Sentimental Education (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (67 page)

It was chiefly through a feeling of boredom that Madame Dambreuse had yielded. But this latest experience was not going to be wasted. She desired to give herself up to a great passion; and so she began to heap on him adulations and caresses.

She sent him flowers; she had an upholstered chair made for him. She made presents to him of a cigar-holder, an inkstand, a thousand little things for daily use, so that every act of his life should remind him of her. These kind attentions charmed him at first, and soon after he took them for granted.

She would step into a cab, get rid of it at the opening of an alley-way, and come out at the other end; and then, gliding along by the walls, with a double veil on her face, she would reach the street where Frederic, who had been keeping watch, would take her arm quickly to lead her towards his house. His two men-servants would have gone out for a walk, and the concierge would have been sent on some errand. She would throw a glance around her-nothing to fear!—and she would breathe forth the sigh of an exile who beholds his country once more. Their luck emboldened them. Their appointments became more frequent. One evening, she even presented herself, all of a sudden, in full ball-dress. These surprises could be dangerous. He reproached her for her lack of prudence. Nevertheless, he thought she looked unattractive. The low body of her dress exposed her meager bosom.

It was then that he discovered what he had hitherto hidden from himself—the disillusionment of his senses. None the less he made professions of ardent love; but in order to call up such emotions he found it necessary to evoke the images of Rosanette and Madame Arnoux.

This sentimental atrophy left his head entirely clear; and he was more ambitious than ever of attaining a high position in society. Inasmuch as he had such a stepping-stone, the very least he could do was to make use of it.

One morning, about the middle of January, Sénécal entered his study, and in response to his exclamation of astonishment, announced that he was Deslauriers’ secretary. He even brought Frédéric a letter. It contained good news, and yet it took him to task for his negligence; he would have to come to see his constituency. The future representative said he would set out on his way there in two days’ time.

Sénécal gave no opinion on the other’s merits as a candidate. He spoke about his own concerns and about the affairs of the country.

Miserable as the state of things happened to be, it gave him pleasure, for they were advancing in the direction of Communism. In the first place, the Administration moved towards it of its own accord, since every day a greater number of things were controlled by the Government. As for Property, the Constitution of ’48, in spite of its weaknesses, had not spared it. The State might, in the name of public utility, henceforth take whatever it thought would suit it. Sénécal declared himself in favour of authority; and Frédéric noticed in his remarks the exaggeration which characterised what he had said himself to Deslauriers. The Republican even inveighed against the masses for their inadequacy.

“Robespierre, by upholding the right of the minority, had brought Louis XVI before the National Convention, and saved the people. The end justifies the means. A dictatorship is sometimes indispensable. Long live tyranny, provided that the tyrant promotes the public welfare!”

Their discussion lasted a long time; and, as he was taking his departure, Sénécal confessed (perhaps it was the real reason for his visit) that Deslauriers was getting very impatient at M. Dambreuse’s silence.

But M. Dambreuse was ill. Frédéric saw him every day, as an intimate friend of the family.

General Changarnier’s dismissal
^ct
had powerfully affected the capitalist’s mind. He was, on the evening of the occurrence, seized with a burning sensation in his chest, together with a breathlessness that prevented him from lying down. The application of leeches gave him immediate relief The dry cough disappeared; the respiration became more easy; and, eight days later, he said, while swallowing some broth:

“Ah! I’m better now—but I was near going on my last long journey!”

“Not without me!” exclaimed Madame Dambreuse, intending by this remark to convey that she could not survive without him.

Instead of replying, he cast upon her and upon her lover a singular smile, in which there was at the same time resignation, indulgence, irony, and even, as it were, a touch of humour, a sort of secret satisfaction almost amounting to actual joy.

Frédéric wished to start for Nogent. Madame Dambreuse objected to this; and he unpacked and repacked his luggage according to the changes in the invalid’s condition.

Suddenly M. Dambreuse spat forth a considerable amount of blood. The “princes of medical science,” on being consulted, could not think of any new remedy. His legs swelled, and his weakness increased. He had several times expressed a desire to see Cécile, who was at the other end of France with her husband, now a collector of taxes, a position to which he had been appointed a month ago. M. Dambreuse gave express orders to send for her. Madame Dambreuse wrote three letters, which she showed him.

Without trusting him even to the care of the nun, she did not leave him for one second, and no longer went to bed. People who left their names with the concierge made enquiries about her admiringly, and the passers-by were filled with respect on seeing the quantity of straw which was placed in the street under the windows.

On the 12th of February, at five o’clock, a frightful haemoptysis came on. The doctor on duty pointed out that the case had taken a dangerous turn. They sent in haste for a priest.

While M. Dambreuse was making his confession, Madame kept gazing curiously at him some distance away. After this, the young doctor applied a blister, and awaited the result.

The flame of the lamps, obscured by some of the furniture, lit up the room unevenly. Frédéric and Madame Dambreuse, at the foot of the bed, watched the dying man. In the recess of a window the priest and the doctor chatted in low voices. The good sister on her knees kept mumbling prayers.

At last came a rattling in the throat. The hands grew cold; the face began to turn white. Now and then he drew a deep breath; but gradually this became rarer and rarer. Two or three confused words escaped him. He turned his eyes upward, and at the same moment his respiration became so feeble that it was almost imperceptible. Then his head sank to one side on the pillow.

For a minute, all present remained motionless.

Madame Dambreuse advanced towards the dead body of her husband, and, without an effort—with the unaffectedness of one discharging a duty—she drew down the eyelids. Then she spread out her arms, her figure writhing as if in a spasm of repressed despair, and left the room, supported by the physician and the nun.

A quarter of an hour afterwards, Frédéric made his way up to her room.

There was an indefinable odour there, emanating from some delicate things which filled the place. In the middle of the bed lay a black dress, in glaring contrast to the pink coverlet.

Madame Dambreuse was standing at the corner of the mantelpiece. Without attributing to her any passionate regret, he thought she looked a little sad; and, in a mournful voice, he said:

“Are you suffering?”

“I? No—not at all.”

As she turned around, her eyes fell on the dress, which she inspected. Then she told him not to stand on ceremony.

“Smoke, if you like! You can make yourself at home with me!”

And, with a great sigh:

“Ah! Blessed Virgin!—what a relief to be rid of him!”

Frédéric was astonished at this exclamation. He replied, as he kissed her hand:

“All the same, we were free enough!”

This allusion to the facility with which the intrigue between them had been carried on hurt Madame Dambreuse.

“Ah! you don’t know the services that I did for him, or the misery in which I lived!”

“What!”

“Why, certainly! How could I feel secure always having that bastard of his around? A daughter, whom he introduced into the house after five years of married life, and who, were it not for me, might have led him to do something foolish?”

Then she explained how her affairs stood. The arrangement on the occasion of her marriage was that the property of each party should be separate. The amount of her inheritance was three hundred thousand francs. M. Dambreuse had guaranteed by the marriage contract that in the event of her surviving him, she should have an income of fifteen thousand francs a year, together with the ownership of the mansion. But a short time afterwards he had made a will by which he gave her all he possessed, and this she estimated, so far as it was possible to ascertain at the moment, at over three million.

Frédéric opened his eyes wide.

“It was worth the trouble, wasn’t it? However, I contributed to it! It was my own property I was protecting; Cécile would have unjustly robbed me of it.”

“Why did she not come to see her father?”

As he asked her this question Madame Dambreuse eyed him attentively; then, in a dry tone:

“I haven’t the least idea! Sheer heartlessness, probably! Oh! I know what she is! And for that reason she won’t get a penny from me!”

She had not been very troublesome, he pointed out; at any rate, since her marriage.

“Ha! her marriage!” said Madame Dambreuse, with a sneer. And she blamed herself for having treated only too well this stupid creature, who was jealous, self-interested, and hypocritical. “All the faults of her father!” She disparaged him more and more. There was never a person with such profound duplicity, and with such a merciless disposition, as hard as a stone—“a bad man, a bad man!”

Even the wisest people make mistakes. Madame Dambreuse had just made a serious one through this overflow of hatred on her part. Frédéric, sitting opposite her in an easy chair, was reflecting deeply, scandalised by the language she had used.

She arose and knelt down beside him.

“To be with you is the only real pleasure! You are the only one I love!”

While she gazed at him her heart softened, a nervous reaction brought tears into her eyes, and she murmured:

“Will you marry me?”

At first he thought he had not understood what she meant. He was dizzy with the thought of all this wealth.

She repeated in a louder tone:

“Will you marry me?”

At last he said with a smile:

“Have you any doubt about it?”

Then he had a pang of conscience, and in order to make a kind of reparation to the dead man, he offered to watch over him himself. But, feeling ashamed of this pious sentiment, he added, in a flippant tone:

“It would be perhaps more seemly.”

“Perhaps so, indeed,” she said, “on account of the servants.”

The bed had been drawn completely out of the alcove. The nun was near the foot of it, and at the head of it sat a priest, a different one, a tall, thin, Spanish-looking man, with a fanatical air about him. On the night-table, covered with a white cloth, three candles were burning.

Frédéric took a chair, and gazed at the corpse.

The face was as yellow as straw. At the corners of the mouth there were traces of blood-stained foam. He had a silk handkerchief tied around his head, a knitted waistcoat, and a silver crucifix on his chest between his folded arms.

It was over, this life full of anxieties! How many visits had he not made to various offices? How many rows of figures calculated? How many deals hatched? How many reports read? What schemes, what smiles and bows! For he had acclaimed Napoleon, the Cossacks, Louis XVIII, 1830, the working-men, every
regime,
loving power so dearly that he would have paid in order to have the opportunity of selling himself.

But he had left behind him the estate of La Fortelle, three factories in Picardy, the woods of Crancé in the Yonne, a farm near Orleans, and a great deal of stocks and bonds.

Frédéric thus made an estimate of her fortune; and it would soon belong to him! First of all, he thought of “what people would say”; of what present he ought to make to his mother, of his future carriages, and of an old coachman belonging to his own family who he’d like to make his concierge. Of course, the livery would not be the same. He would convert the large reception-room into his own study. There was nothing to prevent him from knocking down three walls to set up a picture-gallery on the second-floor. Perhaps there might be an opportunity to set up a Turkish bath downstairs. As for M. Dambreuse’s office, a disagreeable spot, what use could he make of it?

These reflections were from time to time rudely interrupted by the sounds made by the priest in blowing his nose, or by the good sister in stoking the fire.

But reality confirmed them. The corpse was still there. The eyelids had reopened, and the pupils, although steeped in a cloudy, glutinous film, had an enigmatic expression which Frédéric found intolerable.

Frédéric imagined that he saw there a judgment directed at himself, and he felt almost a sort of remorse, for he had never any complaint to make against this man, who, on the contrary—

“Come, now! an old scoundrel” and he looked at the dead man more closely in order to strengthen his mind, mentally addressing him thus:

“Well, what? Have I killed you?”

Meanwhile, the priest read his breviary; the nun, who sat motionless, had fallen asleep. The wicks of the three candles had grown longer.

For two hours the heavy rolling of carts could be heard making their way to the markets. The windows grew whiter. A cab passed; then a group of donkeys went trotting along the road. Then came the noise of hammering, cries of itinerant vendors and blasts of horns. Already every other sound was blended with the great voice of awakening Paris.

Frédéric went out to perform the duties assigned to him. He first went to the Mayor’s office to make the necessary declaration; then, when the medical officer had given him a certificate of death, he called a second time at the municipal buildings in order to name the cemetery which the family had selected, and to make arrangements with the undertakers.