The next morning the Marquise de Campvallon was strolling beside a large
circular sheet of water which ornamented the lower part of her park, the
metallic gleam of the rippling waves being discernible from afar through
the branches of the surrounding trees.
She walked slowly along the bank of the lake, her head bowed, and
the long skirt of her mourning-robe sweeping the grass. Two large and
dazzlingly white swans, watching their mistress eagerly, in expectation
of receiving their usual titbits from her hands, swam close to the bank,
following her steps as if escorting her.
Suddenly the Comte de Camors appeared before her. She had believed that
she never should see him again. She raised her head quickly and pressed
one hand to her heart.
“Yes, it is I!” said Camors. “Give me your hand.”
She gave it to him.
“You were right, Charlotte,” he said, after a moment of silence. “Ties
like ours can not be broken. I have reflected on everything. I was
seized with a momentary cowardice, for which I have reproached myself
bitterly, and for which, moreover, I have been sufficiently punished.
But I come to you to ask your forgiveness.”
The Marquise led him tenderly into the deep shadow of the great
plane-trees that surrounded the lake; she knelt before him with theatric
grace, and fixed on him her swimming eyes. She covered his head with
kisses. He raised her and pressed her to his heart.
“But you do not wish that crime to be committed?” he said in a low
voice.
She bent her head with mournful indecision.
“For that matter,” he added, bitterly, “it would only make us worthier
of each other; for, as to myself, they have already believed me capable
of it.”
He took her arm and recounted to her briefly the scene of the night
before.
He told her he had not returned home, and never should. This was the
result of his mournful meditations. To attempt an explanation with
those who had so mortally outraged him--to open to them the depth of his
heart--to allude to the criminal thought they had accused him of--he had
repelled with horror, the evening before, when proposed by another. He
thought of all this; but this humiliation--if he could have so abased
himself--would have been useless. How could he hope to conquer by these
words the distrust capable of creating such suspicions?
He confusedly divined the origin, and understood that this distrust,
envenomed by remembrance of the past, was incurable.
The sentiment of the irreparable, of revolted pride, indignation, and
even injustice, had shown him but one refuge, and it was this to which
he had fled.
The Comtesse de Camors and Madame de Tecle learned only through their
servants and the public of the removal of the Count to a country-house
he had rented near the Chateau Campvallon. After writing ten
letters--all of which he had burned--he had decided to maintain an
absolute silence. They sometimes trembled at the thought he might take
away his son. He thought of it; but it was a kind of vengeance that he
disdained.
This move, which publicly proclaimed the relations existing between
M. de Camors and the Marquise, made a sensation in the Parisian world,
where it was soon known. It revived again the strange recollections and
rumors that all remembered. Camors heard of them, but despised them.
His pride, which was then exasperated by a savage irritation, was
gratified at defying public opinion, which had been so easily duped
before. He knew there was no situation one could not impose upon the
world providing one had wealth and audacity. From this day he resumed
energetically the love of his life, his habits, his labors, and his
thoughts for the future. Madame de Campvallon was the confidante of
all his projects, and added her own care to them; and both occupied
themselves in organizing in advance their mutual existence, hereafter
blended forever. The personal fortune of M. de Camors, united to that
of the Marquise, left no limits to the fancies which their imagination
could devise. They arranged to live separately at Paris, though the
Marquise’s salon should be common to both; but their double influence
would shine at the same time, and they would be the social centre of
a sovereign influence. The Marquise would reign by the splendor of her
person over the society of letters, art, and politics. Camors would
there find the means of action which could not fail to accomplish the
high destiny to which his talent and his ambition called him.
This was the life that had appeared to them in the origin of their
liaison as a sort of ideal of human happiness--that of two superior
beings, who proudly shared, above the masses, all the pleasures of
earth, the intoxication of passion, the enjoyment of intellectual
strength, the satisfaction of pride, and the emotions of power. The
eclat of such a life would constitute the vengeance of Camors, and force
to repent bitterly those who had dared to misunderstand him. The recent
mourning of the Marquise commanded them, notwithstanding, to adjourn the
realization of their dream, if they did not wish to wound the conscience
of the public. They felt it, and resolved to travel for a few months
before settling in Paris. The time that passed in their preparations
for the future, and in arrangements for this voyage, was to Madame de
Campvallon the sweetest period of her life. She finally tasted to the
full an intimacy, so long troubled, of which the charm, in truth,
was very great; for her lover, as if to make her forget his momentary
desertion, was prodigal in the effusion of his tenderness. He brought to
private studies, as well as to their common schemes, an ardor, a fire,
which displayed itself in his face, in his eyes, and which seemed yet
more to heighten his manly beauty. It often happened, after quitting
the Marquise in the evening, that he worked very late at home, sometimes
until morning. One night, shortly before the day fixed for their
departure, a private servant of the Count, who slept in the room above
his master’s, heard a noise which alarmed him.
He went down in great haste, and found M. de Camors stretched apparently
lifeless on the floor at the foot of his desk. The servant, whose name
was Daniel, had all his master’s confidence, and he loved him with
that singular affection which strong natures often inspire in their
inferiors.
He sent for Madame de Campvallon, who soon came. M. de Camors,
recovering from his fainting-fit, was very pale, and was walking across
the room when she entered. He seemed irritated at seeing her, and
rebuked his servant sharply for his ill-advised zeal.
He said he had only had a touch of vertigo, to which he was subject.
Madame de Campvallon soon retired, having first supplicated him not to
overwork himself again. When he came to her next day, she could not
help being surprised at the dejection stamped on his face, which she
attributed to the attack he had had the night before. But when she spoke
of their approaching departure, she was astonished, and even alarmed by
his reply:
“Let us defer it a little, I beg of you,” he said. “I do not feel in a
state fit for travelling.”
Days passed; he made no further allusion to the voyage. He was serious,
silent, and cold. The active ardor, almost feverish, which had animated
until then his life, his speech, his eyes, was suddenly quenched.
One symptom which disquieted the Marquise above all was the absolute
idleness to which he now abandoned himself.
He left her in the evening at an early hour. Daniel told the Marquise
that the Count worked no longer; that he heard him pacing up and down
the greater part of the night. At the same time his health failed
visibly. The Marquise ventured once to interrogate him. As they were
both walking one day in the park, she said:
“You are hiding something from me. You suffer, my friend. What is the
cause?”
“There is nothing.”
“I pray you tell me!”
“Nothing is the matter with me,” he replied, petulantly.
“Is it your son that you regret?”
“I regret nothing.” After a few steps taken in silence--“When I think,”
he said, quickly, “that there is one person in the world who considers
me a coward--for I hear always that word in my ear--and who treated me
like a coward, and who believed it when it was said, and believes it
still! If it had been a man, it would be easy, but it was a woman.”
After this sudden explosion he was silent.
“Very well; what do you desire?” said the Marquise, with vexation. “Do
you wish that I should go and tell her the truth--tell her that you were
ready to defend her against me--that you love her, and hate me? If it
be that you wish, say so. I believe if this life continues I shall be
capable of doing anything!”
“Do not you also outrage me! Dismiss me, if that will give you pleasure;
but I love you only. My pride bleeds, that is all; and I give you my
word of honor that if you ever affront me by going to justify me, I
shall never in my life see you or her. Embrace me!” and he pressed her
to his heart.
She was calm for a few hours.
The house he occupied was about to be taken again by its proprietor. The
middle of September approached, and it was the time when the Marquise
was in the habit of returning to Paris. She proposed to M. de Camors
to occupy the chateau during the few days he purposed passing in the
country. He accepted; but whenever she spoke of returning to Paris:
“Why so soon?” he would say; “are we not very well here?”
A little later she reminded him that the session of the Chamber was
about to open. He made his health a pretext for delay, saying that he
felt weak and wished to send in his resignation as deputy. She induced
him only by her urgent prayer to content himself with asking leave of
absence.
“But you, my beloved!” he said, “I am condemning you to a sad
existence!”
“With you,” she replied, “I am happy everywhere and always!”
It was not true that she was happy, but it was true that she loved
him and was devoted to him. There was no suffering she would not have
resigned herself to, no sacrifice she would not make, were it for him.
From this moment the prospect of worldly sovereignty, which she thought
she had touched with her hand, escaped her. She had a presentiment of
a melancholy future of solitude, of renunciation, of secret tears; but
near him grief became a fete. One knows with what rapidity life passes
with those who busy themselves without distraction in some profound
grief--the days themselves are long, but the succession of them is rapid
and imperceptible. It was thus that the months and then the seasons
succeeded one another, for Camors and the Marquise, with a monotony
that left hardly any trace on their thoughts. Their daily relations were
marked, on the part of the Count with an invariably cold and distant
courtesy, and very often silence; on the part of the Marquise by an
attentive tenderness and a constrained grief. Every day they rode out
on horseback, both clad in black, sympathetic by their beauty and their
sadness, and surrounded in the country by distant respect. About the
beginning of the ensuing winter Madame de Campvallon experienced a
serious disquietude. Although M. de Camors never complained, it was
evident his health was gradually failing. A dark and almost clayey tint
covered his thin cheeks, and spread nearly to the whites of his eyes.
The Marquise showed some emotion on perceiving it, and persuaded him
to consult a physician. The physician perceived symptoms of chronic
debility. He did not think it dangerous, but recommended a season at
Vichy, a few hygienic precautions, and absolute repose of mind and body.
When the Marquise proposed to Camors this visit to Vichy, he only
shrugged his shoulders without reply.
A few days after, Madame de Campvallon on entering the stable one
morning, saw Medjid, the favorite mare of Camors, white with foam,
panting and exhausted. The groom explained, with some awkwardness, the
condition of the animal, by a ride the Count had taken that morning.
The Marquise had recourse to Daniel, of whom she made a confidant, and
having questioned him, drew out the acknowledgment that for some time
his master had been in the habit of going out in the evening and not
returning until morning. Daniel was in despair with these nightly
wanderings, which he said greatly fatigued his master. He ended by
confessing to Madame de Campvallon the goal of his excursions.
The Comtesse de Camors, yielding to considerations the details of which
would not be interesting, had continued to live at Reuilly since her
husband had abandoned her. Reuilly was distant twelve leagues from
Campvallon, which could be made shorter by a crosscut. M. de Camors did
not hesitate to pass over this distance twice in the same night, to give
himself the emotion of breathing for a few minutes the same air with his
wife and child.
Daniel had accompanied him two or three times, but the Count generally
went alone. He left his horse in the wood, and approached as near as he
could without risking discovery; and, hiding himself like a malefactor
behind the shadows of the trees, he watched the windows, the lights, the
house, the least signs of those dear beings, from whom an eternal abyss
had divided him.
The Marquise, half frightened, half irritated, by an oddity which seemed
to border on madness, pretended to be ignorant of it. But these two
spirits were too accustomed to each other, day by day, to be able to
hide anything. He knew she was aware of his weakness, and seemed no
longer to care to make a mystery of it.
One evening in the month of July, he left on horseback in the afternoon,
and did not return for dinner. He arrived at the woods of Reuilly at the
close of the day, as he had premeditated. He entered the garden with
his usual precaution, and, thanks to his knowledge of the habits of the
household, he could approach, without being noticed, the pavilion where
the Countess’s chamber was situated, and which was also that of his son.
This chamber, by a particular arrangement of the house, was elevated at
the side of the court by the height of an entresol, but was level
with the garden. One of the windows was open, owing to the heat of the
evening. Camors hid himself behind the shutters, which were half closed,
and gazed eagerly into the chamber.
He had not seen for two years either his wife, his child, or Madame de
Tecle. He now saw all three there. Madame de Tecle was working near the
chimney. Her face was unchanged. She had the same youthful look, but
her hair was as white, as snow. Madame de Camors was sitting on a couch
nearly in front of the window and undressing her son, at the same time
talking to and caressing him.
The child, at a sign, knelt down at his mother’s feet in his light
night-garments, and while she held his joined hands in her own, he began
in a loud voice his evening prayers. She whispered him from time to time
a word that escaped him. This prayer, composed of a number of phrases
adapted to a youthful mind, terminated with these words: “O God! be good
and merciful to my mother, my grandmother, to me--and above all, O
God, to my unfortunate father.” He pronounced these words with childish
haste, but under a serious look from his mother, he repeated them
immediately, with some emotion, as a child who repeats the inflection of
a voice which has been taught him.
Camors turned suddenly and retired noiselessly, leaving the garden
by the nearest gate. A fixed idea tortured him. He wished to see his
son--to speak to him--to embrace him, and to press him to his heart.
After that, he cared for little.
He remembered they had formerly the habit of taking the child to
the dairy every morning to give him a cup of milk. He hoped they had
continued this custom. Morning arrived, and soon came the hour for which
he waited. He hid himself in the walk which led to the farm. He heard
the noise of feet, of laughter, and of joyous cries, and his son
suddenly appeared running in advance. He was a charming little boy of
five or six years, of a graceful and proud mien. On perceiving M.
de Camors in the middle of the walk he stopped, he hesitated at this
unknown or half-forgotten face; but the tender and half-supplicating
smile of Camors reassured him.
“Monsieur!” he said, doubtfully.
Camors opened his arms and bent as if to kneel before him.
“Come and embrace me, I beg of you,” he murmured.
The child had already advanced smiling, when the woman who was following
him, who was his old nurse, suddenly appeared. ‘She made a gesture of
fright:
“Your father!” she said, in a stifled voice.
At these words the child uttered a cry of terror, rushed back to the
nurse, pressed against her, and regarded his father with frightened
eyes.
The nurse took him by the arm, and earned him off in great haste.
M. de Camors did not weep. A frightful contraction distorted the corners
of his mouth, and exaggerated the thinness of his cheeks. He had two or
three shudderings as if seized with sudden fever. He slowly passed his
hand over his forehead, sighed profoundly, and departed.
Madame de Campvallon knew nothing of this sad scene, but she saw its
consequences; and she herself felt them bitterly. The character of M. de
Camors, already so changed, became after this unrecognizable. He showed
her no longer even the cold politeness he had manifested for her up to
that period. He exhibited a strange antipathy toward her. He fled from
her. She perceived he avoided even touching her hand.
They saw each other rarely now. The health of Camors did not admit of
his taking regular meals. These two desolate existences offered then, in
the midst of the almost royal state which surrounded them, a spectacle
of pity.
In this magnificent park--across these beautiful gardens, with great
vases of marble--under long arcades of verdure peopled with more
statues-both wandered separately, like two sad shadows, meeting
sometimes but never speaking.
One day, near the end of September, Camors did not descend from his
apartment. Daniel told the Marquise he had given orders to let no one
enter.
“Not even me?” she said. He bent his head mournfully. She insisted.
“Madame, I should lose my place!”
The Count persisted in this mania of absolute seclusion. She was
compelled from this moment to content herself with the news she obtained
from his servant. M. de Camors was not bedridden. He passed his time in
a sad reverie, lying on his divan. He got up at intervals, wrote a few
lines, then lay down again. His weakness appeared great, though he did
not complain of any suffering.
After two or three weeks, the Marquise read in the features of Daniel
a more marked disquietude than usual. He supplicated her to call in the
country physician who had once before seen him. It was so decided.
The unfortunate woman, when the physician was shown into the Count’s
apartment, leaned against the door listening in agony. She thought she
heard the voice of Camors loudly raised, then the noise ceased.
The doctor, when departing, simply said to her: “Madame, his sad case
appears to me serious--but not hopeless. I did not wish to press him
to-day, but he allows me to return tomorrow.”
In the night which followed, at two o’clock, Madame de Campvallon heard
some one calling her, and recognized the voice of Daniel. She rose
immediately, threw a mantle around her, and admitted him.
“Madame,” he said, “Monsieur le Comte asks for you,” and burst into
tears.
“Mon Dieu! what is the matter?”
“Come, Madame--you must hasten!”
She accompanied him immediately. From the moment she put her foot in
the chamber, she could not deceive herself--Death was there. Crushed
by sorrow, this existence, so full, so proud, so powerful, was about to
terminate. The head of Camors, turned on the pillow, seemed already to
have assumed a death-like immobility. His beautiful features, sharpened
by suffering, took the rigid outline of sculpture; his eye alone yet
lived and looked at her.
She approached him hastily and wished to seize the hand resting on the
sheet.
He withdrew it. She gave a despairing groan. He continued to look
fixedly at her. She thought he was trying to speak, but could not; but
his eyes spoke. They addressed to her some request, at the same time
with an imperious though supplicating expression, which she doubtless
understood; for she said aloud, with an accent full of sadness and
tenderness:
“I promise it to you.”
He appeared to make a painful effort, and his look indicated a
large sealed letter lying on the bed. She took it, and read on the
envelope-“To my son.”
“I promise you,” she said, again, falling on her knees, and moistening
the sheet with her tears.
He extended his hand toward her. “Thanks!” was all he said. Her tears
flowed faster. She set her lips on this hand already cold. When she
raised her head, she saw at the same instant the eyes of Camors slightly
moist, rolling wildly--then extinguished! She uttered a cry, threw
herself on the bed, and kissed madly those eyes still open--yet void of
light forever!
Thus ended Camors, who was a great sinner, but nevertheless a MAN!
ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS:
A man never should kneel unless sure of rising a conqueror
A defensive attitude is never agreeable to a man
Bad to fear the opinion of people one despises
Believing that it is for virtue’s sake alone such men love them
Camors refused, hesitated, made objections, and consented
Confounding progress with discord, liberty with license
Contempt for men is the beginning of wisdom
Cried out, with the blunt candor of his age
Dangers of liberty outweighed its benefits
Demanded of him imperatively--the time of day
Determined to cultivate ability rather than scrupulousness
Disenchantment which follows possession
Do not get angry. Rarely laugh, and never weep
Every one is the best judge of his own affairs
Every road leads to Rome--and one as surely as another
Every cause that is in antagonism with its age commits suicide
God--or no principles!
Have not that pleasure, it is useless to incur the penalties
He is charming, for one always feels in danger near him
Inconstancy of heart is the special attribute of man
Intemperance of her zeal and the acrimony of her bigotry
Knew her danger, and, unlike most of them, she did not love it
Man, if he will it, need not grow old: the lion must
Never can make revolutions with gloves on
Once an excellent remedy, is a detestable regimen
One of those pious persons who always think evil
Pleasures of an independent code of morals
Police regulations known as religion
Principles alone, without faith in some higher sanction
Property of all who are strong enough to stand it
Put herself on good terms with God, in case He should exist
Semel insanivimus omnes.’ (every one has his madness)
Slip forth from the common herd, my son, think for yourself
Suspicion that he is a feeble human creature after all!
There will be no more belief in Christ than in Jupiter
Ties that become duties where we only sought pleasures
Truth is easily found. I shall read all the newspapers
Two persons who desired neither to remember nor to forget
Whether in this world one must be a fanatic or nothing
Whole world of politics and religion rushed to extremes
With the habit of thinking, had not lost the habit of laughing
You can not make an omelette without first breaking the eggs
End of Project Gutenberg’s Monsieur de Camors, Complete, by Octave Feuillet