Sentimental Education (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (50 page)

She gazed at him in an ironical fashion.

“Well, and this marriage?”

“What marriage?”

“Your own!”

“Mine? I’ll never marry as long as I live!”

She made a gesture as if to contradict his words.

“Though, indeed, such things must be, after all? We take refuge in the commonplace, despairing of ever realising the beautiful existence of which we have dreamed.”

“All your dreams, however, are not so—innocent!”

“What do you mean?”

“When you drive to races with women!”

He cursed the Maréchale. Then he remembered something.

“But it was you who begged me to see her at one time in the interest of Arnoux.”

She replied with a shake of her head:

“And you take advantage of it to amuse yourself?”

“Good God! let us forget all these foolish things!”

“ ’Tis right, since you are going to be married.”

And she stifled a sigh, while she bit her lips.

Then he exclaimed:

“But I tell you again I am not! Can you believe that I, with my intellectual requirements, my habits, am going to bury myself in the provinces in order to play cards, supervise builders, and walk about in clogs? What reason, pray, could I have for taking such a step? You’ve been told that she was rich, haven’t you? Ah! what do I care about money? Could I, after yearning long for that which is most lovely, tender, enchanting, a sort of Paradise under a human form, and having found this sweet ideal at last, when this vision hides every other from my view—”

And taking her head between his two hands, he began to kiss her on the eyelids, repeating:

“No! no! no! never will I marry! never! never!”

She submitted to these caresses, her mingled amazement and delight leaving her powerless.

The door of the storeroom above the staircase fell back, and she gave a start but remained with her hand outstretched, as if to bid him keep silent. Steps drew near. Then some one said from behind the door:

“Is Madame there?”

“Come in!”

Madame Arnoux had her elbow on the counter, and was calmly rolling a pen between her fingers when the book-keeper threw aside the door curtain.

Frédéric started up, as if on the point of leaving.

“My repects, Madame. The service will be ready—will it not? May I count on it?”

She made no reply. But by thus silently becoming his accomplice in the deception, she made his face flush with the crimson glow of adultery.

On the following day he paid her another visit. She received him; and, in order to follow up the advantage he had gained, Frédéric immediately, without any preamble, attempted to offer some justification for the accidental meeting in the Champ de Mars. It was the merest chance that led to his being in that woman’s company. While admitting that she was pretty—which really was not the case—how could she for even a moment absorb his thoughts, seeing that he loved another woman?

“You know it well—I told you it was so!”

Madame Arnoux bowed her head.

“I am sorry you said such a thing.”

“Why?”

“The most ordinary proprieties now demand that I should see you no more!”

He protested that his love was innocent. The past ought to be a guaranty as to his future conduct. He had of his own accord made it a point of honour with himself not to disturb her existence, not to deafen her with his pleadings.

“But yesterday my heart overflowed.”

“We ought not to let our thoughts dwell on that moment, my friend!”

And yet, where would be the harm in two wretched beings mingling their griefs?

“For, indeed, you are not happy any more than I am! Oh! I know you. You have no one who responds to your craving for affection, for devotion. I will do anything you wish! I will not offend you! I swear to you that I will not!”

And he let himself fall on his knees, in spite of himself, giving way beneath the weight of the feelings that oppressed his heart.

“Get up!” she said; “get up, I insist!”

And she declared in an imperious tone that if he did not comply with her wish, she would never see him again.

“Ha! I defy you to do it!” returned Frédéric. “What is there for me to do in the world? Other men strive for riches, celebrity, power! But I have no profession; you are my exclusive occupation, my whole wealth, the object, the centre of my existence and of my thoughts. I can no more live without you than without the air of heaven! Do you not feel the aspiration of my soul ascending towards yours, and that they must intermingle, and that I am dying on your account?”

Madame Arnoux began to tremble in every limb.

“Oh! leave me, I beg of you”

The look of utter confusion in her face made him pause. Then he advanced a step. But she drew back, with her two hands clasped.

“Leave me in the name of Heaven, for mercy’s sake!”

And Frédéric loved her so much that he went away.

Soon afterwards, he was filled with rage against himself, declared in his own mind that he was an idiot, and, after the lapse of twenty-four hours, returned.

Madame was not there. He remained at the head of the stairs, numb with anger and indignation. Arnoux appeared, and informed Frédéric that his wife had, that very morning, gone out to take up her residence at a little country-house of which he had become tenant at Auteuil,
^bj
as he had given up possession of the house at Saint-Cloud.

“This is another of her whims. No matter, as long as she is settled at last; and myself, too, for that matter, so much the better. Let us dine together this evening, shall we?”

Frédéric pleaded as an excuse some urgent business; then he hurried off to Auteuil.

Madame Arnoux allowed an exclamation of joy to escape her lips. Then all his bitterness vanished.

He did not say one word about his love. In order to inspire her with confidence in him, he even exaggerated his reserve; and on his asking whether he might call again, she replied: “Why, of course!” putting out her hand, which she withdrew the next moment.

From that time forth, Frédéric increased his visits. He promised extra fares to the cabman who drove him. But often he grew impatient at the slow pace of the horse, and, getting out of the cab, he would make a dash after an omnibus, and climb to the top of it out of breath. Then with what disdain he surveyed the faces of those around him, who were not going to see her!

He could distinguish her house at a distance with an enormous honeysuckle covering, the planks of the roof on one side. It was a kind of Swiss chalet, painted red, with a balcony outside. In the garden there were three old chestnut-trees, and on a mound in the centre was a parasol made of thatch, held up by the trunk of a tree. Under the slate lining the walls, a big vine had come loose and hung down like a rotten cable. The gate-bell, which was rather hard to pull, was slow in ringing, and a long time always elapsed before it was answered. On each occasion he experienced a pang of suspense, an indefinable fear.

Then his ears would be greeted with the pattering of the servant-maid’s slippers over the gravel, or else Madame Arnoux herself would make her appearance. One day he came up behind her just as she was stooping down in the act of gathering violets.

Her daughter’s temper had made it necessary to send the girl to a convent. Her little son was at school every afternoon. Arnoux was now in the habit of taking prolonged lunches at the Palais-Royal with Regimbart and their friend Compain. Nothing could disturb them.

It was clearly understood between Frédéric and her that they should not belong to each other. By this convention they were preserved from danger, and they found it easier to pour out their hearts to each other.

She told him all about her early life at Chartres, which she spent with her mother, her piety at the age of twelve, then her passion for music, when she used to sing till nightfall in her little room, from which the ramparts could be seen.

He related to her how melancholy broodings had haunted him at college, and how a woman’s face shone brightly in his poetic imagination, so that, when he first laid eyes upon her, he felt that her features were quite familiar to him.

These conversations, as a rule, covered only the years during which they had been acquainted with each other. He reminisced about insignificant details—the colour of her dress during a certain period, a woman whom they had met on a certain day, what she had said on another occasion; and she replied, quite astonished:

“Yes, I remember!”

Their tastes, their judgments, were the same. Often one of them, when listening to the other, exclaimed:

“So do I!”

And the other replied:

“Me, too!”

Then there were endless complaints about Providence:

“Why was it not the will of Heaven? If we had only met—!”

“Ah! if I had been younger!” she sighed.

“No, but if I had been a little older.”

And they pictured a life entirely devoted to love, sufficiently rich to fill up the most vast solitude, surpassing all other joys, defying all sorrows; in which the hours would glide away in a continual out-pouring of their own emotions, and which would be as bright and glorious as the shimmering splendour of the stars.

They were nearly always out of doors standing at the top of the stairs. The tops of trees yellowed by the autumn stood before them at unequal heights up to the edge of the pale sky; or else they walked on to the end of the avenue into a summer-house whose only furniture was a couch of grey canvas. Black specks marked the mirror; the walls gave off a mouldy smell; and they remained there chatting freely about all sorts of topics—anything that happened to arise—in a spirit of delight. Sometimes the rays of the sun, passing through the Venetian blind, extended from the ceiling down to the flagstones like the strings of a lyre. Particles of dust whirled amid these luminous bars. She amused herself by dividing them with her hand. Frédéric gently took it in his own; and he gazed on the twinings of her veins, the grain of her skin, and the form of her fingers. Each of those fingers of hers was for him more than a thing—almost a person.

She gave him her gloves, and, the week after, her handkerchief. She called him “Frédéric;” he called her “Marie,” adoring this name, which, as he said, was expressly made to be uttered with a sigh of ecstasy, and which seemed to contain clouds of incense and bouquets of roses.

They soon came to an understanding as to the days on which he would call to see her; and, leaving the house as if by mere chance, she walked along the road to meet him.

She made no effort whatever to excite his love, lost in that listlessness which is characteristic of intense happiness. During the whole season she wore a brown silk dressing-gown with velvet borders of the same colour, a large garment, which united the softness of her attitude and her serious expression. Besides, she had just reached the autumnal period of womanhood, in which reflection is combined with tenderness, in which the beginning of maturity colours the face with a more intense flame, when strength of feeling mingles with experience of life, and when, having completely expanded, the entire being overflows with a richness of harmony and beauty. Never had she possessed more sweetness, more leniency. Secure in the thought that she would not err, she abandoned herself to a sentiment which seemed to her won by her sorrows. And, moreover, it was so innocent and fresh! What an abyss lay between the coarseness of Arnoux and the adoration of Frédéric!

He trembled at the thought that by an imprudent word he might lose all that he had gained, saying to himself that an opportunity might be found again, but that a foolish step could never be repaired. He wished that she should give herself to him rather than that he should take her. The assurance of being loved by her delighted him like a foretaste of possession, and then the charm of her person stirred his heart more than his senses. It was an indefinable feeling of bliss, a sort of intoxication that made him lose sight of the possibility of having his happiness completed. Apart from her, he was consumed with longing.

Ere long the conversations were interrupted by long spells of silence. Sometimes a sort of sexual shame made them blush in each other’s presence. All the precautions they took to hide their love only unveiled it; the stronger it grew, the more constrained they became in manner. Living such a lie only served to intensify their sensibility. They experienced a sensation of delight at the odour of moist leaves; they could not endure the east wind; they got irritated without any apparent cause, and had melancholy forebodings. The sound of a footstep, the creaking of a panel, filled them with as much terror as if they had been guilty. They felt as if they were being pushed towards the edge of a chasm. They were surrounded by a tempestuous atmosphere; and when complaints escaped Frédéric’s lips, she made accusations against herself.

“Yes, I am doing wrong. I am acting as if I were a coquette! Don’t come any more!”

Then he would repeat the same oaths, to which on each occasion she listened with renewed pleasure.

His return to Paris, and the fuss occasioned by New Year’s Day, interrupted their meetings to some extent. When he returned, he had an air of greater self-confidence. Every moment she went out of the room to give orders, and in spite of his entreaties she received every visitor that called during the evening.

After this, they engaged in conversations about Léotade, M. Guizot, the Pope, the insurrection at Palermo, and the banquet of the Twelfth Arrondissement, which had caused some anxiety. Frédéric eased his mind by railing against Power, for he longed, like Deslauriers, to turn the whole world upside down, so soured had he now become. Madame Arnoux, for her part, had become sad.

Her husband, indulging in extravagances, was keeping one of the girls in his pottery works, the one who was known as “the girl from Bordeaux.” Madame Arnoux was herself informed about it by Frédéric. He wanted to make use of it as an argument, “inasmuch as she was the victim of deception.”