Sentimental Education (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (60 page)

“At the door, the first thing that struck me was a golden candelabra on a table, laid for two. A mirror on the ceiling showed their reflections, and the blue silk hangings on the walls made the entire room look like an alcove; I was seized with astonishment. You understand—a poor creature who had never seen anything before. In spite of my dazed mental condition, I got frightened. I wanted to leave. However, I remained.

“The only seat in the room was a sofa close beside the table. It was so soft that it gave way under me. The heating vent in the middle of the carpet sent out towards me warm air, and there I sat without touching a thing. The waiter, who was standing near me, urged me to eat. He poured out for me immediately a large glass of wine. My head began to swim, I wanted to open the window. He said to me:

“ ’No, Mademoiselle! that is forbidden.’ ”

“And he left me.

“The table was covered with lots of things that I had never seen before. Nothing there seemed good to me. Then I decided to try the pot of jam, and patiently waited. I did not know what prevented him from coming. It was very late—midnight at least—I couldn’t bear the fatigue any longer. While pushing aside one of the pillows, in order to hear better, I found under my hand a kind of album—a book of engravings, they were vulgar pictures. I was sleeping on top of it when he entered the room.”

She bowed her head and remained pensive.

The leaves rustled around them. Amid the tangled grass a great foxglove was swaying to and fro. The sunlight flowed like a wave over the green expanse, and the silence was interrupted at intervals by the grazing of the cow, which they could no longer see.

Rosanette kept her eyes fixed on a particular spot, three feet away from her, her nostrils heaving, and her mind absorbed in thought. Frédéric caught hold of her hand.

“How you suffered, poor darling!”

“Yes,” said she, “more than you imagine! So much so that I wanted to put an end to it all—they had to fish me out of the river!”

“What?”

“Ah! think no more about it! I love you, I am happy! kiss me!”

And she picked off, one by one, the sprigs of the thistles which clung to the hem of her gown.

Frédéric was thinking mostly about what she had not told him. What were the means by which she had gradually emerged from such misery? To what lover did she owe her education? What had occurred in her life down to the day when he first came to her house? Her latest admission forbade these questions. All he asked her was how she had made Arnoux’s acquaintance.

“Through Vatnaz.”

“Wasn’t it you that I once saw with both of them at the Palais-Royal?”

He referred to the exact date. Rosanette made a movement which showed a sense of deep pain.

“Yes, it is true! I was not very happy during that time!”

But Arnoux had proved himself a very good fellow. Frédéric had no doubt of it. However, their friend was an odd character, full of faults. He took pains to remind her of them. She quite agreed with him on this point.

“Never mind! He is likeable, all the same, the rascal!”

“Still—even now?” said Frédéric.

She began to redden, half smiling, half angry. “Oh, no! that’s an old story. I don’t keep anything hidden from you. Even though it might be so, with him it is different. Besides, I don’t think you are nice towards your victim!”

“My victim!”

Rosanette caught hold of his chin.

“No doubt!”

And changing into baby talk:

“Haven’t always been so good! Never went night-night with his wife?”

“I! never at any time!”

Rosanette smiled. He felt hurt by this smile of hers, which seemed to him a proof of indifference.

But she went on gently, and with one of those looks which seem to appeal for a denial of the truth:

“Are you perfectly certain?”

“Not a doubt of it!”

Frédéric solemnly declared on his word of honour that he had never bestowed a thought on Madame Arnoux, as he was too much in love with another woman.

“With whom, pray?”

“Why, with you, my beauty!”

“Ah! don’t laugh at me! I don’t like it!”

He thought it a prudent course to invent a story—to pretend that he was swayed by a passion. He manufactured some circumstantial details. This woman, however, had made him very unhappy.

“You certainly have not been lucky,” said Rosanette.

“Oh! oh! I may have been!” wishing to convey in this way that he had been often fortunate in his love-affairs, so that she might have a better opinion of him, just as Rosanette did not avow how many lovers she had had, in order that he might have more respect for her—for there will always be found in the midst of the most intimate confidences restrictions, false shame, delicacy, and pity. You divine either in the other or in yourself precipices or muddy paths which prevent you from penetrating any farther; moreover, you feel that you will not be understood. It is hard to express accurately the thing you mean, whatever it may be; and this is the reason why perfect unions are rare.

The poor Maréchale had never known one better than this. Often, when she gazed at Frédéric, tears came into her eyes; then she would raise them or cast a glance towards the horizon, as if she saw there some bright dawn, perspectives of boundless happiness. At last, she confessed one day to him that she wished to have a mass said, “so that it might bring a blessing on our love.”

How was it, then, that she had resisted him so long? She herself could not say. He repeated his question a great many times; and she replied, as she clasped him in her arms:

“It was because I was afraid, my darling, of loving you too much!”

On Sunday morning, Frédéric read, amongst the list of the wounded given in a newspaper, the name of Dussardier. He let out an exclamation, and showing the paper to Rosanette, declared that he was going to leave at once for Paris.

“For what purpose?”

“In order to see him, to take care of him!”

“You are not going to leave me by myself, are you?”

“Come with me!”

“To poke my nose in a brawl like that? Oh, no, thanks!”

“Well, I cannot—”

“Oh, la, la! as if they had need of nurses in the hospitals! And then, what concern is he of yours any longer? Everyone for himself!”

He was roused to indignation by this egoism on her part, and he reproached himself for not being in the capital with the others. Such indifference to the misfortunes of the nation had something petty and bourgeois about it. And now, all of a sudden, his love weighed on him as if it were a crime. For an hour they were quite cool towards each other.

Then she appealed to him to wait, and not expose himself to danger.

“Suppose you happen to be killed?”

“Well, I should only have done my duty!”

Rosanette jumped to her feet. His first duty was to love her; but, no doubt, he did not care about her any longer. There was no common sense in what he was going to do. Good heavens! what an idea!

Frédéric rang for his bill. But to get back to Paris was not an easy matter. The Leloir mail-coach had just left; the Lecomte berlins were not running; the stage-coach from Bourbonnais would not be passing till a late hour that night, and perhaps it might be full, one could never tell. After he had lost a great deal of time in making enquiries about the various modes of transportation, the idea occurred to him to travel by post-horse. The post master refused to supply him with horses, as Frédéric had no passport. Finally, he hired an open carriage—the same one in which they had driven about the country—and at about five o’clock they arrived in front of the Hotel du Commerce at Melun.
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The market-place was covered with piles of arms. The prefect had forbidden the National Guards to proceed towards Paris. Those who did not belong to his department wished to continue on. There was a great deal of shouting, and the inn was packed with a noisy crowd.

Rosanette, seized with terror, said she would not go a step further, and once more begged him to stay. The innkeeper and his wife joined in her entreaties. A decent sort of man who happened to be dining there intervened, and observed that the fighting would be over in a very short time. Besides, one ought to do his duty. This made the Maréchale cry even harder. Frédéric got exasperated. He handed her his purse, kissed her quickly, and disappeared.

On reaching Corbeil, he learned at the station that the insurgents had cut the rails at regular intervals, and the coachman refused to drive him any farther; he said that his horses were “overspent.”

Through his influence, however, Frédéric managed to procure an old cabriolet, which, for the sum of sixty francs, without taking into account the tip for the driver, was to take him as far as the Barriere d’Italie.
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But a hundred yards from the barrier his coachman made him get out and he turned back. Frédéric was walking along the pavement, when suddenly a sentinel thrust out his bayonet. Four men seized him, exclaiming:

“This is one of them! Look out! Search him! Brigand! scoundrel!”

And he was so thoroughly stupefied that he let himself be dragged to the guard-house of the barrier, at the very point where the Boulevard des Gobelins and Boulevard de l’Hôpital meet the Rue Godefroy and Rue Mouffetard.

Four barricades at the ends of four different routes formed enormous sloping ramparts of paving-stones. Torches were glimmering here and there. In spite of the rising clouds of dust he could distinguish infantrymen and National Guards, all with their faces blackened, disheveled, and haggard. They had just captured the square, and had shot a number of men. Their rage had not yet cooled. Frédéric said he had come from Fontainebleau to the relief of a wounded comrade who lodged in the Rue Bellefond. Not one of them would believe him at first. They examined his hands; they even put their noses to his ear to make sure that he did not smell of powder.

However, after repeating over and over the same thing, he finally satisfied a captain, who directed two fusiliers to take him to the guard-house of the Jardin des Plantes. They descended the Boulevard de l’Hôpital. A strong breeze was blowing. It revived him.

After this they turned up the Rue du Marché aux Chevaux. The Jardin des Plantes at the right formed a long black mass, whilst at the left the entire front of the Hôpital de la Pitié,
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with every window lit up, blazed like it was on fire, and shadows passed rapidly behind the window-panes.

The two men charged with escorting Frédéric went off. Another accompanied him to the Polytechnic School. The Rue Saint-Victor was quite dark, without a gas-lamp or a light in any of the houses. Every ten minutes could be heard the words:

“Sentries! Attention!”

And this exclamation, cast into the midst of the silence, was prolonged like the repeated striking of a stone against the side of a chasm as it falls through space.

Every now and then the stamp of heavy footsteps could be heard drawing nearer. This was a patrol consisting of at least a hundred men. From this confused mass escaped whisperings and the dull clanking of iron; and, moving away with a rhythmic swing, it melted into the darkness.

In the middle of the crossing, where several streets met, a dragoon sat motionless on his horse. From time to time a dispatch rider passed at a rapid gallop; then the silence fell once more. Cannons, which were being drawn along the streets, made, on the pavement, a heavy rolling sound that seemed full of menace—a sound different from every ordinary sound—which struck fear in the heart. The sound seemed to intensify the silence, which was profound, unlimited—a black silence. Men in white smocks accosted the soldiers, spoke one or two words to them, and then vanished like phantoms.

The guard-house of the Polytechnic School overflowed with people. The doorway was blocked by women, who had come to see their sons or their husbands. They were sent on to the Panthéon, which had been transformed into a morgue; and nobody paid any attention to Frédéric. He pressed forward resolutely, solemnly declaring that his friend Dussardier was waiting for him, that he was dying. At last they sent a corporal to accompany him to the top of the Rue Saint-Jacques, to the Mayor’s office in the twelfth arrondissement.

The Place du Panthéon was filled with soldiers lying asleep on straw. The day was breaking; the camp-fires were going out.

The insurrection had left terrible traces in this quarter. The surface of the streets, from one end to the other, was churned up. Against the wrecked barricades, omnibuses, gas-pipes, and cartwheels were piled up. In certain places there were little dark pools, which must have been blood. The houses were riddled with bullets, and their framework could be seen through the holes in the plaster. Window-blinds, attached only by a single nail, hung like rags. The staircases having fallen in, doors opened on to vacant space. The interiors of rooms could be perceived with their wallpaper in shreds. In some instances delicate objects had remained intact. Frédéric noticed a clock, a parrot’s perch, and some engravings.

When he entered town hall, the National Guards were incessantly chattering about the deaths of Bréa and Négrier, about the deputy Charbonnel, and about the Archbishop of Paris. He heard them saying that the Duc d‘Aumale had landed at Boulogne, that Barbès had fled from Vincennes, that artillery was coming from Bourges,
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and that abundant aid was arriving from the provinces. About three o’clock some one brought good news.

Spokesmen for the insurgents were in conference with the President of the Assembly.

They all rejoiced; and as he had a dozen francs left, Frédéric sent for a dozen bottles of wine, hoping by this means to hasten his deliverance. Suddenly musket fire was heard. The drinking stopped. They peered with distrustful eyes into the unknown—it might be Henry V.
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