“Yes, I’m sure of it.”
“Why would he hate you?”
“Do you really want me to tell you?” cried Maurice.
“Of course.”
“Well then, because …”
Maurice bit off his words. He was going to say: “because I love you.”
“I can’t tell you why,” said Maurice, blushing to the roots of his hair. Around Geneviève, the staunch republican was as bashful and hesitant as a girl. Geneviève smiled.
“If you said there was no sympathy between you, I might believe you. You have an ardent, impetuous nature, a brilliant mind, you’re very much sought after. Morand is a merchant grafted onto a chemist. He’s shy, modest … and it’s this shyness and this modesty that prevent him from making the first move toward you.”
“So who’s asking him to make the first move? I’ve made fifty moves toward him; he’s never responded. No,” Maurice continued, shaking his head, “no, it can’t be that.”
“Well then, what can it be?”
Maurice preferred not to say.
The day after Geneviève had offered him this explanation, he got to her place at two in the afternoon and found her dressed to go out. “Ah, welcome,” she said. “You can be my knight in shining armor.”
“And where are you off to?”
“To Auteuil.3 The weather’s so delicious, I’d like to have a little walk. Our carriage will take us just past the city barrier, then we’ll proceed to Auteuil on foot, and when I’ve finished what I have to do there, we’ll walk back and pick it up again.”
Maurice was enchanted. “Oh, what a gorgeous prospect—how can I resist!”
The two young people took off in the carriage, which dropped them off just past Passy. They sprang down to the side of the road and continued their promenade on foot. When they reached Auteuil, Geneviève stopped.
“Wait for me at the edge of the park,” she said. “I’ll come and join you when I’ve finished.”
“Who are you going to see, then?” asked Maurice.
“A woman I know.”
“And I can’t go with you?”
Geneviève shook her head, smiling.
“No, you can’t,” she said.
Maurice bit his lip.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll wait.”
“What’s wrong?” asked Geneviève.
“Nothing,” Maurice answered. “Will you be long?”
“If I’d realized I was putting you out, Maurice, if I’d known your day was full, I would not have asked you to do me the small service of accompanying me. I’d have asked …”
“Morand?” Maurice promptly cut in.
“No. You know Monsieur Morand is at the factory in Rambouillet and won’t be back till tonight.”
“So that’s why you asked me instead.”
“Maurice,” Geneviève said gently, “I can’t keep the person who’s expecting me waiting. If it’s a nuisance taking me back to Paris, you go; just send the carriage back for me.”
“No, no, madame,” said Maurice sharply, “I’m at your service.”
With that he bowed to Geneviève, who gave out a gentle sigh and set off into Auteuil. Maurice went to the meeting point and wandered around like Tarquin,4 whipping the heads off the grasses and all the flowers and thistles in his path. This path was restricted to a pretty small space; like anyone lost in thought, Maurice paced back and forth relentlessly.
What was troubling Maurice was the weighty question of whether Geneviève loved him or not. She treated him the way a sister or close friend would; but for him, this was no longer enough. He loved her with all his heart. She had become the idea that occupied his every waking hour and that appeared to him in his dreams each and every night. Once he had asked only to be able to see her again. Now that was no longer enough: Geneviève had to love him back.
Geneviève was gone for a good hour, which seemed like a century to Maurice. When he saw her coming toward him with a smile on her lips, he strode toward her, frowning. Our poor hearts are so made that they seek to draw pain from happiness itself.
Still smiling, Geneviève took Maurice’s arm.
“Here I am,” she said. “Sorry to keep you waiting.…”
Maurice managed a nod by way of reply and they both turned down a sumptuous path, damp and shady and soft underfoot, which would take them back to the main road by a detour.
It was one of those lovely spring evenings when each plant sends its scent heavenward and each bird, sitting still on its branch or flitting among the bushes, sings its hymn of love to God, one of those evenings that seem destined to live on in memory.
Maurice was silent, Geneviève distracted and thoughtful; she was fingering the flowers in a bouquet she held in her other hand, the one resting on Maurice’s arm.
“What’s the matter?” Maurice suddenly asked. “What’s making you so sad today?”
Geneviève might have said: “my happiness.”
She turned her soft, poetic gaze upon him.
“But what about you? Aren’t you sadder than usual?”
“I have every reason to be sad, I am unhappy; but you?”
“You, unhappy?”
“Of course. Can’t you tell by the way my voice sometimes trembles that I’m suffering? Don’t you notice that sometimes when I’m talking to you or your husband I’m suddenly forced to get up and go outside for air because it feels like my chest will burst?”
“But to what do you attribute this suffering?” asked Geneviève, at a loss.
“If I were some kind of neurasthenic,” said Maurice, laughing a painful little laugh, “I’d say I had a case of nerves.”
“Are you suffering at this moment?”
“Very much,” said Maurice.
“Then we’ll go back.”
“So soon, madame?”
“Of course.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” the young man muttered. “I’d forgotten Monsieur Morand will be back from Rambouillet at nightfall, and night is beginning to fall.”
Geneviève cast him a reproachful glance.
“Again!” she said.
“Just why did you praise him so pompously the other day?” asked Maurice. “It’s your fault.”
“Since when can one not say what one thinks of someone admirable to someone one admires?”
“That’s some admiration that makes you race the way you’re doing at the moment for fear of being a few minutes late.”
“You are royally unjust today, Maurice. Haven’t I spent a good part of the day with you?”
“You’re right; I am too demanding,” said Maurice, giving in to his impetuous nature. “Let’s go and see Monsieur Morand!”
Geneviève felt a stab of bitter disappointment in the region of her heart.
“Yes,” she said, “by all means let’s go and see Monsieur Morand; he is one friend, at least, who has never caused me pain.”
“Friends like that are precious,” said Maurice, choking with jealousy. “I wish I had some.”
They were now on the main road. The horizon was turning red as the sun disappeared, sending its dying rays dancing over the molten gold moldings of the dome of the Invalides.5 A star, the first, the one that on another evening had attracted Geneviève’s gaze, twinkled in the limpid azure sky.
Geneviève let go of Maurice’s arm in sad resignation.
“Why do you make me suffer like this?” she said.
“Ah, well, it’s because I’m not as clever as other people I know; I don’t know how to make myself loved.”
“Maurice!” cried Geneviève.
“Oh, madame! If he’s always on his best behavior, always even-tempered, it’s because he doesn’t care.”
Geneviève placed her white hand back on Maurice’s powerful, manly arm.
“Please,” she whispered in a changed voice, “let’s not talk anymore, let’s not!”
“Why not?”
“Because your voice hurts me.”
“So ther
e’s nothing about me you like, not even my voice?”
“Be quiet, I beseech you.”
“Your wish is my command, madame.”
And the impetuous young man wiped his hand across his forehead, which was damp with sweat. Geneviève could see that he really was suffering. Men like Maurice feel pain others can’t imagine.
“You are my friend, Maurice,” said Geneviève, gazing at him with a heavenly expression. “A very precious friend. Please, Maurice, don’t let me lose you.”
“Oh! You won’t miss me for long!” cried Maurice.
“You’re wrong,” said Geneviève. “I would miss you for a very long time—always.”
“Geneviève! Geneviève! Have pity on me!” cried Maurice.
Geneviève shivered. It was the first time Maurice had pronounced her name with such deep longing.
“All right,” Maurice continued, “since you’ve finally understood, let me get it off my chest, once and for all. For even if you were to kill me with a look, I’ve kept silent for too long. I will speak, Geneviève.”
“Monsieur, I’ve already begged you to be quiet, in the name of our friendship, monsieur, I beg you once more, for my sake if not for yours—not another word, for heaven’s sake, not another word!”
“Our friendship! Friendship! Ha! If this is the kind of friendship you feel for Monsieur Morand, I don’t want any more of your friendship, Geneviève. I need more than what you give to other people.”
“That’s enough,” said Madame Dixmer with a queenly flap of the hand. “Enough, Monsieur Lindey. Here is our carriage, please take me home to my husband.”
Maurice was quivering with chills and fever. When Geneviève placed her hand on his arm again to hoist herself up into the carriage, which was indeed waiting only a few feet away, it seemed to the young man that her hand was on fire. They both climbed up into the carriage, Geneviève sitting at the back, Maurice at the front, and crossed the whole of Paris without either one saying a word. Yet Geneviève held her handkerchief to her eyes the entire trip.
When they reached the factory, Dixmer was busy in his office and Morand had returned from Rambouillet and was changing his clothes. Geneviève gave Maurice her hand as she moved off toward her room:
“Adieu, Maurice, farewell, since that is what you want.”
Maurice did not reply. He went straight to the mantelpiece, where a miniature of Geneviève hung. He kissed it ardently, pressed it to his heart, put it back in its place, and left.
Maurice had no idea how he got home. He traversed Paris without seeing or hearing a thing. All he saw was a replay in his head of what had just happened, as in a dream, without being able to fathom his actions or his words or the feelings that inspired them. There are moments when the most serene, the most self-controlled person lets himself go with a violence demanded by the underhanded powers of the imagination that were previously subdued.
Maurice, as we have said, raced home rather than walked. He got undressed without the help of his manservant, did not answer his cook when she showed him supper was all ready; then he took the day’s letters from his table and read them all, one after the other, without understanding a single word. The fog of jealousy, sending reason reeling, had not yet lifted.
At ten o’clock, Maurice got into bed as mechanically as he had done everything else since leaving Geneviève. If you’d told Maurice when he was cool and collected that someone else had behaved the way he had, he would have been baffled, would have regarded as a madman any man who indulged in such desperate action, not justified either by any great reserve or any great abandon on Geneviève’s part. All that he registered was a terrible blow to hopes he hadn’t been aware till then that he entertained and upon which, vague as they were, rested all his dreams of happiness, floating amorphous, like barely discernible wisps of smoke, toward the horizon.
What then happened to Maurice was what almost always happens in such cases: stunned by the blow received, he fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. Or, rather, he lay there senseless until the next day. A noise awoke him, however, the noise his officieux made whenever he opened the door. He was coming, as was his wont, to open Maurice’s bedroom windows, which looked over a great big garden, and to bring flowers.
They grew a lot of flowers in ’93 and Maurice loved them, but he didn’t even glance at this lot, half sitting up as he was, with his heavy head propped on his hand, trying for the life of him to remember what had happened the day before.
Maurice wondered why he felt so glum, but he couldn’t quite hit on it. The sole thing he could come up with was his jealousy of Morand. But it was hardly the moment to play at being jealous of a man when that man was out of the way in Rambouillet and when he himself was alone with the woman he loved, enjoying such splendid isolation with all the sweetness laid out for them by nature, awakening on one of the first lovely days of spring.
It was not mistrust of what might have taken place in the house in Auteuil to which he’d taken Geneviève and where she had spent more than an hour. No, the constant torment of his life was this idea that Morand was in love with Geneviève; yet such were the tricks played by the mind, by caprice, that never had a gesture, a look, a word from Dixmer’s partner ever lent any semblance of reality to such a supposition.
The manservant’s voice snapped him out of his reverie.
“Citizen,” he said, indicating the letters open on the table, “have you decided which ones you want to keep or should I burn the lot?”
“Burn what?” asked Maurice.
“The letters the citizen read last night before going to bed.”
Maurice could not remember reading one.
“Burn the lot,” he said.
“Here are today’s, citizen,” said the officieux, handing Maurice a bundle of letters and throwing the others into the fireplace.
Maurice took the bundle of letters, felt a thick seal beneath his fingers, and sensed vaguely a familiar perfume. Flipping through the pile he saw a stamp and handwriting that made him jump. This man, so unflinching in the face of danger, no matter how great, paled at the mere sight of a letter.
The officieux went over to see what was the matter, but Maurice waved him out of the room. When he was gone, he turned the letter over and over with the foreboding that it sealed his own doom. He felt the chill of the unknown slow down his blood.
Mustering all his courage, Maurice ripped the letter open and read the following:
CITIZEN MAURICE,
We must break ties that, on your side, threaten to exceed the bounds of friendship. You are a man of honor, citizen, and now that a night has passed since what happened between us yesterday evening, you will surely see that your presence in our house has become impossible. I am counting on you to provide my husband with whatever excuse you like. If I see a letter from you for Monsieur Dixmer arrive this very day, I will know I can regret a friend who has unfortunately gone astray, but whom all socially accepted standards of behavior prevent me from seeing again.
Adieu, now and forever.
GENEVIÈVE
P.S. My courier will wait for your answer.
Maurice called and the officieux reappeared.
“Who brought this letter?”
“A citizen delivery boy.”
“Is he still here?”
“Yes.”
Without a sigh, without a moment’s hesitation, Maurice leapt out of bed, pulled on a pair of trousers, plunked down at his desk, grabbed the first sheet of paper he could find—it just so happened that this was a sheet of paper with the section letterhead printed at the top—and wrote:
CITIZEN DIXMER,
I was fond of you, I am still fond of you, but I cannot see you again.
Maurice tried to think of a reason for not being able to see citizen Dixmer again, but only one sprang to mind and it was simply the one that would have occurred to anyone in those times. He thus continued:
Certain rumors are making the rounds that you are lukewarm when
it comes to politics. I do not want to accuse you, nor have I been given the mission of defending you. Please accept my regrets and rest assured that your secrets remain buried in my heart.
Maurice did not even reread this letter, which he tossed off, as you’ve seen, just like that, off the top of his head. He had no doubt of the effect it would have on Dixmer, who was a good patriot, as far as Maurice could tell—from what he said, at least. Dixmer would be annoyed when he got it; no doubt his wife and citizen Morand would press him to persevere, but he wouldn’t even bother answering and would soon forget, oblivion like a black veil blanketing the past and transforming it into a gloomy future. Maurice signed and sealed the letter and handed it to his officieux, and the delivery boy went on his way.
Then a small sigh escaped from the republican’s heart. He grabbed his hat and gloves and headed for the section, hoping, poor Brutus, to regain his stoicism when faced with public affairs.
Public affairs were terrible: the thirty-first of May6 was gearing up. The Terror came rushing down from the top of the Mountain like a torrent, smashing into the dike with which the Girondins were trying to hold it back, audacious moderates that they were, they who had dared to demand revenge for the September massacres and to fight briefly to save the King’s life.
While Maurice worked so assiduously, and the fever he was trying to work off racked his brain instead of his heart, the messenger had returned to the old rue Saint-Jacques and sent the place into a horrified spin. Geneviève gave the handwriting the once-over before handing it to Dixmer, who at first read the note without comprehending; he then communicated its message to citizen Morand, who smacked his alabaster white forehead with both hands.
In the situation in which Dixmer, Morand, and company found themselves, a situation Maurice knew absolutely nothing about but which our readers have been able to penetrate, the letter was, of course, a bolt from the blue.
“Can this man mean what he says?” Dixmer wondered anxiously.
“Yes,” said Morand without hesitation.
“What does it matter!” said the extremist. “You see now we were wrong not to kill him.”
The Knight of Maison-Rouge Page 12