Complete Works of Anatole France

by Anatole France

  What he had become, for her, since his death, she could not have said, so alien was it to her beliefs, so contrary to her reason, and so antiquated, ridiculous and obsolete did the words which would have expressed her feeling seem to her. But from some remote inherited instinct, or more likely from certain tales which she had heard in her childhood, she derived a confused idea that he was of the number of those dead who in the days of old were wont to torment the living, and were exorcised by the priests; for upon thinking of him she instinctively began to make the sign of the cross, and she checked herself only that she might not seem ridiculous.

  Ligny, seeing her melancholy and distracted, blamed himself for his harsh and useless words, while at the very moment of reproaching himself for them he followed them by others equally harsh and equally useless.

  “And yet you told me it was not true!”

  She replied, fervently:

  “Because, don’t you see, I wanted it not to be true.”

  She added:

  “Oh, my darling, since I’ve been yours, I swear to you that I’ve not belonged to anyone else. I don’t claim any merit for this; I should have found it impossible.”

  Like the young of animals, she had need of gaiety. The wine, which shone in her glass like liquid amber, was a joy to her eyes, and she moistened her tongue with it with luxurious pleasure. She took an interest in the dishes set before her, and especially in the pommes de terre soufflées, like golden blisters. Next she watched the people lunching at the tables in the dining-room, attributing to them, according to their appearance, ridiculous opinions or grotesque passions. She noticed the ill-natured glances which the women directed toward her, and the efforts of the men to appear handsome and important. And she gave utterance to a general reflection:

  “Robert, have you noticed that people are never natural? They do not say a thing because they think it. They say it because they think it is what they ought to say. This habit makes them very wearisome. And it is extremely rare to find anyone who is natural. You, you are natural.”

  “Well, I don’t think I’m guilty of posing.”

  “You pose like the rest. But you pose in your own character. I can see perfectly well when you are trying to surprise and impress me.”

  She spoke to him of himself and, led back by an involuntary train of thought to the tragedy enacted at Neuilly, she inquired:

  “Did your mother say anything to you?”

  “No.”

  “Yet she must have known.”

  “It is probable.”

  “Are you on good terms with her?”

  “Why, yes!”

  “They say she is still very beautiful, your mother, is it so?”

  He did not answer her and sought to change the conversation. He did not like Félicie to speak to him of his mother, or to turn her attention to his family. Monsieur and Madame de Ligny enjoyed the highest consideration in Parisian society. Monsieur de Ligny, a diplomatist by birth and by profession, was in himself a person worthy of the greatest consideration. He was so even before his birth, by virtue of the diplomatic services which his ancestors had rendered to France. His great-grandfather had signed the surrender of Pondicherry to England. Madame de Ligny lived with her husband on the most correct terms. But, although she had no money of her own, she lived in great style, and her gowns were one of the greatest glories of France. She received intimate visits from an ex-Ambassador. His age, his position, his opinions, his titles, and his great fortune made the connection respectable. Madame de Ligny kept the ladies of the Republic at arm’s length, and, when the spirit moved her, gave them lessons in decorum. She had nothing to fear from the opinion of the fashionable world. Robert knew that she was looked upon with respect by people in society. But he was continually dreading that, in speaking of her, Félicie might fail to do so with all the needful reserve. He feared lest, not being in society, she might say that which had better have been left unsaid. He was wrong; Félicie knew nothing of the private life of Madame de Ligny; moreover, had she known of it, she would not have blamed her. The lady inspired her with a naive curiosity and an admiration mingled with fear. Since her lover was unwilling to speak to her of his mother, she attributed his reserve to a certain aristocratic arrogance, even to a lack of consideration, for her, at which the pride of the freewoman and the plebeian was up in arms. She was wont to say to him tartly:

  “I’m perfectly free to speak of your mother.” The first time she had added: “Mine is just as good as yours.” But she had realized that the remark was vulgar, and she had not repeated it.

  The dining-room was now empty. She looked at her watch, and saw that it was three o’clock.

  “I must be off,” she said. “La Grille is being rehearsed this afternoon. Constantin Marc ought to be at the theatre already. There’s another queer fellow for you! He boasts that when he’s in the Vivarais he ruins all the women. And yet he is so shy that he daren’t even talk to Fagette and Falempin. I frighten him. It amuses me.”

  She was so tired that she had not the courage to rise.

  “Isn’t it queer? They are saying everywhere that I’m engaged for the Français, it’s not true. There’s not even a question of it. Of course, I can’t remain indefinitely where I am. In the long run one would get besotted there. But there is no hurry. I have a great part to create in La Grille. We shall see after that. What I want is to play comedy. I don’t want to join the Français and then to do nothing.”

  Suddenly, gazing in front of her with eyes full of terror, she flung herself backwards, turned pale, and uttered a shrill scream. Then her eyelids fluttered, and she murmured that she could not breathe.

  Robert loosened her jacket, and moistened her temples with a little water.

  She spoke.

  “A priest! I saw a priest. He was in his surplice. His lips were moving, but no sound came from them. He looked at me.”

  He tried to comfort her.

  “Come now, my darling, how can you suppose that a priest, a priest in his surplice, would show himself in a restaurant?”

  She listened obediently, and allowed herself to be persuaded.

  “You are right, you are right, I know it well enough.”

  In that little head of hers illusions were soon dispelled. She was born two hundred and thirty years after the death of Descartes, of whom she had never heard; yet, as Dr. Socrates would have said, he had taught her the use of reason.

  Robert met her at six o’clock after the rehearsal, under the arcades of the Odéon, and drove away with her in a cab.

  “Where are we going?” she inquired.

  He hesitated a little.

  “You would not care to go back to our house out there?”

  She cried out at the suggestion.

  “Oh no! I couldn’t! Oh, heavens, never!”

  He replied that he had thought as much; that he would try to find something else: a little ground-floor flat in Paris; that in the meantime, just for to-day, they would content themselves with a chance abode.

  She gazed at him with fixed, heavy eyes, drew him violently towards her, scorching his neck and ear with the breath of her desire. Then her arms fell away from him, and she sank back beside him, dejected and relaxed.

  When the cab stopped, she said:

  “You will not be vexed with me, will you, my own Robert, at what I am going to say? Not to-day — to-morrow.”

  She had considered it necessary to make this sacrifice to the jealous dead.

  CHAPTER XII

  On the following day, he took her to a furnished room, commonplace but cheerful, which he had selected on the first floor of a house facing the square, near the Bibliothèque Nationale. In the centre of the square stood the basin of a fountain, supported by lusty nymphs. The paths, bordered with laurel and spindlewood, were deserted, and from this little-frequented spot one heard the vast and reassuring hum of the city. The rehearsal had finished very late. When they entered the room the night, already slower to arrive in this season of
melting snow, was beginning to cast its gloom over the hangings. The large mirrors of the wardrobe and overmantel were filling with vague lights and shadows. She took off her fur coat, went to look out of the window between the curtains and said:

  “Robert, the steps are wet.”

  He answered that there was no flight of steps, only the pavement and the road, and then another pavement and the railings of the square.

  “You are a Parisian, you know this square well. In the centre, among the trees, there is a monumental fountain, with enormous women whose breasts are not as pretty as yours.”

  In his impatience he helped her to undo her cloth frock; but he could not find the hooks, and scratched himself with the pins.

  “I am clumsy,” he said.

  She retorted laughingly:

  “You are certainly not so clever as Madame Michon! It’s not so much clumsiness, but you are afraid of getting pricked. Men are a cowardly race. As for women, they have to accustom themselves to suffer. It’s true: to be a woman is to be nearly always ailing.”

  He did not notice that she was pale, with dark rings round her eyes. He desired her so ardently; he no longer saw her.

  “They are very sensitive to pain,” he said, “but they are also very sensitive to pleasure. Do you know Claude Bernard?”

  “No.”

  “He was a great scientist. He said that he didn’t hesitate to recognize woman’s supremacy in the domain of physical and moral sensibility.”

  Nantueil; unhooking her stays, replied:

  “If he meant by that that all women are sensitive, he was indeed an old greenhorn. He ought to have seen Fagette; he would soon have discovered whether it was easy to get anything out of her in the domain — how did he express it? — of physical and moral sensibility.”

  And she added with gentle pride:

  “Don’t you make any mistake, Robert, there’s not such a heap of women like myself.”

  As he was drawing her into his arms, she released herself.

  “You are hindering me.”

  Sitting down and doubling herself up in order to undo her boots, she continued.

  “Do you know, Dr. Socrates told me the other day that he had seen an apparition. He saw a donkey-boy who had murdered a little girl. I dreamt of the story last night, only in my dream I could not make out whether the donkey-boy was a man or a woman. What a mix-up the dream was! Talking of Dr. Socrates, just guess whose lover he is — why, the lady who keeps the circulating library in the Rue Mazarine. She is no longer very young, but she is very intelligent. Do you think he is faithful to her? I’ll take off my stockings, it’s more becoming.”

  And she went on to tell him a story of the theatre:

  “I really don’t think I shall remain at the Odéon much longer.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll see. Pradel said to me to-day, before rehearsal ‘My dear little Nanteuil, there has never been anything between us. It is ridiculous.’ He was extremely decorous, but he gave me to understand that we were in a false position with regard to one another, which could not go on indefinitely. You must know that Pradel has established a rule. Formerly he used to pick and choose among his pensionnaires. He had favourites, and that caused an outcry. Nowadays, for the better administration of the theatre, he takes them all, even those he has no liking for, even those who are distasteful to him. There are no more favourites. Everything goes splendidly. Ah, he’s a director all through, is Pradel!”

  As Robert, in the bed, listened in silence, she went up to him and shook him:

  “Then it’s all the same to you if I carry on with Pradel?”

  “No, my dear, it would not be all the same to me. But nothing I might say would prevent it.”

  Bending over him, she caressed him ardently, pretending to threaten and to punish him; and she cried:

  “Then you don’t really love me, that you are not jealous. I insist that you shall be jealous.”

  Then, suddenly, she moved away from him, and hitching over her left shoulder her chemise, which had slipped down under her right breast, she loitered in front of the dressing-table and inquired uneasily:

  “Robert, you have not brought anything here from the other room?”

  “Nothing.”

  Thereupon, softly, timidly, she slipped into the bed. But hardly had she lain down when she raised herself from the pillow on her elbow, and, craning her neck, listened with parted lips. It seemed to her that she could hear slight sounds of footsteps along the gravel path which she had heard in the house in the Boulevard de Villiers. She ran to the window; she saw the Judas tree, the lawn, the garden gate. Knowing what she was yet to see, she sought to hide her face in her hands, but she could not raise her arms, and Chevalier’s face rose up before her.

  CHAPTER XIII

  She had returned home in a burning fever. Robert, after dining en famille, had retired to his attic. His nerves were on edge, and he was badly out of temper as a result of the manner in which Nanteuil had left him.

  His shirt and his clothes, laid out on the bed by his valet, seemed to be waiting for him in a domestic and obsequious attitude. He began to dress himself with a somewhat ill-tempered alacrity. He was impatient to leave the house. He opened his round window, listened to the murmur of the city, and saw above the roofs the glow which rose into the sky from the city of Paris. He scented from afar all the amorous flesh gathered, on this winter’s night, in the theatres and the great cabarets, the café-concerts and the bars.

  Irritated by Félicie’s denial of his desires, he had decided to satisfy them elsewhere, and as he was not conscious of any preference he believed that his only difficulty would be to make a choice; but he presently realized that he had no desire for any of the women of his acquaintance, nor did he even feel any desire for an unknown woman. He closed his window, and seated himself before the fire.

  It was a coke fire; Madame de Ligny, who wore cloaks costing a thousand pounds, was wont to economize in the matter of her table and her fires. She would not allow wood to be burned in her house.

  He reflected upon his own affairs, to which he had so far given little or no thought; upon the career he had embraced, and which he beheld obscurely before him. The Minister was a great friend of his family. A mountaineer of the Cévennes, brought up on chestnuts, his dazzled eyes blinked at the flower-bedecked tables of Paris. He was too shrewd and too wily not to retain his advantage over the old aristocracy, which welcomed him to its bosom: the advantage of harsh caprices and arrogant refusals. Ligny knew him, and expected no favours at his hands. In this respect he was more perspicacious than his mother, who credited herself with a certain power over the dark, hairy little man, whom every Thursday she engulfed in her majestic skirts on the way from the drawing-room to the dinner-table. He judged him to be disobliging. And then something had gone wrong between them. Robert, as ill luck would have it, had forestalled his Minister in his intimacy with a lady whom the latter loved to the verge of absurdity: Madame de Neuilles, a woman of easy virtue. And it seemed to him that the hairy little man suspected it, and regarded him with an unfriendly eye. And, lastly, the idea had grown upon him at the Quai d’Orsay that Ministers are neither able nor willing to do very much. But he did not exaggerate matters, and thought it quite possible that he might obtain a minor secretaryship. Such had been his wish hitherto. He was most anxious not to leave Paris. His mother, on the contrary, would have preferred that he should be sent to The Hague, where a post as third secretary was vacant. Now, of a sudden, he decided in favour of The Hague. “I’ll go,” he said. “The sooner the better.” Having made up his mind, he reviewed his reasons. In the first place, it would be an excellent thing for his future career. Again, The Hague post was a pleasant one. A friend of his, who had held it, had enlarged upon the delightful hypocrisy of the sleepy little capital, where everything was engineered and “wangled” for the comfort of the Diplomatic Corps. He reflected, also, that The Hague was the august cradle of a new international law, and
finally went so far as to invoke the argument that he would be giving pleasure to his mother. After which he realized that he wanted to leave home solely on account of Félicie.

  His thoughts of her were not benevolent. He knew her to be mendacious, timorous, and a malicious friend. He had proof that she was given to falling in love with actors of the lowest type, or, at all events, that she made shift with them. He was not certain that she did not deceive him, not that he had discovered anything suspect in the life which she was leading, but because he was properly distrustful of all women. He conjured up in his mind all the evil that he knew of her, and persuaded himself that she was a little jade, and, being conscious that he loved her, he believed that he loved her merely because of her extreme prettiness. This reason seemed to him a sound one; but on analysing it he perceived that it explained nothing; that he loved the girl not because she was exceedingly pretty, but because she was pretty in a certain uncommon fashion of her own; that he loved her for that which was incomparable and rare in her; because, in a word, she was a wonderful thing of art and voluptuousness, a living gem of priceless value. Thereupon, realizing how weak he was, he wept, mourning over his lost freedom, his captive mind, his disordered soul, the devotion of his very flesh and blood to a weak, perfidious little creature.

  He had scorched his eyes by gazing at the coke fire behind the bars of the grate. He closed them in pain and, under his closed eyes, he saw negroes leaping before him in an obscene and bloody riot. While he sought to remember from what book of travel, read in boyhood, these blacks emerged, he saw them diminish, resolve themselves into imperceptible specks, and disappear into a red Africa, which little by little came to represent the wound seen by the light of a match on the night of the suicide. He reflected.

  “That fool of a Chevalier! Why, I was scarcely thinking of the fellow!”