Ги де Мопассан
The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume 8
"So then you believe she was not asleep?"
He wore an air of dissatisfaction.
"Well, at any rate," he said, "let us have a drink together."
And immediately he showed a disposition to empty the two bottles one after the other without more ado.
This time I did display some energy. When I had swallowed one glass I rose up to leave. He no longer spoke of accompanying me, and with a sullen scowl, the scowl of a common man in an angry mood, the scowl of a brute whose violence is only slumbering, in the direction of his wife's sleeping apartment, he muttered:
"She'll have to open that door when you've gone."
I stared at this poltroon, who had worked himself into a fit of rage without knowing why, perhaps, owing to an obscure presentiment, the instinct of the deceived male who does not like closed doors. He had talked about her to me in a tender strain; now assuredly he was going to beat her.
He exclaimed, as he shook the lock once more:
"Pauline!"
A voice like that of a woman waking out of her sleep, replied from behind the partition:
"Eh! what?"
"Didn't you hear me coming in?"
"No, I was asleep! Let me rest."
"Open the door!"
"Yes, when you're alone. I don't like you to be bringing home fellows at night to drink with you."
Then I took myself off, stumbling down the stairs, as the other man, of whom I had been the accomplice had done. And, as I resumed my journey toward Paris, I realized that I had just witnessed in that wretched abode a scene of the eternal drama which is being acted every day, under every form, and among every class.
THE AVENGER
When M. Antoine Leuillet married the Widow Mathilde Souris, he had been in love with her for nearly ten years.
M. Souris had been his friend, his old college chum. Leuillet was very fond of him, but found him rather a muff. He often used to say: "That poor Souris will never set the Seine on fire."
When Souris married Mdlle. Mathilde Duval, Leuillet was surprised and somewhat vexed, for he had a slight weakness for her. She was the daughter of a neighbor of his, a retired haberdasher with a good bit of money. She was pretty, well-mannered, and intelligent. She accepted Souris on account of his money.
Then Leuillet cherished hopes of another sort. He began paying attentions to his friend's wife. He was a handsome man, not at all stupid, and also well off. He was confident that he would succeed; he failed. Then he fell really in love with her, and he was the sort of lover who is rendered timid, prudent, and embarrassed by intimacy with the husband. Mme. Souris fancied that he no longer meant anything serious by his attentions to her, and she became simply his friend. This state of affairs lasted nine years.
Now, one morning, Leuillet received a startling communication from the poor woman. Souris had died suddenly of aneurism of the heart.
He got a terrible shock, for they were of the same age; but the very next moment, a sensation of profound joy, of infinite relief of deliverance, penetrated his body and soul. Mme. Souris was free.
He had the tact, however, to make such a display of grief as the occasion required; he waited for the proper time to elapse, and attended to all the conventional usages. At the end of fifteen months he married the widow.
His conduct was regarded as not only natural but generous. He had acted like a good friend and an honest man. In short he was happy, quite happy.
They lived on terms of the closest confidence, having from the first understood and appreciated each other. One kept nothing secret from the other, and they told each other their inmost thoughts. Leuillet now loved his wife with a calm trustful affection; he loved her as a tender, devoted partner, who is an equal and a confidante. But there still lingered in his soul a singular and unaccountable grudge against the deceased Souris, who had been the first to possess this woman, who had had the flower of her youth and of her soul, and who had even robbed her of her poetic attributes. The memory of the dead husband spoiled the happiness of the living husband; and this posthumous jealousy now began to torment Leuillet's heart day and night.
The result was that he was incessantly talking about Souris, asking a thousand minute and intimate questions about him, and seeking for information as to all his habits and personal characteristics. And he pursued him with railleries even into the depths of the tomb, recalling with self-satisfaction his oddities, emphasizing his absurdities, and pointing out his defects.
Every minute he kept calling out to his wife from one end to the other of the house:
"Hallo, Mathilde!"
"Here am I, dear."
"Come and let us have a chat."
She always came over to him, smiling, well aware that Souris was to be the subject of the chat, and anxious to gratify her second husband's harmless fad.
"I say! do you remember how Souris wanted, one day, to prove to me that small men are always better loved than big men?"
And he launched out into reflections unfavorable to the defunct husband, who was small, and discreetly complimentary to himself, as he happened to be tall.
And Mme. Leuillet let him think that he was quite right; and she laughed very heartily, turned the first husband into ridicule in a playful fashion for the amusement of his successor, who always ended by remarking:
"Never mind! Souris was a muff!"
They were happy, quite happy. And Leuillet never ceased to testify his unabated attachment to his wife by all the usual manifestations.
Now, one night when they happened to be both kept awake by the renewal of youthful ardor, Leuillet, who held his wife clasped tightly in his arms, and had his lips glued to hers, said:
"Tell me this, darling."
"What?"
"Souris – 'tisn't easy to put the question – was he very – very amorous?"
She gave him a warm kiss, as she murmured:
"Not so much as you, my duck."
His male vanity was flattered, and he went on:
"He must have been – rather a flat – eh?"
She did not answer. There was merely a sly little laugh on her face, which she pressed close to her husband's neck.
He persisted in his questions:
"Come now! Don't deny that he was a flat – well, I mean, rather an awkward sort of fellow?"
She nodded slightly.
"Well, yes, rather awkward."
He went on:
"I'm sure he used to weary you many a night – isn't that so?"
This time, she had an access of frankness, and she replied:
"Oh! yes."
He embraced her once more when she made this acknowledgment, and murmured:
"What an ass he was! You were not happy with him?"
She answered:
"No. He was not always jolly."
Leuillet felt quite delighted, making a comparison in his own mind between his wife's former situation and her present one.
He remained silent for some time: then, with a fresh outburst of merit, he said:
"Tell me this!"
"What?"
"Will you be quite candid – quite candid with me?"
"Certainly, dear."
"Well, look here! Have you never been tempted to – to deceive this imbecile, Souris?"
Mme. Leuillet uttered a little "Oh!" in a shamefaced way, and again cuddled her face closer to her husband's chest. But he could see that she was laughing.
He persisted:
"Come now, confess it! He had a head just suited for a cuckold, this blockhead! It would be so funny! This good Souris! Oh! I say, darling, you might tell it to me – only to me!"
He emphasized the words "to me," feeling certain that if she wanted to show any taste when she deceived her husband, he, Leuillet, would have been the man; and he quivered with joy at the expectation of this avowal, sure that if she had not been the virtuous woman she was he could have had her then.
But she did not reply, laughing incessantly as if at the recollection of something infinitely comic.
Leuillet, in his turn, burst out laughing at the notion that he might have made a cuckold of Souris. What a good joke! What a capital bit of fun, to be sure!
He exclaimed in a voice broken by convulsions of laughter.
"Oh! poor Souris! poor Souris! Ah! yes, he had that sort of head – oh, certainly he had!"
And Mme. Leuillet now twisted herself under the sheets, laughing till the tears almost came into her eyes.
And Leuillet repeated: "Come, confess it! confess it! Be candid. You must know that it cannot be unpleasant to me to hear such a thing."
Then she stammered, still choking with laughter.
"Yes, yes."
Her husband pressed her for an answer.
"Yes, what? Look here! tell me everything."
She was now laughing in a more subdued fashion, and, raising her mouth up to Leuillet's ear, which was held towards her in anticipation of some pleasant piece of confidence, she whispered – "Yes, I did deceive him!"
He felt a cold shiver down his back, and utterly dumbfounded, he gasped.
"You – you – did – really – deceive him?"
She was still under the impression that he thought the thing infinitely pleasant, and replied.
"Yes – really – really."
He was obliged to sit up in bed so great was the shock he received, holding his breath, just as overwhelmed as if he had just been told that he was a cuckold himself. At first, he was unable to articulate properly; then after the lapse of a minute or so, he merely ejaculated.
"Ah!"
She, too, had stopped laughing now, realizing her mistake too late.
Leuillet, at length asked.
"And with whom?"
She kept silent, cudgeling her brain to find some excuse.
He repeated his question.
"With whom?"
At last, she said.
"With a young man."
He turned towards her abruptly, and in a dry tone, said.
"Well, I suppose it wasn't with some kitchen wench. I ask you who was the young man – do you understand?"
She did not answer. He tore away the sheet which she had drawn over her head, and pushed her into the middle of the bed, repeating.
"I want to know with what young man – do you understand?"
Then, she replied with some difficulty in uttering the words.
"I only wanted to laugh." But he fairly shook with rage: "What? How is that? You only wanted to laugh? So then you were making game of me? I'm not going to be satisfied with these evasions, let me tell you! I ask you what was the young man's name?"
She did not reply, but lay motionless on her back.
He caught hold of her arm and pressed it tightly.
"Do you hear me, I say? I want you to give me an answer when I speak to you."
Then, she said, in nervous tones.
"I think you must be going mad! Let me alone!"
He trembled with fury, so exasperated that he scarcely knew what he was saying, and, shaking her with all his strength, he repeated.
"Do you hear me? do you hear me?"
She wrenched herself out of his grasp with a sudden movement, and with the tips of her fingers slapped her husband on the nose. He entirely lost his temper, feeling that he had been struck, and angrily pounced down on her.
He now held her under him, boxing her ears in a most violent manner, and exclaiming:
"Take that – and that – and that – there you are, you trollop!"
Then, when he was out of breath, exhausted from beating her, he got up, and went over to the chest of drawers to get himself a glass of sugared orange-water for he was almost ready to faint after his exertion.
And she lay huddled up in bed, crying and heaving great sobs, feeling that there was an end of her happiness, and that it was all her own fault.
Then, in the midst of her tears, she faltered:
"Listen, Antoine, come here! I told you a lie – listen! I'll explain it to you."
And now, prepared to defend herself, armed with excuses and subterfuges, she slightly raised her head all tangled under her crumpled nightcap.
And he, turning towards her, drew close to her, ashamed at having whacked her, but feeling intensely still in his heart's core as a husband an inexhaustible hatred against that woman who had deceived his predecessor, Souris.
ALL OVER
The Comte de Lormerin had just finished dressing himself. He cast a parting glance at the large glass, which occupied an entire panel of his dressing-room, and smiled.
He was really a fine-looking man still, though he was quite gray. Tall, slight, elegant, with no projecting paunch, with a scanty moustache of doubtful shade in his thin face, which seemed fair rather than white, he had presence, that "chic" in short, that indescribable something which establishes between two men more difference than millions.
He murmured, "Lormerin is still alive!"
And he made his way into the drawing-room where his correspondence awaited him.
On his table, where everything had its place, the work-table of the gentleman who never works, there were a dozen letters lying beside three newspapers of different opinions. With a single touch of the finger he exposed to view all these letters, like a gambler giving the choice of a card; and he scanned the handwriting, a thing he did each morning before tearing open the envelopes.
It was for him a moment of delightful expectancy, of inquiry and vague anxiety. What did these sealed mysterious papers bring him? What did they contain of pleasure, of happiness, or of grief? He surveyed them with a rapid sweep of the eye, recognizing in each case the hand that wrote them, selecting them, making two or three lots, according to what he expected from them. Here, friends; there, persons to whom he was indifferent; further on, strangers. The last kind always gave him a little uneasiness. What did they want from him? What hand had traced those curious characters full of thoughts, promises, or threats?
This day one letter in particular caught his eye. It was simple nevertheless, without seeming to reveal anything; but he regarded it with disquietude, with a sort of internal shiver.
He thought: "From whom can it be? I certainly know this writing, and yet I can't identify it."
He raised it to a level with his face, holding it delicately between two fingers, striving to read through the envelope without making up his mind to open it.
Then he smelled it, and snatched up from the table a little magnifying glass which he used in studying all the niceties of handwriting. He suddenly felt unnerved. "Who is it from? This hand is familiar to me, very familiar. I must have often read its prosings, yes, very often. But this must have been a long, long time ago. Who the deuce can it be from? Pooh! 'tis only from somebody asking for money."
And he tore open the letter. Then he read.
"My dear Friend, – You have, without doubt, forgotten me, for it is now twenty-five years since we saw each other. I was young; I am old. When I bade you farewell, I quitted Paris in order to follow into the provinces my husband, my old husband, whom you used to call 'my hospital.' Do you remember him? He died five years ago, and now, I am returning to Paris to get my daughter married, for I have a daughter, a beautiful girl of eighteen, whom you have never seen. I informed you about her entrance into the world, but you certainly did not pay much attention to so trifling an event.
"You, you are always the handsome Lormerin; so I have been told. Well, if you still recollect little Lise, whom you used to call Lison, come and dine this evening with her, with the elderly Baronne de Vance, your ever faithful friend, who, with some emotion, stretches out to you, without complaining of her lot, a devoted hand, which you must clasp, but no longer kiss, my poor Jaquelet.
"Lise de Vance."
Lormerin's heart began to throb. He remained sunk in his armchair, with the letter on his knees, staring straight before him, overcome by poignant feelings that made the tears mount up to his eyes!
If he had ever loved a woman in his life it was this one, little Lise, Lise de Vance, whom he called "Cinder-Flower" on account of the strange color of her hair, and the pale gray of her eyes. Oh! what a fine, pretty, charming creature she was, this frail Baronne, the wife of that, gouty, pimply Baron, who had abruptly carried her off to the provinces, shut her up, kept her apart through jealousy, through jealousy of the handsome Lormerin.
Yes, he had loved her, and he believed that he, too, had been truly loved. She familiarly gave him the name of Jaquelet, and she used to pronounce that word in an exquisite fashion.
A thousand memories that had been effaced came back to him, far off and sweet and melancholy now. One evening, she called on him on her way home from a ball, and they went out for a stroll in the Bois de Boulogne, she in evening dress, he in his dressing-jacket. It was springtime; the weather was beautiful. The odor of her bodice embalmed the warm air – the odor of her bodice, and also a little, the odor of her skin. What a divine night! When they reached the lake, as the moon's rays fell across the branches into the water, she began to weep. A little surprised, he asked her why.
She replied:
"I don't know. 'Tis the moon and the water that have affected me. Every time I see poetic things, they seize hold of my heart, and I have to cry."
He smiled, moved himself, considering her feminine emotion charming – the emotion of a poor little woman whom every sensation overwhelms. And he embraced her passionately, stammering:
"My little Lise, you are exquisite."
What a charming love affair short-lived and dainty it had been, and all over too so quickly, cut short in the midst of its ardor by this old brute of a Baron, who had carried off his wife, and never shown her afterwards to anyone!
Lormerin had forgotten, in good sooth, at the end of two or three months. One woman drives out the other so quickly in Paris when one is a bachelor! No matter he had kept a little chapel for her in his heart, for he had loved her alone! He assured himself now that this was so.
He rose up, and said: "Certainly, I will go and dine with her this evening!"
And instinctively he turned round towards the glass in order to inspect himself from head to foot. He reflected: "She must have grown old unpleasantly, more than I have!" And he felt gratified at the thought of showing himself to her still handsome, still fresh, of astonishing her, perhaps of filling her with emotion, and making her regret those bygone days so far, far distant!
He turned his attention to the other letters. They were not of importance.
The whole day, he kept thinking of this phantom. What was she like now? How funny it was to meet in this way after twenty-five years! Would he alone recognize her?
He made his toilet with feminine coquetry, put on a white waistcoat, which suited him better with the coat, sent for the hairdresser to give him a finishing touch with the curling-iron, for he had preserved his hair, and started very early in order to show his eagerness to see her.
The first thing he saw on entering a pretty drawing-room freshly furnished, was his own portrait, an old faded photograph, dating from the days of his good-fortune, hanging on the wall in an antique silk frame.
He sat down and waited. A door opened behind him. He rose up abruptly, and, turning round, beheld an old woman with white hair who extended both hands towards him.
He seized them, kissed them one after the other with long, long kisses, then, lifting up his head, he gazed at the woman he had loved.
Yes, it was an old lady, an old lady whom he did not recognize, and who, while she smiled, seemed ready to weep.
He could not abstain from murmuring:
"It is you, Lise?"
She replied:
"Yes, it is I; it is I, indeed. You would not have known me, isn't that so? I have had so much sorrow – so much sorrow. Sorrow has consumed my life. Look at me now – or rather don't look at me! But how handsome you have kept – and young! If I had by chance met you in the street, I would have cried, 'Jaquelet!' Now sit down and let us, first of all, have a chat. And then I'll show you my daughter, my grown-up daughter. You'll see how she resembles me – or rather how I resemble her – no, it is not quite that: she is just like the 'me' of former days – you shall see! But I wanted to be alone with you first. I feared that there would be some emotion on my side, at the first moment. Now it is all over; it is past. Pray be seated, my friend."
He sat down beside her, holding her hand; but he did not know what to say; he did not know this woman – it seemed to him that he had never seen her before. What had he come to do in this house? Of what could he speak? Of the long-ago? What was there in common between him and her? He could no longer recall anything to mind in the presence of this grandmotherly face. He could no longer recall to mind all the nice, tender things so sweet, so bitter, that had assailed his heart, some time since, when he thought of the other, of little Lise, of the dainty Cinder-Flower. What then had become of her, the former one, the one he had loved? that woman of far-off dreams, the blonde with gray eyes, the young one who used to call him "Jaquelet" so prettily?
They remained side by side, motionless, both constrained, troubled, profoundly ill at ease.
As they only talked in commonplace phrases, broken and slow, she rose up, and pressed the button of the bell.
"I am going to call Renee," she said.
There was a tap at the door, then the rustle of a dress; next, a young voice exclaimed:
"Here I am, mamma!"
Lormerin remained scared, as if at the sight of an apparition.
He stammered:
"Good-day, Mademoiselle."
Then, turning towards the mother:
"Oh! it is you!.."
In fact, it was she, she whom he had known in bygone days, the Lise who had vanished and come back! In her he found the woman he had won twenty-five years before. This one was even younger still, fresher, more childlike.
He felt a wild desire to open his arms, to clasp her to his heart again, murmuring in her ear:
"Good-day, Lison!"
A man-servant announced:
"Dinner is ready, Madame."
And they proceeded towards the dining-room.
What passed at this dinner? What did they say to him, and what could he say in reply? He found himself plunged in one of those strange dreams which border on insanity. He gazed at the two women with a fixed idea in his mind, a morbid, self-contradictory idea:
"Which is the real one?"
The mother smiled, repeating over and over again:
"Do you remember?" And it was in the bright eye of the young girl that he found again his memories of the past. Twenty times he opened his mouth to say to her: "Do you remember, Lison? – " forgetting this white-haired lady who was regarding him with looks of tenderness.
And yet there were moments when he no longer felt sure, when he lost his head. He could see that the woman of to-day was not exactly the woman of long ago. The other one, the former one, had in her voice, in her glance, in her entire being, something which he did not find again. And he made prodigious efforts of mind to recall his lady love, to seize again what had escaped from her to him, what this resuscitated one did not possess.
The Baronne said:
"You have lost your old sprightliness, my poor friend."
He murmured:
"There are many other things that I have lost!"
But in his heart touched with emotion, he felt his old love springing to life once more, like an awakened wild beast ready to bite him.
The young girl went on chattering, and every now and then some familiar phrase of her mother which she had borrowed, a certain style of speaking and thinking, that resemblance of mind and manner which people acquire by living together, shook Lormerin from head to foot. All these things penetrated him, making the reopened wound of his passion bleed anew.
He got away early, and took a turn along the boulevard. But the image of this young girl pursued him, haunted him, quickened his heart, inflamed his blood. Apart from the two women, he now saw only one, a young one, the one of former days returned, and he loved her as he had loved her in bygone years. He loved her with greater ardor, after an interval of twenty-five years.
He went home to reflect on this strange and terrible thing, and to think on what he should do.
But, as he was passing, with a wax candle in his hand, before the glass, the large glass in which he had contemplated himself and admired himself before he started, he saw reflected there an elderly, gray-haired man; and suddenly he recollected what he had been in olden days, in the days of little Lise. He saw himself charming and handsome, as he had been when he was loved! Then, drawing the light nearer, he looked at himself more closely, as one inspects a strange thing with a magnifying glass, tracing the wrinkles, discovering those frightful ravages, which he had not perceived till now.
And he sat down, crushed at the sight of himself, at the sight of his lamentable image, murmuring:
"All over, Lormerin!"
