And after I had killed her, what then?
As the judges would not be able to explain such an extraordinary crime
to themselves, they would of course say that I was mad, medical men
would examine me and would immediately agree that I ought at once to be
kept under supervision, taken care of and placed in a lunatic asylum.
And for years, perhaps, because I was strong, and because such a
vigorous animal would survive the calamity intact, although my intellect
might give way, I should remain a prey to these chimeras, carry that
fixed idea of her lies, her impurity and her shame about with me, that
would be my one recollection, and I should suffer unceasingly.
I am writing all this perfectly coolly and in full possession of my
reason; I have perfect prescience of what my resolve entails, and of
this blind rush towards death. I feel that my very minutes are numbered,
and that I no longer have anything in my skull, in which some fire,
though I do not quite know what it is, is burning, except a few
particles of what used to be my brain.
Just as a short time ago, I should certainly have murdered Elaine, if
she had been with me, when invisible hands seemed to be pushing me
towards her, inaudible voices ordered me to commit that murder, it is
surely most probable that I shall have another crisis, and will there be
any awakening from that?
Ah! It will be a thousand times better, since Destiny has left me a
half-open door, to escape from life before it is too late, before the
free, sane, strong man that I am at present, becomes the most pitiable,
the most destructive, the most dangerous of human wrecks!
May all these notes of my misery fall into Elaine's hands some day, may
she read them to the end, pity and absolve me, and for a long time mourn
for me!
_(Here ends Jacques' Journal.)_
AN UNFORTUNATE LIKENESS
During one of those sudden changes of the electric light, which at one
time throws rays of exquisite pale pink, at another a liquid gold, as if
it had been filtered through the light hair of a woman, and at another,
rays of a bluish hue with strange tints, such as the sky assumes at
twilight, in which the women with their bare shoulders looked like
living flowers--it was on the night of the first of January at
Montonirail's, the refined painter of great undulating _poses_ figures,
of brilliant dresses, of Parisian prettiness--that tall Pescarelle, whom
some called _Pussy_, though I do not know why, suddenly said in a low
voice:
"Well, people were not altogether mistaken, in fact, were only half
wrong when they coupled my name with that of pretty Lucy Plonelle. She
had captivated my heart, just as a bird-catcher on a frosty morning
catches an imprudent wren on a limed twig, and she might have done
whatever she liked with me.
"I was under the charm of her enigmatical and mocking smile, where her
teeth had a cruel look between her red lips, and glistened as if they
were ready to bite and to heighten the pleasure of the most delightful,
the most voluptuous kiss, by pain.
"I loved everything in her, her feline suppleness, her slow looks, which
seemed to glide from her half-closed lids, full of promises and
temptation, her somewhat extreme elegance, and her hands, her long,
delicate, white hands, with blue veins, like the bloodless hands of a
female saint in a stained glass window, and her slender fingers, on
which only the large drops of blood of a ruby glittered.
"I would have given her all my remaining youth and vigor to have laid my
burning hands onto the nape of her cool round neck, and to feel that
bright, silky, golden mane enveloping me and caressing my skin. I was
never tired of hearing her disdainful, petulant voice, those vibrations
which sounded as if they proceeded from clear glass, and that music,
which at times, became hoarse, harsh and fierce, like the loud, sonorous
calls of the Valkyries.
"Oh! Good heavens! to be her lover, to be her chattel, to belong to her,
to devote one's whole existence to her, to spend one's last half-penny
and to go under in misery, only to have the glory, the happiness of
possessing the splendid beauty, the sweetness of her kisses, the pink,
and the white of her demon-like soul all to myself, were it only for a
few months!
"It makes you laugh, I know, to think that I should have been caught
like that, I who give such good, prudent advice to my friends, who fear
love as I do those quicksands and shoals which appear at low tide and in
which one is swallowed up and disappears!
"But who can answer for himself, who can defend himself against such a
danger, against the magnetic attraction that comes from such a woman?
Nevertheless, I got cured, and perfectly cured, and that, quite
accidentally, and this is how the enchantment, which was apparently so
infrangible, was broken.
"On the first night of a play, I was sitting in the stalls close to
Lucy, whose mother had accompanied her, as usual, and they occupied the
front of a box, side by side. From some insurmountable attraction, I
never ceased looking at the woman whom I loved with all the force of my
being. I feasted my eyes on her beauty, I saw nobody except her in the
theater, and did not listen to the piece that was being performed on the
stage.
"Suddenly, however, I felt as if I had received a blow from a dagger in
my heart, and I had an insane hallucination. Lucy had moved and her
pretty head was in profile, in the same attitude and with the same lines
as her mother. I do not know what shadow, or what play of light had
hardened and altered the color of her delicate features and destroyed
their ideal prettiness, but the more I looked at them both, the one who
was young, and the one who was old, the greater that distressing
resemblance became.
"I saw Lucy growing older and older, striving against those accumulating
years which bring wrinkles in the face, produce a double chin and crow's
feet, and spoil the mouth. _They almost looked like twins._
"I suffered so that I almost thought I should have gone mad, and, in
spite of myself, instead of shaking off this feeling and make my escape
out of the theater, far away into the noise and life on the boulevards,
I persisted in looking at the other, at the old one, in scanning her
over, in judging her, in dissecting her with my eyes; I got excited over
her flabby cheeks, over those ridiculous dimples, that were half-filled
up, over that treble chin, that hair which must have been dyed, those
eyes which had no more brightness in them, and that nose which was a
caricature of Lucy's beautiful, attractive little nose.
"I had the prescience of the future. I loved her, and I should love her
more and more every day, that little sorceress who had so despotically
and so quickly conquered me. I should not allow any participation or any
intrigue from the day she gave herself to me, and when once we had been
so intimately connected, who could tell whether, just as I was defending
myself against it most, the legitimate termination--marriage--might not
come?
"Why not give one's name to a woman whom one loves, and of whom one is
sure? The reason was, that I should be tied to a disfigured, ugly
creature with whom I should not venture to be seen in public, as my
friends would leer at her with laughter in their eyes, and with pity in
their hearts for the man who was accompanying those remains."
* * * * *
"And so, as soon as the curtain had fallen, without saying good-day or
good-evening, I had myself driven to the _Moulin Rouge_, and there I
picked up the first woman I came across, and remained in her company
until late next day."
"Well," Florise d'Anglet exclaimed, "I shall never take Mamma to the
theater with me again, for men are really getting too mad!"
THE NEW SENSATION
That little Madame d'Ormonde certainly had the devil in her, but above
all, a fantastic, baffling brain, through which the most unheard of
caprices passed, in which ideas danced and jostled each other, like
those pieces of different colored glass in a kaleidoscope, which form
such strange figures when they have been shaken, in which _Parisine_ was
fermenting to such an extent--you know, _Parisine_, the analysis of
which Roqueplan lately gave--that the most learned members of _The
Institute_ would have wasted his science and his wisdom if he had tried
to follow her slips and her subterfuges.
That was, very likely, the reason why she attracted, retained and
infatuated even those who had paid their debt to implacable love, who
thought that they were strong and free from those passions under the
influence of which men lose their heads, and that they were beyond the
reach of woman's perfidious snares. Or, perhaps, it was her small, soft,
delicate, white hands, which always smelled of some subtle, delicious
perfume, and whose small fingers men kissed almost with devotion, almost
with absolute pleasure. Or, was it her silky, golden hair, her large,
blue eyes, full of enigmas, of curiosity, of desire, her changeable
mouth, which was quite small and infantine at one moment, when she was
pouting, and smiling and as open as a rose that is unfolding in the sun,
when she opened it in a laugh, and showed her pearly teeth, so that it
became a target for kisses? Who will ever be able to explain that kind
of magic and sorcery which some _Chosen Women_ exercise over all men,
that despotic authority, against which nobody would think of rebelling?
Among the numerous men who had entreated her, who were anxiously waiting
for that wonderful moment when her heart would beat, when his mocking
companion would grow tired and abandon herself to the pleasure of loving
and of being loved, would become intoxicated with the honey of caresses,
and would no longer refuse her lips to kisses, like some restive animal
that fears the yoke, none had so made up his mind to win the game, and
to pursue this deceptive siege, as much as Xavier de Fontrailles. He
marched straight for his object with a patient energy and a strength of
will which no checks could weaken, and with the ardent fervor of a
believer who has started on a long pilgrimage, and who supports all the
suffering of the long journey with the fixed and consoling idea that one
day he will be able to throw himself on his knees at the shrine where he
wishes to worship, and to listen to the divine words which will be a
Paradise to him.
He gave way to Madame d'Ormonde's slightest whims, and did all he could
never to bore her, never to hurt her feelings, but really to become a
friend whom she could not do without, and of whom, in the end, a woman
grows more jealous than she does of her husband, and to whom she
confesses everything, her daily worries and her dreams of the future.
She would very likely have suffered and wept, and have felt a great void
in her existence if they had separated for ever, if he had disappeared,
and she would not have hesitated to defend him, even at the risk of
compromising herself, and of passing as his mistress, if any one had
attacked him in her presence, and sometimes she used to say with a
sudden laughing sadness in her voice:
"If I were really capable of loving for five minutes consecutively, I
should love you."
And when they were walking in the _Bois de Boulogne_, while the Victoria
was waiting near Armenonville, during their afternoon talks when, as he
used to say, they were hanging over the abyss until they both grew
giddy, and spoke of love madly and ceaselessly--returning to the subject
constantly, and impregnating themselves with it--Madame d'Ormonde would
occasionally produce one of her favorite theories. Yes, she certainly
understood possession of the beloved object, that touch of madness which
seizes you from head to foot, which makes your blood hot, and which
makes you forget everything else in a man's embraces, in that supreme
pleasure which overwhelms you, and which rivets two beings together for
ever, by the heart and by the brain. But only at some unexpected moment,
in a strange place, with a touch of something novel about it, which one
would remember all one's life, something amusing and almost maddening,
which one had been in search of for a long time, and which imparted a
flavor of curry, as it were, into the common-place flavor of immorality.
And Xavier de Fontrailles did all he could to discover such a place, but
failed successively in a bachelor's lodgings with silk tapestry, like a
boudoir of the seventeenth century, in a villa hidden like a nest among
trees and rose bushes, with a Japanese house furnished in an
extraordinary fashion and very expensively, with latticed windows from
which one could see the sea, in an old melancholy palace, from which one
could see the Grand Canal, in rooms, in hotels, in queer quarters, in
private rooms, in restaurants, and in small country houses in the
recesses of woods.
Madame d'Ormonde went on her way without turning her head, but Xavier,
alas! became more and more amorous, as amorous as an overgrown schoolboy
who has never hitherto had any conversation with a woman, and who is
amorous enough to pick up the flowers that fall from her bodice, and to
be lost and unhappy as soon as he does not see her, or hear her soft,
cooing voice, and see her smile....
One evening, however, he had gone with her to the fair at Saint Cloud,
and went into three shows, deafened by the noise of the organs, the
whistling of the machinery of the round-abouts, and the hubbub of the
crowd that came and went among the booths that were illuminated by
paraffin lamps. As they were passing in front of a somnambulist's van,
Monsieur de Fontrailles stopped and said to Madame d'Ormonde:
"Would you like to have our fortune told?"
It was a very fine specimen of its kind, and had, no doubt, been far and
wide. Placards and portraits, bordered by advertisements, hung above the
shaky steps, and the small windows with their closed shutters, were
almost hidden by boxes of sweet basil and mignonette, while an old, bald
parrot, with her feathers all ruffled, was asleep just outside.
The fortune teller was sitting on a chair, quietly knitting a stocking,
and on their approach she got up, went up to Madame d'Ormonde and said
in an unctuous voice:
"I reveal the present, the past and the future, and even the name of the
future husband or wife, and of deceased relations, as well as my
client's present and future circumstances. I have performed before
crowned heads. The Emperor of Brazil came to me, with the illustrious
poet, Victor Hugo.... My charge is five francs for telling your fortune
from the cards or by your hand, and twenty francs for the whole lot....
Would you like the lot, Madame?"
Madame d'Ormonde gave vent to a burst of sonorous laughter, like a
street girl, who is amusing herself, but they went in and Monsieur de
Fontrailles opened the glass door which was covered by a heavy red
curtain. When they got in, the young woman uttered an exclamation of
surprise. The interior of the van was full of roses, arranged in the
most charming manner as if for a lovers' meeting. On a table covered
with a damask cloth, and which was surrounded by piles of cushions, a
supper was waiting for chance comers, and at the other end, concealed by
heavy hangings, one could see a large, wide bed, one of those beds which
give rise to sinister suggestions!
Xavier had shut the door again, and Madame d'Ormonde looked at him in a
strange manner, with rather flushed cheeks, palpitating nostrils, and a
look in her eyes, such as he had never seen in them before, and in a
very low voice, while his heart beat violently, and he whispered into
her ear:
"Well, does the decoration please you this time?"
She replied by holding up her lips to him, and then filled two glasses
with extra dry champagne, which was as pale as the skin of a fair woman,
and said almost as if she had already been rather drunk:
"I am decidedly worth a big stake!"
It was in this fashion that Madame d'Ormonde, for the first and last
time, deceived her husband; and it was at the fair at Saint Cloud, in a
somnambulist's van.