Читать книгу The Complete Works of Emile Zola - Emile Zola - Страница 157

WHEN Madeleine met William, she was thinking of leaving the hotel and looking for a little room which she would furnish herself. In this house, open to all comers, full of students and young women, she did not feel sufficiently at home, and she found herself exposed to having to listen to horrible proposals which put her in mind cruelly of her desertion. After her removal, she intended to work and to utilise her talent for embroidery. Besides, her income of two thousand francs, was sufficient for her needs. The future filled her with an indistinct feeling of anxiety; she foresaw that the solitude, to which she wished to condemn herself, would be full of perils. Although she had sworn to be brave, there were days that were so devoid of interest and so sad, that on certain nights, she would find herself in the midst of her dejection, entertaining thoughts of weakness that were unworthy of herself.

The night of William’s arrival, she saw him on the staircase. He stepped aside against the wall with such a respectful air, that she was in a way confused and astonished at his attitude. Usually, the lodgers in the hotel almost walked over her feet and blew whiffs of tobacco in her face. The young man went into a room that adjoined hers, a thin partition separated the two apartments. Madeleine fell asleep listening, in spite of herself, to the step of. the stranger who was taking possession of his quarters.

William, respectful as he had been, had not failed to notice his Neighbour’s pearly complexion and lovely golden hair. If he walked about a long time in his room that night, it was because the thought of having a woman so near him caused him a sort of feverishness. He could hear her bed creak when she turned over.

Next day, the young people smiled at one another as a matter of course. Their intimacy made rapid progress. Madeleine gave way the more easily to her sympathy for this calm gentle young fellow, because she felt herself perfectly safe with him. She looked upon him somewhat as a child. She thought that if he should ever commit the folly of speaking to her about love, she would give him a lecture and easily get to know the motive of his desires. She felt confidence in her strength, and meant to keep her oath of widowhood. The following days, she accepted William’s arm, and consented to take a little walk in his company. On their return, she went into the young man’s room, and he went into hers. But there was not the least tender word, not the least smile to cause uneasiness. They treated one another as friends of a day’s standing, with a reserve full of charming delicacy.

At bottom, their existence was disturbed in an indistinct kind of way. At night when they were alone in their rooms, they would listen to each other’s step, and they would dream, without being able to read clearly the feelings that were disturbing them. Madeleine felt that she was loved, and she indulged the sweet thought, saying to herself all the while that she herself would not fall in love. To tell the truth, she did not know what real love was; her first intimacy had been so devoid of tenderness that she enjoyed William’s attentions with infinite pleasure; her heart went out to him, in spite of herself, touched by a sympathy which was gradually ripening into affection. If she still happened to think of her wounds, she drove away the cruel memories by musing on her new friend; the passion of a sanguine temperament had dismayed her, the endearing affection of a nervous nature was filling her with a softening languor, and toning down her caprices one by one. As for William, he was living in a dream, he was worshipping the first woman he had met, and this was fatal. In the beginning he did not even ask himself where this woman came from, she was the first to smile on him, and that smile was sufficient to make him kneel down and offer her his life. He was joyously astonished at having found a sweetheart at once, he was in haste to open his heart so long closed, so full of restrained passion; if he did not embrace Madeleine, it was because he did not dare to, but he thought already that she was his.

Things went on like this for a week. William hardly went out; Paris terrified him, and he had taken good care not to go to one of the big hotels of which his father had given him the addresses. He congratulated himself now on having buried himself behind the Luxembourg in the heart of that peaceful neighbourhood where love was awaiting him. He would have liked to carry Madeleine off to the fields, far far away, not from a design of making her fall into his arms the sooner, but because he loved the trees, and wished to walk with her in their shade. She resisted, with a sort of presentiment. At last, she consented to go and dine with him at a little inn on the outskirts of Paris. There, at the restaurant in the Verrières wood, she surrendered herself.

Next day, when they returned to Paris, the two lovers were so astonished at their adventure, that they would at times speak to each other with a certain amount of ceremony. They even experienced a feeling of restraint, an uncomfortable sensation which they had not felt when they were simply comrades. By a singular sentiment of shame, they did not wish to sleep both of them in the hotel where, the day before, they had been almost strangers to each other. William saw that Madeleine would be pained by the smiles of the waiters, if she came to live in his room. He went at night to sleep in a neighbouring hotel. Besides, now that she was his, he wanted to have the young woman entirely to himself, in some retreat unknown to the world.

He acted as if he were on the point of getting married. The banker, on whom his father had given him unlimited credit, told him, when he made inquiries, of a quiet little house, which was for sale in the Rue de Boulogne. William hurried off to look at the place, and bought it at once. He put the workmen in immediately, and furnished it in a few days. The whole thing was the affair of a week at most. One night, he took Madeleine by the hand and asked her if she would be his wife Since the night they had spent in the restaurant in the Verrières wood, he came to see her every afternoon, like a betrothed young man paying his addresses to his ladylove; then he went away discreetly. His request touched Madeleine’s heart, and she replied by throwing her arms round his neck. They went into the house in the Rue de Boulogne like two new married people, on the evening of their wedding day. It was there really that their nuptial night was spent. They seemed to have forgotten the chance circumstance which had thrown them suddenly, one night, into one another’s arms: they seemed to think that this was the first time that they had been allowed to exchange kisses. Sweet and happy night when the lovers could picture to themselves that the past was dead for ever, and that their union had the purity and strength of au eternal bond.

They lived there for six months, severed from the world and seldom going out. It was a veritable vision of happiness. Lulled by their affection, they no longer reminded one another of what had preceded their love, nor were they uneasy about the events that the future might have in store for them. They were remote from the past and careless of the future, in a complete contentment of mind, in the peace of a happiness which nothing disturbed. The house, with its little rooms, carpeted and upholstered with bright material, offered them a lovely retreat, secluded, quiet, and cheerful. And then there was the garden, a little patch not much bigger than your hand, where they would forget themselves, in spite of the cold, chatting during the fine winter afternoons.

Madeleine used to think that her life only dated from the previous day. She did not know if she loved William; she only knew that this man brought happiness to her being, and that it was pleasant to repose in this happiness. All her wounds had been healed; she no longer felt those shocks and burning pangs which had torn her breast; she was filled with warmth, a genial unfluctuating warmth which gave rest to her heart. She never asked herself any questions. Like a patient recovering with reduced strength from a sharp attack of fever, she abandoned herself to the voluptuous languor of her convalescence, thanking him from the bottom of her heart, who had extricated her from her anguish. It was not the fond embraces of the young man which touched her the most; her senses were usually quiescent, and there was more maternity than passion in her kisses: it was the profound esteem which he showed for her, the dignity with which he treated her, like a lawful wife. This raised herself in her own esteem, and she could fancy that she had passed from the arms of her mother to the arms of a husband. This picture which her shame would draw, flattered her pride, and hampered all the modesty of her nature. She could thus hold up her head, and, above all, she enjoyed to the full her new affection, her peacefulness and smiling hopes, in the complete oblivion of the wounds which bled in her no longer.

William was in the seventh heaven. At last, the cherished dream of his youth and childhood was being realised. When he was at school, crushed by the blows of his comrades, he had dreamt of a happy solitude, a hidden secluded nook where he would pass long days of idleness, never beaten, but caressed by some kind and gentle fairy who would always stay by his side; and later on, at eighteen, when vague desires were beginning to throb in his veins, he had taken up again this dream beneath the trees in the park, on the banks of clear streams, replacing the fairy by a sweetheart, traversing the thicket in the hope of meeting the object of his affection, at every turn in the path. Today Madeleine was the kind and gentle fairy, the sweetheart that he had sought. She was his in the solitude that he had dreamt of, far from the crowd, in a retreat where not a soul could come to disturb his ecstasy. This, for him, was the highest bliss: to know that he was out of the world, to be no longer afraid of being hurt by anyone, to surrender himself to all the softened peace of his heart, to have by his side one being only, and to live on the beauty and love of this being. Such an existence consoled him for his youth of sorrow: a youth devoid of affection, with a proud ironical father, an old fanatic whose caresses frightened him, and a friend who was not enough to calm his feverish adoration. It consoled him for crushing persecutions, for a childhood of martyrdom and a youth of exile, and for a long series of sorrows which had made him ardently long for the shade and complete silence, for a total annihilation of his sorrowful existence in an endless happiness. Thus ho reposed, and took refuge in Madeleine’s arms, like a man weary and frightened. All his joys were joys of tranquillity. Such a peace seemed to him as never to end. He pictured to himself that the eternity of the last sleep was opening before him and that he was sleeping in the arms of his Madeleine.

It was with both of them a feeling more of repose than of love. You might have said that chance had drawn them together that each might staunch the blood of the other’s wounds. They both felt a like need of repose, and their words of affection were a sort of thanks which they addressed to one another for the peaceful happy hours which they were enjoying together. They revelled in the present with the egoism of hungry souls. It seemed to them that they had only existed since their meeting; a memory of the past never entered their long lovers’ talks. William was no longer uneasy about the years of Madeleine’s life before she knew him, and the young woman never thought of questioning him, as women in love do, about his previous existence. It was enough for them to be by each other’s side, to laugh, to be happy, like children who have neither regret for the past nor anxiety for the future.

Madeleine heard one day of Lobrichon’s death. She merely remarked:

“He was a bad man.”

She appeared quite unconcerned, and William seemed to take no interest in this news. When he received letters from Véteuil, be threw them into a drawer after reading them; his mistress never asked him what these letters contained. At the end of six months of this life, they knew as little of each other’s history as they did the first day; their love had been bestowed without inquiries.

This dream came to a sudden end.

One morning, when William had gone to his banker’s, Madeleine, not knowing what to do, began to turn over the leaves of an album which was lying in the room, and which had hitherto escaped her notice. Her lover had come across it the night before, at the bottom of a trunk. It only contained three portraits, one of his father, one of Genevieve, and one of his friend James.

When the young woman saw the latter, she uttered a cry of pain. With her hands resting on the open leaves of the album, erect and trembling she gazed at James’s smiling face as if a phantom had risen before her. It was he, the lover of a night that had become the lover of a year, the man whose memory, long dormant in her breast, was awakening and hurting her cruelly, by this sudden apparition.

It was a thunderbolt in her peaceful sky. She had forgotten this young fellow, she considered herself William’s faithful wife. Why was James coming between them? Why was he here, in the very room where but a minute before her lover was holding her in his arms? Who had brought him to her to disturb her peace for ever? These questions set her distracted head reeling.

James was looking at her with a slightly mocking air. He seemed to be joking her on her softened heart; he was saying to her: “Good gracious! my poor girl, how you must be bored here! Come, let us go to Chatou, let us go to Robinson, let us go, quick! to where there is life and excitement — “ She could fancy that she heard the sound of his voice and his burst of laughter; she thought that he was going to stretch out his arms to her in the old familiar way. Like a flash, she saw the past, the room in the Rue Soufflot, all that life which she thought so far off, and from which a few months only separated her. She had been in a dream then; the bliss of yesterday was not hers by right, she was false and dishonest. All the disgrace she had passed through rose to her heart and stifled her.

The photograph presented James in the careless attitude of his student’s life. He was sitting astride an overturned chair, in his shirt sleeves, his neck and arms hare, and a clay pipe in his mouth. Madeleine could distinguish a mark that he had on his left arm, and she remembered how often she had kissed that mark. Her recollections caused her a hot burning sensation; in her suffering she could detect, as it were, the hitter dregs of the cup of pleasure which he had given her to drink. He was in his own room, half-undressed, and perhaps going to take her to his heart. Then she seemed to feel, around her waist, the clasp, that she knew so well, of her first lover. Fainting, she sank back in her chair, believing that she was prostituting herself, and looking round her with the frightened shudder of an adulterous woman. The little room had an appearance of demure quiet, of soft shade; it was full of that voluptuous peace which six months of love impart to a secluded cot; on a panel, above the sofa, hung William’s portrait smiling tenderly on Madeleine. And Madeleine grew pale beneath this look of love, in the midst of that peaceful air, as she felt James take possession of her heart and fill her with pain.

Then she bethought herself. Before going away, the young doctor had given her his portrait, one exactly like this which a cruel fate had just put under her eyes. But, the day before she came to this house, she had religiously burnt it, unwilling to introduce the likeness of her first lover into William’s home. And this portrait was coming to life again, and James was finding his way, in spite of herself, into her retreat! She got up, and took the album again. Then, behind the photograph, she read this inscription: “To my old comrade, to my brother William.” William, James’s comrade, James’s brother! Madeleine, pale as death, closed the album and sat down again. With stony eyes and drooping hands, she remained a long time absorbed in thought.

She said to herself that she must be guilty of some great crime, to be punished so cruelly for her six months’ bliss. She had surrendered herself to two men, and these two men loved one another with brotherly love. She pictured a sort of incest in her double affection. Formerly, in the Latin quarter, she had known a girl who was shared by two friends, and who went quietly from one friend’s bed to the other’s. She suddenly thought of this poor wretch, telling herself with disgust that she was as shameless as she was. Now she felt for certain that she would be haunted by the phantom as she devoted herself to William. Perhaps she would enjoy a horrid pleasure in the embraces of these lovers whom she would confound with each other. The anguish of her future seemed to her then so clearly defined, that she had an idea of fleeing, of disappearing for ever.

But her cowardice restrained her. The very night before, she had felt so happy in the genial, pleasant warmth of William’s adoration. Could she not grow calm beneath the young man’s caresses, forget again, and think herself worthy and faithful? Then she asked herself if it would not be better to tell her lover everything, to confide to him her past, and to get his absolution. The thought of such a disclosure terrified her. How could she dare to confess to William that she had been his comrade’s, his brother’s former mistress? He would drive her away, he would banish her from his bed, he would never put up with the shame of such a partnership. She reasoned as if she were still James’s mistress, so strong did she feel his influence over her even now.

She would say nothing, she would keep all the shame to herself. But she could not yet make up her mind to this decision; her straightforward nature revolted at the idea of an eternal falsehood, she felt that she would not have strength for long to live in her shame and anguish. It were better to confess at once, or flee. These agitating thoughts passed through her reeling head with painful noisy shocks. She examined her feelings without being able to come to a decision. Suddenly she heard the street door open. A rapid step mounted the staircase and William entered.

His face was quite agitated. He threw himself on the sofa and burst out sobbing. Madeleine, surprised and terrified, thought that he had got to know all. She rose up in a tremble.

The young man was still weeping, with his face buried in his hands, and shaking with the paroxysms of despair. At last, he held out his arms to his mistress, and said to her in a choking voice:

“Comfort me, comfort me. Oh! how I suffer!” Madeleine went and sat down by his side, not daring to understand him, and asking herself if it was she who was making him weep like that. She forgot her own sufferings in the presence of a grief like his.

“Tell me, what is the matter with you,” she asked her lover, as she took his hands in hers.

He looked at her like one distracted.

“I did not like to sob in the street,” he stammered through his tears. “I ran, I was choking — I wanted to get here — Let me be, it does me good, it comforts me — “ He wiped his tears, then he almost choked afresh and burst out weeping again.

“My God! my God! I shall never see him again,” he murmured.

The young woman thought she understood and was touched with pity. She drew William into her arms, kissed his forehead, wiped his tears, and soothed him with her brokenhearted gaze.

“You have lost your father?” she asked him again.

He made a sign of denial. Then he clasped his hands and in the meek voice of despair:

“My poor James,” he said, seeming to address himself to a shadow seen only by himself; “my poor James, you will never love me more as you used to love me — I had forgotten you, I was not even thinking of you when you died.” At the name of James, Madeleine, who was still drying her lover’s tears, jumped up with a shudder. James dead! The news fell with a dull thud on her heart. She stood stunned, asking herself if it was not she who, without knowing it, had killed this young fellow to get rid of him.

“You did not know him,” William went on, “I have never spoken to you of him, I think. I was ungrateful, our happiness made me forgetful — He was a jewel, he had a nature full of devotion. He was the only friend I had in this world. Before meeting you, I had only known one affection, it was his. You were the only beings that had opened your hearts to me. And I have lost him — “

Here he was interrupted by a sob. He went on:

“At school, they used to beat me, and it was he who came to my aid. He saved me from tears, he held out to me his friendship and protection, to me, who lived like a pariah in the contempt, in the derision of everybody. When I was a child, I worshipped him like a god; I would have fallen on my knees before him, had he asked for my prayers, I owed him so much. I would ask myself with such fervour how I could pay him, some day, my debt of gratitude? And I have let him die far away. I have not loved him enough, I feel it.”

His emotion choked him again. After a short silence he continued:

“And later on, what long days we passed together. We roamed the fields, hand in hand. I remember one morning we were searching for crawfish under the willows; he said to me, ‘William, there is only one good thing in this world, and it is friendship. Let us be devoted to one another, it will soothe us in after life.’ Poor dear fellow, he is gone, and I am alone. But he will live always in my soul — I have nobody but you left, Madeleine, I have lost my brother.” He sobbed again, and again held out his arms to the young woman, with a gesture of utter despair.

She was in pain. The grief, the poignant regrets of William were causing her a singular feeling of rebellion; she could not hear from his month his passionate praise of James, without being tempted to exclaim: “Silence! this man has robbed you of your happiness, you owe him nothing.’’ She had thus far escaped the anguish of being brought face to face with her past by the very man whose love compelled her to forget it. And she did not dare to close his lips, or to confess all to him, terrified by what she had just learnt, by that strong bond of friendship and gratitude which had united her two lovers. She listened to William’s despair, as she would have listened to the threatening roar of a wave which was rushing towards her to swallow her up. Motionless and silent, her impassiveness was remarkable. She felt that her only sensation was one of anger. James’s death irritated her. She had at first felt a sort of dull pang, and then she had revolted as she saw that his memory could not fade from her mind. By what right, since he was dead, did he come to disturb her peace?

William was still holding out his arms to her, and repeating: “My poor Madeleine, console me — You are the only one left to me in the world.”

Console him for James’s death; it seemed ridiculous and cruel to her. She was obliged to take him in her arms again, and dry the tears which he was shedding for her first lover. The strange part she was acting at this moment, would have made her weep too, could she have found tears. She was truly unfeeling and pitiless; no regret, no tenderness for him whom she had loved, nothing but a secret irritation at William’s grief. She was still the daughter of Férat the workman.

“He loved him more than he does me,” she thought; “he would cast me off if I were to declare what I think.”

Then, for the sake of saying something, prompted too by bitter curiosity, she asked in a brief tone, how he had met with his death?

Then William told her how. having to wait at his banker’s he had mechanically taken up a newspaper. His eyes had fallen on a paragraph which announced the wreck of the frigate Prophet which had been caught in a gale on nearing the Cape. The vessel had been dashed to pieces on the rocks and not a man had been saved. James, who was going out to Cochin China on this steamer, did not even repose in a grave where his friends could go to pray for him. The news was officially confirmed.

When the anguish of the lovers was allayed, during the night that followed, Madeleine meditated more calmly on the unexpected events of the day. Her anger had gone, and she felt herself dejected and sad. Had she heard of James’s death under other circumstances, no doubt she would have had a choking sensation in her throat and the tears would have come. Now, alone in the recess where the bed stood, at the sound of the fitful breathing of her lover who was sleeping the heavy sleep of the wretched, she thought of him who was dead, of the corpse rolled and beaten against the rocks by the waves. Perhaps, as he had fallen into the sea, he had uttered her name. She remembered bow one day he had cut himself rather severely, in the Rue Soufflot, and how she had nearly fainted at the sight of the blood trickling along his hand. She loved him then, she would have sat up with him for months to rescue him from an illness. And now he was drowned, and she was feeling angry with him. Yet he had not become so indifferent to her as all that; she had him still, on the contrary, always in her breast, in every member; he had such hold on her that she thought she could feel his breath on her face. Then she felt the quiver which thrilled her in the old days, when the young fellow wound his arms round her body. She felt an inexpressible pang, as if a part of her being had been torn away from her. She began to weep, burying her head in the pillow, so that William might not hear. All her woman’s weakness had come back to her; it seemed to her that she was more alone than ever in the world.

This crisis lasted for a long time. Madeleine prolonged it involuntarily as she called to mind the days of James’s love; at each touching detail which came back to her from the past, she became more distressed, and she reproached herself with her petulant indifference during the day, as if it had been a crime. William himself, had he known her history, would have told her to fall on her knees and weep with him. She clasped her hands, she asked pardon of him who was dead, of him whom she evoked, of him whose cries of agony she fancied she could hear mingled with the roaring of the sea.

A violent desire suddenly seized her. She made no effort to struggle against this irresistible longing.

She got quietly out of bed, with infinite precautions, so as not to wake William. When she had put her feet on the carpet, she looked at him uneasily, dreading lest he should ask her where she was going. But he was asleep, his eyes still full of tears. Then, she went and looked for the night-lamp and passed into the sitting-room, trembling when the floor creaked beneath her bare feet.

She walked straight to the album, opened it on a little table, and sat down before James’s portrait. It was James that she came to look for. Her shoulders covered with her loose hair, wrapping herself up shiveringly in her long nightdress, she gazed long at the portrait in the yellow flickering light of the lamp. A deep silence fell around her, and as she listened, starting with sudden and groundless fears, she could hear nothing but William’s feverish breathing in the next room.

James no longer appeared to her to have his mocking look of the morning. His bare neck and arms, and his open shirt no longer irritated her memories. The man was dead; his portrait had assumed an indefinable softened expression of friendship and Madeleine felt soothed as she gazed on him. He was smiling at her with his old cordial smile, and even his careless attitude touched her deeply. The young fellow, astride on a chair, smoking his clay pipe, seemed to be forgiving her goodnaturedly. He was as she had known him, a good fellow in death; he looked as if she had opened the door of their room in the Rue Soufflot, and James in his lighthearted, offhand way was getting forgiveness for his peccadillos by his gay spirits.

Her tears became less bitter, she forgot herself in the contemplation of him who was no more. Henceforth this portrait would be a relic, and she thought she had nothing to fear from it. Then, she remembered her struggles of the morning, her indecision, her anxiety to know what to do. Poor James, at the moment of her distress at seeing him rise up between herself and her lover, had seemed to have sent her the news of his death to tell her to live in peace. He would come no more to disturb her in her new love; he seemed to authorise her to bury deep in her heart the secret of their intimacy. Why make William suffer? and why not seek for happiness again? She ought to keep silent out of pity, out of affection. James’s portrait murmured: “Go, try to be happy, my child. I am no longer near you. I will never appear before you as your living shame. Your lover is a child. I have befriended him, and I implore you to befriend him in your turn. If you are good, just think of me sometimes.”

Madeleine’s mind was made up. She would say nothing, she would not be more cruel than fate which had wished to conceal her first lover’s name from William. Besides, had he not said so himself? James’s memory would live in his mind, and it must live there elevated and serene. It would be doing wrong to speak. When she had sworn to preserve silence, it seemed to her that the portrait thanked her for her resolution.

She kissed the likeness.

Day was breaking when she went back to bed. William, worn out, was still slumbering. She fell asleep at last, comforted, nursed by distant hope. They would forget this day of anguish, they would come back to their beloved state of bliss and love.

But their dream was over. The peacefulness of their first acquaintance was never more to lull them in their retreat in the Rue de Boulogne. During the days that followed, the rueful phantom of the shipwreck haunted the house, casting around them a gloomy sadness. They forgot their kisses, they would sit for a whole morning side by side, hardly saying a word, absorbed in their sad memories. James’s death had entered into their genial solitude like an icy blast; now they shuddered, and it seemed to there as if the little rooms, where they had lived the day before on each other’s knees, were large, dilapidated and exposed to every wind. The silence and the seclusion which they had sought, caused them a vague feeling of terror. They found themselves too lonely. One day, William could not restrain a cruel remark.

“This house is really like a grave,” he exclaimed, “it is enough to stifle one.”

He was sorry for it directly he had spoken, and, taking Madeleine’s hand, he added:

“Forgive me. I shall forget him, and I will be yours again.” He was in earnest, but he was not aware that the same dream rarely comes twice. When they had got over their dejection, they had lost the blind confidence of their early acquaintance. Madeleine especially was quite changed. She had just evoked the past, and she could no longer surrender herself to William’s embraces like one who knew nothing. Life had inflicted a wound on her, it would do so again, and she must, she thought, be on her guard against the wounds that threatened her. Before, she hardly thought of the shame attached to her title of mistress; it seemed to her natural to be loved, she herself loved, smilingly, forgetting the world. Now, her pride had been hurt, she was feeling again the anguish she had felt in the Rue Soufflot, and she looked upon her lover as an enemy who was robbing her of her self-respect. There was a something which made her feel that she was not in her proper sphere in the Rue de Boulogne. The thought, “I am a kept woman,” presented itself to her in all its nakedness and made her burn like a hot iron; she rushed off, and shut herself up in a room, and there wept bitterly, almost heartbroken. William often made her presents, for he was fond of giving. At the beginning she had received these presents with the joy of a child at the gift of a plaything. The value of the object made little difference. She was happy that her lover was constantly thinking of her, and she accepted jewels as mere keepsakes. After the shock which awoke her from her dream, she was strangely troubled at seeing herself dressed in robes of silk and adorned with diamonds that she had not paid for herself. Her life from that time was a continual bitterness, for she was hurt at the sight of this luxury which did not belong to her. She was pained by the lacework and the softness of her bed, and by the rich furniture in the house. She looked upon everything about her as the price of her shame.

“I am selling myself,” she would think sometimes, with a horrible oppression at her heart.

William, on one of their gloomy days, brought her a bracelet. She grew pale at the sight of the jewel and did not utter a word.

The young man, astonished not to see her fling her arms round his neck, as in the old days, said to her gently:

“You don’t like this bracelet, perhaps?”

She was silent for a moment; then in a trembling voice she said:

“My dear, you spend a lot of money on me. You do wrong. I don’t want all these presents and I should love you quite as much if you gave me nothing.”

She restrained a sob. William drew her quietly towards him, surprised and vexed, yet not daring to divine the cause of her paleness.

“What is the matter with you?” he answered. “Madeleine, those are horrid thoughts — Are you not my wife?”

She looked him in the face, and her steady, almost stern gaze, said plainly: “No, I am not your wife.” Had she dared, she would have proposed to him to pay for her food and dress out of her little income. Since her fall, her pride had become refractory; she felt that everything wounded her feelings and that irritated her all the more.

A few days after, William brought her a dress and she said to him with a nervous smile:

“Thank you; but, in future, let me buy these things. You don’t understand anything about them, and they cheat you.”

From that time she made her purchases herself. When her lover wanted to refund her the money that she had spent, she contrived a little plot to refuse it. Thus she was always on her guard, always making little attacks to defend her pride which was so easily wounded by a trifle. The truth was that life was beginning to prove unbearable to her in the Rue de Boulogne. She loved William, but she had made, herself so wretched by her daily revolts, that she would fancy that she did not love him, though this could not prevent her from feeling greatly distressed when she thought that he might leave her as James had done. Then she would weep for hours and ask herself into what new shame she would fall then.

William could see perfectly well that her eyes were at times red with weeping. He could guess in part the wounds that she was inflicting on herself. He would have wished to be kind, to console her by becoming more affectionate towards her, and yet, in spite of himself, he was becoming more distressed and more feverish every day. Why did she weep like that? was she unhappy with him? was she regretting a lover? This last thought made him very wretched. He too was losing the faith and blind confidence he used to have. He was thinking of that period of Madeleine’s past history of which he knew nothing, of which he wished to know nothing, and which however he could not help thinking of incessantly. The painful doubts that he had felt on the night of their walk at Verrières seized him again and tortured him. He felt anxious about the years gone by, he watched Madeleine in order to detect a confession in her gestures, or in her looks; then, when he thought that he could perceive a smile that he could not account for, he was distressed that she could be thinking of anything but himself. Now that she was his, she ought to be his without reserve. He would say to himself that his love ought to be sufficient to satisfy her. He would not admit of any ground for her reveries, and he felt himself painfully hurt by her passing fits of indifference. Often, when she was by his side, she was not listening to him; she would let him talk on, staring vacantly around, absorbed in secret thoughts; then he would stop talking, he would think himself slighted, and a sudden feeling of pride would change his love almost into disdain. “My heart is deceived,” he would think; “this woman is not worthy of me; she has already seen too much of life to be able to reward me for my affections.”

They never had an open quarrel. They continued in a state of tacit hostility. But the few bitter words they sometimes exchanged only left them more dejected and depressed.

“Your eyes are red,” William would often say to Madeleine, “what is the cause of your secret weeping?”

“I don’t weep, you are mistaken,” the young woman would reply, trying to smile.

“No, no, I am not mistaken,” was William’s answer; “I can hear you quite well sometimes in the night. Are you unhappy with me?”

She would give a shake of denial with her head, and put on a forced laugh, or the look of a persecuted woman. Then the young man would take her hands in his, and try to infuse a little warmth into them, and as these hands continued lifeless and cold, he would let go of them exclaiming:

“I am a poor lover, am I not? I don’t know how to win love — But there are some people who are never forgotten.”

Such an illusion would have a painful effect on Madeleine.

“You are cruel,” she would reply bitterly. “I can’t forget what I am, and that’s why I weep. What can you be thinking of, William?”

He would hang down his head, and she would add, earnestly:

“It would, perhaps, be better for you to know my past history. Anyhow you would know what to do, and you would no longer think about shame which does not exist. Would you like me to tell you all?”

He would vehemently ask her not to, and take her to his heart, beseeching her pardon. This scene, which took place again and again, never went any further: but an hour after, they would forget it all, and go back to their old state: William, to his selfish despair at not possessing her entire affection, Madeleine, to the regrets prompted by her pride and to the dread of being hurt.

At other times, Madeleine would throw her arms round William’s neck and shed tears unreservedly. These crises of weeping, which nothing could explain to him, were even still more painful to the young man. He did not dare to question his mistress, he consoled her, with a provoked air, which stopped her tears and made her assume a hard, implacable attitude. Then she refused to speak to him, and he had to relent so far as to sob, before they fell into each other’s arms, distressing and consoling one another mutually. And they would have been unable to say what it was that was making them wretched; they were inexpressibly sad, they knew not why; it seemed to them that they were breathing a tainted air and that a lingering, unrelenting dejection was crushing them beneath its oppressiveness.

There was no termination to a situation like this. There was only one remedy — a frank explanation. But from this Madeleine shrank, for this William was too feeble. For a month, they lived this life of oppression.

William had got James’s portrait richly framed, and this portrait, placed in the lover’s bedroom, troubled Madeleine. When she retired to rest, it would seem to her as if the eyes of the dead man were watching her get into bed. During the night, she would smother her kisses that he might not hear them. When she was dressing, in the morning, she hurried on her clothes so as not to stand naked before the photograph in broad daylight. Yet, she loved this likeness, and there was nothing painful in the distress that it caused it. Her memories of the past were less hard, yet she no longer looked on James with the eyes of a lover, but from the standpoint of a friend of his who is ashamed of the past. She even felt more modesty with regard to him than before William, and was really pained at seeing him look on at her new passions. Sometimes she thought that she ought to ask his pardon, she would forget herself before his portrait, with no other feeling but one of solace. The days when she wept, or when she had exchanged bitter words with her lover, she gazed at James with a still gentler expression. She regretted him in a vague way, forgetful of her former sufferings.

Perhaps Madeleine would have wept at last before the likeness like an inconsolable widow, had not an event transpired to lift her and William from the sorrowful life they were leading. Another month, and they would doubtless have quarrelled outright, and cursed the day of their meeting. They were saved by circumstances.

William received a letter from Véteuil summoning him in all haste. His father was dying. Madeleine, touched at his grief, clasped him in a warm, affectionate embrace, and, for an hour, they sat once more hand in hand. He set out, full of anxiety, telling the young woman that he would write and that she was to wait for his return.