She stammered: ‘Oh… after what you promised… It’s wrong, very wrong.’
He seemed to make a great effort, then, in a restrained voice, went on: ‘There, see how I’m controlling myself. And yet… But allow me just to say this to you: I love you, and to tell you so every day… yes, let me go to your home and kneel a few minutes at your feet to utter those three words, while I gaze at your beloved face.’
She had surrendered her hand to him, and said, gasping for breath: ‘No, I can’t, I won’t. Think what people would say, think of my servants, of my daughters. No, no, it’s impossible…’
He continued: ‘I can no longer live without seeing you. Whether it’s in your home or somewhere else, I have to see you, were it only for one moment every day, I have to touch your hand, breathe the air stirred by your skirts, gaze at the shape of your body and at your beautiful big eyes that drive me demented.’
She was trembling as she listened to this banal music of love, and stammering: ‘No… no… it’s impossible. Be quiet!’
He was speaking very softly into her ear, realizing that with this one, this simple woman, he would have to ensnare her very gradually, persuade her to agree to meet him, first at a place she would choose, then, later, somewhere he chose: ‘Listen… you must… I shall see you… I shall wait in front of your door like a beggar… If you don’t come down, I shall go in to you… but I shall see you… I shall see you… tomorrow.’
She kept saying: ‘No… no… don’t come. I won’t see you. Think of my daughters.’
‘Then tell me where I can meet you… in the street, anywhere… whenever you wish… just as long as I see you… I shall bow, and say “I love you” and leave.’
She hesitated, uncertain what to do. And, as the vehicle was passing the door of her house, she said in a rapid whisper: ‘Well, I’ll go to the Holy Trinity,* tomorrow at three-thirty.’ Getting out of the carriage, she said to her coachman: ‘Take M. Du Roy home.’
On his return, his wife asked him: ‘Where did you go?’
He replied in a low voice: ‘To the telegraph office, to send an urgent wire.’
Mme de Marelle came up to them: ‘You’ll see me home, Bel-Ami, won’t you? You know that’s the only way I can come so far for dinner.’ Then, turning to Madeleine, ‘You’re not jealous?’
Mme Du Roy slowly replied: ‘No, not very.’
The guests were leaving. Mme Laroche-Mathieu looked like a little provincial housemaid. She was the daughter of a notary, and Laroche had married her when he was just a second-rate lawyer.
Mme Rissolin, elderly and pretentious, had the air of a former midwife whose education had been acquired in public reading-rooms. The Vicomtesse de Percemur looked down on both of them. Her ‘white paw’ disliked the touch of such vulgar fingers.
Clotilde, enveloped in lace, said to Madeleine as she went through the door onto the landing: ‘Your dinner-party was perfect. In a little while you’ll have the most influential political salon in Paris.’
As soon as she was alone with Georges, she clasped him in her arms. ‘Ah! Bel-Ami, my darling, I love you more every day.’
The cab they were in was rocking like a ship. ‘This isn’t as good as our room,’ she said. He replied: ‘Oh, no!’ But he was thinking of Mme Walter.
CHAPTER 4
The Place de la Trinité was almost deserted under a brilliant July sun. Paris lay sweltering in the oppressive heat, as if the air from the sky above, dense and scorching, had sunk down on to the city, viscous, burning air that hurt your lungs.
The fountain in front of the church flowed languidly. It seemed tired, equally weary and listless, and the water in the basin, upon which leaves and bits of paper were floating, looked faintly greenish, thick, and glaucous.
A dog that had jumped over the stone rim was soaking itself in this unappealing fluid. People on the benches in the small round garden in front of the church porch were eyeing the animal enviously.
Du Roy took out his watch. It was not yet three. He was thirty minutes early. He laughed as he thought about this meeting. ‘She finds churches handy for everything,’ he reflected. ‘They comfort her for marrying a Jew, they provide her with a cause to champion in the political world, an irreproachable image in high society, and a safe place to meet her lovers. How nice, to be able to use religion like an umbrella-cum-sunshade. When it’s fine, you’ve a walking-stick, when it’s sunny, a parasol, when it rains an umbrella and, if you don’t go out, you can leave it in the hall. And there are hundreds of women like that, who don’t give a damn about God, but don’t like anyone to speak ill of him, and who use him, if necessary, as a go-between. If you suggested meeting in a rented room, they’d be indignant, but it strikes them as perfectly normal to carry on an affair at the foot of an altar.’
He was walking slowly along the side of the basin; then he looked at the time again, by the church clock, which was two minutes faster than his watch. It said five past three.
Deciding that he would be more comfortable inside, he went in. He was met by a cellar-like coolness, which he breathed in with delight; then he strolled round the nave to familiarize himself with it.
From the depths of the vast building another regular footstep, which paused from time to time and then began again, echoed the sound of his own tread as it rose up sonorously under the high vaulted roof. Growing curious as to the identity of this other visitor, he looked for him. It was a stout, bald gentleman, who walked with his nose in the air, holding his hat behind his back.
Here and there, old women were kneeling at prayer, their faces in their hands. He was filled with a sense of solitude, of seclusion, of repose. The light, subtly tinged with colour by the stained glass, was gentle to the eye.
Du Roy thought it ‘damned nice’ in there.
He returned to the area by the door, and looked again at his watch. It was still only three-fifteen. He took a seat at the entrance to the main aisle, sorry that he could not light up a cigarette. The measured tread of the stout gentleman was still audible, near the choir, at the far end of the church.
Someone came in. Georges turned round sharply. It was a working-class woman in a woollen skirt, a poor woman who fell to her knees beside the first chair, and remained motionless, her fingers intertwined, her gaze directed upwards, lost in prayer. Du Roy watched her with interest, wondering what grief, or pain, or despair might be tormenting that humble heart. She was desperately poor, that was obvious. Perhaps she also had a husband who beat her mercilessly, or even a dying child.
He murmured to himself: ‘Poor things. Some of them do suffer.’ A wave of anger against implacable Mother Nature swept through him. Then he reflected that those wretches did at least believe that they mattered to someone up there, that the facts relating to their existence were inscribed in the heavenly register, along with the reckoning of their debits and their credits. Up there–but where?
And Du Roy, in whom the silence of the church had inspired vast conjectures, disposed of the Creation in a single thought, muttering: ‘How stupid all that is.’
The rustle of a dress startled him. It was her.
He stood up, and moved rapidly towards her. She did not offer her hand, but whispered in a low voice: ‘I’ve only got a few minutes. I must get home; kneel down near me, so that we shan’t be noticed.’
And she went up the main aisle in search of a suitable, safe place, like a woman who knows every corner of a house. Her face was concealed by a thick veil, and she walked with a soft step that was barely audible. She had almost reached the choir when she turned round and mumbled in that mysterious tone that people affect in church: ‘The side-aisles would be better. Round here we’re too obvious.’
She bent her head low before the Tabernacle on the high altar, adding a slight bob; then, turning right, she moved back in the direction of the entrance, and, finally making up her mind, chose a prayer stool and knelt down.
Georges took the adjacent prayer stool and, as soon as they were kneeling
as if at prayer: ‘Thank you, thank you,’ he said. ‘I adore you. I would like to tell you so all the time, describe to you how I started to love you, how I was utterly captivated the first time I saw you… One day will you let me pour out my heart, and tell you all that I feel?’
She was listening to him in an attitude of deep meditation, as if she heard nothing. Between her fingers she replied: ‘I’m mad to let you speak to me like this, mad to have come, mad to do what I’m doing, to allow you to believe that this… this intrigue can come to anything. Forget all this, you must, and never speak to me of it again.’
She waited. He searched for a reply, for decisive, passionate words, but being unable to translate words into action, he felt his will was paralysed. He answered: ‘I expect nothing… I hope for nothing. I love you. No matter what you do, I shall repeat this to you so often, with so much force and passion, that in the end you will certainly understand. I want to fill you with my love, I want to pour it into your soul, word by word, hour by hour, day by day, so that you will eventually be permeated by it as if by a liquid falling drop by drop, so that it may disarm you, and soften you, and force you, one day, to tell me: “I love you too.”’
He could sense, beside him, the quivering of her shoulders and the throbbing of her breast, as, very rapidly, she stammered: ‘I love you too.’
He gave a start, as if he had been struck sharply on the head, and sighed: ‘Oh! My God!’
She continued, in a breathless voice: ‘Ought I to be telling you that? I feel guilty and despicable… I… who have two daughters… but I can’t… I can’t… I would never have believed… I would never have thought… I can’t help it… I can’t help it. Listen… listen… I’ve never loved… anyone but you… I swear to you. I’ve loved you for a year, secretly, in my secret heart. Oh, I’ve suffered, believe me, and struggled, I can’t help it, I love you…’
She was weeping into the fingers that covered her face, and her whole body was trembling, shaken by the violence of her emotion.
Georges whispered: ‘Give me your hand, let me touch it, let me press it…’
Slowly she took her hand from her face. He saw her cheek soaked with tears, and a drop of water on the edge of her lashes, just about to fall.
He had grasped her hand, he was squeezing it: ‘Oh! How I would love to drink your tears!’
She said in a low, broken voice: ‘Don’t take advantage of me… I’m lost!’
He wanted to smile. How could he have taken advantage of her there? He put the hand he was holding on his heart, and asked: ‘Can you feel how it’s beating?’ for he had run out of passionate phrases.
But, during the last few minutes, the regular step of the other visitor had been approaching. He had done the rounds of the altars and was now returning, for at least the second time, down the right side-aisle. When Mme Walter heard him very close to the pillar that concealed her, she pulled her fingers out of Georges’s grasp and again covered her face.
And they both remained on their knees without moving, as if they were jointly addressing fervent prayers to heaven. The stout gentleman passed close beside them, casting them an indifferent glance, and moved off towards the rear of the church, still holding his hat behind his back.
Du Roy, intent on arranging a meeting somewhere other than in that church, whispered: ‘Where shall I see you tomorrow?’ She did not reply. She seemed lifeless, changed into a stone image of Prayer. He went on: ‘Tomorrow, would you like to meet in the Pare Monceau?’
She turned her face to him, a ghastly face, convulsed by terrible suffering, and said in a shaky voice: ‘Leave me, leave me now… go away… go away… just for five minutes… I suffer too much when I’m near you… I want to pray… I can’t pray… go away… leave me to pray… for five minutes… I can’t… let me beg God… to forgive me… to save me… leave me… five minutes.’
Her face was so distraught, so full of pain, that he rose without a word, and after hesitating asked: ‘I’ll come back in a little while?’
She gave a nod, meaning ‘Yes, in a little while.’ He walked off in the direction of the choir.
So then she tried to pray. She made a superhuman effort of invocation to reach God, as, shaking all over and full of torment, she cried out to heaven for mercy. Desperately she closed her eyes so that she could no longer see that man who had just left her. Banishing him from her thoughts, she struggled against him, but in place of the heavenly vision for which her anguished heart was yearning, what she still saw was the young man’s curly moustache.
For a year now she had been struggling like this, day and night, against this growing obsession, against this image which haunted her dreams and her flesh and disturbed her sleep. She felt trapped like an animal in a net, bound, cast into the arms of this male who had overpowered and conquered her, simply by the hair on his lip and the colour of his eyes.
And now, in this church, very close to God, she felt herself weaker, more forsaken, more lost even than in her own home. She could no longer pray, she could think only of him. Already she was suffering because he had moved away. Nevertheless she fought like a desperate woman, defending herself, calling for help with all the power of her soul. She would have preferred to die, rather than fall like this, she who had never transgressed. She was whispering frantic words of supplication, but she was listening to the sound of Georges’s footsteps dying away under the distant arches.
She realized that it was over, that struggling was useless. Nevertheless she did not want to surrender, and she was seized by one of those attacks of hysteria that fling women to the ground, quivering, howling, and writhing. She was trembling in every limb, certain that she was about to collapse and roll, shrieking, between the chairs.
Someone was approaching rapidly. She turned her head. It was a priest. So she stood up and, rushing over to him with clasped hands, stammered: ‘Oh! Save me! Save me!’
He halted, surprised. ‘What is it that you want, Madame?’
‘I want you to save me. Have pity on me. Unless you help me, I am lost.’
He gazed at her, wondering if she might perhaps be crazy. He repeated: ‘What can I do for you?’
He was a young man, tall and a trifle heavy, with full, pendulous jowls darkened by his scrupulously shaved beard, a handsome city priest for an affluent neighbourhood, accustomed to confessing wealthy women parishioners.
‘Hear my confession,’ she said, ‘and counsel me, support me, tell me what to do!’
He replied: ‘I hear confession every Saturday, from three until six.’
She had grabbed hold of his arm, and kept clutching at it as she insisted: ‘No, no, no! Now, now! You must! He’s here! In this church! He’s waiting for me.’
The priest asked: ‘Who’s waiting for you?’
‘A man… who’ll be my downfall… who’ll take me, if you don’t save me… I can’t escape him, I’m too weak… too weak… so weak… so weak!’ She fell to her knees, sobbing: ‘Oh, have pity on me, Father! Save me, in God’s name save me!’
She was holding on to his black robe so that he could not get away from her; and he looked uneasily round, in case some spiteful or pious eye might see this woman lying at his feet. Realizing, finally, that he would not be able to get away from her: ‘Stand up,’ he said, ‘it so happens I have the key to the confessional on me.’ And, rummaging in his pocket, he produced a ring of keys, selected one, and then walked quickly over towards some little wooden booths, containers for the refuse of souls, into which believers empty out their sins.
He went in by the door in the centre which he closed behind him, and Mme Walter, who had flung herself into the narrow box on one side, stammered fervently, in an access of impassioned hope: ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’
Du Roy, having walked round the chancel, turned down the left aisle. On reaching the centre he met the stout, bald gentleman, who was still calmly sauntering along, and he wondered: ‘What in the world can this fellow be doing here?’
; The other walker had also slowed his pace and was looking at Georges with an evident desire to speak to him. When he was close he bowed and said very politely: ‘I beg your pardon, Monsieur, for troubling you, but could you tell me the date when this church was built?’
Du Roy replied: ‘My word, I’m not quite sure, but I think twenty years ago, or twenty-five.* Actually, it’s the first time I’ve been inside it.’
‘Same for me. I’d never seen it.’
So then the journalist, who was growing curious, went on: ‘You seem to be looking round it most attentively. You’re studying all its details.’
The other told him, in a resigned tone: ‘I’m not looking round it, Monsieur, I’m waiting for my wife who arranged to meet me here, and is extremely late.’
He fell silent, then said, after a few seconds: ‘It’s dreadfully hot, outside.’
Du Roy gazed at him, thinking he looked a bit of a fool, and suddenly it struck him that he resembled Forestier.
‘You’re from the provinces?’ he asked.
‘Yes, from Rennes.* And you, Monsieur, is it curiosity that brings you to this church?’
‘No, I myself am waiting for a woman.’ And, with a bow, the journalist walked away, a smile on his lips.
As he approached the main entrance, he again saw the beggar woman; she was still on her knees, praying. He thought: ‘Good Lord! She’s certainly persistent with her prayers.’ He was no longer moved; he no longer felt sorry for her. He passed by her and began walking quietly up the right aisle to meet Mme Walter.
He examined, from far away, the spot where he had left her, and was astonished not to see her. Thinking that he must have mistaken the pillar, he went up to the end one, and then returned. So, she must have left! He was surprised and infuriated. Then he thought that she might be looking for him, and walked round the church again. Not having found her, he came back to the chair she had been occupying, hoping that she would join him there. He waited.