Sentimental Education (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (30 page)

In fact, Arnoux, in order to make a good speculation, had refused to sell his properties, had borrowed money extensively on them, and finding no purchasers, had thought of rehabilitating himself by establishing the earthenware manufactory. The expense of this had exceeded his calculations. She knew nothing more about it. He evaded all her questions, and declared repeatedly that it was going very well.

Frédéric tried to reassure her. These in all probability were mere temporary troubles. However, if he got any information, he would impart it to her.

“Oh! yes, will you not?” said she, clasping her two hands with an air of charming supplication.

So then, he had it in his power to be useful to her. He was now entering into her existence—finding a place in her heart.

Arnoux appeared.

“Ah! how nice of you to come to take me out to dine!”

Frédéric was silent on hearing these words.

Arnoux spoke about general topics, then informed his wife that he would be returning home very late, as he had an appointment with M. Oudry.

“At his house?”

“Why, certainly, at his house.”

As they went down the stairs, he confessed that, as the Maréchale was free, they were going on a secret pleasure-party to the Moulin Rouge; and, as he always needed somebody to confide in, he got Frédéric to accompany him as far as the door.

Instead of entering, he walked about on the sidewalk, looking up at the windows on the second floor. Suddenly the curtains parted.

“Ah! bravo! Père Oudry is no longer there! Good evening!”

Frédéric did not know what to think now.

From this day forth, Arnoux was still more cordial than before; he invited the young man to dine with his mistress; and ere long Frédéric frequented both houses at the same time.

Rosanette’s abode furnished him with amusement. They used to call there on their way back from a club or a play. They would have a cup of tea there, or play a game of lotto. On Sundays they played charades; Rosanette, more boisterous than the rest, became known for her funny tricks, such as running on all-fours or sticking a cotton cap on her head. In order to watch the passers-by through the window, she wore a hat of waxed leather; she smoked cigars; she sang Tyrolean yodeling songs. In the afternoon, to kill time, she cut flowers out of a piece of chintz and pasted them on the windows, put rouge on her two little dogs, burned incense, or drew cards to tell her fortune. Incapable of resisting a desire, she became infatuated about some trinket which she happened to see, and could not sleep till she had gone and bought it, then bartered it for another, sold costly dresses for little or nothing, lost her jewellery, squandered money, and would have sold her chemise for a loge-box at the theatre. Often she asked Frédéric to explain to her some word she came across when reading a book, but did not pay any attention to his answer, for she jumped quickly to another idea, while heaping questions on top of each other. After spasms of gaiety came childish outbursts of rage, or else she sat on the ground dreaming before the fire with her head down and her hands clasping her knees, more inert than a torpid snake. Without minding it, she dressed in his presence, drew on her silk stockings, then washed her face with great splashes of water, throwing her body backwards as if she were a shivering water nymph; and her laughing white teeth, her sparkling eyes, her beauty, her gaiety, dazzled Frédéric, and made his nerves tingle under the lash of desire.

Nearly always he found Madame Arnoux teaching her little boy how to read, or standing behind Marthe’s chair while she played her scales on the piano. When she was doing a piece of sewing, it was a great source of delight to him to pick up her scissors now and then. In all her movements there was a tranquil majesty. Her little hands seemed made to scatter alms and to wipe away tears, and her voice, naturally rather soft, had a caressing tone and a sort of breezy lightness.

She did not display much enthusiasm about literature; but her intelligence exercised a charm by the use of a few simple and penetrating words. She loved travelling, the sound of the wind in the woods, and a walk with uncovered head in the rain.

Frédéric listened to these confidences with rapture, fancying that he saw in them the beginning of a certain self abandonment on her part.

His association with these two women made, as it were, two different strains of music in his life, the one playful, passionate, diverting, the other serious and almost religious, and vibrating at the same time, they grew louder and gradually blended with one another; for if Madame Arnoux happened merely to touch him with her finger, the image of the other immediately presented itself as an object of desire, because in her case his chances were better, and, when his heart happened to be touched while in Rosanette’s company, he immediately remembered his great love.

This confusion was, in some measure, due to a similarity which existed between the interiors of the two houses. One of the trunks which was formerly to be seen in the Boulevard Montmartre now adorned Rosanette’s dining-room. The same courses were served up for dinner in both places, and even the same velvet cap was to be found lying on an easy-chair; then, a heap of little presents—screens, boxes, fans—went to the mistress’s house from the wife’s and returned again, for Arnoux, without the slightest embarrassment, often took back from the one what he had given to her in order to make a present of it to the other.

The Maréchale laughed with Frédéric at the utter disregard for propriety which his habits exhibited. One Sunday, after dinner, she led him behind the door, and showed him in the pocket of Arnoux’s overcoat a sac of cakes which he had just pilfered from the table, in order, no doubt, to surprise his little family with at home. M. Arnoux gave in to some little tricks which bordered on dishonesty. It seemed to him a duty to practise fraud with regard to the city dues; he never paid when he went to the theatre, or if he took a ticket for the upper level seats always tried to make his way into the orchestra seats; and he used to relate as an excellent joke that it was a custom of his at the cold baths to put into the attendants’ collection-box a trouser-button instead of a ten-sous piece—and this did not prevent the Maréchale from loving him.

One day, however, she said, while talking about him:

“Ah! he’s getting on my nerves! I’ve had enough of him! Too bad—I’ll find another!”

Frédéric believed that the other had already been found, and that his name was M. Oudry.

“Well,” said Rosanette, “what does it matter?”

Then, in a voice choked with tears:

“I ask very little from him, and yet he won’t do it, the animal! He just won’t do it. As for his promises, well ...”

He had even promised a fourth of his profits in the famous kaolin mines. No profit made its appearance any more than the cashmere with which he had been luring her for the last six months.

Frédéric immediately thought of offering it to her as a present. Arnoux might regard it as a lesson for himself, and be annoyed by it.

For all that, he was good-natured, his wife herself said so, but so foolish! Instead of bringing people to dine every day at his house, he now entertained his acquaintances at a restaurant. He bought things that were utterly useless, such as gold chains, timepieces, and household articles. Madame Arnoux even pointed out to Frédéric in the lobby an enormous supply of tea-kettles, foot-warmers, and samovars. Finally, she one day confessed that a certain matter caused her much anxiety. Arnoux had made her sign a check payable to M. Dambreuse.

Meanwhile Frédéric still cherished his literary projects as if it were a point of honour with himself to do so. He wished to write a history of aesthetics, a result of his conversations with Pellerin; next, to write dramas dealing with different epochs of the French Revolution, and to compose a great comedy, an idea traceable to the indirect influence of Deslauriers and Hussonnet. In the midst of his work the face of one or the other of the two women passed before his mental vision. He struggled against the longing to see her, but was not long ere he yielded to it; and he felt sadder as he came back from Madame Arnoux’s house.

One morning, while he was brooding over his melancholy thoughts by the fireside, Deslauriers came in. The incendiary speeches of Sénécal had filled his employer with uneasiness, and once more he found himself without any income.

“What do you want me to do?” said Frédéric.

“Nothing! I know you have no money. But it will not be much trouble for you to get him a post either through M. Dambreuse or else through Arnoux. The latter ought to have need of engineers in his establishment.”

Frédéric had an inspiration. Sénécal would be able to let him know when the husband was away, carry letters for him and assist him on a thousand occasions when opportunities presented themselves. Services of this sort are always rendered between men. Besides, he would find means of employing him without arousing any suspicion on his part. Chance offered him an auxiliary; it was a circumstance that was a good omen for the future, and he hastened to take advantage of it; and, feigning indifference, he replied that the thing was feasible perhaps, and that he would devote his attention to it.

And he did so at once. Arnoux took a great deal of pains with his earthenware works. He was endeavouring to discover the copper-red of the Chinese, but his colours evaporated in the process of baking. In order to avoid cracks in his ware, he mixed lime with his potter’s clay; but the articles got broken for the most part; the enamel of his paintings on the raw material boiled away; his large plates had bubbles in them; and, attributing these mischances to the inferior equipment in his factory, he was anxious to order new grinding-mills and install drying-rooms. Frédéric recalled some of these things, and, when he met Arnoux, said that he had discovered a very able man, who would be capable of finding his famous red. Arnoux gave a jump; then, having listened to what the young man had to tell him, replied that he didn’t want assistance.

Frédéric spoke in a very laudatory style about Sénécal’s extensive knowledge, pointing out that he was at the same time an engineer, a chemist, and an accountant, being a mathematician of the first rank.

The ceramics-dealer consented to see him.

But Arnoux and Sénécal squabbled over the terms. Frédéric intervened, and, at the end of the week, succeeded in getting them to come to an agreement.

But as the works were situated at Creil, Sénécal could not assist Frédéric in any way. This thought alone was enough to make him discouraged, as if he had met with some misfortune. His notion was that the more Arnoux was kept apart from his wife the better would be his own chances with her. Then he proceeded to make repeated apologies for Rosanette. He referred to all the wrongs she had sustained at his hands, told of the vague threats which she had made a few days before, and even spoke about the cashmere without concealing the fact that she had accused Arnoux of cheapness.

Arnoux, stung by the word (and, furthermore, feeling some uneasiness), brought Rosanette the cashmere, but scolded her for having made any complaint to Frédéric. When she told him that she had reminded him a hundred times of his promise, he pretended that, due to the pressure of business, he had forgotten all about it.

The next day Frédéric presented himself at her abode, and found the Maréchale still in bed, though it was two o’clock, with Delmar beside her finishing a
pâté de foie gras
at the little round table. She cried out to him: “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” Then she seized him by the ears, kissed him on the forehead, thanked him profusely, spoke to him endearingly, and even wanted to make him sit down on the bed. Her fine eyes, full of tender emotion, were sparkling with pleasure. There was a smile on her moist lips. Her two round arms emerged through the sleeveless opening of her night-dress, and, from time to time, he could feel through the filmy cotton the firm contours of her body.

All this time Delmar kept rolling his eyes.

“But really, my dear, my pet ...”

It was the same way when he saw her next. As soon as Frédéric entered, she sat up on a cushion in order to embrace him with more ease, called him a darling, a “dearie,” put a flower in his button-hole, and fixed his cravat. These delicate attentions were exaggerated when Delmar happened to be there. Were they advances on her part? So it seemed to Frédéric.

As for deceiving a friend, Arnoux, in his place, would not have had many scruples on that score, and he had every right not to adhere to rigidly virtuous principles with regard to this man’s mistress, seeing that his relations with the wife had been strictly honourable, for so he thought—or rather he would have liked Arnoux to think so, in any event, as a sort of justification of his own tremendous cowardice. Nevertheless he felt somewhat bewildered; and he made up his mind to lay siege boldly to the Maréchale.

So, one afternoon, just as she was stooping down in front of her chest of drawers, he approached her, and his unambiguous overtures made her stand up immediately and she blushed.

He renewed his advances and thereupon, she began to cry, saying that she was very unfortunate, but that people should not treat her badly because of it.

He only repeated his attempts. She now adopted a different plan, namely, to laugh like mad at his attempts. He thought it a clever thing to answer her sarcasms with retorts in the same vein in which there was even a touch of exaggeration. But he made too great a display of gaiety to convince her that he was sincere; and their comradeship was an impediment to any expression of serious feeling. At last, when she said one day, in reply to his amorous whispers, that she would not take another woman’s left-overs, he answered.

“What other woman?”

“Ah! yes, go and meet Madame Arnoux again!”

For Frédéric used to talk about her often. Arnoux, for his part, had the same mania. At last she lost patience at always hearing this woman’s praises sung, and this insinuation of hers was a kind of revenge.