It chanced that one Wednesday, on entering the drawing-room where his mother entertained her friends — who were, generally speaking, unattractive and austere ladies, with a sprinkling of old men and very young people — he noticed, in this intimate circle, Madame des Aubels, the wife of the magistrate at the Law Courts, whom Monsieur d’Esparvieu had vainly consulted on the mysterious ransacking of his library. She was young, he found her pretty, and not without cause. Gilberte had been modelled by the Genius of the Race, and no other genius had had a part in the work.
Thus all her attributes inspired desire, and nothing in her shape or her being aroused any other sentiment.
The law of attraction which draws world to world moved young Maurice to approach this delicious creature, and under its influence he offered to escort her to the tea-table. And when Gilberte was served with tea, he said:
“We should hit it off quite well together, you and I, don’t you think?”
He spoke in this way, according to modern usage, so as to avoid inane compliments and to spare a woman the boredom of listening to one of those old declarations of love which, containing nothing but what is vague and undefined, require neither a truthful nor an exact reply.
And profiting by the fact that he had an opportunity of conversing secretly with Madame des Aubels for a few minutes, he spoke urgently and to the point. Gilberte, so far as one could judge, was made rather to awaken desire than to feel it. Nevertheless, she well knew that her fate was to love, and she followed it willingly and with pleasure. Maurice did not particularly displease her. She would have preferred him to be an orphan, for experience had taught her how disappointing it sometimes is to love the son of the house.
“Will you?” he said by way of conclusion.
She pretended not to understand, and with her little foie-gras sandwich raised half-way to her mouth she looked at Maurice with wondering eyes.
“Will I what?” she asked.
“You know quite well.”
Madame des Aubels lowered her eyes, and sipped her tea, for her prudishness was not quite vanquished. Meanwhile Maurice, taking her empty cup from her hand, murmured:
“Saturday, five o’clock, 126 Rue de Rome, on the ground-floor, the door on the right, under the arch. Knock three times.”
Madame des Aubels glanced severely and imperturbably at the son of the house, and with a self-possessed air rejoined the circle of highly respectable women to whom the Senator Monsieur Le Fol was explaining how artificial incubators were employed at the agricultural colony at St. Julienne.
The following Saturday, Maurice, in his ground-floor flat, awaited Madame des Aubels. He waited her in vain. No light hand came to knock three times on the door under the arch. And Maurice gave way to imprecation, inwardly calling the absent one a jade and a hussy. His fruitless wait, his frustrated desires, rendered him unjust. For Madame des Aubels in not coming where she had never promised to go hardly deserved these names; but we judge human actions by the pleasure or pain they cause us.
Maurice did not put in an appearance in his mother’s drawing-room until a fortnight after the conversation at the tea-table. He came late. Madame des Aubels had been there for half an hour. He bowed coldly to her, took a seat some way off, and affected to be listening to the talk.
“Worthily matched,” a rich male voice was saying; “the two antagonists were well calculated to render the struggle a terrible and uncertain one. General Bol, with unprecedented tenacity, maintained his position as though he were rooted in the very soil. General Milpertuis, with an agility truly superhuman, kept carrying out movements of the most dazzling rapidity around his immovable adversary. The battle continued to be waged with terrible stubbornness. We were all in an agony of suspense....”
It was General d’Esparvieu describing the autumn manœuvres to a company of breathlessly interested ladies. He was talking well and his audience were delighted. Proceeding to draw a comparison between the French and German methods, he defined their distinguishing characteristics and brought out the conspicuous merits of both with a lofty impartiality. He did not hesitate to affirm that each system had its advantages, and at first made it appear to his circle of wondering, disappointed, and anxious dames, whose countenances were growing increasingly gloomy, that France and Germany were practically in a position of equality. But little by little, as the strategist went on to give a clearer definition of the two methods, that of the French began to appear flexible, elegant, vigorous, full of grace, cleverness, and verve; that of the Germans heavy, clumsy, and undecided. And slowly and surely the faces of the ladies began to clear and to light up with joyous smiles. In order to dissipate any lingering shadows of misgiving from the minds of these wives, sisters, and sweethearts, the General gave them to understand that we were in a position to make use of the German method when it suited us, but that the Germans could not avail themselves of the French method. No sooner had he delivered himself of these sentiments than he was button-holed by Monsieur le Truc de Ruffec, who was engaged in founding a patriotic society known as “Swordsmen All,” of which the object was to regenerate France and ensure her superiority over all her adversaries. Even children in the cradle were to be enrolled, and Monsieur le Truc de Ruffec offered the honorary presidency to General d’Esparvieu.
Meanwhile Maurice was appearing to be interested in a conversation that was taking place between a very gentle old lady and the Abbé Lapetite, Chaplain to the Dames du Saint Sang. The old lady, severely tried of late by illness and the loss of friends, wanted to know how it was that people were unhappy in this world.
“How,” she asked Abbé Lapetite, “do you explain the scourges that afflict mankind? Why are there plagues, famines, floods, and earthquakes?”
“It is surely necessary that God should sometimes remind us of his existence,” replied Abbé Lapetite, with a heavenly smile.
Maurice appeared keenly interested in this conversation. Then he seemed fascinated by Madame Fillot-Grandin, quite a personable young woman, whose simple innocence, however, detracted all piquancy from her beauty, all savour from her bodily charms. A very sour, shrill-voiced old lady, who, affecting the dowdy, woollen weeds of poverty, displayed the pride of a great lady in the world of Christian finance, exclaimed in a squeaky voice:
“Well, my dear Madame d’Esparvieu, so you have had trouble here. The papers speak darkly of robbery, of thefts committed in Monsieur d’Esparvieu’s valuable library, of stolen letters....”
“Oh,” said Madame d’Esparvieu, “if we are to believe all the newspapers say....”
“Oh, so, dear Madame, you have got your treasures back. All’s well that ends well.”
“The library is in perfect order,” asserted Madame d’Esparvieu. “There is nothing missing.”
“The library is on the floor above this, is it not?” asked young Madame des Aubels, showing an unexpected interest in the books.
Madame d’Esparvieu replied that the library occupied the whole of the second floor, and that they had put the least valuable books in the attics.
“Could I not go and look at it?”
The mistress of the house declared that nothing could be easier. She called to her son:
“Maurice, go and do the honours of the library to Madame des Aubels.”
Maurice rose, and without uttering a word, mounted to the second floor in the wake of Madame des Aubels.
He appeared indifferent, but inwardly he rejoiced, for he had no doubt that Gilberte had feigned her ardent desire to inspect the library simply to see him in secret. And, while affecting indifference, he promised himself to renew those offers which, this time, would not be refused.
Under the romantic bust of Alexandre d’Esparvieu, they were met by the silent shadow of a little wan, hollow-eyed old man, who wore a settled expression of mute terror.
“Do not let us disturb you, Monsieur Sariette,” said Maurice. “I am showing Madame des Aubels round the library.”
Maurice and Madame des Aubels passed
on into the great room where against the four walls rose presses filled with books and surmounted by bronze busts of poets, philosophers, and orators of antiquity. All was in perfect order, an order which seemed never to have been disturbed from the beginning of things.
Only, a black void was to be seen in the place which, only the evening before, had been filled by an unpublished manuscript of Richard Simon. Meanwhile, by the side of the young couple walked Monsieur Sariette, pale, faded, and silent.
“Really and truly, you have not been nice,” said Maurice, with a look of reproach at Madame des Aubels.
She signed to him that the librarian might over-hear. But he reassured her.
“Take no notice. It is old Sariette. He has become a complete idiot.” And he repeated: “No, you have not been at all nice. I awaited you. You did not come. You have made me unhappy.”
After a moment’s silence, while one heard the low melancholy whistling of asthma in poor Sariette’s bronchial tubes, young Maurice continued insistently:
“You are wrong.”
“Why wrong?”
“Wrong not to do as I ask you.”
“Do you still think so?”
“Certainly.”
“You meant it seriously?”
“As seriously as can be.”
Touched by his assurance of sincere and constant feeling, and thinking she had resisted sufficiently, Gilberte granted to Maurice what she had refused him a fortnight ago.
They slipped into an embrasure of the window, behind an enormous celestial globe whereon were graven the Signs of the Zodiac and the figures of the stars, and there, their gaze fixed on the Lion, the Virgin, and the Scales, in the presence of a multitude of Bibles, before the works of the Fathers, both Greek and Latin, beneath the casts of Homer, Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, Thucydides, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Seneca, and Epictetus, they exchanged vows of love and a long kiss on the mouth.
Almost immediately Madame des Aubels bethought herself that she still had some calls to pay, and that she must make her escape quickly, for love had not made her lose all sense of her own importance. But she had barely crossed the landing with Maurice when they heard a hoarse cry and saw Monsieur Sariette plunge madly downstairs, exclaiming as he went:
“Stop it, stop it; I saw it fly away! It escaped from the shelf by itself. It crossed the room ... there it is — there! It’s going downstairs. Stop it! It has gone out of the door on the ground floor!”
“What?” asked Maurice.
Monsieur Sariette looked out of the landing window, murmuring horror-struck:
“It’s crossing the garden! It’s going into the summer-house. Stop it, stop it!”
“But what is it?” repeated Maurice— “in God’s name, what is it?”
“My Flavius Josephus,” exclaimed Monsieur Sariette. “Stop it!”
And he fell down unconscious.
“You see he is quite mad,” said Maurice to Madame des Aubels, as he lifted up the unfortunate librarian.
Gilberte, a little pale, said she also thought she had seen something in the direction indicated by the unhappy man, something flying.
Maurice had seen nothing, but he had felt what seemed like a gust of wind.
He left Monsieur Sariette in the arms of Hippolyte and the housekeeper, who had both hastened to the spot on hearing the noise.
The old gentleman had a wound in his head.
“All the better,” said the housekeeper; “this wound may save him from having a fit.”
Madame des Aubels gave her handkerchief to stop the blood, and recommended an arnica compress.
CHAPTER IX
WHEREIN IT IS SHOWN THAT, AS AN ANCIENT GREEK POET SAID, “NOTHING IS SWEETER THAN APHRODITE THE GOLDEN”
ALTHOUGH he had enjoyed Madame des Aubels’ favours for six whole months, Maurice still loved her. True they had had to separate during the summer. For lack of funds of his own he had had to go to Switzerland with his mother, and then to stop with the whole family at the Château d’Esparvieu. She had spent the summer with her mother at Niort, and the autumn with her husband at a little Normandy seaside place, so that they had hardly seen each other four or five times. But since the winter, kindly to lovers, had brought them back to town again, Maurice had been receiving her twice a week in his little flat in the Rue de Rome, and received no one else. No other woman had inspired him with feelings of such constancy and fidelity. What augmented his pleasure was that he believed himself loved, and indeed he was not unpleasing.
He thought that she did not deceive him, not that he had any reason to think so, but it appeared right and fitting that she should be content with him alone. What annoyed him was that she always kept him waiting, and was unpunctual in coming to their meeting-place; she was invariably late, — at times very late.
Now on Saturday, January 30th, since four o’clock in the afternoon, Maurice had been awaiting Madame des Aubels in the little pink room, where a bright fire was burning. He was gaily clad in a suit of flowered pyjamas, smoking Turkish cigarettes. At first he dreamt of receiving her with long kisses, with hitherto unknown caresses. A quarter of an hour having passed, he meditated serious and affectionate reproaches, then after an hour of disappointed waiting he vowed he would meet her with cold disdain.
At length she appeared, fresh and fragrant.
“It was scarcely worth while coming,” he said bitterly, as she laid her muff and her little bag on the table and untied her veil before the wardrobe mirror.
Never, she told her beloved, had she had such trouble to get away. She was full of excuses, which he obstinately rejected. But no sooner had she the good sense to hold her tongue than he ceased his reproaches, and then nothing detracted from the longing with which she inspired him.
The curtains were drawn, the room was bathed in warm shadows lit by the dancing gleams of the fire. The mirrors in the wardrobe and on the chimney-piece shone with mysterious lights. Gilberte, leaning on her elbow, head on hand, was lost in thought. A little jeweller, a trustworthy and intelligent man, had shown her a wonderfully pretty pearl and sapphire bracelet; it was worth a great deal, and was to be had for a mere nothing. He had got it from a cocotte down on her luck, who was in a hurry to dispose of it. It was a rare chance; it would be a huge pity to let it slip.
“Would you like to see it, darling? I will ask the little man to let me have it to show you.”
Maurice did not actually decline the proposal. But it was clear that he took no interest in the wonderful bracelet. “When small jewellers come across a great bargain, they keep it to themselves, and do not allow their customers to profit by it. Moreover, jewellery means nothing just now. Well-bred women have given up wearing it. Everyone goes in for sport, and jewellery does not go with sport.”
Maurice spoke thus, contrary to truth, because having given his mistress a fur coat, he was in no hurry to give her anything more. He was not stingy, but he was careful with his money. His people did not give him a very large allowance, and his debts grew bigger every day. By satisfying the wishes of his inamorata too promptly he feared to arouse others still more pressing. The bargain seemed less wonderful to him than to Gilberte; besides, he liked to take the initiative in choosing his gifts. Above all, he thought that if he gave her too many presents he would be no longer sure of being loved for himself.
Madame des Aubels felt neither contempt nor surprise at this attitude; she was gentle and temperate, she knew men, and judged that one must take them as one found them, that for the most part they do not give very willingly, and that a woman should know how to make them give.
Suddenly a gas lamp was lighted in the street, and shone through the gaps in the curtains.
“Half-past six,” she said. “We must be on the move.”
Pricked by the touch of Time’s fleeting wing, Maurice was conscious of reawakened desires and reanimated powers. A white and radiant offering, Gilberte, with her head thrown back, her eyes half
closed, her lips apart, sunk in dreamy languor, was breathing slowly and placidly, when suddenly she started up with a cry of terror.
“Whatever is that?”
“Stay still,” said Maurice, holding her back in his arms.
In his present mood, had the sky fallen it would not have troubled him. But in one bound she escaped from him. Crouching down, her eyes filled with terror, she was pointing with her finger at a figure which appeared in a corner of the room, between the fire-place and the wardrobe with the mirror. Then, unable to bear the sight, and nearly fainting, she hid her face in her hands.
CHAPTER X
WHICH FAR SURPASSES IN AUDACITY THE IMAGINATIVE FLIGHTS OF DANTE AND MILTON
MAURICE at length turned his head, saw the figure, and perceiving that it moved, was also frightened. Meanwhile, Gilberte was regaining her senses. She imagined that what she had seen was some mistress whom her lover had hidden in the room. Inflamed with anger and disgust at the idea of such treachery, boiling with indignation, and glaring at her supposed rival, she exclaimed:
“A woman ... a naked woman too! You bring me into a room where you allow your women to come, and when I arrive they have not had time to dress. And you reproach me with arriving late! Your impudence is beyond belief! Come, send the creature packing. If you wanted us both here together, you might at least have asked me whether it suited me....”
Maurice, wide-eyed and groping for a revolver that had never been there, whispered in her ear:
“Be quiet ... it is no woman. One can scarcely see, but it is more like a man.”
She put her hands over her eyes again and screamed harder than ever.
“A man! Where does he come from? A thief. An assassin! Help! Help! Kill him.... Maurice, kill him! Turn on the light. No, don’t turn on the light....”
Complete Works of Anatole France Page 266