Lemonnier had remained a widower with one child. He had loved his wife
devotedly, with a tender and exalted love, without a slip, during
their entire married life. He was a good, honest man, perfectly simple,
sincere, without suspicion or malice.
He fell in love with a poor neighbor, proposed and was accepted. He was
making a very comfortable living out of the wholesale cloth business,
and he did not for a minute suspect that the young girl might have
accepted him for anything else but himself.
She made him happy. She was everything to him; he only thought of her,
looked at her continually, with worshiping eyes. During meals he would
make any number of blunders, in order not to have to take his eyes from
the beloved face; he would pour the wine in his plate and the water in
the salt-cellar, then he would laugh like a child, repeating:
“You see, I love you too much; that makes me crazy.”
She would smile with a calm and resigned look; then she would look away,
as though embarrassed by the adoration of her husband, and try to make
him talk about something else; but he would take her hand under the
table and he would hold it in his, whispering:
“My little Jeanne, my darling little Jeanne!”
She sometimes lost patience and said:
“Come, come, be reasonable; eat and let me eat.”
He would sigh and break off a mouthful of bread, which he would then
chew slowly.
For five years they had no children. Then suddenly she announced to him
that this state of affairs would soon cease. He was wild with joy. He no
longer left her for a minute, until his old nurse, who had brought him
up and who often ruled the house, would push him out and close the door
behind him, in order to compel him to go out in the fresh air.
He had grown very intimate with a young man who had known his wife since
childhood, and who was one of the prefect's secretaries. M. Duretour
would dine three times a week with the Lemonniers, bringing flowers to
madame, and sometimes a box at the theater; and often, at the end of
the dinner, Lemonnier, growing tender, turning towards his wife, would
explain: “With a companion like you and a friend like him, a man is
completely happy on earth.”
She died in childbirth. The shock almost killed him. But the sight of
the child, a poor, moaning little creature, gave him courage.
He loved it with a passionate and sorrowful love, with a morbid love
in which stuck the memory of death, but in which lived something of his
worship for the dead mother. It was the flesh of his wife, her being
continued, a sort of quintessence of herself. This child was her very
life transferred to another body; she had disappeared that it might
exist, and the father would smother it in with kisses. But also, this
child had killed her; he had stolen this beloved creature, his life was
at the cost of hers. And M. Lemonnier would place his son in the cradle
and would sit down and watch him. He would sit this way by the hour,
looking at him, dreaming of thousands of things, sweet or sad. Then,
when the little one was asleep, he would bend over him and sob.
The child grew. The father could no longer spend an hour away from him;
he would stay near him, take him out for walks, and himself dress him,
wash him, make him eat. His friend, M. Duretour, also seemed to love the
boy; he would kiss him wildly, in those frenzies of tenderness which are
characteristic of parents. He would toss him in his arms, he would
trot him on his knees, by the hour, and M. Lemonnier, delighted, would
mutter:
“Isn't he a darling? Isn't he a darling?”
And M. Duretour would hug the child in his arms and tickle his neck with
his mustache.
Celeste, the old nurse, alone, seemed to have no tenderness for the
little one. She would grow angry at his pranks, and seemed impatient at
the caresses of the two men. She would exclaim:
“How can you expect to bring a child up like that? You'll make a perfect
monkey out of him.”
Years went by, and Jean was nine years old. He hardly knew how to read;
he had been so spoiled, and only did as he saw fit. He was willful,
stubborn and quick-tempered. The father always gave in to him and let
him have his own way. M. Duretour would always buy him all the toys
he wished, and he fed him on cake and candies. Then Celeste would grow
angry and exclaim:
“It's a shame, monsieur, a shame. You are spoiling this child. But it
will have to stop; yes, sir, I tell you it will have to stop, and before
long, too.”