From time to time you heard the word: ‘Touché!’ And the six judges would bend their heads forward to consult together in a knowing way. The audience saw nothing but two flesh-and-blood marionettes that moved around stretching out their arms; they did not understand anything, but were satisfied. They were reminded of those wooden puppets of wrestlers sold on the city streets on New Year’s Day.
The first two competitors were replaced by M. Planton and M. Carapin, a civilian and a military fencing master. M. Planton was very small and M. Carapin very large. It looked as if the first touch of the foil would deflate that balloon like a blown-up toy elephant. People were laughing. M. Planton was leaping about like a monkey. M. Carapin moved only his arm, for the rest of his body was immobilized by fat, and every five minutes he lunged forward so heavily and with so great an effort that he seemed to be taking the most energetic step of his life. Afterwards, he would find it extremely difficult to straighten up again. The experts declared his style very steady and forceful. The audience, trusting to the experts, admired him.
Next came M. Porion and M. Lapalme, a fencing master and an amateur, who embarked on a frenzied display of gymnastics, dashing furiously at each other, forcing the judges to flee carrying their chairs, crossing and recrossing the stage from side to side, one advancing and the other retreating with vigorous, comic leaps. They would give little jumps backwards that made the ladies laugh, and great leaps forward that were actually quite thrilling. This display in double time was characterized by some kid or other who yelled: ‘Why get in a sweat, they pay by the hour!’ The audience, ruffled by this lack of taste, said: ‘Shsh!’ The experts’ opinion did the rounds. The fencers had displayed a lot of vigour and an occasional want of propriety.
The first half came to a close with a very beautiful passage-at-arms between Jacques Rival and the famous Belgian Professor Lebègue. Rival was much admired by the ladies. He was a truly handsome man, well made, supple, agile, and more graceful than all who had preceded him. In his style of standing en garde and of lunging he showed a certain worldly elegance that appealed, and contrasted with the energetic but commonplace style of his adversary. ‘You can tell he’s a man of breeding,’ people were saying. He was the winner. There was applause.
But for some time past a peculiar noise, coming from the floor above, had been bothering the spectators. There was a lot of trampling about, accompanied by loud laughter. The two hundred guests who had been unable to get into the cellar were, no doubt, amusing themselves in their own fashion. Some fifty men were crowded onto the little spiral staircase. The heat below was growing intolerable. There were shouts of: ‘Give us air!’ ‘Water!’ The same wit as before was yelling in a shrill tone which rose above the murmur of conversation: ‘Barley-water! Lemonade! Beer!’
Rival appeared, very red, still wearing his fencing kit. ‘I’ll bring down some refreshments,’ he said, hurrying towards the stairs. But all communication with the ground floor was cut off. It would have been easier to pierce a hole in the ceiling than to penetrate the human wall blocking the stairs. Rival shouted: ‘Pass down some ices for the ladies!’ Fifty voices repeated: ‘Ices!’ Finally, a tray appeared. But it bore nothing but empty glasses, as the refreshments had been consumed on the way down.
A loud voice bellowed: ‘We’re stifling in here, let’s get it over with and go home.’ Another voice called: ‘The collection!’ And the entire audience, gasping for air but still cheerful, repeated: ‘The collection… the collection… the collection…’ Then six ladies began doing the rounds of the benches; you could hear the faint clink of money dropping into bags.
Du Roy was identifying the well-known figures for Mme Walter. These were men-about-town, journalists from the great newspapers, the old newspapers, who looked down on La Vie française with a certain reserve born of experience. They had watched the disappearance of so many of these politico-financial periodicals, the fruits of questionable partnerships, that were destroyed by the fall of a ministry. Also to be seen there were painters and sculptors, who are often also sportsmen, a poet, a member of the Academy, whom people were pointing out to one another, two musicians and a number of aristocratic foreigners to whose names Du Roy attached the syllable ‘Adv.’ (adventurer) in imitation, he said, of the English, who put ‘Esq.’ on their visiting cards.
Someone shouted to him: ‘Good afternoon, my dear fellow.’ It was the Comte de Vaudrec. Du Roy excused himself to the ladies, and went to shake his hand. He declared when he returned: ‘Vaudrec’s so gracious. His breeding really shows.’
Mme Walter made no reply. She was a little tired, and her bosom, rising laboriously with every breath she took, attracted Du Roy’s eyes. From time to time he would encounter the gaze of the Director’s wife, an uneasy, hesitant gaze, which would rest upon him and then instantly move away. He was thinking: ‘My… my… Can I have made it with that one as well?’
The ladies passed by with the collecting bags, which were full of gold and silver. A fresh placard was hung on the stage, announcing: ‘A verrry big surprise.’ The members of the panel returned to their places. Everyone waited.
Two women appeared carrying foils and dressed in fencing outfits, with dark tights, very short skirts reaching to mid-thigh, and a plastron that ballooned out over the bust so that they were forced to hold their heads high. They were pretty, and young. They smiled as they bowed to the audience. They were applauded for a long time.
They took up their positions en garde to the accompaniment of appreciative murmurings and whispered jokes. The judges, their lips set in pleasant smiles, uttered little ‘bravos’ in approval of the sword thrusts.
The audience loved this display and let the contestants know as much; it excited desire in the men, and in the women aroused that natural taste of Parisian audiences for faintly bawdy entertainment, for rather smutty elegance, for what is pseudo-pretty and pseudo-graceful, like café-concert singers and songs from operettas. Each time one of the fencers lunged, a thrill of pleasure ran through the audience. The fencer who turned her back–a nicely filled-out back–to the hall would cause mouths to open and eyes to pop; it was not the movements of her wrist that drew the most gazes.
They were wildly applauded.
A display using sabres followed, but no one looked at it, for the audience’s attention was entirely taken up with what was happening up above. For several minutes they had been hearing a tremendous noise of furniture being shifted about and dragged over the floor, as though the apartment were being vacated. Then, all of a sudden, the sound of a piano came through the ceiling, and they could clearly hear the rhythmic thud of feet moving to the beat. The people upstairs were treating themselves to a dance, to make up for not being able to see anything.
At first a ripple of laughter ran through the audience in the fencing hall, then the ladies, feeling an urge to dance, stopped paying attention to what was happening on the stage and began talking in loud voices. The idea of this dance organized by the late-comers struck them as funny. No, those people weren’t having a bad time at all. It would have been really nice to be up there.
But two new contestants were saluting one another, and taking up their positions en garde with so much authority that every eye followed their movements. They lunged and recovered with such supple grace and restrained vigour, with such self-assured strength, such economy of movement, such flawlessness of bearing and control of swordplay, that the ignorant crowd was amazed and enchanted.
Their unruffled alertness, their judicious flexibility, their rapid movements, so studied as to appear slow, attracted and captivated the eye by the simple power of perfection. The audience felt that in them they were watching something beautiful and rare, that two great artists in their field were demonstrating the very best that could be seen, everything that two masters could possibly display of skill, of cunning, of technical knowledge, and physical dexterity. The audience was no longer talking, they were watching so intently. Then, when the two shook hands, after the fi
nal touch, cheers and hurrahs rang out. People were stamping and shouting. Everyone knew their names: Sergent and Ravignac.
Excited by all this, the audience was growing feisty. Men felt an impulse to pick a quarrel when they glanced at their neighbour. A duel might have been provoked by a smile. People who had never handled a foil sketched lunges and parries with their walking-sticks.
The crowd, however, was slowly making its way back up the little stairway. They were finally going to have something to drink. There was great indignation when they realized that the dancers had ransacked the buffet and had departed, declaring that it was rude to inconvenience two hundred people and then not show them anything.
Not a cake remained, not a drop of champagne, fruit cordial, or beer, not a sweetmeat, not a fruit, nothing, nothing whatsoever. They had pillaged, plundered, made a clean sweep. All these details were elicited from the servants, whose doleful expressions concealed their urge to laugh. The ladies were more desperate than the men, they declared, and had eaten and drunk enough to make them ill. You might have been listening to survivors describe the sacking and looting of a city during the Invasion.
So they all simply had to leave. Some of the men regretted having donated twenty francs to the collection; they were very annoyed that the people upstairs had gorged themselves without paying anything. The lady patronesses had collected more than three thousand francs. There remained, after all the expenses were paid, two hundred and twenty francs for the orphans of the sixth arrondissement.
Du Roy, who was escorting the Walter family, waited for his landau. Sitting opposite the Director’s wife on the way back, he again met her tender, furtive gaze, which seemed troubled. He thought: ‘My God! I do believe she’s falling for me,’ and he smiled, reflecting that he really was lucky with women, for Mme de Marelle, since their affair had begun again, seemed to be wildly in love with him.
He went home walking on air. Madeleine was waiting for him in the drawing-room.
‘I’ve some news,’ she said. ‘The Morocco business is getting complicated. France might well send an expeditionary force there in a few months’ time. In any event, that’s going to be the excuse for overthrowing the government, and Laroche will take advantage of the chance to snap up Foreign Affairs.’
To tease his wife, Du Roy pretended not to believe her. They’d never be so crazy as to start the same idiotic thing that they did in Tunis. But she was shrugging her shoulders impatiently. ‘I’m telling you they will! They will! You don’t seem to grasp that for them there’s a lot of money involved. These days, my dear, in politics, you shouldn’t ask “who’s the woman behind it,” but “what’s the money in it?”’
To annoy her, he muttered: ‘nonsense!’ in a scornful tone.
She was getting angry: ‘Goodness, you’re as green as Forestier.’
She meant to hurt him and expected an angry outburst. But he smiled, and replied: ‘As that cuckold Forestier?’
Shocked, she murmured: ‘Oh! Georges!’
With an insolent, mocking air he went on: ‘Well, what? Didn’t you confess to me, the other evening, that Forestier was a cuckold?’ And he added: ‘Poor devil!’ in a tone of intense pity.
Madeleine turned her back to him, not deigning to reply; then, after a moment’s silence, she continued: ‘We’re having guests on Tuesday: Mme Laroche-Mathieu will be coming to dinner with the Vicomtesse de Percemur. Will you ask Rival and Norbert de Varenne? Tomorrow I’ll go and see Mme Walter and Mme de Marelle. We might have Mme Rissolin as well.’
For some time she had been building up a network of contacts, making use of her husband’s political influence to attract to her home, by fair means or foul, the wives of senators or deputies who needed the support of La Vie française. Du Roy replied: ‘Fine. I’ll see to asking Rival and Norbert.’
Feeling pleased, he rubbed his hands, for he had discovered a perfect catchword to annoy his wife and satisfy the mysterious resentment, the obscure, corrosive jealousy that had been growing in him since their drive in the Bois. He would never mention Forestier again without calling him a cuckold. He was quite sure that this would, in the end, infuriate Madeleine. And ten times in the course of the evening he found a chance to utter, in tones of good-natured irony, the name of ‘that cuckold Forestier.’
He no longer bore the dead man a grudge: he was avenging him.
His wife pretended not to hear and went on smiling at him, apparently unconcerned. The following morning, since she would be calling on Mme Walter to invite her, he decided to go there first, to catch his Director’s wife alone and see if she really was attracted to him. He found this thought amusing and flattering. And then… why not… if it was possible?
Promptly at two o’clock he went to the Boulevard Malesherbes. He was shown into the drawing-room. He waited.
Mme Walter came in, offering him her hand with eager delight.
‘What lucky chance brings you here?’
‘No lucky chance, but a wish to see you. Something made me come to your house, I don’t know why, I’ve nothing to say to you. I just came, and here I am! Will you forgive me for calling so early, and for this frank explanation?’ He said this in a worldly, playful tone, with a smile on his lips and a serious note in his voice.
Astonished and rather pink, she stammered: ‘But… really… I don’t understand… you surprise me…’
He went on: ‘This is a declaration in the light-hearted mode, so as not to alarm you.’
They had sat down side by side. She treated it as a joke.
‘So this is a… serious declaration?’
‘Of course! I’ve been wanting to make it for a long time, indeed for a very long time. But then I didn’t dare. People say you’re so strict, so unbending…’
She had regained her confidence. She answered: ‘Why did you choose today?’
‘I don’t know.’ Then, lowering his voice: ‘Or, rather, because I’ve thought of nothing but you, since yesterday.’
Suddenly she turned white, and faltered: ‘Come on, that’s enough of this nonsense, let’s talk of something else.’
But he had fallen to his knees, so abruptly that she was frightened. She tried to stand up; but he was holding her in her seat, his arms round her waist, and repeating in a passionate voice: ‘Yes, it’s true, I love you, madly, I’ve loved you for a long time. Don’t answer me. I’m sorry, I’m losing my mind! I love you… Oh! if you only knew how much I love you!’
Gasping and panting, she tried to speak but could not utter a word. She was pushing him away with both hands, grabbing at his hair to prevent the approach of that mouth she could feel coming closer to her own. And, with rapid movements, she kept turning her head from right to left and from left to right, closing her eyes so she could no longer see him.
He was fondling her through her dress, running his hands over her body, pawing her; and she was almost fainting under this brutal, powerful caress. Suddenly he stood up and tried to embrace her, but she used her momentary freedom to move back and away, escaping, now, from chair to chair. Deciding that this pursuit was ridiculous, he let himself fall onto a chair, his face in his hands, and pretended to be racked by violent sobs.
Then, drawing himself up, he cried: ‘Goodbye! Goodbye!’ and fled.
In the entrance hall he calmly picked up his walking-stick and went out into the street, telling himself: ‘Christ! I do believe it’s in the bag.’ And he went to the telegraph office to send Clotilde a wire, setting up a meeting for the next day.
On returning home at his usual time, he asked his wife: ‘Well, did you get everybody for your dinner-party?’
She replied: ‘Yes; there’s only Mme Walter who’s not sure she’s free. She wavered; she said something about–oh, I don’t know–an engagement, her conscience. I thought she seemed very odd. Anyway it doesn’t matter, I hope she’ll come just the same.’
He shrugged: ‘Oh, Lord, yes; she’ll come.’
He was not, however, certain of it, and felt uneasy
right up to the day of the dinner.
On the morning itself Madeleine received a little note from the Director’s wife: ‘I’ve arranged, with considerable difficulty, to be free, and I shall be joining you. But my husband will not be able to accompany me.’
Du Roy thought: ‘I was absolutely right not to go back there. She’s calmed down. I must be careful.’
But he awaited her arrival with some anxiety. She appeared, very calm, rather cold, rather haughty. He made himself very meek, very circumspect and submissive.
Mme Laroche-Mathieu and Mme Rissolin accompanied their husbands. The Vicomtesse de Percemur talked about high society. Mme de Marelle was enchanting in a fantastic garment of black and yellow, a Spanish outfit that clung to her pretty waist, her breasts and her dimpled arms, and gave added sparkle to her tiny bird-like head.
Du Roy had seated Mme Walter on his right, and during the dinner spoke to her only about serious matters, with exaggerated respect. From time to time he glanced at Clotilde. ‘She really is prettier, and fresher,’ he thought. Then his eyes would come back to his wife; she wasn’t bad either, although he still felt a repressed anger against her, a persistent, spiteful anger.
But it was precisely the difficulty of seducing the Director’s wife which sexually excited him, as well as the novelty which men always want.
She wanted to leave early. ‘I’ll take you home,’ he said.
She refused. He insisted. ‘Why don’t you want me to? You’re going to hurt me very deeply. Don’t let me think that you haven’t forgiven me. You can see how calm I am.’
She replied: ‘You can’t abandon your guests like that.’
He smiled. ‘Oh! I’ll only be gone twenty minutes. They won’t even notice. If you refuse, you’ll cut me to the quick.’
She murmured: ‘Very well, I accept.’
But as soon as they were in the carriage, he seized her hand, and, kissing it passionately: ‘I love you, I love you. Let me tell you that. I won’t touch you. I simply want to tell you again and again that I love you.’
Bel-Ami (Oxford World's Classics) Page 30