Sentimental Education (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (52 page)

At eight o’clock the drum of the National Guard gave warning to M. Arnoux that his comrades were expecting his arrival. He dressed himself quickly and went off, promising that he would immediately go by the house of their doctor, M. Colot.

At ten o’clock, when M. Colot did not make his appearance, Madame Arnoux dispatched her chambermaid for him. The doctor was away in the country; and the young man who was taking his place had gone out on some business.

Eugène kept his head on one side of the bolster with knitted eyebrows and dilated nostrils. His pale little face had become whiter than the sheets; and there escaped from his larynx a wheezing with each intake of breath, which was becoming gradually shorter, dryer, and more metallic. His cough resembled the noise made by those barbarous mechanisms which enable toy-dogs to bark.

Madame Arnoux was seized with terror. She rang the bell violently, calling out for help, and exclaiming:

“A doctor! a doctor!”

Ten minutes later came an elderly gentleman in a white tie, and with grey whiskers well trimmed. He asked several questions as to the habits, the age, and the constitution of the young patient, then examined his throat, listened to his breathing by pressing his ear against Eugène’s back and wrote out a prescription.

The calm manner of this old man was intolerable. He smelt of embalming. She would have liked to hit him. He said he would come back in the evening.

The horrible coughing soon began again. Sometimes the child sat up suddenly. Convulsive movements shook the muscles of his chest; and in his efforts to breathe his stomach contracted as if he were gasping for air after running too hard. Then he sank down, with his head thrown back and his mouth wide open. With infinite pains, Madame Arnoux tried to make him swallow the contents of the medicine bottles, ipacacuanha syrup, and an antimony potion. But he pushed away the spoon, groaning in a feeble voice. He seemed to be blowing out his words.

From time to time she re-read the prescription. The formula frightened her. Perhaps the apothecary had made some mistake. Her powerlessness filled her with despair. M. Colot’s pupil arrived.

He was a young man of modest demeanour, new to medical work, and he made no attempt to conceal his opinions. He was at first undecided as to what he should do, for fear of committing himself, and finally he ordered pieces of ice to be applied to the sick child. It took a long time to get ice. The bladder containing the ice burst. It was necessary to change the little boy’s shirt. This disturbance brought on an attack even more dreadful than any of the previous ones.

The child began tearing off the bandages round his neck, as if he wanted to remove the obstacle that was choking him; and he scratched the walls and grabbed onto the curtains of his bedstead, trying to get a point of support to assist him in breathing.

His face was now of a bluish hue, and his entire body, steeped in a cold perspiration, appeared to be growing thinner. His haggard eyes were fixed with terror on his mother. He threw his arms round her neck, and hung there in a desperate fashion; and, repressing her rising sobs, she whispered loving words to him in a broken voice:

“Yes, my pet, my angel, my treasure!”

Then came intervals of calm.

She went to look for some toys—a doll, a picture book, and spread them out on the bed in order to amuse him. She even made an attempt to sing.

She began to sing a little ballad which she used to sing years before, when she was nursing him wrapped up in swaddling-clothes in this same little upholstered chair. But a shiver ran all over his frame, just as when a wave is agitated by the wind. His eyeballs protruded. She thought he was going to die, and turned away to avoid seeing him.

The next moment she felt strength enough in her to look at him. He was still alive. The hours succeeded each other—dull, mournful, interminable, hopeless, and she no longer counted the minutes, save by the progress of this agony. The shakings of his chest threw him forward as if to shatter his body. Finally, he vomited something strange, which was like a tube of parchment. What was this? She imagined that he had thrown up one end of his entrails. But he now began to breathe freely and regularly. This appearance of well-being frightened her more than anything else that had happened. She was standing there petrified, her arms hanging by her sides, her eyes fixed, when M. Colot suddenly made his appearance. The child, in his opinion, was saved.
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She did not realise what he meant at first, and made him repeat the words. Was not this one of those consoling phrases which were customary with medical men? The doctor went away with an air of tranquillity. Then it seemed as if the cords that squeezed her heart were loosened.

“Saved! Is this possible?”

Suddenly the thought of Frédéric entered her mind clearly and inexorably. It was a warning sent to her by Providence. But the Lord in His mercy had not wished to punish her completely. What expiation could she offer hereafter if she were to persevere in this love-affair? No doubt insults would be flung at her son on her account; and Madame Arnoux saw him a young man, wounded in a duel, carried off on a stretcher, dying. In a single bound, she threw herself on the little chair, and, lifting up her soul towards the heights of heaven, she vowed to God that she would sacrifice her first real passion, her only weakness as a woman.

Frédéric had returned home. He remained in his armchair, without even possessing enough energy to curse her. A sort of slumber fell upon him, and, in the midst of his nightmare, he could hear the rain falling, still under the impression that he was there outside on the sidewalk.

Next morning, unable to resist the temptation, he again sent a messenger to Madame Arnoux’s house.

Whether the true explanation happened to be that the fellow did not deliver his message, or that she had too many things to say to explain herself in a word or two, the same answer was brought back. This insolence was too great! A feeling of angry pride took possession of him. He swore in his own mind that he would never again cherish a desire; and, like a group of leaves carried away by a hurricane, his love disappeared. He experienced a sense of relief, a feeling of stoic joy, then a need of violent action; and he walked on randomly through the streets.

Men from the faubourgs were marching past armed with guns and old swords, some of them wearing red caps, and all singing the “Marseillaise” or the “Girondins.” Here and there a National Guard was hurrying to his local town hall. Drums could be heard rolling in the distance. A conflict was going on at Porte Saint-Martin. There was something lively and warlike in the air. Frédéric kept walking on without stopping. The excitement of the great city raised his spirits.

In the vicinity of the Frascati gambling parlor he caught sight of the Maréchale’s windows: a wild idea occurred to him, a youthful impulse. He crossed the boulevard.

The yard-gate was just being closed; and Delphine, who was in the act of writing on it with a piece of charcoal, “Arms handed over,” said to him in an eager tone:

“Ah! Madame is in such a state! She dismissed a groom who insulted her this morning. She thinks there’s going to be looting everywhere. She is frightened to death! and all the more so since Monsieur has gone!”

“What Monsieur?”

“The Prince!”

Frédéric entered the boudoir. The Maréchale appeared in her petticoat, and her hair hanging down her back in disorder.

“Ah! thank you! You have come to save me! ’tis the second time! You are one of those who never count the cost!”

“A thousand pardons!” said Frédéric, catching her round the waist with both hands.

“Hey! What are you doing?” stammered the Maréchale, at the same time, surprised and cheered up by his manner.

He replied:

“I am following the fashion! I’m reforming myself?”

She let herself fall back on the divan, and continued laughing under his kisses.

They spent the afternoon looking out through the window at the people in the street. Then he brought her to dinner at the Trois Frères Provençaux. The meal was long and exquisite. They walked back since they had no carriage.

At the announcement of a change of Ministry,
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Paris had changed. Everyone was in a state of delight. People kept promenading about the streets, and every floor was illuminated with lamps, so that it seemed as if it were broad daylight. The soldiers made their way back to their barracks, worn out and looking quite depressed. The people saluted them with exclamations of “Long live the infantry!”

They continued on without making any response.

Among the National Guard, on the contrary, the officers, flushed with enthusiasm, brandished their sabres, crying out:

“Long live Reform!”

And every time the two lovers heard this word they laughed.

Frédéric told droll stories, and was quite elated.

Making their way through the Rue Duphot, they reached the boulevards. Venetian lanterns hanging from the houses formed wreaths of flame. Underneath, a confused swarm of people kept in constant motion. In the midst of those moving shadows could be seen, here and there, the steely glitter of bayonets. A great din arose. The crowd was too compact, and it was impossible to make one’s way back in a straight line. They were entering the Rue Caumartin, when suddenly there burst forth behind them a noise like the sound of a huge piece of silk being torn in two. It was the firing of muskets on the Boulevard des Capucines.
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“Ah! They’re killing off some bourgeois,” said Frédéric calmly; for there are situations in which the least cruel of men is so detached from his fellow-men that he would see the entire human race perish without a single throb of the heart.

The Maréchale was clinging to his arm with her teeth chattering. She declared that she would not be able to walk even twenty more steps. Then, through a refined hatred, in order to desecrate the memory of Madame Arnoux, he led Rosanette to the house in the Rue Tronchet, and brought her up to the room which he had prepared for the other.

The flowers were not withered. The lace was spread out on the bed. He drew forth from the cupboard the little slippers. Rosanette considered this thoughtfulness on his part very delicate. About one o’clock she was awakened by distant rumblings, and she saw that he was sobbing with his head buried in the pillow.

“What’s the matter with you now, my darling?”

“ ’Tis too much happiness,” said Frédéric. “I have been yearning for you too long!”

H
e was abruptly roused from sleep by the noise of musket fire; and, in spite of Rosanette’s entreaties, Frédéric was fully determined to go and see what was happening. He hurried down to the Champs- Elysées, where the shots were fired. At the corner of the Rue Saint- Honoré some men in smocks ran past him, exclaiming:

“No! not that way! to the Palais-Royal!”

Frédéric followed them. The railings of the church of the Assumption had been torn down. A little further on he noticed three paving-stones in the middle of the street, the beginning of a barricade, no doubt; then fragments of bottles and bundles of iron-wire, to obstruct the cavalry; and, at the same moment, there rushed suddenly out of a lane a tall young man of pale complexion, with his black hair flowing over his shoulders, and wearing a sort of singlet with colored dots. In his hand he held a long military musket, and he dashed along on the tips of his slippers with the air of a sleepwalker and with the agility of a tiger. At intervals detonations could be heard.

On the evening of the day before, the spectacle of the wagon containing five corpses picked up from amongst those that were lying on the Boulevard des Capucines had changed the mood of the people; and, while at the Tuileries the aides-de-camp came and went, and M. Mole, having set about the composition of a new Cabinet, did not return, and M. Thiers was making efforts to constitute another, and while the King picked fights, hesitated, and finally assigned the post of commander-in-chief to Bugeaud
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only to prevent him from using it, the insurrection was organising itself formidably, as if directed by a single hand.

Men with a kind of frantic eloquence harangued the mob at the street-corners, others were in the churches ringing the bells as loudly as they could. Lead was cast for bullets, cartridges were rolled. The trees on the boulevards, the public urinals, the benches, the railings, the gas-lamps, everything was torn out or overturned. Paris, that morning, was covered with barricades. The resistance which was offered was of short duration, so that at eight o‘clock the people, by voluntary surrender or by force, had taken possession of five barracks, nearly all the municipal buildings, the most favourable strategic points. Of its own accord, without any effort, the Monarchy was melting away in rapid dissolution, and now an attack was made on the guard-house of the Château d’Eau, in order to liberate fifty prisoners, who were not there.

Frédéric was forced to stop at the entrance to the square.
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It was filled with groups of armed men. The Rue Saint-Thomas and the Rue Fromanteau were occupied by infantry companies. The Rue de Valois was blocked by an enormous barricade. The smoke hanging on it was breaking up. Men kept running towards it, making violent gestures; they vanished from sight; then the firing began again. It was answered from the guard-house without anyone being seen inside. Its windows, protected by oaken window-shutters, were pierced with loop-holes; and the monument with its two storys, its two wings, its fountain on the first floor and its little door in the centre, was beginning to be speckled with white spots under the shock of the bullets. The three steps in front remained empty.

At Frédéric’s side a man in a Greek cap, with a cartridge-box over his knitted vest, was having a dispute with a woman with a Madras kerchief on her head. She said to him: