I no longer knew where I was going, but was like a train going at full
speed through a dense fog, and which in vain disturbs the perfect
silence of the sleeping country with its puffing and shrill whistles;
when the driver cannot distinguish the changing lights of the discs, nor
the signals, and when soon some terrible crash will send the train off
the rails, and the carriages will become a heap of ruins.
I was afraid of going mad, and at times I asked myself whether any of my
family had shown any signs of mental aberration, and had been locked up
in a lunatic asylum, and whether the life of constant fast pleasures, of
turning night into day and of frequent violent emotions, that I had led
for years, had not at last affected my brain. If I had believed in
anything, and in the science of the occult, which haunts so many
restless brains, I should have imagined that some enemy was bewitching
me and laying invisible snares for me, that he was suggesting those
actions which were quite unworthy of the frank, upright and well-bred
man that I was, and was trying to destroy the happiness of which she and
I had dreamt.
For a whole week I devoted myself to that hateful business of playing
the spy, and to those inquiries which were killing me. I had succeeded
in discovering the lady's maid who had been in Elaine's service before
we were married, and whom she loved as if she had been her foster
sister, who used to accompany her whenever she went out, when she went
to visit the poor and when she went for a walk, who used to wake her
every morning, do her hair and dress her. She was young and rather
pretty, and one saw that Paris had improved her and given her a polish,
and that she knew her difficult business from end to end.
I had found out, however, that her virtue was only apparent, especially
since she had changed employers; that she was fond of going to the
public balls, and that she divided her favors between a man who came
from her part of the country, and who was a sergeant in a dragoon
regiment, and a footman, and that she spent all her money on horse races
and on dress. I felt sure that I should be able to make her talk and get
the truth out of her, either by money or cunning, and so I asked her to
meet me early one morning in a quiet square.
She listened to me first of all in astonishment, without replying yes or
no, as if she did not understand what I was aiming at, or with what
object I was asking her all these questions about her former mistress;
but when I offered her a few hundred francs to loosen her tongue, as I
was impatient to get the matter over and pretended to know that she had
managed interviews for Elaine with her lovers, that they were known and
being followed, that she was in the habit of frequenting quiet
bachelors' quarters, from which she returned late, the sly little wench
frowned angrily, shrugged her shoulders and exclaimed:
"What pigs some men are to have such ideas, and cause such an excellent
person as Mademoiselle Elaine any unhappiness. Look here, you disgust me
with your banknotes and your dirty stories, and I don't choose to say
what you ought to wear on your head!"
She turned her back on me and hurried off, and her insolence, that
indignant reply which she had given me, rejoiced me to the depths of my
heart, like soothing balm that lulls the pain.
I should have liked to have called her back, and told her that it was
all a joke, that I was devotedly in love with my wife, that I was always
on the watch to hear her praised, but she was already out of sight, and
I felt that I was ridiculous and mean, that I had lowered myself by what
I had done, and I swore that I would profit by such a humiliating
lesson, and for the future show myself to Elaine as the trusting and
ardent husband that she deserved, and I thought myself cured, altogether
cured....
And yet, I was again the prey to the same bad thoughts, to the same
doubts, and persuaded that that girl had lied to me just like all other
women lie when they are on the defensive, that she made fun of me, that
perhaps _some one_ had foreseen this scene and had told her what to say
and made sure of her silence, just as her complicity had been gained.
Thus I shall always knock up against some barrier, and struggle in this
wretched darkness, and this mire from which I cannot extricate myself!