Having said her prayer, Nanteuil, without waiting to hear Pradel's
speech, jumped into a carriage in order to join Robert de Ligny, who was
waiting for her in front of the Montparnasse railway station. Amid the
throng of passers-by they shook hands, gazing at one another without a
word. More than ever did they feel that they were bound together. Robert
loved her.
He loved her without knowing it. She was for him, or so he believed,
merely one delight in the infinite series of possible delights. But
delight had assumed for him the form of Félicie, and, had he reflected
more deeply upon the innumerable women whom he promised himself in the
vast remainder of his newly begun life, he would have recognized that
now they were all Félicies. He might at least have realized that,
without having any intention of being faithful to her, he did not dream
of being unfaithful, and that since she had given herself to him he had
not desired any other woman. But he did not realize it.
On this occasion, however, standing in the bustling commonplace square,
on seeing her no longer in the voluptuous shadow of night, nor under the
caressing glimmer of the alcove which gave her naked form the delicious
vagueness of a Milky Way, but in a harsh, diffused daylight, by the
circumstantial illumination of a sunlight devoid of splendour and
without shadows, which revealed beneath her veil her eyelids that were
seared with tears, her pearly cheeks and roughened lips, he realized
that he felt for this woman's flesh a profound and mysterious
inclination.
He did not question her. They exchanged only tender trivial phrases.
And, as she was very hungry, he took her to lunch at a well-known
_cabaret_ whose name shone in letters of gold on one of the old houses
in the square. They had their meal served in the winter-garden, whose
rockery, fountain, and solitary tree were multiplied by mirrors framed
in a green trellis. When seated at the table, consulting the bill of
fare, they conversed with less restraint than heretofore. He told her
that the emotions and worries of the past three days had unstrung his
nerves, but he no longer thought about it, and it would be absurd to
worry about the matter any further. She spoke to him of her health,
complaining that she could not sleep, save for a restless slumber full
of dreams. But she did not tell him what she saw in those dreams, and
she avoided speaking of the dead man. He asked her if she had not spent
a tiring morning, and why she had gone to the cemetery, a useless
proceeding.
Incapable of explaining to him the depths of her soul, submissive to
rites and propitiatory ceremonies and incantations, she shook her head
as if to say:
"Had to."
While those lunching at the adjoining tables were finishing their meal,
they talked for a long time, both in subdued tones, while waiting to be
served.
Robert had promised himself, had sworn indeed never to reproach Félicie
for having had Chevalier for her lover, or even to ask her a single
question in this connection. And yet, moved by some obscure resentment,
by an ebullition of ill-temper or natural curiosity, and also because he
loved her too deeply to control himself, he said to her, with bitterness
in his voice:
"You were on intimate terms with him, formerly."
She was silent, and did not deny the fact. Not that she felt that it was
henceforth useless to lie. On the contrary, she was in the habit of
denying the obvious truth, and she had, of course, too much knowledge of
men to be ignorant of the fact that, when in love, there is no lie,
however clumsy, which they cannot believe if they wish to do so. But on
this occasion, contrary to her nature and habit, she refrained from
lying. She was afraid of offending the dead. She imagined that in
denying him she would be doing him a wrong, depriving him of his share,
angering him. She held her peace, fearing to see him come and rest his
elbows on the table, with his fixed smile and the hole in his head, and
to hear him say in his plaintive voice. "Félicie, you surely cannot have
forgotten our little room, in the Rue des Martyrs?"
What he had become, for her, since his death, she could not have said,
so alien was it to her beliefs, so contrary to her reason, and so
antiquated, ridiculous and obsolete did the words which would have
expressed her feeling seem to her. But from some remote inherited
instinct, or more likely from certain tales which she had heard in her
childhood, she derived a confused idea that he was of the number of
those dead who in the days of old were wont to torment the living, and
were exorcised by the priests; for upon thinking of him she
instinctively began to make the sign of the cross, and she checked
herself only that she might not seem ridiculous.
Ligny, seeing her melancholy and distracted, blamed himself for his
harsh and useless words, while at the very moment of reproaching
himself for them he followed them by others equally harsh and equally
useless.
"And yet you told me it was not true!"
She replied, fervently:
"Because, don't you see, I wanted it not to be true."
She added:
"Oh, my darling, since I've been yours, I swear to you that I've not
belonged to anyone else. I don't claim any merit for this; I should have
found it impossible."
Like the young of animals, she had need of gaiety. The wine, which shone
in her glass like liquid amber, was a joy to her eyes, and she moistened
her tongue with it with luxurious pleasure. She took an interest in the
dishes set before her, and especially in the _pommes de terre
soufflées_, like golden blisters. Next she watched the people lunching
at the tables in the dining-room, attributing to them, according to
their appearance, ridiculous opinions or grotesque passions. She noticed
the ill-natured glances which the women directed toward her, and the
efforts of the men to appear handsome and important. And she gave
utterance to a general reflection:
"Robert, have you noticed that people are never natural? They do not say
a thing because they think it. They say it because they think it is
what they ought to say. This habit makes them very wearisome. And it is
extremely rare to find anyone who is natural. You, you are natural."
"Well, I don't think I'm guilty of posing."
"You pose like the rest. But you pose in your own character. I can see
perfectly well when you are trying to surprise and impress me."
She spoke to him of himself and, led back by an involuntary train of
thought to the tragedy enacted at Neuilly, she inquired:
"Did your mother say anything to you?"
"No."
"Yet she must have known."
"It is probable."
"Are you on good terms with her?"
"Why, yes!"
"They say she is still very beautiful, your mother, is it so?"
He did not answer her and sought to change the conversation. He did not
like Félicie to speak to him of his mother, or to turn her attention to
his family. Monsieur and Madame de Ligny enjoyed the highest
consideration in Parisian society. Monsieur de Ligny, a diplomatist by
birth and by profession, was in himself a person worthy of the greatest
consideration. He was so even before his birth, by virtue of the
diplomatic services which his ancestors had rendered to France. His
great-grandfather had signed the surrender of Pondicherry to England.
Madame de Ligny lived with her husband on the most correct terms. But,
although she had no money of her own, she lived in great style, and her
gowns were one of the greatest glories of France. She received intimate
visits from an ex-Ambassador. His age, his position, his opinions, his
titles, and his great fortune made the connection respectable. Madame de
Ligny kept the ladies of the Republic at arm's length, and, when the
spirit moved her, gave them lessons in decorum. She had nothing to fear
from the opinion of the fashionable world. Robert knew that she was
looked upon with respect by people in society. But he was continually
dreading that, in speaking of her, Félicie might fail to do so with all
the needful reserve. He feared lest, not being in society, she might say
that which had better have been left unsaid. He was wrong; Félicie knew
nothing of the private life of Madame de Ligny; moreover, had she known
of it, she would not have blamed her. The lady inspired her with a naive
curiosity and an admiration mingled with fear. Since her lover was
unwilling to speak to her of his mother, she attributed his reserve to a
certain aristocratic arrogance, even to a lack of consideration, for
her, at which the pride of the freewoman and the plebeian was up in
arms. She was wont to say to him tartly:
"I'm perfectly free to speak of your mother." The first time she had
added: "Mine is just as good as yours." But she had realized that the
remark was vulgar, and she had not repeated it.
The dining-room was now empty. She looked at her watch, and saw that it
was three o'clock.
"I must be off," she said. "_La Grille_ is being rehearsed this
afternoon. Constantin Marc ought to be at the theatre already. There's
another queer fellow for you! He boasts that when he's in the Vivarais
he ruins all the women. And yet he is so shy that he daren't even talk
to Fagette and Falempin. I frighten him. It amuses me."
She was so tired that she had not the courage to rise.
"Isn't it queer? They are saying everywhere that I'm engaged for the
Français, it's not true. There's not even a question of it. Of course, I
can't remain indefinitely where I am. In the long run one would get
besotted there. But there is no hurry. I have a great part to create in
_La Grille_. We shall see after that. What I want is to play comedy. I
don't want to join the Français and then to do nothing."
Suddenly, gazing in front of her with eyes full of terror, she flung
herself backwards, turned pale, and uttered a shrill scream. Then her
eyelids fluttered, and she murmured that she could not breathe.
Robert loosened her jacket, and moistened her temples with a little
water.
She spoke.
"A priest! I saw a priest. He was in his surplice. His lips were moving,
but no sound came from them. He looked at me."
He tried to comfort her.
"Come now, my darling, how can you suppose that a priest, a priest in
his surplice, would show himself in a restaurant?"
She listened obediently, and allowed herself to be persuaded.
"You are right, you are right, I know it well enough."
In that little head of hers illusions were soon dispelled. She was born
two hundred and thirty years after the death of Descartes, of whom she
had never heard; yet, as Dr. Socrates would have said, he had taught her
the use of reason.
Robert met her at six o'clock after the rehearsal, under the arcades of
the Odéon, and drove away with her in a cab.
"Where are we going?" she inquired.
He hesitated a little.
"You would not care to go back to our house out there?"
She cried out at the suggestion.
"Oh no! I couldn't! Oh, heavens, never!"
He replied that he had thought as much; that he would try to find
something else: a little ground-floor flat in Paris; that in the
meantime, just for to-day, they would content themselves with a chance
abode.
She gazed at him with fixed, heavy eyes, drew him violently towards her,
scorching his neck and ear with the breath of her desire. Then her arms
fell away from him, and she sank back beside him, dejected and relaxed.
When the cab stopped, she said:
"You will not be vexed with me, will you, my own Robert, at what I am
going to say? Not to-day--to-morrow."
She had considered it necessary to make this sacrifice to the jealous
dead.