"This is just what I expected. Thank you!"
Rosanette remained motionless, stupefied by this extraordinary behaviour.
She even allowed the door to be shut; then, with a bound, she pulled him back into the anteroom, and flinging her arms around him:
"Why, you are mad! you are mad! this is absurd! I love you!" Then she changed her tone to one of entreaty:[304]
"Good heavens! for the sake of our dead infant!"
"Confess that it was you who did this trick!" said Frederick.
She still protested that she was innocent.
"You will not acknowledge it?"
"No!"
"Well, then, farewell! and forever!"
"Listen to me!"
Frederick turned round:
"If you understood me better, you would know that my decision is irrevocable!"
"Oh! oh! you will come back to me again!"
"Never as long as I live!"
And he slammed the door behind him violently.
Rosanette wrote to Deslauriers saying that she wanted to see him at once.
He called one evening, about five days later; and, when she told him about the rupture:
"That's all! A nice piece of bad luck!"
She thought at first that he would have been able to bring back Frederick; but now all was lost. She ascertained through the doorkeeper that he was about to be married to Madame Dambreuse.
Deslauriers gave her a lecture, and showed himself an exceedingly gay fellow, quite a jolly dog; and, as it was very late, asked permission to pass the night in an armchair.
Then, next morning, he set out again for Nogent, informing her that he was unable to say when they would meet once more. In a little while, there would perhaps be a great change in his life.
Two hours after his return, the town was in a state of revolution. The news went round that M. Frederick was going to marry Madame Dambreuse.[305] At length the three Mesdemoiselles Auger, unable to stand it any longer, made their way to the house of Madame Moreau, who with an air of pride confirmed this intelligence. Père Roque became quite ill when he heard it. Louise locked herself up; it was even rumoured that she had gone mad.
Meanwhile, Frederick was unable to hide his dejection. Madame Dambreuse, in order to divert his mind, no doubt, from gloomy thoughts, redoubled her attentions. Every afternoon they went out for a drive in her carriage; and, on one occasion, as they were passing along the Place de la Bourse, she took the idea into her head to pay a visit to the public auction-rooms for the sake of amusement.
It was the 1st of December, the very day on which the sale of Madame Arnoux's furniture was to take place. He remembered the date, and manifested his repugnance, declaring that this place was intolerable on account of the crush and the noise. She only wanted to get a peep at it. The brougham drew up. He had no alternative but to accompany her.
In the open space could be seen washhand-stands without basins, the wooden portions of armchairs, old hampers, pieces of porcelain, empty bottles, mattresses; and men in blouses or in dirty frock-coats, all grey with dust, and mean-looking faces, some with canvas sacks over their shoulders, were chatting in separate groups or hailing each other in a disorderly fashion.
Frederick urged that it was inconvenient to go on any further.
"Pooh!"
And they ascended the stairs. In the first room, at the right, gentlemen, with catalogues in their hands, were examining pictures; in another, a collection of[306] Chinese weapons were being sold. Madame Dambreuse wanted to go down again. She looked at the numbers over the doors, and she led him to the end of the corridor towards an apartment which was blocked up with people.
He immediately recognised the two whatnots belonging to the office of L'Art Industriel, her work-table, all her furniture. Heaped up at the end of the room according to their respective heights, they formed a long slope from the floor to the windows, and at the other sides of the apartment, the carpets and the curtains hung down straight along the walls. There were underneath steps occupied by old men who had fallen asleep. At the left rose a sort of counter at which the auctioneer, in a white cravat, was lightly swinging a little hammer. By his side a young man was writing, and below him stood a sturdy fellow, between a commercial traveller and a vendor of countermarks, crying out: "Furniture for sale." Three attendants placed the articles on a table, at the sides of which sat in a row second-hand dealers and old-clothes' women. The general public at the auction kept walking in a circle behind them.
When Frederick came in, the petticoats, the neckerchiefs, and even the chemises were being passed on from hand to hand, and then given back. Sometimes they were flung some distance, and suddenly strips of whiteness went flying through the air. After that her gowns were sold, and then one of her hats, the broken feather of which was hanging down, then her furs, and then three pairs of boots; and the disposal by sale of these relics, wherein he could trace in a confused sort of way the very outlines of her form, appeared to him an atrocity, as if he had seen carrion[307] crows mangling her corpse. The atmosphere of the room, heavy with so many breaths, made him feel sick. Madame Dambreuse offered him her smelling-bottle. She said that she found all this highly amusing.
The bedroom furniture was now exhibited. Maître Berthelmot named a price. The crier immediately repeated it in a louder voice, and the three auctioneer's assistants quietly waited for the stroke of the hammer, and then carried off the article sold to an adjoining apartment. In this way disappeared, one after the other, the large blue carpet spangled with camellias, which her dainty feet used to touch so lightly as she advanced to meet him, the little upholstered easy-chair, in which he used to sit facing her when they were alone together, the two screens belonging to the mantelpiece, the ivory of which had been rendered smoother by the touch of her hands, and a velvet pincushion, which was still bristling with pins. It was as if portions of his heart had been carried away with these things; and the monotony of the same voices and the same gestures benumbed him with fatigue, and caused within him a mournful torpor, a sensation like that of death itself.
There was a rustle of silk close to his ear. Rosanette touched him.
It was through Frederick himself that she had learned about this auction. When her first feelings of vexation was over, the idea of deriving profit from it occurred to her mind. She had come to see it in a white satin vest with pearl buttons, a furbelowed gown, tight-fitting gloves on her hands, and a look of triumph on her face.
He grew pale with anger. She stared at the woman who was by his side.[308]
Madame Dambreuse had recognised her, and for a minute they examined each other from head to foot minutely, in order to discover the defect, the blemish—the one perhaps envying the other's youth, and the other filled with spite at the extreme good form, the aristocratic simplicity of her rival.
At last Madame Dambreuse turned her head round with a smile of inexpressible insolence.
The crier had opened a piano—her piano! While he remained standing before it he ran the fingers of his right hand over the keys, and put up the instrument at twelve hundred francs; then he brought down the figures to one thousand, then to eight hundred, and finally to seven hundred.
Madame Dambreuse, in a playful tone, laughed at the appearance of some socket that was out of gear.
The next thing placed before the second-hand dealers was a little chest with medallions and silver corners and clasps, the same one which he had seen at the first dinner in the Rue de Choiseul, which had subsequently been in Rosanette's house, and again transferred back to Madame Arnoux's residence. Often, during their conversations his eyes wandered towards it. He was bound to it by the dearest memories, and his soul was melting with tender emotions about it, when suddenly Madame Dambreuse said:
"Look here! I am going to buy that!"
"But it is not a very rare article," he returned.
She considered it, on the contrary, very pretty, and the appraiser commended its delicacy.
"A gem of the Renaissance! Eight hundred francs, messieurs! Almost entirely of silver! With a little whiting it can be made to shine brilliantly."[309]
And, as she was pushing forward through the crush of people:
"What an odd idea!" said Frederick.
"You are annoyed at this!"
"No! But what can be done with a fancy article of that sort?"
"Who knows? Love-letters might be kept in it, perhaps!"
She gave him a look which made the allusion very clear.
"A reason the more for not robbing the dead of their secrets."
"I did not imagine she was dead." And then in a loud voice she went on to bid:
"Eight hundred and eighty francs!"
"What you're doing is not right," murmured Frederick.
She began to laugh.
"But this is the first favour, dear, that I am asking from you."
"Come, now! doesn't it strike you that at this rate you won't be a very considerate husband?"
Some one had just at that moment made a higher bid.
"Nine hundred francs!"
"Nine hundred francs!" repeated Maître Berthelmot.
"Nine hundred and ten—fifteen—twenty—thirty!" squeaked the auctioneer's crier, with jerky shakes of his head as he cast a sweeping glance at those assembled around him.
"Show me that I am going to have a wife who is amenable to reason," said Frederick.
And he gently drew her towards the door.[310]
The auctioneer proceeded:
"Come, come, messieurs; nine hundred and thirty. Is there any bidder at nine hundred and thirty?"
Madame Dambreuse, just as she had reached the door, stopped, and raising her voice to a high pitch:
"One thousand francs!"
There was a thrill of astonishment, and then a dead silence.
"A thousand francs, messieurs, a thousand francs! Is nobody advancing on this bid? Is that clear? Very well, then—one thousand francs! going!—gone!"
And down came the ivory hammer. She passed in her card, and the little chest was handed over to her. She thrust it into her muff.
Frederick felt a great chill penetrating his heart.
Madame Dambreuse had not let go her hold of his arm; and she had not the courage to look up at his face in the street, where her carriage was awaiting her.
She flung herself into it, like a thief flying away after a robbery, and then turned towards Frederick. He had his hat in his hand.
"Are you not going to come in?"
"No, Madame!"
And, bowing to her frigidly, he shut the carriage-door, and then made a sign to the coachman to drive away.
The first feeling that he experienced was one of joy at having regained his independence. He was filled with pride at the thought that he had avenged Madame Arnoux by sacrificing a fortune to her; then, he was amazed at his own act, and he felt doubled up with extreme physical exhaustion.
Next morning his man-servant brought him the news.[311]
The city had been declared to be in a state of siege; the Assembly had been dissolved; and a number of the representatives of the people had been imprisoned at Mazas. Public affairs had assumed to his mind an utterly unimportant aspect, so deeply preoccupied was he by his private troubles.
He wrote to several tradesmen countermanding various orders which he had given for the purchase of articles in connection with his projected marriage, which now appeared to him in the light of a rather mean speculation; and he execrated Madame Dambreuse, because, owing to her, he had been very near perpetrating a vile action. He had forgotten the Maréchale, and did not even bother himself about Madame Arnoux—absorbed only in one thought—lost amid the wreck of his dreams, sick at heart, full of grief and disappointment, and in his hatred of the artificial atmosphere wherein he had suffered so much, he longed for the freshness of green fields, the repose of provincial life, a sleeping existence spent beneath his natal roof in the midst of ingenuous hearts. At last, when Wednesday evening arrived, he made his way out into the open air.
On the boulevard numerous groups had taken up their stand. From time to time a patrol came and dispersed them; they gathered together again in regular order behind it. They talked freely and in loud tones, made chaffing remarks about the soldiers, without anything further happening.
"What! are they not going to fight?" said Frederick to a workman.
"They're not such fools as to get themselves killed for the well-off people! Let them take care of themselves!"[312]
And a gentleman muttered, as he glanced across at the inhabitants of the faubourgs:
"Socialist rascals! If it were only possible, this time, to exterminate them!"
Frederick could not, for the life of him, understand the necessity of so much rancour and vituperative language. His feeling of disgust against Paris was intensified by these occurrences, and two days later he set out for Nogent by the first train.
The houses soon became lost to view; the country stretched out before his gaze. Alone in his carriage, with his feet on the seat in front of him, he pondered over the events of the last few days, and then on his entire past. The recollection of Louise came back to his mind.
"She, indeed, loved me truly! I was wrong not to snatch at this chance of happiness. Pooh! let us not think any more about it!"
Then, five minutes afterwards: "Who knows, after all? Why not, later?"
His reverie, like his eyes, wandered afar towards vague horizons.
"She was artless, a peasant girl, almost a savage; but so good!"
In proportion as he drew nearer to Nogent, her image drew closer to him. As they were passing through the meadows of Sourdun, he saw her once more in imagination under the poplar-trees, as in the old days, cutting rushes on the edges of the pools. And now they had reached their destination; he stepped out of the train.
Then he leaned with his elbows on the bridge, to gaze again at the isle and the garden where they had walked together one sunshiny day, and the dizzy[313] sensation caused by travelling, together with the weakness engendered by his recent emotions, arousing in his breast a sort of exaltation, he said to himself:
"She has gone out, perhaps; suppose I were to go and meet her!"
The bell of Saint-Laurent was ringing, and in the square in front of the church there was a crowd of poor people around an open carriage, the only one in the district—the one which was always hired for weddings. And all of a sudden, under the church-gate, accompanied by a number of well-dressed persons in white cravats, a newly-married couple appeared.
He thought he must be labouring under some hallucination. But no! It was, indeed, Louise! covered with a white veil which flowed from her red hair down to her heels; and with her was no other than Deslauriers, attired in a blue coat embroidered with silver—the costume of a prefect.
How was this?
Frederick concealed himself at the corner of a house to let the procession pass.
Shamefaced, vanquished, crushed, he retraced his steps to the railway-station, and returned to Paris.
The cabman who drove him assured him that the barricades were erected from the Château d'Eau to the Gymnase, and turned down the Faubourg Saint-Martin. At the corner of the Rue de Provence, Frederick stepped out in order to reach the boulevards.
It was five o'clock. A thin shower was falling. A number of citizens blocked up the footpath close to the Opera House. The houses opposite were closed. No one at any of the windows. All along the boulevard, dragoons were galloping behind a row[314] of wagons, leaning with drawn swords over their horses; and the plumes of their helmets, and their large white cloaks, rising up behind them, could be seen under the glare of the gas-lamps, which shook in the wind in the midst of a haze. The crowd gazed at them mute with fear.
In the intervals between the cavalry-charges, squads of policemen arrived on the scene to keep back the people in the streets.
But on the steps of Tortoni, a man—Dussardier—who could be distinguished at a distance b
y his great height, remained standing as motionless as a caryatide.
One of the police-officers, marching at the head of his men, with his three-cornered hat drawn over his eyes, threatened him with his sword.
The other thereupon took one step forward, and shouted:
"Long live the Republic!"
The next moment he fell on his back with his arms crossed.
A yell of horror arose from the crowd. The police-officer, with a look of command, made a circle around him; and Frederick, gazing at him in open-mouthed astonishment, recognised Sénécal.
* * *
CHAPTER XIX.
A Bitter-Sweet Reunion.
e travelled.
He realised the melancholy associated[315] with packet-boats, the chill one feels on waking up under tents, the dizzy effect of landscapes and ruins, and the bitterness of ruptured sympathies.
He returned home.
He mingled in society, and he conceived attachments to other women. But the constant recollection of his first love made these appear insipid; and besides the vehemence of desire, the bloom of the sensation had vanished. In like manner, his intellectual ambitions had grown weaker. Years passed; and he was forced to support the burthen of a life in which his mind was unoccupied and his heart devoid of energy.
Towards the end of March, 1867, just as it was getting dark, one evening, he was sitting all alone in his study, when a woman suddenly came in.
"Madame Arnoux!"
"Frederick!"[316]
She caught hold of his hands, and drew him gently towards the window, and, as she gazed into his face, she kept repeating:
"'Tis he! Yes, indeed—'tis he!"
In the growing shadows of the twilight, he could see only her eyes under the black lace veil that hid her face.
When she had laid down on the edge of the mantelpiece a little pocket-book bound in garnet velvet, she seated herself in front of him, and they both remained silent, unable to utter a word, smiling at one another.
At last he asked her a number of questions about herself and her husband.
They had gone to live in a remote part of Brittany for the sake of economy, so as to be able to pay their debts. Arnoux, now almost a chronic invalid, seemed to have become quite an old man. Her daughter had been married and was living at Bordeaux, and her son was in garrison at Mostaganem.