Sentimental Education (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (33 page)

But with a significant glance towards her niece, Madame Dambreuse laid a finger on her lips, while the smile which escaped from her contradicted this display of austerity.

Suddenly, Martinon appeared at the door directly in front of her. She arose at once. He offered her his arm. Frédéric, in order to watch the progress of these gallantries on Martinon’s part, walked past the card-table, and joined them in the large drawing-room. Madame Dambreuse very soon left her cavalier, and began chatting with Frédéric himself in a very familiar tone.

She understood that he did not play cards, and did not dance.

“Young people have a tendency to be melancholy!” Then, with a single comprehensive glance around:

“Besides, this sort of thing is not amusing—at least for some people!”

And she stopped in front of the row of armchairs, uttering a few polite remarks here and there, while some old men with double eyeglasses came to pay court to her. She introduced Frédéric to some of them. M. Dambreuse touched him lightly on the elbow, and led him out on the terrace.

He had seen the Minister. The thing was not easy to manage. Before he could be qualified for the post of auditor to the Council of State, he should pass an examination. Frédéric, seized with an inexplicable self-confidence, replied that he had a knowledge of the subjects required for it.

The financier was not surprised at this, given how M. Roque had praised his abilities.

At the mention of this name, a vision of little Louise, her house and her room, passed through his mind, and he remembered how he had on nights like this stood at her window listening to the wagoners driving past. This recollection of his unhappiness brought back the thought of Madame Arnoux, and he relapsed into silence as he continued to pace up and down the terrace. The windows shone amid the darkness like slabs of flame. The buzz of the ball gradually grew fainter; the carriages were beginning to leave.

“Why in the world,” M. Dambreuse went on, “are you so anxious to be attached to the Council of State?”

And he declared, in the tone of a man of broad views, that public service led to nothing—he could speak with some authority on that point—business was much better.

Frédéric pointed out the difficulty of learning all the details of business.

“Nonsense! I could teach you all about it in a very short time.”

Would he like to be a partner in any of his own undertakings?

The young man saw, as by a lightning-flash, an enormous fortune coming into his hands.

“Let us go back in,” said the banker. “You are staying for supper with us, are you not?”

It was three o’clock. They left the terrace.

In the dining-room, a table at which supper was served up awaited the guests.

M. Dambreuse noticed Martinon, and, drawing near his wife, in a low tone:

“Is it you who invited him?”

She answered dryly:

“Yes, of course.”

The niece was not present.

The guests drank a great deal of wine, and laughed very loudly; and risque jokes did not give any offence, all present experiencing that sense of relief which follows a somewhat prolonged period of constraint.

Only Martinon looked serious. He refused to drink champagne, as he thought this good form, and, moreover, he assumed an air of tact and politeness, for when M. Dambreuse, who was narrow-chested, complained of being out of breath, he repeatedly asked about the gentleman’s health, and then let his blue eyes wander in the direction of Madame Dambreuse.

She questioned Frédéric in order to find out which of the young ladies he liked best. He had noticed none of them in particular, and besides, he preferred women of thirty.

“There, perhaps, you show your sense,” she returned.

Then, as they were putting on their cloaks and overcoats, M. Dambreuse said to him:

“Come and see me one of these mornings and we’ll have a chat.”

Martinon, at the foot of the stairs, was lighting a cigar, and, as he puffed it, he presented such a rough hewn profile that his companion allowed this remark to escape from him:

“Upon my word, what a fine head you have!”

“It has turned a few other heads,” replied the young magistrate, with a mix of conviction and annoyance.

As soon as Frédéric was in bed, he went over the party in his mind. In the first place, his own appearance (he had looked at himself several times in the mirrors), from the cut of his coat to the bows of his pumps left nothing to find fault with. He had spoken to influential men, and seen wealthy ladies up close. M. Dambreuse had shown himself to be an admirable type of man, and Madame Dambreuse an almost bewitching type of woman. He weighed one by one her slightest words, her looks, a thousand indescribable yet meaningful things. It would be a right good thing to have such a mistress. And, after all, why should he not? He would have as good a chance with her as any other man. Perhaps she was not so hard to win? Then he remembered Martinon; and, as he fell asleep, he smiled with pity for this worthy fellow.

He woke up with the thought of the Maréchale in his mind. Those words of her note, “After tomorrow evening,” were in fact an appointment for the very same day.

He waited until nine o’clock, and then hurried to her house.

Some one who had been going up the stairs before him shut the door. He rang the bell; Delphine came out and told him that “Madame” was not there.

Frédéric persisted, begging her to let him in. He had something of a very serious nature to tell her; just a word would suffice. At length, the hundred-sous-piece argument proved successful, and the maid let him into the hall.

Rosanette appeared. She was in a negligee, with her hair loose, and, shaking her head, she waved her arms when she was some paces away from him to indicate that she could not receive him now.

Frédéric descended the stairs slowly. This caprice was worse than any of the others. He could not understand it at all.

In front of the concierge’s lodge Mademoiselle Vatnaz stopped him.

“Has she received you?”

“No.”

“You’ve been put out?”

“How do you know that?”

“’Tis quite plain. But come on; let’s go. I can’t breathe!”

She made him accompany her along the street; she panted for breath; he could feel her thin arm trembling against his own. Suddenly, she broke out:

“Ah! the wretch!”

“Who?”

“Why, he—he—Delmar!”

This revelation humiliated Frédéric. He next asked:

“Are you quite sure of it?”

“Why, when I tell you I followed him!” exclaimed Vatnaz. “I saw him going in! Now do you understand? I ought to have expected it for that matter—’twas I, in my stupidity, that introduced him to her. And if you only knew all; my God! Why, I took him in, supported him, clothed him! And then all the paragraphs I got into the newspapers about him! I loved him like a mother!”

Then, with a sneer:

“Ha! Monsieur wants velvet robes! As an investment, you understand! And as for her!—to think that I knew her when she was making her living as a seamstress! If it were not for me, she would have fallen into the mire twenty times over! But I will plunge her into it yet! Let her die in a hospital—and everyone will know the truth!”

And, like a torrent of dirty water from a vessel full of refuse, her rage poured out in a tumultuous fashion into Frédéric’s ear the recital of her rival’s disgraceful acts.

“She has slept with Jumillac, with Flacourt, with little Allard, with Bertinaux, with Saint-Valery, the pockmarked fellow! No,‘twas the other! They are brothers—it makes no difference. And when she was in difficulty, I settled everything. She is so stingy! And then, you will agree with me, ’twas nice and kind of me to go to see her, for we are not persons of the same class! Am I a fast woman—I? Do I sell myself? Without taking into account that she is as stupid as a head of cabbage. She writes ‘category’ with a ’th.‘ After all, they are well suited. They make a precious couple, though he styles himself an artist and thinks himself a man of genius. But, my God! if he only had intelligence, he would not have done such a thing! Men don’t, as a rule, leave a superior woman for a hussy! What do I care about him after all? He is getting ugly. I hate him! If I met him, mind you, I’d spit in his face.” She spat out as she uttered the words. “Yes, this is what I think about him now. And Arnoux, eh? Isn’t it abominable? He has forgiven her so often! You can’t conceive the sacrifices he has made for her. She ought to kiss his feet! He is so generous, so good!”

Frédéric was delighted at hearing Delmar disparaged. He had accepted Arnoux as a rival. This betrayal on Rosanette’s part seemed to him an abnormal and inexcusable thing; and, infected with this spinster’s emotion, he felt a sort of tenderness towards her. Suddenly he found himself in front of Arnoux’s door. Mademoiselle Vatnaz, without his attention having been drawn to it, had led him down towards the Rue Poissonnière.

“Here we are!” said she. “As for me, I can’t go up; but you, surely there is nothing to prevent you?”

“From doing what?”

“From telling him everything, faith!”

Frédéric, as if waking up with a start, saw the baseness towards which she was urging him.

“Well?” she said after a pause.

He raised his eyes towards the second floor. Madame Arnoux’s lamp was burning. In fact there was nothing to prevent him from going up.

“I am going to wait for you here. Go on, then!”

This command had the effect of cooling the sympathy he had felt towards her and he said:

“I shall be a long time up there; you would do better to return home. I will call on you to-morrow.”

“No, no!” replied Vatnaz, stamping with her foot. “Take him with you! Bring him there! Let him catch them together!”

“But Delmar will no longer be there.”

She hung her head.

“Yes; that’s true, perhaps.”

And she remained without speaking in the middle of the street, with vehicles all around her; then, fixing on him her wild-cat’s eyes:

“I may rely on you, may I not? There is now a sacred bond between us. Do what you say, then; we’ll talk about it to-morrow”

Frédéric, in passing through the lobby, heard two voices responding to one another.

Madame Arnoux’s voice was saying:

“Don’t lie! don’t lie, pray!”

He went in. The voices suddenly ceased.

Arnoux was walking from one end of the room to the other, and Madame was seated on the little chair near the fire, extremely pale and staring straight before her. Frédéric stepped back, and was about to leave, when Arnoux grasped his hand, glad that some one had come to his rescue.

“But I am afraid—” said Frédéric.

“Stay here, I beg of you!” he whispered in his ear.

Madame remarked:

“You must make some allowance for this scene, Monsieur Moreau. Such things sometimes unfortunately occur in households.”

“They do when we introduce them there ourselves,” said Arnoux in a jolly tone. “Women get crazy ideas in their heads, I assure you. This, for instance, is not a bad one—see! No; quite the contrary. Well, she has been amusing herself for the last hour by teasing me with a lot of stories.”

“They are true,” retorted Madame Arnoux, losing patience; “for, in fact, you bought it yourself.”

“I?”

“Yes, you yourself, at the Persian House.”

“The cashmere,” thought Frédéric.

He was filled with guilt and fear.

She quickly added:

“It was on Saturday, the fourteenth.”

“The fourteenth,” said Arnoux, looking up, as if he were searching in his mind for a date.

‘And, furthermore, the clerk who sold it to you was a fair-haired young man.”

“How could I remember what sort of man the clerk was?”

“And yet it was at your dictation he wrote the address, 18 Rue de Laval.”

“How do you know?” said Arnoux in amazement.

She shrugged her shoulders.

“Oh! ‘tis very simple: I went to get my cashmere altered, and the superintendent of the millinery department told me that they had just sent another of the same sort to Madame Arnoux.”

“Is it my fault if there is a Madame Arnoux in the same street?”

“Yes; but not Jacques Arnoux,” she returned.

Thereupon, he began to talk incoherently, protesting that he was innocent. It was some misapprehension, some accident, one of those things that happen in some way that is utterly unaccountable. Men should not be condemned on mere suspicion, vague indications; and he referred to the case of the unfortunate Lesurques.

“In short, I say you are mistaken. Do you want me to take an oath on it?”

“’Tis not worth while.”

“Why?”

She looked him straight in the face without saying a word, then stretched out her hand, took down the little silver chest from the mantelpiece, and handed him a bill which was spread open.

Arnoux coloured up to his ears, and his distorted features puffed up betraying his confusion.

“But,” he said in faltering tones, “what does this prove?”

“Ah!” she said, with a peculiar ring in her voice, in which sorrow and irony were blended. “Ah!”

Arnoux held the bill in his hands, and turned it round without removing his eyes from it, as if he were going to find in it the solution to a great problem.

“Ah! yes, yes; I remember,” said he at length. “’Twas a commission. You ought to know about that matter, Frédéric.” Frédéric remained silent. “A commission that Père Oudry entrusted to me.”

“And for whom?”

“For his mistress.”

“For your own!” exclaimed Madame Arnoux, springing to her feet.

“I swear to you!”

“Don’t begin over again. I know everything.”

“Ah! quite right. So you’re spying on me!”