DISILLUSION
Mme. de Burne's _coupé_ was proceeding at a quick trot along the Rue
de Grenelle. It was early April, and the hailstones of a belated storm
beat noisily against the glasses of the carriage and rattled off upon
the roadway which was already whitened by the falling particles. Men
on foot were hurrying along the sidewalk beneath their umbrellas, with
coat-collars turned up to protect their necks and ears. After two
weeks of fine weather a detestable cold spell had set in, the farewell
of winter, freezing up everything and bringing chapped hands and
chilblains.
With her feet resting upon a vessel filled with hot water and her
form enveloped in soft furs that warmed her through her dress with a
velvety caress that was so deliciously agreeable to her sensitive skin,
the young woman was sadly reflecting that in an hour at farthest she
would have to take a cab to go and meet Mariolle at Auteuil. She was
seized by a strong desire to send him a telegram, but she had promised
herself more than two months ago that she would not again have recourse
to this expedient unless compelled to, for she had been making a great
effort to love him in the same manner that he loved her. She had seen
how he suffered, and had commiserated him, and after that conversation
when she had kissed him upon the eyes in an outburst of genuine
tenderness, her sincere affection for him had, in fact, assumed a
warmer and more expansive character. In her surprise at her involuntary
coldness she had asked herself why, after all, she could not love him
as other women love their lovers, since she knew that she was deeply
attached to him and that he was more pleasing to her than any other
man. This indifference of her love could only proceed from a sluggish
action of the heart, which could be cured like any other sluggishness.
She tried it. She endeavored to arouse her feelings by thoughts of him,
to be more demonstrative in his presence. She was successful now and
then, just as one excites his fears at night by thinking of ghosts or
robbers. Fired a little herself by this pretense of passion, she even
forced herself to be more caressing; she succeeded very well at first,
and delighted him to the point of intoxication.
She thought that this was the beginning in her of a fever somewhat
similar to that with which she knew that he was consuming. Her old
intermittent hopes of love, that she had dimly seen the possibility
of realizing the night that she had dreamed her dreams among the
white mists of Saint-Michel's Bay, took form and shape again, not so
seductive as then, less wrapped in clouds of poetry and idealism,
but more clearly defined, more human, stripped of illusion after the
experience of her _liaison_. Then she had summoned up and watched for
that irresistible impulse of all the being toward another being that
arises, she had heard, when the emotions of the soul act upon two
physical natures. She had watched in vain; it had never come.
She persisted, however, in feigning ardor, in making their interviews
more frequent, in saying to him: "I feel that I am coming to love you
more and more." But she became weary of it at last, and was powerless
longer to impose upon herself or deceive him. She was astonished to
find that the kisses that he gave her were becoming distasteful to her
after a while, although she was not by any means entirely insensible to
them.
This was made manifest to her by the vague lassitude that took
possession of her from the early morning of those days when she had an
appointment with him. Why was it that on those mornings she did not
feel, as other women feel, all her nature troubled by the desire and
anticipation of his embraces? She endured them, indeed she accepted
them, with tender resignation, but as a woman conquered, brutally
subjugated, responding contrary to her own will, never voluntarily
and with pleasure. Could it be that her nature, so delicate, so
exceptionally aristocratic and refined, had in it depths of modesty,
the modesty of a superior and sacred animality, that were as yet
unfathomed by modern perceptions?
Mariolle gradually came to understand this; he saw her factitious ardor
growing less and less. He divined the nature of her love-inspired
attempt, and a mortal, inconsolable sorrow took possession of his soul.
She knew now, as he knew, that the attempt had been made and that all
hope was gone. The proof of this was that this very day, wrapped as
she was in her warm furs and with her feet on her hot-water bottle,
glowing with a feeling of physical comfort as she watched the hail
beating against the windows of her _coupé_, she could not find in her
the courage to leave this luxurious warmth to get into an ice-cold cab
to go and meet the poor fellow.
The idea of breaking with him, of avoiding his caresses, certainly
never occurred to her for a moment. She was well aware that to
completely captivate a man who is in love and keep him as one's own
peculiar private property in the midst of feminine rivalries, a woman
must surrender herself to him body and soul. That she knew, for it is
logical, fated, indisputable. It is even the loyal course to pursue,
and she wanted to be loyal to him in all the uprightness of her nature
as his mistress. She would go to him then, she would go to him always;
but why so often? Would not their interviews even assume a greater
charm for him, an attraction of novelty, if they were granted more
charily, like rare and inestimable gifts presented to him by her and
not to be used too prodigally?
Whenever she had gone to Auteuil she had had the impression that she
was bearing to him a priceless gift, the most precious of offerings.
In giving in this way, the pleasure of giving is inseparable from a
certain sensation of sacrifice; it is the pride that one feels in
being generous, the satisfaction of conferring happiness, not the
transports of a mutual passion.
She even calculated that André's love would be more likely to be
enduring if she abated somewhat of her familiarity with him, for hunger
always increases by fasting, and desire is but an appetite. Immediately
that this resolution was formed she made up her mind that she would
go to Auteuil that day, but would feign indisposition. The journey,
which a minute ago had seemed to her so difficult through the inclement
weather, now appeared to her quite easy, and she understood, with a
smile at her own expense and at this sudden revelation, why she made
such a difficulty about a thing that was quite natural. But a moment
ago she would not, now she would. The reason why she would not a moment
ago was that she was anticipating the thousand petty disagreeable
details of the rendezvous! She would prick her fingers with pins that
she handled very awkwardly, she would be unable to find the articles
that she had thrown at random upon the bedroom floor as she disrobed in
haste, already looking forward to the hateful task of having to dress
without an attendant.
She paused at this reflection, dwelling upon it and weighing it
carefully for the first time. After all, was it not rather repugnant,
rather vulgarizing, this idea of a rendezvous for a stated time,
settled upon a day or two days in advance, just like a business
appointment or a consultation with your doctor? There is nothing
more natural, after a long and charming _tête-à-tête_, than that the
lips which have been uttering warm, seductive words should meet in a
passionate kiss; but how different that was from the premeditated
kiss that she went there to receive, watch in hand, once a week. There
was so much truth in this that on those days when she was not to see
André she had frequently felt a vague desire of being with him, while
this desire was scarcely perceptible at all when she had to go to him
in foul cabs, through squalid streets, with the cunning of a hunted
thief, all her feelings toward him quenched and deadened by these
considerations.
Ah! that appointment at Auteuil! She had calculated the time on all the
clocks of all her friends; she had watched the minutes that brought her
nearer to it slip away at Mme. de Frémines's, at Mme. de Bratiane's,
at pretty Mme. le Prieur's, on those afternoons when she killed time
by roaming about Paris so as not to remain in her own house, where she
might be detained by an inopportune visit or some other unforeseen
obstacle.
She suddenly said to herself: "I will make to-day a day of rest; I
will go there very late." Then she opened a little cupboard in the
front of the carriage, concealed among the folds of black silk that
lined the _coupé_, which was fitted up as luxuriously as a pretty
woman's boudoir. The first thing that presented itself when she had
thrown open the doors of this secret receptacle was a mirror playing on
hinges that she moved so that it was on a level with her face. Behind
the mirror, in their satin-lined niches, were various small objects
in silver: a box for her rice-powder, a pencil for her lips, two
crystal scent-bottles, an inkstand and penholder, scissors, a pretty
paper-cutter to tear the leaves of the last novel with which she amused
herself as she rolled along the streets. The exquisite clock, of the
size and shape of a walnut, told her that it was four o'clock. Mme. de
Burne reflected: "I have an hour yet, at all events," and she touched
a spring that had the effect of making the footman who was seated
beside the coachman stoop and take up the speaking-tube to receive her
order. She pulled out the other end from where it was concealed in the
lining of the carriage, and applying her lips to the mouthpiece of
rock-crystal: "To the Austrian embassy!" she said.
Then she inspected herself in the mirror. The look that she gave
herself expressed, as it always did, the delight that one feels in
looking upon one's best beloved; then she threw back her furs to judge
of the effect of her corsage. It was a toilette adapted to the chill
days of the end of winter. The neck was trimmed with a bordering of
very fine white down that shaded off into a delicate gray as it fell
over the shoulders, like the wing of a bird. Upon her hat--it was
a kind of toque--there towered an aigret of more brightly colored
feathers, and the general effect that her costume inspired was to make
one think that she had got herself up in this manner in preparation
for a flight through the hail and the gray sky in company with Mother
Carey's chickens.
She was still complacently contemplating herself when the carriage
suddenly wheeled into the great court of the embassy.
Thereupon she arranged her wrap, lowered the mirror to its place,
closed the doors of the little cupboard, and when the _coupé_ had come
to a halt said to her coachman: "You may go home; I shall not need
you any more." Then she asked the footman who came forward from the
entrance of the hotel: "Is the Princess at home?"
"Yes, Madame."
She entered and ascended the stairs and came to a small drawing-room
where the Princess de Malten was writing letters.
The ambassadress arose with an appearance of much satisfaction when she
perceived her friend, and they kissed each other twice in succession
upon the cheek, close to the corner of the lips. Then they seated
themselves side by side upon two low chairs in front of the fire.
They were very fond of each other, took great delight in each other's
society and understood each other thoroughly, for they were almost
counterparts in nature and disposition, belonging to the same race of
femininity, brought up in the same atmosphere and endowed with the
same sensations, although Mme. de Malten was a Swede and had married
an Austrian. They had a strange and mysterious attraction for each
other, from which resulted a profound feeling of unmixed well-being
and contentment whenever they were together. Their babble would run on
for half a day on end, without once stopping, trivial, futile talk,
interesting to them both by reason of their similarity of tastes.
"You see how I love you!" said Mme. de Burne. "You are to dine with me
this evening, and still I could not help coming to see you. It is a
real passion, my dear."
"A passion that I share," the Swede replied with a smile.
Following the habit of their profession, they put each her best foot
foremost for the benefit of the other; coquettish as if they had been
dealing with a man, but with a different style of coquetry, for the
strife was different, and they had not before them the adversary, but
the rival.
Madame de Burne had kept looking at the clock during the conversation.
It was on the point of striking five. He had been waiting there an
hour. "That is long enough," she said to herself as she arose.
"So soon?" said the Princess.
"Yes," the other unblushingly replied. "I am in a hurry; there is some
one waiting for me. I would a great deal rather stay here with you."
They exchanged kisses again, and Mme. de Burne, having requested the
footman to call a cab for her, drove away.
The horse was lame and dragged the cab after him wearily, and the
animal's halting and fatigue seemed to have infected the young woman.
Like the broken-winded beast, she found the journey long and difficult.
At one moment she was comforted by the pleasure of seeing André, at
the next she was in despair at the thought of the discomforts of the
interview.
She found him waiting for her behind the gate, shivering. The biting
blasts roared through the branches of the trees, the hailstones rattled
on their umbrella as they made their way to the house, their feet sank
deep into the mud. The garden was dead, dismal, miry, melancholy, and
André was very pale. He was enduring terrible suffering.
When they were in the house: "Gracious, how cold it is!" she exclaimed.
And yet a great fire was blazing in each of the two rooms, but they had
not been lighted until past noon and had not had time to dry the damp
walls, and shivers ran through her frame. "I think that I will not take
off my furs just yet," she added. She only unbuttoned her outer garment
and threw it open, disclosing her warm costume and her plume-decked
corsage, like a bird of passage that never remains long in one place.
He seated himself beside her.
"There is to be a delightful dinner at my house to-night," she said,
"and I am enjoying it in anticipation."
"Who are to be there?"
"Why, you, in the first place; then Prédolé, whom I have so long wanted
to know."
"Ah! Prédolé is to be there?"
"Yes; Lamarthe is to bring him."
"But Prédolé is not the kind of a man to suit you, not a bit! Sculptors
in general are not so constituted as to please pretty women, and
Prédolé less so than any of them."
"Oh, my friend, that cannot be. I have such an admiration for him!"
The sculptor Prédolé had gained a great success and had captivated all
Paris some two months before by his exhibition at the Varin gallery.
Even before that he had been highly appreciated; people had said of
him, "His _figurines_ are delicious"; but when the world of artists and
connoisseurs had assembled to pass judgment upon his collected works
in the rooms of the Rue Varin, the outburst of enthusiasm had been
explosive. They seemed to afford the revelation of such an unlooked-for
charm, they displayed such a peculiar gift in the translation of
elegance and grace, that it seemed as if a new manner of expressing the
beauty of form had been born to the world. His specialty was statuettes
in extremely abbreviated costumes, in which his genius displayed an
unimaginable delicacy of form and airy lightness. His dancing girls,
especially, of which he had made many studies, displayed in the highest
perfection, in their pose and the harmony of their attitude and motion,
the ideal of female beauty and suppleness.
For a month past Mme. de Burne had been unceasing in her efforts to
attract him to her house, but the artist was unsociable, even something
of a bear, so the report ran. At last she had succeeded, thanks to
the intervention of Lamarthe, who had made a touching, almost frantic
appeal to the grateful sculptor.
"Whom have you besides?" Mariolle inquired.
"The Princess de Malten."
He was displeased; he did not fancy that woman. "Who else?"
"Massival, Bernhaus, and George de Maltry. That is all: only my select
circle. You are acquainted with Prédolé, are you not?"
"Yes, slightly."
"How do you like him?"
"He is delightful; I never met a man so enamored of his art and so
interesting when he holds forth on it."
She was delighted and again said: "It will be charming."
He had taken her hand under her fur cloak; he gave it a little squeeze,
then kissed it. Then all at once it came to her mind that she had
forgotten to tell him that she was ill, and casting about on the spur
of the moment for another reason, she murmured: "Gracious! how cold it
is!"
"Do you think so?"
"I am chilled to my very marrow."
He arose to take a look at the thermometer, which was, in fact, pretty
low; then he resumed his seat at her side.
She had said: "Gracious! how cold it is!" and he believed that he
understood her. For three weeks, now, at every one of their interviews,
he had noticed that her attempt to feign tenderness was gradually
becoming fainter and fainter. He saw that she was weary of wearing this
mask, so weary that she could continue it no longer, and he himself was
so exasperated by the little power that he had over her, so stung by
his vain and unreasoning desire of this woman, that he was beginning
to say to himself in his despairing moments of solitude: "It will be
better to break with her than to continue to live like this."
He asked her, by way of fathoming her intentions: "Won't you take off
your cloak now?"
"Oh, no," she said; "I have been coughing all the morning; this fearful
weather has given me a sore throat. I am afraid that I may be ill." She
was silent a moment, then added: "If I had not wanted to see you very
much indeed I would not have come to-day." As he did not reply, in his
grief and anger, she went on: "This return of cold weather is very
dangerous, coming as it does after the fine days of the past two weeks."
She looked out into the garden, where the trees were already almost
green despite the clouds of snow that were driving among their
branches. He looked at her and thought: "So that is the kind of love
that she feels for me!" and for the first time he began to feel a sort
of jealous hatred of her, of her face, of her elusive affection, of
her form, so long pursued, so subtle to escape him. "She pretends that
she is cold," he said to himself. "She is cold only because I am here.
If it were a question of some party of pleasure, some of those idiotic
caprices that go to make up the useless existence of these frivolous
creatures, she would brave everything and risk her life. Does she not
ride about in an open carriage on the coldest days to show her fine
clothes? Ah! that is the way with them all nowadays!"
He looked at her as she sat there facing him so calmly, and he knew
that in that head, that dear little head that he adored so, there was
one wish paramount, the wish that their _tête-à-tête_ might not be
protracted; it was becoming painful to her.
Was it true that there had ever existed, that there existed now,
women capable of passion, of emotion, who weep, suffer, and bestow
themselves in a transport, loving with heart and soul and body, with
mouth that speaks and eyes that gaze, with heart that beats and hand
that caresses; women ready to brave all for the sake of their love, and
to go, by day or by night, regardless of menaces and watchful eyes,
fearlessly, tremorously, to him who stands with open arms waiting to
receive them, mad, ready to sink with their happiness?
Oh, that horrible love that which now held him in its fetters!--love
without issue, without end, joyless and triumphless, eating away his
strength and devouring him with its anxieties; love in which there was
no charm and no delight, cause to him only of suffering, sorrow, and
bitter tears, where he was constantly pursued by the intolerable regret
of the impossibility of awaking responsive kisses upon lips that are as
cold and dry and sterile as dead trees!
He looked at her as she sat there, so charming in her feathery dress.
Were not her dresses the great enemy that he had to contend against,
more than the woman herself, jealous guardians, coquettish and costly
barriers, that kept him from his mistress?
"Your toilette is charming," he said, not caring to speak of the
subject that was torturing him so cruelly.
She replied with a smile: "You must see the one that I shall wear
to-night." Then she coughed several times in succession and said: "I
am really taking cold. Let me go, my friend. The sun will show himself
again shortly, and I will follow his example."
He made no effort to detain her, for he was discouraged, seeing that
nothing could now avail to overcome the inertia of this sluggish
nature, that his romance was ended, ended forever, and that it was
useless to hope for ardent words from those tranquil lips, or a
kindling glance from those calm eyes. All at once he felt rising with
gathering strength within him the stern determination to end this
torturing subserviency. She had nailed him upon a cross; he was
bleeding from every limb, and she watched his agony without feeling
for his suffering, even rejoicing that she had had it in her power to
effect so much. But he would tear himself from his deathly gibbet,
leaving there bits of his body, strips of his flesh, and all his
mangled heart. He would flee like a wild animal that the hunters have
wounded almost unto death, he would go and hide himself in some lonely
place where his wounds might heal and where he might feel only those
dull pangs that remain with the mutilated until they are released by
death.
"Farewell, then," he said.
She was struck by the sadness of his voice and rejoined: "Until this
evening, my friend."
"Until this evening," he re-echoed. "Farewell."
He saw her to the garden gate, and came back and seated himself, alone,
before the fire.
Alone! How cold it was; how cold, indeed! How sad he was, how lonely!
It was all ended! Ah, what a horrible thought! There was an end of
hoping and waiting for her, dreaming of her, with that fierce blazing
of the heart that at times brings out our existence upon this somber
earth with the vividness of fireworks displayed against the blackness
of the night. Farewell those nights of solitary emotion when, almost
until the dawn, he paced his chamber thinking of her; farewell those
wakings when, upon opening his eyes, he said to himself: "Soon I shall
see her at our little house."
How he loved her! how he loved her! What a long, hard task it would be
to him to forget her! She had left him because it was cold! He saw her
before him as but now, looking at him and bewitching him, bewitching
him the better to break his heart. Ah, how well she had done her work!
With one single stroke, the first and last, she had cleft it asunder.
He felt the old gaping wound begin to open, the wound that she had
dressed and now had made incurable by plunging into it the knife of
death-dealing indifference. He even felt that from this broken heart
there was something distilling itself through his frame, mounting to
his throat and choking him; then, covering his eyes with his hands, as
if to conceal this weakness even from himself, he wept.
She had left him because it was cold! He would have walked naked
through the driving snow to meet her, no matter where; he would have
cast himself from the house top, only to fall at her feet. An old tale
came to his mind, that has been made into a legend: that of the Côte
des Deux Amans, a spot which the traveler may behold as he journeys
toward Rouen. A maiden, obedient to her father's cruel caprice,
which prohibited her from marrying the man of her choice unless she
accomplished the task of carrying him, unassisted, to the summit of the
steep mountain, succeeded in dragging him up there on her hands and
knees, and died as she reached the top. Love, then, is but a legend,
made to be sung in verse or told in lying romances!
Had not his mistress herself, in one of their earliest interviews, made
use of an expression that he had never forgotten: "Men nowadays do not
love women so as really to harm themselves by it. You may believe me,
for I know them both." She had been wrong in his case, but not in her
own, for on another occasion she had said: "In any event, I give you
fair warning that I am incapable of being really smitten with anyone,
be he who he may."
Be he who he may? Was that quite a sure thing? Of him, no; of that he
was quite well assured now, but of another?
Of him? She could not love him. Why not?
Then the feeling that his life had been a wasted one, which had haunted
him for a long time past, fell upon him as if it would crush him. He
had done nothing, obtained nothing, conquered nothing, succeeded in
nothing. When he had felt an attraction toward the arts he had not
found in himself the courage that is required to devote one's self
exclusively to one of them, nor the persistent determination that they
demand as the price of success. There had been no triumph to cheer him;
no elevated taste for some noble career to ennoble and aggrandize his
mind. The only strenuous effort that he had ever put forth, the attempt
to conquer a woman's heart, had proved ineffectual like all the rest.
Take him all in all, he was only a miserable failure.
He was weeping still beneath his hands which he held pressed to his
eyes. The tears, trickling down his cheeks, wet his mustache and
left a salty taste upon his lips, and their bitterness increased his
wretchedness and his despair.
When he raised his head at last he saw that it was night. He had only
just sufficient time to go home and dress for her dinner.