Sentimental Education (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (51 page)

“Oh! I’m not much concerned about it,” she said.

This admission on her part seemed to him to strengthen the intimacy between them. Did Arnoux suspect anything?

“No! not now!”

She told him that, one evening, he had left them talking together, and had afterwards come back again and listened behind the door, and as they both were chatting at the time of matters that were of no consequence, he had lived since then in a state of complete security.

“With good reason, too—is that not so?” said Frédéric bitterly.

“Yes, no doubt!”

It would have been better for her not to have ventured such an answer.

One day she was not at home at the hour when he usually called. To him there seemed to be a sort of betrayal in this.

Then, he was upset at seeing the flowers that he brought her always placed in a glass of water.

“Where, then, would you like me to put them?”

“Oh! not there! Though, they are not as cold there as they would be near your heart!”

Not long afterwards he reproached her for having been at the Italian opera the night before without having given him a previous intimation of her intention to go there. Others had seen, admired, fallen in love with her, perhaps; Frédéric clung to his suspicions merely to pick a fight with her, to torment her; for he was beginning to hate her, and the very least he might expect was that she should share in his sufferings!

One afternoon, towards the middle of February, he surprised her in a state of great upset. Eugène had been complaining about his sore throat. The doctor had told her, however, that it was a minor ailment—a bad cold, an attack of influenza. Frédéric was astonished at the child’s look of delirium. Nevertheless, he reassured the mother, and brought forward the cases of several children of the same age who had been attacked with similar ailments, and had been speedily cured.

“Really?”

“Why, yes, of course!”

“Oh! how good you are!”

And she took his hand. He clasped hers tightly in his.

“Oh! let me go!”

“What does it matter, when you are offering it for the sake of being consoled? You place every confidence in me for such things, but you distrust me when I talk to you about my love!”

“I don’t doubt you on that point, my poor friend!”

“Why this distrust, as if I were a scoundrel capable of taking advantage—”

“Oh! no!—”

“If I only had proof!—”

“What proof?”

“The proof you would give anybody—what you once granted me.”

And he reminded her how, on one occasion, they had gone out together, on a winter’s evening, when it was foggy. This seemed now a long time ago. What, then, was to prevent her from being seen on his arm before the whole world without any fear on her part, and without any ulterior motive on his, not having anyone around them to trouble them?

“So be it!” she said, with a promptness of decision that at first astonished Frédéric.

But he replied, in a lively fashion: “Would you like me to wait at the corner of the Rue Tronchet and the Rue de la Ferme?”

“Good heavens, my friend!” faltered Madame Arnoux.

Without giving her time to reflect, he added:

“Next Tuesday, I suppose?”

“Tuesday?”

“Yes, between two and three o’clock.”

“I will be there!”

And she turned her face away in shame. Frédéric placed his lips on the nape of her neck.

“Oh! This is not right,” she said. “You will face me to repent.”

He turned away, dreading the fickleness which is customary with women. Then, on the threshold, he murmured softly, as if it were a thing that was thoroughly understood:

“See you on Tuesday!”

She lowered her beautiful eyes in a cautious and resigned fashion.

Frédéric had a plan arranged in his mind.

He hoped that, because of the rain or the sun, he might get her to stop under some doorway, and that, once there, she would go into the house. The difficulty was to find one that would suit.

He made a search, and about the middle of the Rue Tronchet he read, at a distance on a signboard, “Furnished apartments.”

The man at the reception, understanding his intention, showed him immediately above the ground-floor a bedroom and a dressing room with two entrances. Frédéric took it for a month, and paid in advance. Then he went into three shops to buy the rarest of perfumes. He got a piece of imitation lace, which was to replace the horrible red cotton coverlets; he selected a pair of blue satin slippers, only the fear of appearing coarse limited the amount of his purchases. He came back with them; and with more devotion than those who are erecting processional altars, he rearranged the furniture, hung the curtains himself, put heather in the fireplace, and covered the chest of drawers with violets. He would have liked to pave the entire apartment with gold. “To-morrow is the time,” said he to himself. “Yes, to-morrow! I am not dreaming!” and he felt his heart throbbing violently under the delirious excitement begotten by his anticipations. Then, when everything was ready, he carried off the key in his pocket, as if the happiness which slept there might have flown away along with it.

A letter from his mother was awaiting him when he reached home:

“Why such a long absence? Your conduct is beginning to look ridiculous. I understand your hesitating more or less at first with regard to this union. However, think well upon it.”

And she put the matter before him with the utmost clarity: an income of forty-five thousand francs. However, “people were talking about it;” and M. Roque was waiting for a definite answer. As for the young girl, her position was truly most embarrassing.

“She is deeply in love with you.”

Frédéric threw aside the letter even before he had finished reading it, and opened another note which came from Deslauriers.

“Dear Old Boy,—The
pear
is ripe.
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In accordance with your promise, we are counting on you. We meet to-morrow at daybreak, in the Place du Panthéon. Drop into the Café Soufflot. I have to chat with you before the demonstration takes place.”

“Oh! I know their demonstrations! Many thanks! I have a more agreeable things to do!”

And on the following morning, at eleven o’clock, Frédéric had left the house. He wanted to give one last glance at the preparations. Then, who could tell but that, by some chance or other, she might be at the place of meeting before him? As he emerged from the Rue Tronchet, he heard a great clamour behind the Madeleine.
^bl
He pressed on, and saw at the far end of the square, to the left, a number of men in smocks and well-dressed people.

In fact, a manifesto published in the newspapers had summoned to this spot all who had subscribed to the banquet of the Reform Party. The Ministry had, almost without a moment’s delay, posted up a proclamation prohibiting the meeting. The Parliamentary Opposition had, on the previous evening, disclaimed any connection with it; but the patriots, who were unaware of this resolution on the part of their leaders, had come to the meeting-place, followed by a great crowd of spectators. A deputation from the schools had made its way, a short time before, to the house of Odillon Barrot.
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It was now at the residence of the Minister for Foreign Affairs; and nobody could tell whether the banquet would take place, whether the Government would carry out its threat, and whether the National Guards would make their appearance. People were as much enraged against the representatives as against Power. The crowd was growing bigger and bigger, when suddenly the strains of the “Marseillaise” rang through the air.

It was the column of students which had just arrived on the scene. They marched along at an ordinary walking pace, in double file and in good order, with angry faces, bare hands, and all exclaiming at intervals:

“Long live Reform! Down with Guizot!”

Frédéric’s friends were there, sure enough. They would have noticed him and dragged him along with them. He quickly sought refuge in the Rue de l’Arcade.

When the students had gone twice around the Madeleine, they went down in the direction of the Place de la Concorde. It was full of people; and, at a distance, the crowd pressed close together, had the appearance of a field of black corn swaying to and fro.

At the same moment, some army soldiers lined up in battle-array at the left-hand side of the church.

The groups remained standing there, however. In order to put an end to this, some police-officers in civilian dress brutally seized the most riotous of them, and carried them off to the guardhouse. Frédéric, in spite of his indignation, remained silent; he might have been arrested along with the others, and he would have missed Madame Arnoux.

A little while afterwards the helmets of the Municipal Guards appeared. They kept striking around them with the flat side of their swords. A horse fell down. The people made a rush forward to save him, and as soon as the rider was back in the saddle, they all ran away.

Then there was a great silence. The thin rain, which had moistened the asphalt, was no longer falling. Clouds floated past, gently swept on by the west wind.

Frédéric began running through the Rue Tronchet, looking before him and behind him.

Finally the clock struck two.

“Ah! now is the time!” said he to himself. “She is leaving her house; she is approaching,” and a minute later, “she could have been here by now.”

Up until three he tried to keep calm. “No, she is not late—a little patience!”

With nothing better to do he examined the most interesting shops that he passed—a bookseller’s, a saddler’s and a mourning outfitters. Soon he knew the names of the different books, the various kinds of harnesses, and every sort of material. The shopkeepers from seeing him continually pacing back and forth, were at first surprised, and then alarmed, and they closed up their shop-fronts.

No doubt she had met with some obstacle, and she also must be suffering on account of it. But what delight would be his in a very short time! For she would come—that was certain. “She has given me her promise!” In the meantime an intolerable feeling of anxiety was gradually seizing hold of him. Impelled by an absurd idea, he returned to his hotel, as if he expected to find her there. At the same moment, she might have reached the street in which their meeting was to take place. He rushed out. Was there no one? And he resumed tramping up and down the sidewalk.

He studied the gaps in the pavement, the mouths of the gutters, the candelabra, and the numbers above the doors. The most trivial objects became his companions, or rather, mocking spectators, and the regular fronts of the houses seemed to him to be pitiless. His feet were cold. He felt as if he were about to succumb to the dejection which was crushing him. The reverberation of his footsteps vibrated through his brain.

When he saw by his watch that it was four o’clock, he experienced, a sort of dizziness and a feeling of dismay. He tried to repeat some verses to himself, to make a calculation, no matter of what sort, to invent some kind of story. Impossible! He was beset by the image of Madame Arnoux; he felt a longing to run to meet her. But what road should he take so that they might not miss each other?

He went up to a messenger, put five francs into his hand, and ordered him to go to the Rue de Paradis to Jacques Arnoux’s residence to enquire “if Madame were at home.” Then he stationed himself at the corner of the Rue de la Ferme and of the Rue Tronchet, so as to be able to look down both of them at the same time. On the boulevard, in the background of the scene in front of him, confused masses of people were gliding past. He could distinguish, every now and then, a dragoon’s helmet or a woman’s hat; and he strained his eyes in an effort to recognise the wearer. A child in rags, exhibiting a jack-in-the-box, asked him, with a smile, for money.

The man with the velvet jacket reappeared. “The concierge had not seen her going out.” What had kept her in? If she were ill he would have been told about it. Was it a visitor? Nothing was easier than to say that she was not at home. He struck his forehead.

“Ah! I am stupid! Of course, ’tis this political outbreak that prevented her from coming!”

He was relieved by this apparently natural explanation. Then, suddenly: “But her quarter of the city is quiet.” And a horrible doubt seized hold of his mind: “Suppose she was not coming at all, and merely gave me a promise in order to get rid of me? No, no!” What had prevented her from coming was, no doubt, some extraordinary stroke of bad luck, one of those occurrences that baffled all one’s anticipations. In that case she would have written to him.

And he sent the hotel errand-boy to his residence in the Rue Rumfort to find out whether there happened to be a letter waiting for him there.

No letter had been brought. This absence of news reassured him.

He drew omens from the random number of coins in his hand, from the facial expressions of the passers-by, and from the colour of different horses; and when the omen was unfavourable, he forced himself to disbelieve in it. In his sudden outbursts of rage against Madame Arnoux, he abused her in muttering tones. Then came fits of weakness that nearly made him faint, followed, all of a sudden, by renewed hopefulness. She would make her appearance soon! She was there, behind his back! He turned round—there was nobody there! Once he perceived, about thirty feet away, a woman of the same height, with a dress of the same kind. He came up to her—it was not she. It struck five—half-past five—six. The gas-lamps were lighted. Madame Arnoux had not come.

The night before, she had dreamed that she had been, for some time, on the sidewalk of the Rue Tronchet. She was waiting there for something the nature of which was not quite clear, but which, nevertheless, was of great importance; and, without knowing why, she was afraid of being seen. But an accursed little dog kept barking at her furiously and biting at the hem of her dress. He kept stubbornly coming back again and again, always barking more violently than before. Madame Arnoux woke up. The dog’s barking continued. She strained her ears to listen. It came from her son’s room. She rushed there in her bare feet. It was the child himself who was coughing. His hands were burning, his face flushed, and his voice strangely hoarse. Every minute he found it more difficult to breathe freely. She waited there till daybreak, bent over the coverlet watching him.