is pride, I say again; it is not love. Now, I disputed

possession of you with Virtue, and I would do the same with any one of

her monks."

"Why should you? Aren't you tired of loving the statue? is not the mummy

in your heart?"

"Ah! you have a marvellous memory! Great God! what does a word amount

to? Every one interprets it as he pleases. An innocent man may be hanged

for a word. I see that I must be careful what I say with you; perhaps

the most prudent way would be never to talk together."

"_Mon Dieu_! have we reached that point?" said Thérèse, bursting into

tears.

They had reached that point. To no purpose did Laurent melt with her

tears and beg her pardon for having caused them to flow: the trouble

broke out afresh the next day.

"What do you suppose will become of me in this detestable city?" he said

to her. "You want me to work; I have tried it and I can't do it. I was

not born like you, with a little steel spring in my brain, so that I

have only to press the button to set the will at work. I am a creator!

Great or small, weak or powerful, a creator is a machine which obeys

nobody and which God sets in motion, when it seems good to Him, with His

breath or with the passing breeze. I am incapable of doing anything

whatsoever when I am bored, or when I do not like my surroundings."

"How is it possible for an intellectual man to be bored," said

Thérèse, "unless he is in a dungeon, deprived of light and air? Are

there no beautiful things to see in this city which enchanted you so the

first day, no interesting excursions to take in the neighborhood, no

good book to consult, no intelligent people to talk with?"

"I have been buried in beautiful things up to my eyes; I don't like to

drive alone; the best books irritate me when they tell me what I am not

in the mood to believe. As for making acquaintances--I have letters of

recommendation which you know very well that I can't use!"

"No, I don't know it; why not?"

"Because my friends in society naturally gave me letters to society

people here; but society people don't live shut up within four walls,

without ever thinking of amusing themselves; and as you are not in

society, Thérèse, you can't go with me, so I should have to go alone!"

"Why not in the day-time, as I have to work all day in that old palace?"

"In the day-time, people make calls, and form plans for the evening. The

evening is the time for amusement in all countries; don't you know

that?"

"Very well, go out sometimes in the evening, since it must be so: go to

balls and _conversazioni_. Don't gamble, that is all I ask."

"And that is just what I cannot promise. In society, one must devote

one's self to play or to the ladies."

"So that all men in society either ruin themselves at play, or are

involved in love-affairs?"

"Those who don't do one or the other are terribly bored in society, or

bore other people terribly. I am not a salon conversationalist myself. I

am not yet so hollow that I can procure a hearing without saying

anything. Tell me, Thérèse, do you want me to take a plunge into

society at our risk?"

"Not yet," said Thérèse; "be patient a little longer. Alas! I was not

prepared to lose you so soon!"

The sorrowful accent and heart-broken glance irritated Laurent more than

usual.

"You know," he said, "that you always bring me around to your wishes

with the slightest complaint, and you abuse your power, my poor

Thérèse. Don't you think you will be sorry for it some day, when you

find me ill and exasperated?"

"I am sorry for it already, since I weary you," she replied. "So do what

you choose!"

"Then you abandon me to my fate? Are you already weary of the struggle?

Look you, my dear, it is you who no longer love me!"

"From the tone in which you say that, it seems to me that you wish that

it should be so!"

He answered _no_, but, a moment later, his every word said _yes_.

Thérèse was too serious, too proud, too modest. She was unwilling to

descend with him from the heights of the empyrean. A hasty word seemed

to her an insult, a trivial reminiscence incurred her censure. She was

sober in everything, and had no comprehension of capricious appetites,

of extravagant fancies. She was the better of the two, unquestionably,

and if compliments were what she must have, he was ready with them; but

was it a matter of compliments between them? Was not the important thing

to devise some means of living together? Formerly, she was more

cheerfully inclined, she had been _coquettish_ with him, and she was no

longer willing to be; now, she was like a sick bird on its perch, with

feathers rumpled, head between its shoulders, and lifeless eye. Her

pale, dismal face was enough to frighten one sometimes. In that huge,

dark room, made depressing by the remains of former splendor, she

produced the effect of a ghost upon him. At times, he was really afraid

of her. Could she not fill that gloomy void with strange songs and

joyous peals of laughter?

"Come; what shall we do to shake off this deathly chill that freezes

one's shoulders? Sit down at the piano and play me a waltz. I will waltz

all by myself. Do you know how to waltz? I'll wager that you don't. You

don't know anything that isn't lugubrious!"

"Come," said Thérèse, rising, "let us leave this place at once, let

come what may! You will go mad here. It may be worse elsewhere; but I

will go through with my task to the end."

At that, Laurent lost his temper. So it was a task that she had imposed

on herself? So she was simply performing a duty in cold blood? Perhaps

she had taken a vow to the Virgin to consecrate her lover to her! All

that she lacked now was to turn nun!

He took his hat with that air of supreme disdain and of a definitive

rupture of relations which was natural to him. He went out without

saying where he was going. It was ten o'clock at night. Thérèse passed

the night in horrible distress of mind. He returned at daylight, and

locked himself into his room, closing the doors noisily. She dared not

show herself for fear of irritating him, and went softly to her own

room. It was the first time that they had gone to sleep without a word

of affection or pardon.

The next day, instead of returning to her work, she packed her boxes and

made all her preparations for departure. He woke at three in the

afternoon, and asked her laughingly what she was thinking about. He had

recovered his senses, and made up his mind what to do. He had walked

alone by the seashore during the night; he had reflected, and had become

calm once more.

"That great, roaring, monotonous sea irritated me," he said, gaily.

"First of all, I wrote some poetry. I compared myself to it. I was

tempted to throw myself into its greenish bosom! Then it seemed to me

tiresome and absurd on the part of the waves to be forever complaining

because there are cliffs along the shore. If they are not strong enough

to destroy them, let them hold their peace! Let them do like me, who do

not propose to complain any more. See how charming I am this morning; I

have determined to work, I shall remain here. I have shaved with great

care. Kiss me, Thérèse, and let us not refer again to that idiotic

last evening. Unpack these trunks and take them away quickly! don't let

me see them again! They seem like a reproach, and I no longer deserve

it."

There was a long interval between this off-hand way of making peace with

himself and the time when an anxious glance from Thérèse was enough to

make him bend both knees, and yet it was no more than three months.

Their thoughts were diverted by a surprise. Monsieur Palmer, who had

arrived in Genoa that morning, came to ask them to dine with him.

Laurent was enchanted by this diversion. Although he was always cold in

his manners toward other men, he leaped on the American's neck, saying

that he was sent by Heaven. Palmer was more surprised than flattered by

this cordial welcome. A single glance at Thérèse had sufficed to show

him that it was not the effusion of happiness. However, Laurent said

nothing of his ennui, and Thérèse was surprised to hear him praise the

city and the country. He even declared that the women were charming. How

did he know them?

At eight o'clock, he called for his overcoat and went out. Palmer would

have taken his leave at the same time.

"Why don't you stay a little longer with Thérèse?" said Laurent. "It

will please her. We are altogether alone here. I am going out for an

hour. Wait till I return before you have your tea."

At eleven, Laurent had not returned. Thérèse was very much depressed.

She made vain efforts to conceal her despair. She was no longer anxious

simply, she felt that she was lost. Palmer saw it all, and pretended to

see nothing; he talked constantly to her to try to distract her

thoughts; but, as Laurent did not come, and it was not proper to wait

for him after midnight, he took his leave after pressing Thérèse's

hand. Involuntarily he told her by that pressure that he was not

deceived by her courage, and that he realized the extent of her

disaster.

Laurent arrived at that moment, and saw Thérèse's emotion. He was no

sooner alone with her, than he began to jest with her in a tone which

affected not to descend to jealousy.

"Come," said she, "do not impose unnecessary pain upon me. Do you think

that Palmer is paying court to me? Let us go, I have already suggested

it."

"No, my dear, I am not so absurd as that. Now that you have somebody for

company, and allow me to go out a little on my own account, everything

is all right, and I feel just in the mood to work."

"God grant it!" said Thérèse. "I will do whatever you wish; but, if

you rejoice because I have somebody to talk with, have the good taste

not to refer to it as you did just now; for I cannot stand it."

"What the devil are you angry about now? what did I say that hurt you

so, pray tell me? You are becoming far too sensitive and suspicious, my

dear friend! What harm would be done if the excellent Palmer should fall

in love with you?"

"It would be very wrong in you to leave me alone with him, if you think

what you say."

"Ah! it would be wrong--to expose you to danger? You see that there is

danger, according to your own story, and that I was not mistaken!"

"Very good! then let us pass our evenings together and receive no one. I

am perfectly content. Is it a bargain?"

"You are very good, my dear Thérèse. Forgive me. I will stay with you,

and we will see whomever you choose; that will be the best and

pleasantest arrangement."

In truth, Laurent seemed to have come to his senses. He began a serious

study in his studio, and invited Thérèse to come to see it. Several

days passed without a storm. Palmer had not reappeared. But Laurent soon

wearied of that regular life and went in search of him, reproaching him

for his desertion of his friends. No sooner did he come to pass the

evening with them than Laurent invented a pretext for going out, and

remained away until midnight.

One week passed in this way, then another. Laurent gave Thérèse one

evening out of three or four, and such an evening! she would have

preferred solitude.

Where did he go? She never knew. He did not appear in society: the damp,

cold weather precluded the idea that he went on the water for pleasure.

However, he often said that he had been on a boat, and his clothes smelt

of tar. He was learning to row, taking lessons of a fisherman in the

harbor. He pretended that the fatigue calmed the excitement of his

nerves, and put him in good condition for the next day's labor.

Thérèse no longer dared to go to his studio. He seemed annoyed when

she expressed a wish to see his work. He did not want her reflections

when he was working out his own idea, nor did he wish to have her come

there and say nothing, which would make him feel as if she were inclined

to find fault. She was not to see his work until he deemed it worthy to

be seen. Formerly, he never began anything without explaining his idea

to her; now, he treated her like _the public_.

Two or three times he passed the whole night abroad. Thérèse did not

become accustomed to the anxiety these prolonged absences caused her.

She would have exasperated him by giving any sign that she noticed them;

but, as may be imagined, she watched him and tried to learn the truth.

It was impossible for her to follow him herself at night in a city full

of sailors and adventurers of all nations. Not for anything in the world

would she have stooped to have him followed by any one. She stole

noiselessly into his room and looked at him as he lay asleep. He seemed

utterly exhausted. Perhaps he had, in reality, undertaken a desperate

struggle against himself, to deaden by physical exercise the excessive

activity of his thought.

One night she noticed that his clothes were muddy and torn, as if he had

actually been in a fight, or as if he had had a fall. Alarmed beyond

measure, she approached him, and discovered blood on his pillow; he had

a slight wound on the forehead. He was sleeping so soundly that she

thought that she could, without rousing him, partly uncover his breast

to see if there was any other wound; but he woke, and flew into a rage

which was the _coup de grâce_ to her. She tried to fly, but he detained

her by force, put on a dressing-gown, locked the door, and then,

striding excitedly up and down the room which was dimly lighted by a

small night-lamp, he poured forth at last all the suffering that was

heaped up in his heart.

"Enough of this," he said; "let us be frank with each other. We no

longer love each other, we have never loved each other! We have deceived

each other; you meant to take a lover; perhaps I was not the first nor

the second, but no matter! you wanted a servant, a slave; you thought

that my unhappy disposition, my debts, my ennui, my weariness of a life

of debauchery, my illusions concerning true love, would put me at your

mercy, and that I could never recover possession of myself. To carry

such an enterprise to a successful issue, you needed to have a happier

disposition yourself, and more patience, more flexibility, and, above

all, more spirit! You have no spirit at all, Thérèse, be it said

without offence. You are all of a piece, monotonous, pig-headed, and

excessively vain of your pretended moderation, which is simply the

philosophy of short-sighted people with limited faculties. As for

myself, I am a madman, fickle, ungrateful, whatever you choose; but I am

sincere, I am no selfish schemer; I give myself, heart and soul, without

reservation: that is why I resume possession of myself in the same way.

My moral liberty is a sacred thing, and I allow no one to seize it. I

simply entrusted it, not gave it to you; it was for you to make a good

use of it and to succeed in making me happy. Oh! do not try to say that

you did not want me! I know all about these tricks of modesty and these

evolutions of the female conscience. On the day that you yielded to me,

I realized that you thought you had conquered me, and that all that

feigned resistance, those tears of distress, and that constant pardoning

of my temerity were simply the old commonplace way of throwing a line,

and luring the poor fish, dazzled by the artificial fly, to nibble at

the hook. I deceived you, Thérèse, by pretending to be deceived by

that fly; it was my privilege. You wished adoration: I lavished it upon

you without effort and without hypocrisy; you are beautiful, and I

desired you! But a woman is only a woman, and the lowest of them all

affords us as much pleasure as the greatest queen. You were simple

enough not to know it, and now you must depend upon yourself. You must

understand that monotony does not suit me, you must leave me to my

instincts, which are not always sublime, but which I cannot destroy

without destroying myself with them. Where is the harm, and why should

we tear our hair? We have been partners, and we separate, that is the

whole of it. There is no need of our hating and abusing each other just

for that. Avenge yourself by granting the prayers of the excellent

Palmer, who is languishing for love of you; I shall rejoice in his joy,

and we three will continue to be the best friends in the world. You will

recover your charms of other days, which you have lost, and the

brilliancy of your lovely eyes, which are growing haggard and dull by

dint of spying upon my acts. I shall become once more the jolly fellow

that I used to be, and we will forget this nightmare that we are passing

through together. Is it a bargain? You don't answer. Do you prefer

hatred? Beware! I have never hated, but I can learn how; I learn

quickly, you know! See, I clinched to-night with a drunken sailor twice

as tall and strong as I; I thrashed him soundly, and received only a

scratch. Beware lest I prove to be as strong mentally as physically on

occasion, and lest, in a contest of hatred and vengeance, I crush the

devil in person without leaving one of my hairs in his claws!"

Laurent, pale-faced and bitter, by turns ironical and frantic, with his

hair in disorder, his shirt torn, and his forehead smeared with blood,

was so ghastly to look at and to hear, that Thérèse felt all her love

change into disgust. She was in such despair at that moment that it did

not occur to her to be afraid. Silent and motionless in the chair in

which she had seated herself, she allowed this torrent of blasphemous

words to roll forth unchecked, and, saying to herself that that madman

was quite capable of killing her, she awaited with frigid disdain and

absolute indifference the climax of his frenzy.

He held his peace when he no longer had the strength to speak.

Thereupon, she rose and left the room, without answering him by a single

syllable, without casting a single glance at him.

VII

Laurent was not so contemptible as his words implied; he did not really

believe a syllable of all the atrocious things he said to Thérèse

during that horrible night. He believed them at the moment, or, rather,

he spoke without heeding what he said. He remembered nothing of it after

sleeping upon it, and if he had been reminded of it, would have denied

every word.

But one fact was undeniably true, that he was weary, for the moment, of

dignified love, and craved, with his whole heart, the degrading

excitements of the past. It was his punishment for following the evil

path he had chosen early in life,--a very harsh punishment, no doubt, of

which we can readily imagine that he complained bitterly, since he had

not sinned with premeditation, but had plunged laughingly into an abyss

from which he supposed that he could easily escape when he chose. But

love is regulated by a code which seems to rest, like all social codes,

upon that terrible formula: _No one is supposed to be ignorant of the

law_! So much the worse for those who are ignorant of it! Let the child

go within reach of the claws of the panther, thinking to pat it: the

panther will make no allowance for such ignorance; it will devour the

child because it is not in its nature to spare him. And so with poison,

with the lightning and with vice, blind agents of the fatal law which

man must study, or take the consequences.

On the morrow of that explosion, naught remained in Laurent's memory

save a vague idea that he had had a decisive explanation with Thérèse,

and that she had seemed resigned.

"Perhaps everything is for the best," he thought, finding her as calm as

when he had parted from her.

And yet he was terrified by her pallor.

"That is nothing," she said, tranquilly; "this cold tires me a good

deal, but it is nothing more than a cold. It will have to run its

course."

"Well, Thérèse," he said, "what is the present state of our relations?

Have you reflected? It is for you to decide. Are we to part in anger, or

remain on the footing of friendship as _formerly_?"

"I am not angry," she replied; "let us remain friends. Remain here, if

you please. I propose to finish my work and return to France in about a

fortnight."

"But should I not go and live in some other house for the next

fortnight? aren't you afraid that people will talk?"

"Do whatever you think best. We have our own apartments here, entirely

independent of each other; we use nothing but the salon in common; I

have no use for it, and I give it up to you."

"No: on the other hand, I beg you to keep it. You will not hear me go

out and come in; I will never put my foot inside it if you forbid me."

"I forbid you nothing," replied Thérèse, "unless it be to think for a

single instant that your mistress can forgive you. As for your friend,

she is superior to a certain order of disappointment. She hopes that she

can still be useful to you, and you will always find her when you need

any proof of friendship."

She offered him her hand, and went away to her work. Laurent did not

understand her. Such perfect self-control was something which he could

not comprehend, unfamiliar as he was with passive courage and silent

resolution. He believed that she expected to resume her influence over

him, and that she proposed to bring him back to love through friendship.

He promised to yield to no attack of weakness, and, in order to be more

certain of himself, he resolved to call some one to witness the fact of

the rupture. He went to Palmer, confided to him the wretched story of

his love, and added:

"If you love Thérèse, as I think you do, my dear friend, make

Thérèse love you. I cannot be jealous of you, far from it. As I have

made her unhappy enough, and as I am convinced that you will be

exceedingly kind to her, you will relieve me of a subject of remorse

which I am most anxious not to retain."

Laurent was surprised that Palmer made no reply.

"Do I offend you by speaking as I do?" he said. "Such is not my purpose.

I entertain friendship and esteem for you, yes, and respect, if you

choose. If you blame my conduct in this matter, tell me so; that will be

preferable to this air of indifference or disdain."

"I am indifferent neither to Thérèse's sorrows nor to yours," replied

Palmer. "But I spare you advice or reproaches which come too late. I

believed that you were made for each other; I am persuaded, now, that

the greatest, yes, the only happiness that you can confer upon each

other is to part. As to my personal feelings for Thérèse, I do not

admit your right to question me, and as for those sentiments which, in

your judgment, I might succeed in arousing in her, you no longer have

the right, after what you have said, to express such a supposition in my

presence, much less in hers."

"That is true," rejoined Laurent, nonchalantly, "and I understand very

well what it means. I see that I shall be in the way here now, and I

think that I shall do as well to leave Genoa, in order not to embarrass

any one."

He did, in fact, carry out his threat, after a very cold farewell to

Thérèse, and went straight to Florence, with the intention of plunging

into society or work, according to his caprice. It was exceedingly

pleasant to him to say to himself:

"I will do whatever comes into my head, and there will be no one to

suffer and be anxious about me. It is the worst of tortures, when a man

is no more evilly disposed than I am, to have a victim constantly before

one's eyes. Come, I am free at last, and the evil that I may do will

fall on myself alone!"

Doubtless, Thérèse was wrong not to let him see the depth of the wound

he had inflicted on her. She was too brave and too proud. Since she had

undertaken the cure of a desperately diseased nature, she should not

have recoiled from heroic remedies and painful operations. She should

have made that frenzied heart bleed freely, have overwhelmed him with

reproaches, and repaid insult with insult and stab with stab. If he had

seen the suffering he had caused, perhaps Laurent would have done

justice to himself. Perhaps shame and repentance would have saved his

soul from the crime of murdering love in cold blood.

But, after three months of fruitless efforts, Thérèse was

disheartened. Did she owe such absolute devotion to a man whom she had

never desired to enslave, who had forced himself upon her despite her

grief and her melancholy forebodings, who had clung to her steps like an

abandoned child, and had cried to her: "Take me under your wing, protect

me, or I shall die here by the roadside!"

And now that child cursed her for yielding to his outcries and his

tears. He accused her of having taken advantage of his weakness to

deprive him of the joys of liberty. He turned his back upon her, drawing

a long breath, and exclaiming: "At last, at last!"

"Since he is incurable," she thought, "what is the use of making him

suffer? Have I not proved that I could do nothing? Has he not told me,

and, alas! almost proved it to me, that I was stifling his genius by

seeking to cure his fever? When I thought that I had succeeded in

disgusting him with dissipation, did I not discover that he was more

greedy of it than ever? When I said to him: 'Go back into the world,' he

dreaded my jealousy, and plunged into mysterious and degrading

debauchery; he returned home drunk, with torn clothes, and blood on his

face!"

On the day of Laurent's departure, Palmer asked Thérèse:

"Well, my friend, what do you propose to do? Shall I go after him?"

"No, certainly not!" she replied.

"Perhaps I could bring him back."

"I should be in despair if you did."

"Then you no longer love him?"

"No, not in the least."

There was a pause, after which Palmer continued in a thoughtful tone:

"Thérèse, I have some very important news for you. I hesitate, because

I fear to cause you additional emotion, and you are hardly in

condition----"

"I beg your pardon, my friend. I am horribly depressed, but I am

absolutely calm, and prepared for anything."

"Very well, Thérèse; in that case, I will tell you that you are free:

the Comte de ---- is no more."

"I know it," replied Thérèse. "I have known it a week."

"And you haven't told Laurent?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because some sort of reaction would have taken place in him instantly.

You know how anything unexpected upsets and excites him. One of two

things would have happened: either he would have imagined that my

purpose in informing him of the change in my position was to induce him

to marry me, and the horror of being bound to me would have intensified

his aversion, or he would have turned suddenly, of his own motion, to

the idea of marriage, in one of those paroxysms of devotion which

sometimes seize him and which last--just a quarter of an hour, to be

succeeded by profound despair or frantic wrath. The unfortunate creature

is guilty enough toward me; it was not necessary to offer fresh bait to

his caprice, and an additional motive for him to perjure himself."

"Then you no longer esteem him?"

"I do not say that, my dear Palmer. I pity him, and do not accuse him.

Perhaps some other woman will make him happy and good. I have been

unable to do either. It is probably as much my fault as his. However

that may be, it is proved to my satisfaction that we never should have

loved each other, and that we should not make any further effort to do

so."

"And now, Thérèse, will you not think of taking advantage of the

liberty you have recovered?"

"What advantage can I take of it?"

"You can marry again, and become acquainted with the joys of a happy

home."

"My dear Dick, I have loved twice in my life, and you see where I am

now. It is not in my destiny to be happy. It is too late to seek what

has thus far eluded me. I am thirty years old."

"It is just because you are thirty years old that you cannot do without

love. You have undergone the enthusiasm of passion, and that is just the

age at which women cannot escape it. It is because you have suffered,

because you have been inadequately loved, that the inextinguishable

thirst for happiness is bound to awake in you, and, it may be, to lead

you from disappointment to disappointment, into deeper abysses than that

from which you are now emerging."

"I trust not."

"Yes, of course, you trust not; but you are mistaken, Thérèse;

everything is to be feared from your time of life, your overstrained

sensitiveness and the deceitful tranquillity due to a moment of

weariness and prostration. Love will seek you out, do not doubt it, and

you will be pursued and beset the moment that you have recovered your

liberty. Formerly, your isolation held in abeyance the hopes of those

who surrounded you; but now that Laurent has lowered you in their

esteem, all those who claimed to be your friends will seek to be your

lovers. You will inspire violent passions, and some there will be

sufficiently clever to persuade you. In a word----"

"In a word, Palmer, you consider me lost because I am unhappy! That is

very cruel of you, and you make me feel very keenly how debased I am!"

Thérèse put her hands over her face, and wept bitterly.

Palmer let her weep on; seeing that tears would be beneficial to her, he

had purposely provoked that outburst. When he saw that she was calmer,

he knelt before her.

"Thérèse," he said, "I have caused you bitter pain, but you must give

me credit for kindly intentions. I love you, Thérèse, I have always

loved you, not with a blind passion, but with all the faith and all the

devotion of which I am capable. I can see more plainly than ever that in

your case a noble life has been ruined and shattered by the fault of

others. You are, in truth, debased in the eyes of the world, but not in

mine. On the contrary, your love for Laurent has proved to me that you

are a woman, and I love you better so than armed at all points against

every human frailty, as I once believed you to be. Listen to me,

Thérèse. I am a philosopher; that is to say, I consult common-sense

and tolerant ideas rather than the prejudices of society and the

romantic subtleties of sentiment. Though you were to plunge into the

most deplorable disorders, I should not cease to love you and esteem

you, because you are one of those women who cannot be led astray except

by the heart. But why should you fall into such a plight? It is

perfectly clear to my mind, that if you should meet to-day a devoted,

tranquil, and faithful heart, exempt from those mental maladies which

sometimes make great artists and often bad husbands--a father, a

brother, a friend, in a word, a husband, you would be forever secure

against danger and misfortune in the future. Well, Thérèse, I venture

to say that I am such a man. There is nothing brilliant about me to

dazzle you, but I have a stout heart to love you. My confidence in you

is absolute. As soon as you are happy, you will be grateful, and once

grateful, you will be loyal and rehabilitated forever. Say yes,

Thérèse; consent to marry me and consent at once, without alarm,

without scruples, without false delicacy, without distrust of yourself.

I give you my life, and ask nothing of you except to believe in me. I

feel that I am strong enough not to suffer from the tears which

another's ingratitude may still cause you to shed. I shall never

reproach you with the past, and I undertake to make the future so

pleasant and so secure that no storm will ever tear you from my bosom."

Palmer talked for a long while in this strain, with a heartfelt

earnestness for which Thérèse was unprepared. She tried to repel his

confidence; but this resistance was, in Palmer's eyes, a last remnant of

mental disease which she must stamp out herself. She felt that Palmer

spoke the truth, but she felt also that he proposed to assume a terrible

task.

"No," she said, "I am not afraid of myself. I do not love Laurent, and I

can never love him again; but what about society, your mother, your

country, your social standing, the honor of your name? I am debased, as

you have said; I am conscious of it. Ah! Palmer, do not urge me so! I am

too dismayed by the thought of what you will have to defy for my sake!"

On the next day, and every day thereafter, Palmer pressed his suit

vigorously. He gave Thérèse no time to breathe. He was alone with her

from morning till night, and redoubled the force of his will to persuade

her. Palmer was a man of heart and of impulse; we shall see later

whether Thérèse was justified in hesitating. What disturbed her was

the precipitation with which Palmer acted, and sought to force her to

act by pledging herself to him by a promise.

"You are afraid of my reflections," she said; "therefore you have not so

much confidence in me as you boast of having."

"I believe in your word," he replied. "Do I not prove that by asking you

for it? But I am not obliged to believe that you love me, for you give

me no answer on that point, and you are right. You do not know as yet

what name to give to your friendly feeling. For my own part, I know that

what I feel is love, and I am not one of those who hesitate to read

their own hearts. Love with me is very logical. It fervently craves its

object. Therefore it seeks to avoid the ill-fortune to which you may

expose it by indulging in reflections or reveries, wherein, mentally

diseased as you are, you may not distinguish your real interests."

Thérèse felt almost hurt when Palmer spoke of her interests. He seemed

to her altogether too self-sacrificing, and she could not bear to have

him think her capable of accepting so much from him without seeking to

reciprocate. She suddenly felt ashamed of herself in that contest of

generosity in which Palmer placed himself absolutely at her discretion,

demanding only that she should accept his name, his fortune, his

protection, and the affection of his whole life. He gave everything,

and, as his only recompense, begged her to think of herself.

Thereupon, hope returned to Thérèse's heart. This man, whom she had

always considered a practical, matter-of-fact mortal, and who still

artlessly affected that character, revealed himself to her in so utterly

unexpected a light, that her mind was vividly impressed, and as it were,

revivified, in the midst of its death-agony. It was like a ray of

sunlight bursting in upon darkness which she thought was destined to be

everlasting. At the very moment when, rendered unjust by her despair,

she was on the point of cursing love, he forced her to believe in love,

and to look upon her misfortune as an accident for which Heaven was

prepared to compensate her. Palmer, who was a handsome man of a cold and

regular type of beauty, became more and more transfigured every moment

in the astonished, uncertain, melting eyes of the woman he loved. His

shyness, which imparted to his first advances a touch of roughness, gave

place to effusive warmth, and, although he expressed himself less

poetically than Laurent, he was none the less persuasive on that

account.

Thérèse discovered genuine enthusiasm beneath that somewhat rough

shell of obstinacy, and she could not refrain from smiling with emotion

when she saw the vehemence with which he _coolly_ pursued his project of

saving her. She felt deeply touched, and allowed him to extort the

promise he demanded.

Suddenly she received a letter in a handwriting that she did not

recognize, it was so changed. Indeed, she had difficulty in deciphering

the signature. She succeeded, however, with Palmer's help, in reading

these words:

"I have played and lost; I had a mistress, she deceived me, and I killed

her. I have taken poison. I am dying. Adieu, Thérèse.

"LAURENT."

"Let us go!" said Palmer.

"Ah! my friend, I do love you!" cried Thérèse, throwing her arms about

his neck. "I realize now how well you deserve to be loved."

They started instantly. In one night they reached Livorno by water, and

were at Florence that evening. They found Laurent at an inn, not dying,

but suffering from an attack of brain fever of such violence that four

men could hardly hold him. When he saw Thérèse, he recognized her and

clung to her, crying that they intended to bury him alive. He held her

so tightly that she fell to the floor, suffocated. Palmer had to carry

her from the room in a swoon; but she came to herself in a moment; and,

with a courage and perseverance bordering on the marvellous, she passed

twenty days and nights at the bedside of that man whom she no longer

loved. He recognized her only to heap the grossest insults upon her,

and, as soon as she left him for an instant, he recalled her, saying

that without her he should die.

Luckily, he had not killed any woman, nor taken any poison, nor, in all

probability, lost his money at play, nor done anything of what he had

written to Thérèse under the influence of delirium and disease. He

never mentioned that letter, which she dared not mention to him; he was

terrified enough by the derangement of his mind when he became conscious

that it had been deranged. He had many other bad dreams while his fever

lasted. Sometimes he imagined that Thérèse was administering poison to

him, sometimes that Palmer was putting fetters on him. The most frequent

and most agonizing of his hallucinations was one in which he saw

Thérèse take a long gold pin from her hair and force it slowly into

his skull. She had such a pin with which she kept her hair in place in

the Italian fashion. She ceased to wear it, but he still saw and felt

it.

As her presence seemed, as a general rule, to excite him, Thérèse

usually stationed herself behind his bed, with the curtain between them;

but, as soon as there was occasion to give him any medicine, he would

lose his temper, and declare that he would take nothing from any hand

but Thérèse's.

"She alone has the right to kill me," he would say; "I have injured her

so deeply! She hates me, let her take her revenge! Don't I see her every

moment, at the foot of my bed, in her new lover's arms? Come, Thérèse,

come, I say; I am thirsty; pour out the poison for me."

Thérèse would, thereupon, pour out for him tranquillity and slumber.

After several days of continued frantic excitement, which the doctors

thought that he could not endure, and which they took note of as an

abnormal fact, Laurent suddenly became calm and lay inert, prostrated,

in a sort of stupor, but saved.

He was so weak that they had to feed him, without his knowledge, and in

such infinitesimal quantities in order to relieve his stomach of all

labor of digestion, that Thérèse felt that she ought not to leave him

for an instant. Palmer tried to induce her to take some rest by giving

her his word of honor to take her place by the invalid's side; but she

refused, feeling that no human power was secure against the surprise of

sleep, and that, since by a sort of miracle she was always on the alert

when the time came to put the spoon to the patient's lips, and was never

overcome by fatigue, God had entrusted to her, and to no other, the duty

of saving that fragile existence.

And so it was, in truth, and she saved him.

If medical science, however enlightened it may be, proves inadequate in

desperate cases, it is very often because it is impossible to carry out

the treatment with absolute exactness. No one knows what disturbance a

moment of craving or a moment of surfeit may cause in a life that is

trembling in the balance; and the miracle lacking to save the dying man

is often nothing more than placidity, persistence, and punctuality on

the part of his nurses.

At last, Laurent awoke one morning as if from a lethargic sleep, seemed

surprised to see Thérèse at his right and Palmer at his left, offered

each of them a hand, and asked them where he was and how he came there.

They deceived him a long while as to the length and severity of his

illness, for he was deeply distressed when he saw how weak and emaciated

he was. The first time that he looked in the glass he was frightened by

his own image. In the early days of his convalescence he asked for

Thérèse. He was told that she was asleep. He was greatly surprised.

"So she has become a genuine Italian woman, has she," he said, "that she

sleeps in the day-time?"

Thérèse slept twenty-four hours without a break. Nature reasserted

itself as soon as anxiety vanished.

Little by little, Laurent learned how devoted she had been to him, and

he detected on her face the traces of excessive fatigue following on the

heels of excessive grief. As he was still too weak to give his mind to

anything, Thérèse installed herself by his side, sometimes reading to

him, sometimes playing cards with him to amuse him, sometimes taking him

to drive. Palmer was always with them.

Laurent's strength returned with a rapidity as extraordinary as his

constitution. His brain was not always perfectly clear, however. One

day, he said angrily to Thérèse, when he happened to be alone with

her:

"By the way, when does the excellent Palmer propose to do us the honor

of going away?"

Thérèse saw that there was a gap in his memory, and did not reply.

Whereupon he made an effort to control himself, and added:

"You consider me ungrateful, my love, to speak thus of a man who has

been almost as devoted to me as you yourself have; but I am not vain

enough or simple enough not to understand that his reason for shutting

himself up for a month in the room of a very disagreeable invalid was to

have an excuse for not leaving you. Come, Thérèse, will you swear that

he did it solely on my account?"

Thérèse was offended by that point-blank question, and by his use of

the second person singular, which she had believed to be discarded

forever between them. She shook her head, and tried to change the

subject. Laurent yielded with ill grace; but he returned to it the next

day; and as Thérèse, seeing that he was strong enough to do without

her, was preparing to go away, he said, with unfeigned surprise:

"Why, where are we going, Thérèse? Aren't we comfortable here?"

She was obliged to explain, for he insisted.

"My child," said Thérèse, "you are to remain here; the doctors say

that you need another week or two of perfect quiet before you can travel

at all without danger of a relapse. I am going back to France, as I have

finished my work at Genoa, and I do not intend, at present, to visit

other parts of Italy."

"Very good, Thérèse, you are free; but if you choose to return to

France, I am at liberty to make the same choice. Can't you wait a week

for me? I am sure that I shall need no more than that to be in condition

to travel."

He was so sincere in his forgetfulness of the wrong he had done her, and

he was so like a child at that moment, that Thérèse had to force back

the tears that came to her eyes at the memory of that species of

adoption, formerly so sweet, which she was forced to resign.

She began involuntarily to use the familiar form of address, and said to

him, with the utmost gentleness and delicacy, that they must part for

some time.

"Why part, in Heaven's name?" cried Laurent; "do we no longer love each

other?"

"That would be impossible," she replied; "we shall always be friends;

but we have mutually caused each other a great deal of suffering, and

your health could not endure any more of it. We will wait until time

enough has elapsed for everything to be forgotten."

"But I have forgotten!" cried Laurent, with an earnestness that was

touching because it was so absolutely ingenuous. "I remember none of the

wrong you did me! You were always an angel to me, and, being an angel,

you cannot harbor resentment. You must forgive me for everything, and

take me away with you, Thérèse! If you leave me here, I shall die of

ennui!"

And as Thérèse displayed a firmness that he did not expect, he lost

his temper and told her that she did very wrong to feign a severity to

which her whole conduct gave the lie.

"I understand perfectly well what you want," he said. "You demand that I

repent, and atone for my wrong-doing. Well, don't you see that I abhor

the thought of it, and have I not expiated it sufficiently by going mad

for eight or ten days? You desire tears and oaths as formerly? What is

the use? you would not believe in them again. My future conduct is what

is to be judged, and you see that I am not afraid of the future, since I

cling to you. You see, my dear Thérèse, you are a child, too, and you

know I often called you one when I saw you pretending to sulk. Do you

think you can persuade me that you no longer love me, when you have just

passed a whole month shut up here, and for twenty days and nights of

that month did not go to bed and hardly left my room? Can't I see, from

the dark rings about your lovely eyes, that you would have died at the

task if it had been necessary? A woman doesn't do such things as that

for a man she no longer loves!"

Thérèse dared not utter the fatal words. She hoped that Palmer would

come and interrupt the tête-à-tête, and that she could avoid a scene

that might result seriously for the convalescent. But it was impossible;

he placed himself in front of the door to prevent her from going out,

dropped at her feet, and grovelled there in despair.

"Great God!" she exclaimed, "is it possible that you think me cruel

enough, capricious enough, to refuse to say a word that I could say to

you? But I cannot say that one because it would not be the truth. Love

is at an end between us."

Laurent rose in a passion. He could not understand that perhaps he had

killed that love in which he had pretended not to believe.

"Is it Palmer?" he cried, smashing a tea-pot, from which he had

mechanically poured himself a draught; "it is he, is it? Tell me, I

insist upon it, I insist upon the truth! It will kill me, I know, but I

don't choose to be deceived!"

"Deceived!" echoed Thérèse, taking his hands to prevent him from

tearing them with his nails; "deceived! what sort of a word is that for

you to use? Do I belong to you, pray? have we not been strangers to each

other since the first night you passed away from home at Genoa, after

telling me that I was your torment and your executioner? wasn't that

four months ago and more? and do you think that length of time, without

an indication of change on your part, was not enough to make me mistress

of myself once more?"

And as she saw that Laurent, instead of being exasperated by her

frankness, grew calmer, and listened with eager interest, she continued:

"If you do not understand the feeling that brought me to your sick-bed,

and that has kept me beside you until to-day, to complete your cure by a

mother's care, it is because you never understood my heart. This heart,

Laurent," she said, putting her hand to her breast, "may be neither so

proud nor so ardent as yours; but, as you yourself used often to say, it

always remains in the same place. What it has loved it cannot cease to

love; but, do not mistake my meaning, it is not love as you understand

the word, it is not such love as you once aroused in me and as you are

mad enough to expect again. Neither my passions nor my reason belong to

you now. I have resumed possession of my body and my will; my confidence

and my enthusiastic regard can never be restored to you. I am at liberty

to bestow them upon whoever may deserve them, upon Palmer, if I choose,

and you have no right to object, you who went to him one morning and

said:

"'Pray go and console Thérèse; you will do me a favor.'"

"That is true! that is true!" cried Laurent, clasping his trembling

hands; "I did say that! I had forgotten it, but I remember it now!"

"Do not forget it again," said Thérèse, who resumed a gentler tone

when she saw that he was calmer, "and understand, my poor child, that

love is too delicate a flower to rise again when one has trampled it

under foot. Think no more of it in connection with me, seek it

elsewhere, if this sad experience you have had of it opens your eyes and

modifies your character. You will find it on the day that you are worthy

of it. As for myself, I could no longer endure your caresses, I should

be degraded by them; but my sisterly and motherly affection will remain

yours in spite of yourself and in spite of everything. That is something

different, it is pity; I do not conceal the fact, but I tell you

frankly, so that you may think no more of winning again a love by which

you as well as myself would be humiliated. If you wish that this

friendship, which seems an insult to you now, should become agreeable to

you, you have only to deserve it. Hitherto you have had no opportunity.

Now the opportunity is at hand; make the most of it, part with me

without weakness or bitterness. Show me the calm, sympathetic face of a

man of heart, instead of this face of a child who weeps without knowing

why."

"Let me weep, Thérèse," said Laurent, kneeling at her feet, "let me

wash away my sin with my tears; let me kneel in adoration of this

saintly compassion which has survived shattered love in your heart. It

does not humiliate me, as you think; I feel that I shall become worthy

of it. Do not ask me to be calm, you know well enough that I cannot be;

but believe that I may possibly become good. Ah! Thérèse, I know you

too late! Why did you not speak to me sooner as you have just spoken?

Why did you overwhelm me with your kindness and devotion, sweet Sister

of Charity who cannot restore my happiness? But you are right,

Thérèse; I deserved what has happened to me, and you have made me

understand it at last. The lesson will benefit me, I promise you, and if

I am ever able to love another woman, I shall know how to love. So I

shall owe everything to you, my sister, past and future alike!"

Laurent was still talking effusively when Palmer entered. Laurent threw

himself on his neck, calling him his brother and his savior, and

exclaimed, pointing to Thérèse:

"Ah! my friend! you remember what you said to me at the Hôtel Meurice

the last time we met in Paris: 'If you are not sure that you will not

make her suffer, blow out your brains to-night rather than return to

her'?--I ought to have done it, but I did not! And now, look at her, she

is more changed than I am, poor Thérèse! She was thrown down and

trampled on, and yet she came and tore me from the clutches of death,

when she might well have cursed me and abandoned me!"

Laurent's penitence was genuine; Palmer was deeply moved by it. As the

artist worked himself up, he expressed himself with persuasive

eloquence, and when Palmer was alone with Thérèse, he said to her:

"Do not think, my dear, that I suffered on account of your solicitude

for him, I understood perfectly! You wished to cure his body and his

heart. You have won the victory. Your poor child is saved! Now what do

you propose to do?"

"Leave him forever," she replied, "or, at all events, not see him again

for years to come. If he returns to France, I remain in Italy, and if he

remains in Italy, I return to France. Have I not told you that was my

resolution? It was because my mind was so thoroughly made up that I

postponed the moment of parting. I knew that there must inevitably be an

outbreak, and I did not wish to leave him while it lasted, if it should

prove to be serious."

"Have you reflected seriously, Thérèse?" said Palmer, thoughtfully.

"Are you quite sure of not weakening at the last moment?"

"I am perfectly sure."

"That man seems to me irresistible in grief. He would extort pity from

the bowels of a stone, and yet, Thérèse, if you yield to him, you are

lost, and he with you. If you still love him, reflect that you can save

him only by leaving him!"

"I know it," replied Thérèse; "but why do you say that, my friend? Are

you ill, too? Have you forgotten that my word is pledged to you?"

Palmer kissed her hand and smiled. Peace re-entered his soul.

On the next day, Laurent came and told them that he intended to go to

Switzerland to complete his cure. The climate of Italy did not agree

with him: that was the truth. The physicians advised him not to wait

until the extremely hot weather.

It was definitely decided that they should part at Florence. Thérèse

had no other plans than to go where Laurent did not go; but, when she

saw how exhausted he was by the emotion of the preceding day, she had to

promise him to pass another week at Florence, in order to prevent him

from going away before he regained the necessary strength.

That week was, perhaps, the best in Laurent's whole life. Generous,

trustful, cordial, and sincere, he had entered upon a frame of mind

which he had never before known, even during the first week of his union

with Thérèse. Affection had penetrated him, invaded him, vanquished

him. He would not leave his two friends, but drove with them to the

_Cascines_, at the hours when there was no crowd there, ate with them,

took a childish delight in going to dine with them in the country, when

Thérèse would take his arm and Palmer's alternately, tried his

strength by fencing a little with the latter, accompanied them to the

theatre, and made _Dick the great tourist_ trace the itinerary of his

trip to Switzerland. It was a very important question whether he should

go by Milan or Genoa. He decided at last on the latter route, intending

to go by Pisa and Lucca, thence along the shore, by land or water,

according as he should feel stronger or weaker after the first few days

of travelling.

The day appointed for his departure arrived. Laurent had made all his

preparations with melancholy gaiety. Brimming over with jests concerning

his costume, concerning his luggage, concerning the mongrel aspect he

would present in a certain waterproof cloak, then a great novelty, which

Palmer had compelled him to accept, and concerning the barbarous French

of an Italian servant whom Palmer had selected for him, and who was the

best fellow in the world; accepting gratefully and humbly all

Thérèse's injunctions and attentions, he had tears in his eyes, while

he laughed most heartily.

On the night preceding this last day, he had a slight attack of fever.

He jested about it. The carriage in which he was to travel by slow

stages, was at the door. It was a cool morning. Thérèse was anxious.

"Go with him as far as Spezzia," Palmer said to her. "That is where he

is to take the boat, if he doesn't stand the carriage journey well. I

will join you there the day after he has left. Some very urgent business

will detain me here twenty-four hours."

Thérèse, surprised by this suggestion, refused to go with Laurent.

"I beg you to do it," said Palmer, with much earnestness; "it is

impossible for me to go with you!"

"Very good, my dear, but it is not necessary for me to go with him."

"Yes, it is," he replied; "you must go."

Thérèse fancied that she understood: that Palmer deemed this final

test necessary. She was surprised and disturbed.

"Will you give me your word of honor," she said, "that you really have

important business here?"

"Yes," he replied, "I give you my word."

"Very well, then I will remain."

"No, you must go."

"I do not understand."

"I will explain later, my love. I believe in you as in God, as you see;

have confidence in me. Go."

Thérèse hastily made up a small bundle which she tossed into the

carriage; then she took her place beside Laurent, calling back to

Palmer:

"I have your word of honor to join me in twenty-four hours."

VIII

Palmer, who was really obliged to remain in Florence and to send

Thérèse away, felt a mortal pang as he watched her go. And yet the

danger that he dreaded did not exist. The chain could not be rewelded.

Laurent did not even think of trying to stir Thérèse's passions; but,

feeling sure that he had not lost her heart, he resolved to recover her

esteem. He resolved, do we say? No, he made no plan; he simply felt a

natural longing to raise himself in the eyes of that woman who had grown

so much greater in his mind. If he had appealed to her at that moment,

she would have resisted him without difficulty; she would, perhaps, have

despised him. He took pains not to do it, or, rather, he did not think

of it. His instincts were too true to make such a mistake. In good

faith, and with the utmost enthusiasm, he assumed the rôle of the man

with the broken heart, of the chastised, humble child, so that, at the

end of the journey, Thérèse wondered if _he_ were not the victim of

their fatal liaison.

During that three days' tête-à-tête, Thérèse was happy with

Laurent. She saw a new era of exquisite sentiments opening before her,

an unexplored road, for she had hitherto walked alone in it. She enjoyed

keenly the pleasurable sensation of loving without remorse, without

anxiety, and without a struggle, a pale-faced, feeble creature, who was

no longer aught save a soul, so to speak, and whom she fancied she had

found again beyond this life, in the paradise of pure spirits, as one

dreams of finding one's self after death.

And then she had been deeply wounded and humiliated by him, stirred up

and irritated against herself; that love, which she had accepted with so

much courage and grandeur of soul, had left a stain, as a purely sensual

liaison would have done. Then had come a moment when she had despised

herself for allowing herself to be so grossly deceived. So she felt as

if she were born again, and she became reconciled with the past when she

saw growing upon the grave of that buried passion a flower of

enthusiastic friendship lovelier than the passion had been even in its

best days.

It was the 10th of May that they arrived at Spezzia, a small picturesque

town, half-Genoese and half-Florentine, at the head of a bay as smooth

and blue as the loveliest sky. The season for sea-bathing had not

arrived. The country round about was an enchanted solitude, the weather

cool and exquisite. At sight of that beautiful, calm water, Laurent,

whom the carriage journey had fatigued somewhat, decided to go by sea.

They inquired about means of transportation; a small steamboat went to

Genoa twice a week. Thérèse was glad that it did not start that same

evening. Her patient had twenty-four hours for rest. She bade him engage

a cabin on the boat for the following day.

Laurent, although he still felt decidedly weak, had never been so well.

He slept and ate like a child. The delicious languor of the first days

of complete cure caused a blissful sort of confusion in his mind. The

memory of his past life vanished like a bad dream. He felt and believed

that he was radically changed forever. In this new life, he seemed not

to have the faculty of suffering. He left Thérèse with a sort of

triumphant joy amid his tears. This submission to the decrees of destiny

was in his eyes a voluntary expiation for which she should give him due

credit. He had not sought it, but he had accepted it at the moment when

for the first time he realized the value of what he had hitherto failed

to appreciate. He carried this craving for self-immolation so far as to

tell her that she must love Palmer, that he was the best of friends and

the greatest of philosophers. Then he cried abruptly:

"Don't say anything, Thérèse. Don't speak to me of him! I don't feel

strong enough yet to hear you say that you love him. No, keep quiet! it

would kill me! But be sure that I love him, too! What more can I say?"

Thérèse did not once mention Palmer's name; and when Laurent, less

heroic, questioned her indirectly, she replied:

"Hush! I have a secret which I will tell you later, and which is not

what you think. You could not guess it, so don't try."

They passed the last day rowing about the harbor of Spezzia. From time

to time, they landed to pluck the lovely aromatic plants that grow in

the sand even to the verge of the transparent, lazily plashing waves.

Trees are rare along those lovely banks, from which mountains covered

with flowering shrubs rise perpendicularly. As the heat was somewhat

oppressive, they bade the boatman row toward a group of pines as soon as

they spied it. They had brought their lunch, which they ate on the grass

amid clumps of lavender and rosemary. The day passed like a dream; that

is to say, it was brief as a moment, and yet it contained the sweetest

emotions of two lives.

At last, the sun declined, and Laurent became melancholy. He saw in the

distance the smoke of the _Ferruccio_, the steamer from Spezzia, which

was getting up steam in readiness for sailing, and that black cloud

passed over his mind. Thérèse saw that she must distract his thoughts

to the very last, and she asked the boatman what more there was to see

in the bay.

"There is Isola Palmaria," he replied, "and the _portor_ marble-quarry.

If you care to go there, you can take the steamer there. It has to pass

the island to go out to sea, for it stops at Porto Venere to take

passengers or freight. You will have time enough. I will answer for

that."

The two friends bade him row them to Isola Palmaria.

It is a perpendicular block of marble on the side of the sea, with

fertile fields sloping gently down to the shore on the side of the bay.

There are a few houses half-way down the slope and two villas on the

shore. The island is planted, a sort of natural fortification, at the

mouth of the bay, the passage being very narrow between it and the small

harbor once consecrated to Venus. Hence the name Porto Venere.

There is nothing about that repulsive village to justify its poetic

name; but its situation on the naked rocks, lashed by angry waves,--for

they are genuine waves from the sea that rush through the passage,--is

as picturesque as possible. One could not imagine a more characteristic

stage-setting for a nest of pirates. The houses, black and wretched,

corroded by the salt air, stand one above another, immeasurably high, on

the uneven rocks. Not a pane unbroken in the little windows, which seem

like restless eyes watching for a victim on the horizon. Not a wall that

is not stripped of its plaster, which hangs in great layers, like veils

torn off by the storm. Not a straight line in all those buildings, which

lean against one another and seem on the point of crumbling together.

They reach to the very extremity of the promontory, where they come to

an end in an old dilapidated fort and the steeple of a tiny church,

standing like sentinels facing the immensity. Behind this picture, which

stands in bold outline against the expanse of sea, rise towering cliffs

of a livid tint, whose base, irised by reflections from the sea, seems

to plunge into something as indefinite and impalpable as the color of

the void.

From the marble-quarry on Isola Palmaria, across the narrow passage,

Laurent and Thérèse looked upon that picturesque scene. The setting

sun cast on the foreground of the picture a reddish light which blended

in a single mass, homogeneous in appearance, cliffs, old walls, and

ruins, so that everything, even the church, seemed hewn from the same

block, while the great rocks in the background swam in a sea-green haze.

Laurent was deeply impressed with the spectacle, and, forgetting all

else, contemplated it with the eye of a painter, wherein Thérèse saw,

as in a mirror, all the flaming colors of the sky.

"Thank God!" she thought; "the artist is awake at last!"

In truth, since his illness, Laurent had not given a thought to his art.

As there was nothing of interest in the quarry, after they had looked at

the great blocks of beautiful black marble, veined with golden yellow,

Laurent proposed to ascend the slope and look out to sea from the

highest point; and he went on through an almost impassable growth of

pines, to a sort of fringe of lichens, where he seemed suddenly to be

lost in space. The rock on which he stood overhung the sea, which had

eaten into its base, and broke against it with a terrific noise.

Laurent, who had no idea that side of the island was so steep, was

seized with such a fit of giddiness that, but for Thérèse, who had

followed him and forced him back upon the ground, he would have fallen

into the sea.

At that moment, she saw that he was as terror-stricken and wild-eyed as

on that night long before in the forest of ----.

"What is the matter?" she asked. "Is this another dream?"

"No! no!" he cried, rising, and clinging to her as if he thought that he

had grasped an immovable rock of refuge; "this is no dream, it is

reality! It is the sea, the horrible sea, which is to carry me off in a

few moments! it is the image of the life to which I am returning! it is

the impassable abyss that will soon be between us! it is that

monotonous, untiring, hateful noise which I used to go to listen to at

night in the roadstead of Genoa, and which roared blasphemies in my

ears! it is that brutal ocean swell which I seemed to be trying to

overcome in a boat, and which bore me resistlessly toward a deeper and

more implacable abyss than that of the waves! Thérèse, Thérèse, do

you know what you are doing when you toss me to that monster who is

waiting yonder, his hideous jaws already open to devour your poor

child?"

"Laurent," she said, shaking him by the arm, "Laurent, do you hear me?"

He seemed to wake in another world when he recognized Thérèse's voice;

for when he appealed to her he thought that he was alone, and he turned

with surprise when he saw that the tree to which he was clinging was

nothing else than his friend's trembling, tired arm.

"Forgive me, forgive me," he said, "it is a last attack, it is nothing.

Let us go!"

And he hurriedly descended the slope which he had ascended with her.

The _Ferruccio_ was coming at full speed from Spezzia.

"_Mon Dieu_! there she is!" he said. "How fast she comes! if only she

might sink before she gets here!"

"Laurent!" exclaimed Thérèse, sternly.

"Yes, yes, don't be afraid, my dear, I am perfectly calm. Don't you know

that all I need now is a glance from you, to obey with joy? Call the

boat! Come, it is all over! I am calm, I am content! Give me your hand,

Thérèse. Remember, I have not asked you for a single kiss in these

three days we have been together! I only ask you for this loyal hand. Do

you remember the day you said to me: 'Never forget that before being

your mistress, I was your friend!'--Well, it is as you wished: I am no

longer anything to you, but I am yours forever!"

He jumped into the boat, thinking that Thérèse would remain on the

island, and that the boat would return for her when he had been put

aboard the _Ferruccio_; but she jumped in after him. She wanted to make

sure, she said, that the servant who was to accompany Laurent, and who

should have gone aboard with the luggage at Spezzia, had forgotten

nothing that his master needed for the voyage.

So she took advantage of the brief stop the little steamer made at Porto

Venere to go aboard with Laurent. Vicentino, the servant in question,

awaited them. He was a trustworthy man, selected by Monsieur Palmer, it

will be remembered. Thérèse took him aside.

"You have your master's purse, have you not?" she said. "I know that he

told you to look after all the expenses of the trip. How much money did

he give you?"

"Two hundred Florentine _lire_, signora; but I think that he has his

wallet with him."

Thérèse had examined Laurent's pockets while he slept. She had found

the wallet, and knew that it was almost empty. Laurent had spent a large

amount in Florence; the expenses of his illness had been very

considerable. He had placed the remainder of his little fortune in

Palmer's hands, bidding him make up the accounts, and he had not glanced

at them. In money matters, Laurent was a genuine child, who knew the

value of nothing at all outside of France, not even the comparative

value of the coins of the different Italian provinces. The amount he had

handed to Vicentino seemed to him enough to last a long while, but it

was not enough to reach the frontier for a man who had not the slightest

idea of prudence.

Thérèse gave Vicentino all the money that she had in Italy, not even

retaining what she herself would require for a few days; for, seeing

that Laurent was coming toward her, she had no time to take one or two

gold pieces from the roll which she slipped hurriedly into the servant's

hand, saying:

"This is what he had in his pockets; he is very absent-minded, and

prefers that you should take charge of it."

And she turned to the artist to exchange a last grasp of the hand. She

deceived him this time without remorse. He had been distressed and

irritated once before when she wished to pay his debts; now, she was no

more than a mother to him, and she had the right to do as she was doing.

Laurent had seen nothing.

"One moment more, Thérèse!" he said in a voice choked by tears. "They

will ring a bell to warn those who are not passengers to go ashore."

She put her arm through his, and went to inspect his cabin, which was

comfortable enough for sleeping-quarters, but smelt disgustingly of

fish. Thérèse felt for her smelling-bottle to leave with him; but she

had lost it on the island.

"Why are you so anxious?" he said, touched by these attentions. "Give me

a piece of the wild lavender we plucked together in the sand yonder."

Thérèse had placed the flowers in her corsage; to leave them with him

was like leaving a pledge of love. There seemed to her something

indelicate, or equivocal at least, in that idea, and her womanly

instinct rebelled; but, as she leaned over the rail, she saw in one of

the skiffs made fast to the gangway a child offering great bunches of

violets for sale. She felt in her pockets, and was delighted to find

there one last remaining coin, which she tossed to the little fellow,

who in return tossed his finest bunch over the rail; she caught it

handily, and spread the flowers about Laurent's cabin. He appreciated

his friend's modesty, but he never knew that those violets were paid for

with Thérèse's last and only sou.

A young man, whose travelling costume and aristocratic air were in

striking contrast to those of the other passengers, who were mostly

dealers in olive-oil, or small traders along the coast, passed Laurent,

and, after glancing at him, said:

"Hallo! is it you?"

They shook hands with the absolute coldness of gesture and feature which

is the stamp of young men of fashion. And yet he was one of those former

companions in debauchery whom Laurent, speaking of them to Thérèse in

his days of ennui, had called his best, his only friends. "People of my

rank!" he would add; for he never lost his temper with Thérèse without

reminding her that he was a gentleman.

But Laurent had mended his ways, and, instead of rejoicing at this

meeting, he inwardly consigned to the devil this unwelcome witness of

his last farewell to Thérèse. Monsieur de Vérac--such was his former

friend's name--knew Thérèse, having been presented to her by Laurent

at Paris; and, having respectfully saluted her, he observed that he was

very fortunate to meet two travelling companions like Laurent and

herself on the wretched little _Ferruccio_.

"But I am not one of you," she replied; "I remain here."

"Here? Where? At Porto Venere?"

"In Italy."

"Oho! then Fauvel is going to do some errands for you at Genoa, I

suppose, and return to-morrow?"

"No!" said Laurent, vexed by this curiosity, which seemed to him

ungentlemanly; "I am going to Switzerland, and Mademoiselle Jacques is

not. Does that surprise you? Very good; then let me tell you that

Mademoiselle Jacques is about to leave me, and that I am very much

distressed. Do you understand?"

"No!" said Vérac, smiling; "but I am not obliged----"

"Yes, you are; you must understand what is a fact," retorted Laurent,

with a vehemence that was slightly overbearing; "I have deserved what

has happened to me, and I submit to it because Mademoiselle Jacques,

regardless of the wrong I have done her, deigned to be a sister and a

mother to me in a mortal illness which I have just gone through; so that

I owe her as much gratitude as respect and affection."

Vérac was greatly surprised by what he heard. It was a story which

resembled nothing in his experience. He walked discreetly away, after

remarking to Thérèse that no noble action on her part would surprise

him; but he watched the parting of the friends out of the corner of his

eye. Thérèse, standing at the top of the gangway, crowded and jostled

by the natives who embraced one another tumultuously and noisily at the

clang of the warning-bell, bestowed a maternal kiss on Laurent's

forehead. They both shed tears; then she went down into the skiff, and

was rowed ashore to the shapeless, dirty staircase of flat stones which

led to the hamlet of Porto Venere.

Laurent was amazed to see her go in that direction, instead of toward

Spezzia.

"Ah!" he thought, weeping afresh, "of course, Palmer is waiting for her

there!"

[Illustration: _THE SEPARATION._

_Laurent, as he cast his eyes for the last time upon

that dismal cliff, saw, on the platform of the old

ruined fort, a figure whose head and waving hair

were still tinged with gold by the sun's declining

rays; it was Thérèse's._]

But, ten minutes later, as the _Ferruccio_, after steaming out to sea

with some effort, turned to round the promontory, Laurent, as he cast

his eyes for the last time upon that dismal cliff, saw, on the platform

of the old ruined fort, a figure whose head and waving hair were still

tinged with gold by the sun's declining rays; it was Thérèse's fair

hair and her adored form. She was alone. Laurent held out his arms with

intense emotion; then he clasped his hands in token of repentance, and

his lips murmured two words which the breeze bore away:

"Forgive! forgive!"

Monsieur de Vérac gazed at him in speechless amazement; and Laurent,

the most sensitive man on earth in the matter of ridicule, did not heed

the glance of his former companion in debauchery. Indeed, he took a sort

of pride in braving it at that moment.

When the shore had disappeared in the evening haze, Laurent found

himself seated on a bench by Vérac's side.

"Come," said the latter, "tell me about this extraordinary experience!

You have said too much to leave me in ignorance of the rest; all your

friends in Paris--I might say all Paris, since you are a famous

man--will ask me concerning the progress of your liaison with

Mademoiselle Jacques, who is also too much in the public eye not to

arouse curiosity. What shall I reply?"