Sentimental Education (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (64 page)

“How do you know that?” said Frédéric.

“Oh! I’m sure of it.”

Delphine, while carrying out some orders for her, had made enquiries about the matter. She must, then, be much attached to Arnoux to take such a deep interest in his movements. He contented himself with saying to her in reply:

“What does this matter to you?”

Rosanette looked surprised at this question.

“Why, the rascal owes me money. Isn’t it atrocious to see him keeping beggars?”

Then, with an expression of triumphant hate in her face:

“Besides, she is having a nice laugh at him. She has three others on hand. So much the better; and I’ll be glad if she squeezes every last penny out of him!”

Arnoux had, in fact, let himself be used by the girl from Bordeaux with the indulgence of an infatuated old fool. His factory had closed down. The entire state of his affairs was pitiful; so that, in order to set them afloat again, he first thought of opening a
caf
é
chantant,
at which only patriotic songs would be sung. With a grant from the Minister, this establishment would become at the same time a focus for the purpose of propagandism and a source of profit. Now that power had been directed into a different channel, the thing was impossible.

His next idea was a big military hat-making business. He lacked the capital, however, to give it a start.

He was not more fortunate in his domestic life. Madame Arnoux was less agreeable in manner towards him, sometimes even a little rude. Marthe always took her father’s side. This increased the discord, and the house was becoming an intolerable place. He often went out in the morning, spent his day making long excursions out of the city, in order to divert his thoughts, then dined at a rustic tavern, abandoning himself to his reflections.

The prolonged absence of Frédéric disturbed him. Then he presented himself one afternoon, begged him to come and see him as in former days, and obtained from him a promise to do so.

Frédéric was afraid to go back to Madame Arnoux’s house. He felt as if he had betrayed her. But this conduct was very cowardly. There was no excuse for it. There was only one way of ending the matter, and so, one evening, he set out on his way.

As the rain was falling, he had just turned up the Passage Jouffroy, when, under the light shed from the shop-windows, a fat little man accosted him. Frédéric had no difficulty in recognising Compain, that orator whose motion had excited so much laughter at the club. He was leaning on the arm of an individual in a zouave’s red cap, with a very long upper lip, a complexion as yellow as an orange, a tuft of beard, and was gazing at Compain with big eyes filled with admiration.

Compain was, no doubt, proud of him, for he said:

“Let me introduce you to this good fellow! He is a bootmaker and a patriot whom I include amongst my friends. Come, let us have a drink together.”

Frédéric having declined his offer, he immediately thundered against Rateau’s motion, which he described as a manoeuvre of the aristocrats. In order to put an end to it, it would be necessary to begin ’93 over again! Then he enquired about Regimbart and some others, who were also well known, such as Masselin, Sanson, Lecornu, Maréchal, and a certain Deslauriers, who had been implicated in the case of the carbines lately intercepted at Troyes.

All this was news to Frédéric. Compain knew nothing more about the subject. He left the young man with these words:

“You’ll come soon, will you not? for you’re a member, aren’t you?”

“Of what?”

“The calf’s head!”

“What calf’s head?”

“Ha, you joker!” returned Compain, giving him a tap on the stomach.

And the two terrorists dived into a café.

Ten minutes later Frédéric was no longer thinking of Deslauriers. He was on the sidewalk of the Rue de Paradis in front of a house; and he was staring at the light which came from a lamp in the second floor behind a curtain.

Finally, he ascended the stairs.

“Is Arnoux in?”

The chambermaid answered:

“No; but come in all the same.”

And, abruptly opening a door:

“Madame, it is Monsieur Moreau!”

She arose, whiter than the collar round her neck.

“To what do I owe the honour—of a visit—so unexpected?”

“Nothing. The pleasure of seeing old friends once more.”

And as he took a seat:

“How is Arnoux?”

“Very well. He has gone out.”

“Ah, I understand! still following his old nightly practices. A little distraction!”

“And why not? After a day spent in making calculations, the head needs a rest.”

She even praised her husband as a hard-working man. Frédéric was irritated at hearing this; and pointing towards a piece of black cloth with a narrow blue braid which lay on her lap:

“What is it you are doing there?”

“A jacket which I am trimming for my daughter.”

“Now that you remind me of it, I have not seen her. Where is she?”

“At a boarding-school,” was Madame Arnoux’s reply.

Tears came into her eyes. She held them back, while she rapidly plied her needle. To keep his composure, he picked up an issue of
L’lllustration
which had been lying on the table close to where she sat.

“These caricatures by Cham
^cn
are very funny, aren’t they?”

“Yes.”

Then they relapsed into silence once more.

All of a sudden, a fierce gust of wind shook the windows.

“What weather!” said Frédéric.

“It was very good of you, indeed, to come here in the midst of this dreadful rain.”

“Oh! what do I care about that? I’m not like those whom it prevents, no doubt, from going to keep their appointments.”

“What appointments?” she asked with an innocent air.

“Don’t you remember?”

A shudder ran through her and she hung her head.

He gently laid his hand on her arm.

“I assure you that you have given me great pain.”

She replied, with a sort of wail in her voice:

“But I was frightened about my child.”

She told him about Eugène’s illness, and all the tortures which she had endured on that day.

“Thank you! Thank you! I doubt you no longer. I love you as much as ever.”

“Ah! no; it is not true!”

“Why so?”

She glanced at him coldly.

“You forget the other! the one you took with you to the races! the woman whose portrait you have—your mistress!”

“Well, yes!” exclaimed Frédéric, “I don’t deny anything! I am a scoundrel! Just listen to me!”

If he had had her, it was through despair, as one commits suicide. However, he had made her very unhappy in order to avenge himself on her with his own shame.

“What mental anguish! Do you not realise what this means?”

Madame Arnoux turned away her beautiful face while she held out her hand to him; and they closed their eyes, absorbed in a kind of sweet, infinite intoxication. Then they stood face to face, gazing at one another.

“Could you believe it possible that I no longer loved you?”

She replied in a low voice, full of caressing tenderness:

“No! in spite of everything, I felt at the bottom of my heart that it was impossible, and that one day the obstacle between us would disappear!”

“So did I; and I was dying to see you again.”

“I once passed close by you in the Palais-Royal!”

“Did you really?”

And he spoke to her of the happiness he experienced at coming across her again at the Dambreuses’ house.

“But how I hated you that evening as I was leaving the place!”

“Poor boy!”

“My life is so sad!”

“And mine, too! If it were only the sorrows, the anxieties, the humiliations, all that I endure as a wife and mother, since everyone must die one day, I would not complain; the dreadful part is my loneliness, without anyone.”

“But you have me here with you!”

“Oh! yes!”

A sob of deep emotion made her bosom swell. She spread out her arms, and they embraced as their lips met in a long kiss.

The floor creaked. There was a woman standing close to them; it was Rosanette. Madame Arnoux had recognised her. Her eyes, opened wide with astonishment and indignation, stared at her. Finally, Rosanette said to her:

“I have come to see Monsieur Arnoux about a business matter.”

“As you can see, he is not here.”

“Ah! that’s true,” returned the Marechale. “Your maid was right! A thousand apologies!”

And turning towards Frédéric:

“So here you are!”

The familiar tone in which she addressed him, and in her own presence, too, made Madame Arnoux flush as if she had received a slap right across the face.

“I tell you again, he is not here!”

Then the Maréchale, who was looking this way and that, said quietly:

“Let us go home together! I have a cab waiting outside.”

He pretended not to hear.

“Come! let’s go!”

“Ah! yes! now’s your chance! Go! go!” said Madame Arnoux.

They went off together, and she stooped over the banister in order to see them once more, and a laugh—piercing, heart-rending, reached them from the top of the stairs. Frédéric pushed Rosanette into the cab, sat down opposite her, and during the entire drive did not utter a word.

The disgrace and its appalling consequences had been brought about by himself alone. He experienced at the same time the dishonour of a crushing humiliation and the regret caused by the loss of his new-found happiness. Just when, at last, he had it in his grasp, it had for ever more become impossible, and all because of this loose woman, this harlot. He would have liked to strangle her. He was choking with rage. When they had gotten into the house he flung his hat on a piece of furniture and tore off his cravat.

“Ha! that was a nice thing you did just now, admit it!”

She planted herself boldly in front of him.

“Ah! well, what of it? Where’s the harm?”

“What! Are you spying on me?”

“Is that my fault? Why do you go to amuse yourself with virtuous women?”

“That’s beside the point! I won’t have you insulting her!”

“How have I insulted her?”

He had no answer to make to this, and in a more spiteful tone:

“But on the other occasion, at the Champ de Mars—”

“Ah! you bore us to death with your old flames!”

“You bitch!”

He raised his fist.

“Don’t kill me! I’m pregnant!”

Frédéric staggered back.

“You are lying!”

“Why, just look at me!”

She seized a candlestick, and pointing at her face:

“Don’t you recognise the signs?”

Little yellow spots dotted her skin, which was strangely swollen. Frédéric did not deny the evidence. He went to the window, and opened it, took a few steps up and down the room, and then sank into an armchair.

This event was a calamity which, in the first place, put off their separation, and, next, upset all his plans. The notion of being a father, moreover, appeared to him grotesque, unthinkable. But why? If, in place of the Maréchale—And his reverie became so deep that he had a kind of hallucination. He saw there, on the carpet, in front of the fireplace, a little girl. She resembled Madame Arnoux and himself a little—dark, and yet fair, with two black eyes, thick eyebrows, and a red ribbon in her curly hair. (Oh, how he would have loved her!) And he seemed to hear her voice saying: “Papa! papa!”

Rosanette, who had just undressed herself, came across to him, and noticing a tear in his eyelids, kissed him gravely on the forehead.

He arose, saying:

“By Jove, we mustn’t kill this little one!”

Then she talked a lot of nonsense. To be sure, it would be a boy, and its name would be Frédéric. It would be necessary for her to begin making its clothes; and, seeing her so happy, he was moved to pity for her. As he no longer felt any anger towards her, he wanted to know the reason for the step she had just taken. She said it was because Mademoiselle Vatnaz had sent her that day a bill which had fallen due a long time ago; and so she hastened to Arnoux to get the money from him.

“I’d have given it to you!” said Frédéric.

“It is a simpler course for me to get over there what belongs to me, and to pay back to the other one her thousand francs.”

“Is this really all you owe her?”

She answered:

“Of course!”

On the following day, at nine o’clock in the evening (the hour recommended by the concierge), Frédéric went to Mademoiselle Vatnaz’s residence.

In the hallway, he bumped into the furniture, which was heaped together. But the sound of voices and of music guided him. He opened a door, and tumbled into the middle of a party. Standing up before a piano, which a young lady in spectacles was playing, Delmar, as serious as a pontiff, was reciting a humanitarian poem on prostitution; and his hollow voice rolled to the accompaniment of the sustained chords. A row of women sat close to the wall, attired, as a rule, in dark colours without collars or sleeves. Five or six men, all intellectuals, occupied seats here and there. In an armchair was seated a former writer of fables, a wreck of a man now; and the pungent odour of the two lamps was intermingled with the aroma of the chocolate which filled a number of bowls placed on the card-table.

Mademoiselle Vatnaz, with an Oriental shawl thrown over her shoulders, sat at one side of the fireplace. Dussardier sat facing her at the other side. He looked a bit embarrassed by his position. Besides, he was rather intimidated by his artistic surroundings. Had Vatnaz, then, broken off with Delmar? Perhaps not. However, she seemed to be keeping a jealous watch on the worthy shop-assistant; and Frédéric having asked to have a word with her, she made a sign to him to join them in her room. When the thousand francs were put down before her, she asked, in addition, for interest.