Sentimental Education (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (19 page)

The words recalled to Frédéric those which had been sung by the man in rags between the paddle-wheels of the steamboat. His eyes involuntarily focused on the hem of a dress spread out before him. After each couplet there was a long pause, and the blowing of the wind through the trees resembled the sound of the waves.

Mademoiselle Vatnaz, pushing aside with one hand the branches of a privet that was blocking her view of the platform, gazed fixedly at the singer, her nostrils flaring, eyes half-closed, and as if lost in rapture.

“Ah!” said Arnoux. “I understand why you are at the Alhambra tonight! Delmas appeals to you, my dear!”

She would admit nothing.

“Oh! What modesty!”

And pointing to Frédéric:

“Is it because of him? You would be mistaken. No young man could be more discreet.”

The others, looking for their friend, came into the arbour. Hussonet introduced them. Arnoux distributed cigars and treated the group to water-ices.

Mademoiselle Vatnaz blushed the moment she saw Dussardier. She soon rose, and stretching out her hand towards him:

“You do not remember me, Monsieur Auguste?”

“How do you know her?” asked Frédéric.

“We used to live in the same house,” he replied.

Cisy pulled him by the sleeve; they went out; and, scarcely had they disappeared, when Madame Vatnaz began to sing his praises. She even went so far as to add that he possessed “genius of the heart.”

Then they chatted about Delmas, admitting that as a mimic he might be a success on the stage; and a discussion followed covering Shakespeare, Censorship, Style, the People, the receipts of the Porte Saint-Martin,
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Alexandre Dumas, Victor Hugo, and Dumersan.

Arnoux had known many celebrated actresses; the young men inclined their heads to hear what he had to say about these ladies. But his words were drowned out by the noise of the music; and, as soon as the quadrille or the polka was over, they all squatted round the tables, called the waiter, and laughed. Bottles of beer and of effervescent lemonade opened with a pop amid the foliage; women clucked like hens; now and then, two gentlemen started to fight; and a thief was arrested.

The dancers soon spilled over onto the walks. Panting, with flushed, smiling faces, they were caught up in a whirlwind which lifted up the gowns with the coat-tails. The trombones brayed more loudly; the rhythmic movement became more rapid. Behind the mediaeval cloister could be heard crackling sounds; fireworks went off; artificial suns began turning round; the gleam of the Bengal fires, like emeralds in colour, lighted up the entire garden for a minute; and, with the last rocket, a great sigh escaped from the assembled throng.

It slowly died away. A cloud of gunpowder floated into the air. Frédéric and Deslauriers were walking step by step through the midst of the crowd, when they happened to see something that made them suddenly stop: Martinon was in the act of paying some money at the cloakroom and he was accompanying a woman of fifty, ugly, magnificently dressed, and of questionable social rank.

“That sly dog,” said Deslauriers, “is not as simple as we imagine. But where in the world is Cisy?”

Dussardier pointed out to them the bar, where they perceived the noble youth, with a bowl of punch before him, and a pink hat by his side, to keep him company. Hussonnet, who had been away for the past few minutes, reappeared at the same moment.

A young girl was leaning on his arm, and addressing him in a loud voice as “My little cat.”

“Oh! no!” he said to her—“not in public! Call me rather ‘Vicomte.’ That gives one a cavalier style—Louis XIII. and floppy leather boots—the sort of thing I like! Yes, my good friends, this is an old flame—nice, isn’t she?”—and he took her by the chin—“Salute these gentlemen! they are all the sons of peers of France. I keep company with them in order that they may get an appointment for me as an ambassador.”

“How insane you are!” sighed Mademoiselle Vatnaz. She asked Dussardier to see her as far as her own door.

Arnoux watched them going off; then, turning towards Frederic:

“Did you like Vatnaz? At any rate, you’re not quite frank about these affairs. I believe you keep your amours hidden.”

Frédéric, turning pale, swore that he kept nothing hidden.

“Can it be possible you don’t know what it is to have a mistress?” said Arnoux.

Frédéric felt a longing to mention a woman’s name at random. But the story might be repeated to her. So he replied that as a matter of fact he had no mistress.

The art-dealer reproached him for this.

“This evening you had a good opportunity! Why didn’t you do like the others, each of whom went off with a woman?”

“Well, and what about yourself?” said Frédéric, provoked by his persistency.

“Oh! myself—that’s quite a different matter, my lad! I go home to my own one!”

Then he called a cab, and disappeared.

The two friends walked towards their own destination. An east wind was blowing. They did not exchange a word. Deslauriers was regretting that he had not succeeded in making an impression before a certain newspaper-manager, and Frédéric was lost once more in his melancholy broodings. Finally, breaking the silence, he said that this ball appeared to him a stupid affair.

“Whose fault is it? If you had not left us, to join that Arnoux of yours—”

“Bah! anything I could have done would have been utterly useless!”

But the clerk had theories of his own. All that was necessary in order to get a thing was to desire it strongly.

“Nevertheless, you yourself, a little while ago—”

“I don’t care a straw about that sort of thing!” returned Deslauriers, cutting short Frédéric’s allusion.

“Am I going to get entangled with women?”

And he expressed his distaste for their affectations, their silly ways—in short, he disliked them.

“Don’t be pretending, then!” said Frédéric.

Deslauriers became silent. Then, suddenly:

“Will you bet me a hundred francs that I won’t ‘make out’ with the first woman that passes?”

“Yes—it’s a bet!”

The first who passed was a hideous-looking beggar-woman, and they were giving up all hope of an opportunity presenting itself when, in the middle of the Rue de Rivoli, they saw a tall girl with a little box in her hand.

Deslauriers accosted her under the arcades. She turned abruptly by the Tuileries, and soon diverged into the Place du Carrousel. She glanced to the right and to the left. She ran after a hackney-coach; Deslauriers overtook her. He walked by her side, talking to her with expressive gestures. After a while, she accepted his arm, and they went on together along the quays. Then, when they reached the hill in front of the Châtelet, they strolled up and down for at least twenty minutes, like two sailors keeping watch. Then, all of a sudden, they passed over the Pont-au-Change, through the Flower Market, and along the Quai Napoleon. Frédéric came up behind them. Deslauriers gave him the impression that he would be in their way, and had only to follow his own example.

“How much have you got still?”

“Two hundred sous.”

“That’s enough—good night to you!”

Frédéric was seized with the astonishment one feels at seeing a practical joke succeed.

“He’s just pulling my leg,” was his thought. “Suppose I went back again?”

Perhaps Deslauriers imagined that he was envious of this love! “As if I had not one a hundred times more rare, more noble, more absorbing.” He felt a sort of angry feeling propelling him onward. He arrived in front of Madame Arnoux’s door.

None of the outer windows belonged to her rooms. Nevertheless, he remained with his eyes glued to the front of the house—as if he could, by his contemplation, break open the walls. No doubt, she was now deep in repose, tranquil as a sleeping flower, with her beautiful black hair resting on the lace of the pillow, her lips slightly parted, and one arm under her head. Then Arnoux’s head rose before him, and he rushed away to escape this vision.

The advice which Deslauriers had given to him came back suddenly. It only filled him with horror. Then he walked about the streets.

When a pedestrian approached, he tried to distinguish the face. From time to time a ray of light passed between his legs, tracing a great quarter of a circle on the pavement; and in the shadows a man appeared with his basket and his lantern. The wind, here and there, made the sheet-iron flue of a chimney shake. Distant sounds reached his ears, mingling with the buzzing in his brain; and it seemed to him that he was listening to the indistinct flourish of quadrille music. His movements as he walked on perpetuated his feeling of intoxication. He found himself on the Pont de la Concorde.

Then he recalled that evening the previous winter, when, as he left her house for the first time, he was forced to stand still, so rapidly did his heart beat with the hopes that clasped it. And now they had all withered!

Dark clouds were drifting across the face of the moon. He gazed at it, musing on the vastness of space, the wretchedness of life, the nothingness of everything. The day dawned; his teeth began to chatter, and, half-asleep, wet with the morning mist, and bathed in tears, he asked himself, Why should I not make an end of it? All that was necessary was a single movement. The weight of his forehead dragged him along—he imagined his own dead body floating in the water. Frédéric stooped down. The parapet was rather wide, and it was through pure weariness that he did not make the attempt to leap over it.

Then fear swept over him. He reached the boulevards once more, and sank down upon a seat. He was aroused by some police-officers, who were convinced that he had been indulging a little too freely.

He resumed his walk. But, as he was exceedingly hungry, and as all the restaurants were closed, he went to get a “snack” at a tavern by the fish-markets; after which, thinking it too soon to go in yet, he kept sauntering about the Hotel de Ville till a quarter past eight.

Deslauriers had long since gotten rid of his little tart; and he was writing at the table in the middle of his room. About four o’clock, M. de Cisy came in.

Thanks to Dussardier, he had enjoyed the society of a lady the night before; and he had even accompanied her home in the carriage with her husband to the very threshold of their house, where she had suggested meeting again. He had just left her. They had never heard her name before.

“And what do you propose that I do?” said Frédéric.

Thereupon the young gentleman began to ramble; he mentioned Mademoiselle Vatnaz, the Andalusian, and all the rest. Finally, with much circumlocution, he stated the object of his visit. Trusting in the discretion of his friend, he came to ask him for his assistance in taking an important step, after which he might definitely consider himself to be a man; and Frédéric showed no reluctance. He told the story to Deslauriers without explaining his part in it.

The clerk was of the opinion that he was now doing very well. This respect for his advice increased his good humour. It was through good humour that he had seduced, on the very first night, Mademoiselle Clémence Daviou, embroideress of military uniforms, the sweetest creature that ever lived, as slender as a reed, with large blue eyes, perpetually wide with wonder. The clerk had taken advantage of her simplicity to such an extent as to make her believe that he had been decorated. When they were alone together he wore his frock-coat adorned with a red ribbon, but did not wear it in public in order, as he put it, not to humiliate his employer. However, he kept her at a distance, allowed himself to be fawned upon, like a pasha, and, as a joke called her “daughter of the people.” Every time they met, she brought him little bunches of violets. Frédéric would not have cared for a love affair of this sort.

Meanwhile, whenever they went out arm-in-arm to dine at Pinson’s or Barillot‘s, he experienced a strange depression. Frédéric did not realise how much pain he had made Deslauriers endure for the past year, while brushing his nails before going out to dine in the Rue de Choiseul!

One evening, when from his balcony, he had just watched them as they went out together, he saw Hussonnet, some distance off, on the Pont d’Arcole. The Bohemian began calling him by making signals, and, when Frédéric had descended the five flights of stairs:

“Here is the thing—it is next Saturday, the 24th, Madame Arnoux’s feast-day.”

“How is that, when her name is Marie?”

“And Angèle also—no matter! They will entertain their guests at their country-house at Saint-Cloud. I was told to give you due notice about it. You’ll find a carriage at the magazine-office at three o’clock. That’s settled then! Excuse me for having disturbed you! But I have such a number of calls to make!”

Frédéric had scarcely turned round when his concierge placed a letter in his hand:

“Monsieur and Madame Dambreuse beg of Monsieur F. Moreau to do them the honour to come and dine with them on Saturday the 24th inst.—R.S.V.P.”

“Too late!” he said to himself. Nevertheless, he showed the letter to Deslauriers, who exclaimed:

“Ha! at last! But you don’t look as if you were pleased. Why?”

After some little hesitation, Frédéric said that he had another invitation for the same day.

“Do me the favor of sending the Rue de Choiseul packing! I’m not joking! I’ll answer this for you if it embarrasses you.”

And the clerk wrote an acceptance of the invitation in the third person.

Having seen nothing of the world save through the fever of his desires, he pictured it as an artificial creation functioning by virtue of mathematical laws. A dinner in the city, a meeting with a man in high office, a smile from a pretty woman, might, by a series of actions deducing themselves from one another, have gigantic results. Certain Parisian drawing-rooms were like those machines which take a material in the rough and render it a hundred times more valuable. He believed in courtesans advising diplomats, in wealthy marriages brought about by intrigues, in the cleverness of criminals, in the capacity of strong men for getting the better of fortune. In short, he considered it so useful to visit the Dambreuses, and talked about it so plausibly, that Frédéric was at a loss to know what was the best course to take.