Sentimental Education (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (17 page)

“He’s got you beaten, hasn’t he?” said Deslauriers.

There is nothing so humiliating as to see blockheads succeed in undertakings in which we fail. Frédéric, filled with vexation, replied that he did not care a straw about the matter. He had higher pretensions; and as Hussonnet made a show of leaving, Frédéric took him aside, and said to him:

“Not a word about this to them, mind you!”

It was easy to keep it secret, since Arnoux was leaving the next morning for Germany.

When he came back in the evening the clerk found his friend singularly changed: he danced about and whistled; and the other was astonished at this capricious change of mood. Frédéric declared that he did not intend to go home to his mother, as he meant to spend his holidays working.

At the news of Arnoux’s departure, a feeling of delight had taken possession of him. He might present himself at the house whenever he liked without any fear of having his visits broken in upon. The consciousness of absolute security would make him self-confident. At last he would not have to be aloof, he would not be separated from her! Something more powerful than an iron chain attached him to Paris; a voice from the depths of his heart called out to him to remain.

There were certain obstacles in his path. These he got over by writing to his mother: he first of all admitted that he had failed to pass, owing to alterations made in the course—a mere mischance—an unfair thing; besides, all the great lawyers (he referred to them by name) had been rejected at their examinations. But he calculated on presenting himself again in the month of November. Now, having no time to lose, he would not go home this year; and he asked, in addition to the quarterly allowance, for two hundred and fifty francs, to get coached in law by a private tutor, which would be of great assistance to him; and he threw around the entire epistle a garland of regrets, condolences, expressions of endearment, and protestations of filial love.

Madame Moreau, who had been expecting him the following day, was doubly grieved. She threw a veil over her son’s misadventure, and in answer told him to “come all the same.” Frédéric would not give way, and the result was a falling out between them. However, at the end of the week, he received the amount of the quarter’s allowance together with the sum required for the payment of the private tutor, which helped to pay for a pair of pearl-grey trousers, a white felt hat, and a gold-headed switch.

When he had procured all these things he thought:

“Perhaps this is only a silly whim!”

And a feeling of considerable hesitation took possession of him.

In order to make sure as to whether he ought to call on Madame Arnoux, he tossed three coins into the air in succession. On each occasion luck was in his favour. So then Fate must have ordained it. He hailed a cab and drove to the Rue de Choiseul.

He quickly ascended the staircase and pulled the bell-cord, but without effect. He felt as if he were about to faint.

Then, with fierce energy, he shook the heavy silk tassel. There was a resounding peal which gradually died away till no further sound was heard. Frédéric got rather frightened.

He pasted his ear to the door—not a breath! He looked in through the key-hole, and only saw two reeds on the wall-paper in the midst of designs of flowers. At last, he was on the point of going away when he changed his mind. This time, he gave a timid little ring. The door flew open, and Arnoux himself appeared on the threshold, with his hair all in disorder, his face crimson, and his features distorted by an expression of sullen embarrassment.

“Hello! What the devil brings you here? Come in!”

He led Frédéric, not into the boudoir or into the bed-room, but into the dining-room, where on the table could be seen a bottle of champagne and two glasses; and, in an abrupt tone:

“There is something you want to ask me, my dear friend?”

“No! nothing! nothing!” stammered the young man, trying to think of some excuse for his visit.

At last, he said to Arnoux that he had called to know whether they had heard from him, as Hussonnet had announced that he had gone to Germany.

“Not at all!” returned Arnoux. “What a feather-headed fellow that is to take everything in the wrong way!”

In order to conceal his agitation, Frédéric kept walking around the dining-room. Happening to come into contact with a chair, he knocked down a parasol which had been laid across it, and the ivory handle broke.

“Good heavens!” he exclaimed. “How sorry I am for having broken Madame Arnoux’s parasol!”

At this remark, the art-dealer raised his head and smiled in a very peculiar fashion. Frédéric, seizing the opportunity thus offered to talk about her, added shyly:

“Could I see her?”

No. She had gone to the country to see her sick mother.

He did not venture to ask any questions as to the length of time that she would be away. He merely enquired what region Madame Arnoux’ came from.

“Chartres. Does this astonish you?”

“Astonish me? Oh, no! Why should it! Not in the least!”

After that, they could find absolutely nothing to talk about. Arnoux, having made a cigarette for himself, kept walking round the table, puffing. Frédéric, standing near the stove, stared at the walls, the whatnot, and the floor; and delightful pictures flitted through his memory, or, rather, before his eyes. Then he decided to leave.

A piece of a newspaper, rolled up into a ball, lay on the floor in the hall. Arnoux snatched it up, and, raising himself on the tips of his toes, he stuck it into the bell, in order, as he said, that he might be able to go and finish his interrupted siesta. Then, as he shook Frédéric’s hand:

“Kindly tell the concierge that I am not in.”

And he shut the door after him with a bang.

Frédéric descended the staircase step by step. The failure of this first attempt discouraged him as to the possible results of those that might follow. Then began three months of absolute boredom. As he had nothing to do, his melancholy was only aggravated by his inactivity.

He spent whole hours gazing from the top of his balcony at the river as it flowed between the quays, with their bulwarks of grey stone, blackened here and there by the seams of the sewers, with a pontoon of washerwomen moored close to the bank, where some children were amusing themselves by making a water-spaniel swim in the slime. His eyes, turning away from the stone bridge of Nôtre Dame and the three suspension bridges, continually directed their glance towards the Quai-aux-Ormes, resting on a group of old trees, resembling the linden-trees of the Montereau wharf. The Saint-Jacques tower, the Hotel de Ville, Saint-Gervais, Saint-Louis, and Saint-Paul, rose up in front of him amid a confused mass of roofs; and the genius of the July Column glittered at the eastern side like a large gold star, whilst at the other end the dome of the Tuileries showed its outlines against the sky in one great round mass of blue.
¹⁸
Madame Arnoux’s house must be on this side in the rear!

He went back to his bedchamber; then, throwing himself on the sofa, he abandoned himself to a confused succession of thoughts—work plans, schemes dreams of the future. At last, in order to shake off his broodings, he went out into the fresh air.

He wandered at random into the Latin Quarter, usually so noisy, but deserted at this particular time, for the students had gone back to join their families. The huge walls of the colleges, which the silence seemed to lengthen, looked that much more melancholy. All sorts of peaceful sounds could be heard—the flapping of wings in cages, the noise made by the turning of a lathe, or the strokes of a cobbler’s hammer; and the old-clothes men, standing in the middle of the street, looked up at each house fruitlessly. In the interior of a solitary café the barmaid was yawning between her two full decanters. The newspapers were left undisturbed on the tables of reading-rooms. In the ironing establishments linen quivered under the gusts of tepid wind. From time to time he stopped to look at the window of a secondhand book-shop; an omnibus which grazed the sidewalk as it came rumbling along made him turn round; and, when he found himself before the Luxembourg gardens,
^s
he went no further.

Occasionally he was drawn towards the boulevards in the hope of finding something there that might amuse him. After he had passed through dark alleys, where his nostrils were greeted by fresh moist odours, he reached vast, desolate, open spaces, dazzling with light, in which monuments cast dark shadows at the side of the pavement. But once more the wagons and the shops appeared, and the crowd had the effect of stunning him, especially on Sunday, when, from the Bastille to the Madeleine, it kept swaying in one immense flood over the asphalt, in the midst of a cloud of dust, in an incessant clamour. He felt disgusted at the meanness of the faces, the silliness of the talk, and the idiotic self-satisfaction that seeped through these sweaty brows. However, the consciousness of being superior to these individuals mitigated the weariness which he experienced in gazing at them.

Every day he went to the office of
L’ Art Industriel;
and in order to ascertain when Madame Arnoux would be back, he made elaborate enquiries about her mother. Arnoux’s answer never varied—“the change for the better was continuing”—his wife, with his little daughter, would be returning the following week. The longer she delayed in coming back, the more uneasiness Frédéric exhibited, so that Arnoux, touched by so much affection, brought him five or six times a week to dine at a restaurant.

In the long talks which they had together on these occasions Frédéric discovered that the art-dealer was not a very intellectual man. Arnoux might take notice of his cooler manner; and now Frédéric deemed it advisable to pay back, in a small way, his kindness.

So, being anxious to do things nicely the young man sold all his new clothes to a secondhand clothes-dealer for the sum of eighty francs, and having added to it a hundred more francs which he had left, he called at Arnoux’s house to bring him out to dine. Regimbart happened to be there, and all three of them set forth for Les Trois Frères Provençaux.

The Citizen began by taking off his frock-coat, and, knowing that the two others would defer to his gastronomic tastes, drew up the
menu.
But in vain did he make his way to the kitchen to speak to the
chef,
go down to the cellar, with every corner of which he was familiar, and send for the master of the establishment, who he blew up at. He was not satisfied with the dishes, the wines, or the attendance. At each new dish, at each fresh bottle, as soon as he had swallowed the first mouthful, the first draught, he threw down his fork or pushed his glass some distance away from him; then, leaning on his elbows on the table-cloth, and stretching out his arms, he declared in a loud tone that he could no longer dine in Paris! Finally, not knowing what to put into his mouth, Regimbart ordered haricots dressed with oil, “quite plain,” which, though only a partial success, slightly appeased him. Then he had a talk with the waiter all about the latter’s predecessors at the “Provencaux”:—“What had become of Antoine? And a fellow named Eugène? And Théodore, the little fellow who always used to attend down stairs? There was much finer fare in those days, and Burgundy vintages the like of which they would never see again.”

Then there was a discussion as to the value of property in the suburbs, Arnoux having speculated in that way, and looked on it as a safe thing. In the meantime, however, he was losing interest on his money. As he did not want to sell out at any price, Regimbart would find out some one; and so these two gentlemen proceeded at the close of the dessert to make calculations with a lead pencil.

They went out to get coffee in the bar on the ground-floor in the Passage du Saumon. Frédéric had to remain on his feet while interminable games of billiards were being played, drenched in innumerable glasses of beer; and he lingered on there till midnight without knowing why, through lack of energy, through sheer senselessness, in the vague expectation that something might happen which would give a favourable turn to his love.

When, then, would he next see her? Frédéric was in a state of despair about it. But, one evening, towards the close of November, Arnoux said to him:

“My wife, you know, came back yesterday!”

Next day, at five o
clock, he made his way to her house. He began by congratulating her on her mother’s recovery from such a serious illness.

“Why, no! Who told you that?”

“Arnoux!”

She let out a slight “Ah!” then added that she had grave fears at first, which, however, had now been dispelled. She was seated close beside the fire in an upholstered easy-chair. He was on the sofa, with his hat between his knees; and the conversation was difficult to carry on, as it was broken off nearly every minute, so he had no chance of voicing his sentiments. But, when he began to complain of having to study legal quibbles, she answered, “Oh! I understand—business!” and she let her face fall, buried suddenly in her own reflections.