i have often seen adrienne lecouvreur acted, since that evening whose events i am recalling, with a tremor of the heart simply at the remembrance of the anguish i felt while camille was performing this mad action. i have always noticed that the audience are gripped by this scene. as regards myself, both before and after the performance by camille upon the improvised stage at bonnivet’s house, this scene has always moved me so that i found the action indicated by the book quite natural—i had the curiosity to consult it. adrienne continues to advance towards the princess, to whom she points with her finger, remaining some time in this attitude, while the ladies and gentlemen who have followed her movements rise as if in affright. it was without any doubt a similar effect on the audience of terror, for ever dishonouring to her rival, that the despised mistress had, in a flash of blind passion, resolved to produce at the risk of the most terrible consequences.
i awaited this terrible effect with as frightful a certainty as if i could see in camille’s hand a 243loaded weapon pointed at madam de bonnivet. to-day, when my mind goes back to those moments in which my heart leapt with apprehension, i cannot help smiling. every one of the audience without doubt knew adrienne lecouvreur if not like i did, at least well enough to recall the situation which was so dramatic as to be easily intelligible. every one had trembled at the théatre fran?ais when they saw sarah bernhardt or bartet advance towards the princess de bouillon as camille advanced towards madam de bonnivet. but, except those who were directly interested in this scene, not one of the audience appeared to understand the young actress’ sinister intention.
no one, i am certain, instituted, between the scene being enacted before them at that moment and the one they had seen acted ten or twenty times at the theatre, a comparison which would have been a revelation. the actress herself, stupefied at what she had dared to do and the results, mechanically continued the tirade as if in a dream. automatically, too, the tones of sarah bernhardt came back to her as she concluded. she stopped amid a most flattering murmur from all sides, the discreet applause of the fashionable before a wonderful feat marvellously executed. one could hear such phrases as: “very lifelike! shutting your eyes you would think you were listening to sarah! how gifted the little one is! it is not given to every one to possess talent like that!”
madam de bonnivet, who had been the first to clap, had got up and gone to camille, to whom she 244said with a smile, the amiability of which was her crowning insolence—
“exquisite, mademoiselle, exquisite. i am very grateful to you. was it not exquisite, molan? will you give mademoiselle favier your arm and take her to the buffet?”
really i am not suspected of sympathy for the audacious woman whose abominable coquetry had exasperated the poor actress to the extent of this astounding insult. but i must do her the justice to admit that she had really a majestic way of thus bringing to naught camille’s justice. i distinctly heard her voice pronounce the phrase in spite of the hum of conversation and the noise of the moving of chairs and couches, and i saw camille look at her with a somnambulist’s look, and also give her arm to jacques in quite a passive and subdued way. her astonishment at daring what she had dared and at nothing happening had left her incapable of reply, feeling or thought. she was like a murderess who had fired at her victim and seen the bullet rebound from his forehead, without even inflicting a scratch. she had not, nor had i, a mind sufficiently disengaged to perceive in what had taken place a proof among a thousand that an irreducible difference separates the life presented upon the stage from the life which is really lived. she was the victim of an attack of nerves which first showed itself in this astonishment, or rather bewilderment, and almost immediately afterwards by a fit of half convulsive laughter which wounded me severely.
245i gladly left the spot where she was with jacques surrounded by men who knew her and were paying her compliments. i came across bonnivet directly. his forehead was red, its veins swollen, his eyes were clear and at the same time flaming, and these things with the tremors through his whole body suddenly caused the fear i had felt a few minutes before to return to me. even if to the rest of the audience the insult hurled in the fashionable lady’s face by the actress had passed unnoticed, a circumstance which was explained by the fact that they had no notion of jacques’ position between his two mistresses, the husband himself had perceived this insult, and it required all his self-control to swallow the affront as he had done. he listened, or pretended to listen, to senneterre, whose volubility showed that he, too, had understood the significance of the scene acted by camille, and that he was trembling with fear lest bonnivet also understood. the husband was automatically curling his moustache with his right hand, while i felt sure he was digging the nails of his left, which was hidden, into his chest.
i was not the only one to feel that this man was in a fury, nor to notice his forehead, eyes and gestures, which displayed the obvious signs, to a painter, of a formidable moral tempest. i saw the group of gentlemen near which i was dissolve to make room for madam de bonnivet, who was approaching her husband. in the same way that a little while before she had found a smile of supreme contempt, with which to congratulate camille 246favier and reply to the insult of an atrocious allusion by the insult of an implacable indifference, now she found a tender and affectionate smile to reply to her husband’s suddenly aggravated suspicions. she brought him in her gracious and affectionate smile an indisputable proof of her clear conscience. the sensation of her presence was necessary to this man at the moment and she had realized this, and also that the physical reality of her voice, of her look, of her breath, the evidence, too, of her tranquillity would impose upon her jealous husband a suggestion of calmness. serenely radiant in her sumptuous white toilette, her eyes clear and gay, a half smile upon her pretty mouth, and fanning her lovely face with a gentle little motion which hardly disturbed the golden hair upon her brow, she walked towards him, hypnotizing him with her look. i could see at her approach the unhappy man’s face relax, while bressoré, whom i knew, took my arm and whispered in my ear—
“how smart she is! but, la croix, as you are a friend of favier’s, i hope you will make her understand that her way of conducting herself this evening is very bad for me and for all of us! why this is a house where we are received like swells, and yet because she is jealous of the mistress of the house and molan, she behaves like a fool and treats her as adrienne lecouvreur did! i saw it coming and i saw it pass, and now i have not a dry stitch of clothing on me. it did not strike home, it is true, but it might have done so. but 247then if the audience did not understand, the husband and wife did. i tell you this house is closed to us for the future. they have had their fill of acting at home by this time. frankly, put yourself in their place, it would not do at all, would it? i am not more straight-laced than most, and i have my fancies, but i always behave in a gentlemanly way.”
the comic plaint of the old actor, who was trembling for his social status, put a note of buffoonery into the adventure. i soothed the old man to the best of my ability, assuring him that he was mistaken, though without hope of convincing him. what a fine picture he would have made, with his mobile blue eyes looking out piercingly from his clean-shaven face, over which seemed to float an everlasting grimace! he had so much and such astounding good fortune that his glance upon the real bad side of life was like that of a diplomat. his countless mistresses had so well instructed him in the particulars of parisian fashionable and gay life that he was no longer the dupe of any one or anything. he nodded his head incredulously at my protests and replied to me with the inherent familiarity of his profession, in spite of the principles of breeding he had just professed with such solemnity.
“you know, my dear fellow, la croix, i am a very good boy and i like to try and give pleasure by appearing to believe what i am told, but i can’t swallow that!”
our little conversation had taken us, the actor 248and myself, into a corner of the drawing-room near the hall door, which was open. i judged that poor camille would not be long in leaving, and that the best thing would be for me to wait for her outside and speak to her then so that bonnivet’s eyes would not be fixed upon us during our talk. if no unfortunate accident happened i felt sure that now queen anne would arrange to definitely withdraw from the intrigue. i was quite sure, too, that jacques would not be the one to end the affair. i knew his self-control. he would not betray himself. i knew that outbursts like camille’s are at once followed by prostration, and i felt sure that she had allowed herself to be taken to the buffet like a cowed animal. senneterre and bressoré, the other two witnesses who had understood all the secrets of this scene, were not the men to let their perspicacity be apparent. one loved madam de bonnivet too sincerely, the other was too preoccupied in playing his part as the correct artist. only i myself was likely by my nervousness to betray my knowledge. i therefore glided between two groups towards the staircase, and as i was doing so felt my hand seized. it was molan, who said in a jerky voice—
“let us leave together. i want to speak to you.”
“i am going at once,” i replied.
“so am i; the coast is clear, let us be off.”
we went downstairs without exchanging a word. we put on our coats in silence under the critical eyes of the footmen. it was not till we 249reached the street that jacques said to me, while he clutched my arm with a force which proved his anger—
“were you present at the scene? did you see what that infamous actress dared to do to me?”
“i saw that she had her revenge,” i told him. “frankly, you well deserved it, both you and madam de bonnivet. but still it had no consequences and no one perceived her intentions.”
“no one? did you take madam de bonnivet for a fool, and her husband too? do you think he did not see through it all? as camille knew, too, his jealous disposition after the risk she had seen me run, it was infamous, i tell you, it was abominable. but i will teach her that i am not to be laughed at like that,” he went on with increasing violence. as he uttered this threat he turned back towards the house we had just left, and i had to hold him back by the arm while i said—
“surely you are not going back there to make a scene?”
“no,” he said, “but i know the driver of the carriage she uses for her evening engagements, i engaged him regularly for her. i have always been so good to her! i will stop her carriage. i will punish her here in the street. it is her proper place, and i will tell her so.”
“you will not do that,” i interrupted him taking up a position in front of him and speaking in a low voice. now i was afraid of the curiosity 250of the drivers who were sitting on the boxes of a long string of carriages.
“i will do it,” he replied, beside himself, and just at that moment the porter called a carriage and we heard a name which caused molan to burst out into a laugh, that of camille herself.
“i beg of you,” i said to the madman, “if you have no regard for camille think of madam de bonnivet!”
“you are right,” he replied after a short silence, “i will control myself. but i must speak to her, i must. i will get into the carriage with her, that is all.”
“but if she will not allow it?”
“allow it!” he said with a shrug of the shoulders. “you shall see.”
a carriage had left the rank while we were talking, a shabby hired brougham. its commonness contrasted strangely with the other vehicles which were waiting in the long street. the time this carriage took to enter beneath the archway and emerge again from it seemed to me interminable. if my companion allowed himself to be disrespectful to camille i had made up my mind what to do.
at last the carriage reappeared and a woman’s form was visible through the window, wrapped in a cloak with a high collar which i recognized only too well. it was camille. jacques called out to the driver, who recognized him, and was on the point of pulling up when the window was let down and we could hear the actress call out: 251“23, rue lincoln, don’t you hear me? do you take your orders from that gentleman?” turning to me she said: “vincent, if you do not prevent that individual,” and she pointed to jacques, “from trying to get into my carriage i shall call the police.” the silhouettes of two policemen appeared quite black in the light of the lamps, and though the dialogue had been short the sound of the voices had made some of the men sitting on the boxes of the other carriages lean forward. in the face of this threat jacques dare not turn the handle of the carriage door on which he had his hand. he stepped back and the carriage drove away while camille’s voice repeated in a tone i shall never forget—
“23, the rue lincoln, as fast as you can go.”
“ah, well!” i said to jacques after a short silence, as he was standing motionless upon the pavement.
“ah, well! she guessed what was waiting for her,” he replied sharply, “and she fled. make your mind easy, the opportunity is only put off, not lost entirely. but why can she be going to 23, rue lincoln?”
“it is an address she gave haphazard,” i said, “to make you jealous and make you think she was going to keep an appointment. she will give another order to her driver as soon as she is round the corner.”
“still we can go there and see for ourselves,” he replied. “if she has already taken a lover 252and allowed herself to play the trick she has done on me, you must admit that she is a hussy.”
“no,” i replied, “only an unfortunate child whom you have ill-treated and driven mad. if she has taken a lover, that will only prove that she is the victim of one of those despairs which women have, when everything seems dark. such an action sometimes leads to suicide though it has not done so in her case, for she is too proud.”
we got into a passing cab as we were talking, and in our turn started off in the direction of the rue lincoln. my only idea now was to find out whether the unkindness of which she had been a victim had not projected her into some horrible calling. the phrases she had uttered to me during my first visit to her modest abode in the rue de la barouillére, on the temptations of luxury for her came back to my mind, and i listened to jacques the philosopher once more in a sort of stupor. libertines of his character never accept, without the most sincere indignation, the appointment of a substitute by the mistress they have most coldly betrayed. still less do they allow any one to see their humiliated spite. jacques had ceased his complaints in order to converse on ideas, and he did so with his usual lucidity. it is the gift of intelligences trained to speculate to work in a mechanical way through every shock. molan, i believe, will dictate copy, and good copy too, in his death agony!
when our cab reached the rue lincoln jacques peered out with a more passionate nervousness 253than suited his dandyism to see if there was any carriage standing in that short street. he saw the light of two lamps. our cab approached and we could see camille’s carriage standing before a small house the number of which was 23. the carriage was empty and the driver had got off the box to light his pipe at one of the lamps.
“the lady told me not to wait,” he replied to the question jacques asked him, accompanied as it was by a tip of louis just as the heroes of the old school of romance used to do. my companion’s anxiety was very great at this reply, though less than mine. we stood for a minute looking at one another.
“we will find out,” he said and called to the driver to stop at the nearest café; “we will consult the bulletin, and if that is not successful we will go to the club and look at the tout paris. we shall then know from whom mademoiselle seeks consolation, which you must admit she has done very rapidly and i expect even before her misfortunes. it is not very flattering for masculine love, but every time a man has any remorse at deceiving a woman, he can assert that he is a dupe and that she had already begun.”
as he said this he jumped from the cab before it had quite stopped, alighted on the pavement in the rue fran?ois i, and entered a café the only occupant of which was a waiter asleep on a seat. without waking him molan picked up the bulletin from the counter, the cashier being absent at the time, and with a hand which trembled a little 254pointed out to me the two following lines: rue de lincoln, 23—tournade, louis ernest, gentleman.
“was i right?” he said with a grin. he shut up the bulletin and put it back on the counter adding: “you must admit that i deserved better treatment.”
“i will admit nothing till i am sure of it,” i replied, so deeply distressed by this fresh happening that i trembled all over.
“sure of it?” molan cried with insolent bitterness. “sure of it? what do you want? perhaps you would need to see them in the same bed? then you would still doubt! but i am not a member of the sect of the pure-minded, i believe that mademoiselle favier is the mistress of m. tournade, and i repeat that in that case the scene which she made this evening is one of the most miserable actions of which i have ever heard tell. i will be revenged. so good-bye.”
he left me after these expressions of hate without any attempt on my part to detain or calm him. i felt crushed by an enormous weight of sorrow. i have never in my sentimental life known that jealousy which most books describe, that agonizing, feverish uneasiness about a perfidy which one suspects without being certain. i have never loved without confidence. it seems to me that women ought to be scrupulous of deceiving men who love them in that fashion. i have discovered that it is not so. should i commence to, for again i should comfort myself in the same way love 255the simple reason that a person cannot see with his eyes full of tears. in return, if i have never been jealous in that uneasy and suspicious fashion, i have experienced that other sorrow which consists of having in one’s heart something like a perpetually bleeding open wound, the evidence of having been deceived. i have known what it is to suffer for entire nights at the idea of a woman’s body being given up as a prey to another man’s luxury. this horrible oppression, this interruption of the inmost soul, this deadly shudder in the face of certainty, is, i believe, the worst form of sentimental disorder, and this suffering i have just experienced again with some intensity in reading the name of tournade in the address book!
oh, god! how miserable i was when i got back to my residence on the boulevard des invalides after walking all the way to quiet my nerves! it was in vain that i told molan that i was not sure camille was the mistress of the cad whose impure face had been so repulsive to me in her dressing-room at the vaudeville, for there was no room in me for doubt on the subject. it was so simple. the unhappy child had lost her head. excess of anger and sorrow had deranged her, and in a moment of delirium she had executed that scheme of revenge which would degrade her for ever. what am i saying? she had executed the plan! she was doing so even at the moment on that night when i saw the stars shining above my head between the walls of the houses. that hour, these minutes, those seconds, whose length i felt, and 256whose flight i measured, she also lived and employed. how?
the sensations with which this idea blasted me must be, i should think, those of the man condemned to death and of his friends who love him during the time which separates his awakening on his last morning and his execution. he feels a desire to arrest the passage of time, to even throw the world, and for the earth to open, houses to fall, and a miracle to be accomplished. with what anxiety he then feels that life performs its functions in us with the implacable accuracy of a machine! all our moral and physical agonies, our revolts and surrenders, have no more influence upon nature than the flutterings of an insect in the furnace of a locomotive.
“it is over! she is tournade’s mistress!”
those frightful words, which i knew to be true, i pronounced despairingly as i walked along the rue fran?ois i, over the invalide’s bridge, and then along the avenue de la tour maubourg. transcribing them now, even after such a long period, gives me pain; but it is a dull pain, a tender melancholy. with it is mingled a thoughtful pity, like that which i should feel when standing before camille’s tomb, instead of the bitter nausea of anger and disgust which seized me when i first realized the certainty of the event. must i have loved her without knowing it, or at least without knowing how much, for thinking of her as i did to be such a penance!
as soon as i reached home, and before going to 257bed, i wished to looked at the two portraits i had drawn of her: the first of her before she knew jacques, the one i concealed so carefully; the second of the month previous with an unfinished smile. these two pictures made her so present to me, and made the defilement which sullied her at that moment so real, that i recollect in the solitude of the studio uttering real groans, like those of an animal with a death rattle in its throat.
my grief relieved itself by such outbursts that my servant was awakened. i saw with surprise this good fellow enter the room to ask if i were ill and needed his services. it was a grotesque incident which had at least one advantage, it put an end to this period of semi-madness. i should smile at this childishness after so many months if, alas, i did not find in it one more proof of my personal fatality, a sign of that destiny which has always refused me the power to fashion events after my own heart. idolizing camille as i did with such tenderness, ought i not to have told her so before? should not i have arranged so that her first movement, if she desired to raise an impassable barrier between jacques and herself, would have been to come to me? who knows? i should then have realized with her the romance of which she had dreamed and which she had failed to realize with molan! i should have shown such cleverness, such passionate tact, such caressing adoration in dressing her wound, that perhaps one day she would have loved me! ah, it is the sorrow of “the might have been”!
258how true those lines of the painter poet rossetti were of me, and how suitable for my tomb—
“look in my face, my name is: might have been!
i am also called: no more, too late, fare thee well.”
i spent that night almost without sleep, only in the morning having a feverish doze during which i dreamed a strange dream. i seemed to be sitting at table during a big dinner. i had facing me camille dressed in red with her golden hair upon her bare shoulders. near her was my unfortunate friend, claude larcher, whom i know is dead, and whom i knew was dead then at the time i seemed to see him alive. although we were at table claude was writing. it caused me infinite anguish to see him writing these lines, holding his pen in a way i knew only too well. it struck me that as he were ill such an effort would be fatal. i wanted to call out to him to stop, but i could not do so, as i was threatened with her finger by camille, in whose eyes i discerned an absolute order not to say a word. i understood at the same time that the letter written like this by claude was meant for me. it contained advice about camille, and i knew it was of such pressing interest that waiting was a punishment which increased when the guests rose from the table and i saw larcher go away with the letter without giving it to me.
i set out to pursue him through an infinite maze of winding staircases. to descend them more quickly i jumped into space and rebounded as if wings had raised me till i found myself in a 259garden which i recognized as being that of nohant, though i had never been there. i observed with astonishment the beautiful order of the beds, in which the flowers were planted so as to trace letters, and in astonishment i read the phrase which jacques had used to me: “she had already begun.” at that moment a burst of laughter made me look round. i saw camille with her hair still on her fine shoulders and very pale in her red dress. she took to tournade a note which i knew to be the one written by claude. the fat man was lying in bed, his face still redder than usual, and he smacked his lips together with the sensuality of a glutton who has an appetizing dish set before him. it was then, at the moment when camille began to unfasten her dress to get into bed, that the grief became unbearable. i understood that she was about to give herself to him for the first time. i wished to run to her and again the same fearful immobility entirely paralysed me and i awakened bathed in perspiration.
no sooner had i awakened from this painful sleep than an idea took possession of me. perhaps this visit to tournade on the previous evening had not been followed by a irreparable lapse? is it not an every-day occurrence for a woman to accept an appointment, keep it, and at the last moment be seized with a feeling of revolt, defend her person with fury and go away, having protected herself with an energy as mad as her inconsistent conduct. why had i not admitted that hypothesis the previous evening, and why did i admit it now? 260i had no other reason than this dream. it was enough to make me get up hastily at eight o’clock and hurry to the house in the rue de la barouillére. happily or unhappily, for a little uncertainty at times means a little hope, at the moment i knocked at the lodge window to ask if, in spite of the early hour, mademoiselle favier was at home, i saw in the lodge a servant who had several times accompanied her to my studio. this woman had opened the door to me on my first visit. she had been present at camille’s birth, as i knew, and was her confidant. as soon as she caught sight of me she ran out of the lodge with a haste which redoubled my fears.
“ah! m. la croix,” she said as she pulled me towards the stairs so as not to be overheard, “have you come to see mademoiselle?”
“has she returned?” i cried. suddenly i realized by a glance at the servant’s anxious face that her question was a pious fiction. camille had not returned. my exclamation revealed to my questioner the fact that i knew something, and she at once began to interrogate me. her questions served to inform me.
“listen, m. la croix,” she said anxiously, as she clasped her rough and misshapen servant’s hands which trembled a little. “if you know where she is, i ask you in the name of your mother, go and find her. since the coachman brought a message from her last evening that she would not return, madam has been mad with grief. i never saw her like it before, not even when we found her 261husband with a bullet in his forehead. she does nothing but weep and say to me: “i don’t want ever to see her again. i will turn her out if she comes back.” she says that; but if camille returns i am sure she will forgive her. do you understand that, m. la croix? a child like her, modest and sweet, who never allowed any one to approach her! we used to say, madam and i, that she would marry so well, like that singer who became a marquise! no, i cannot believe that she has gone astray! m. la croix, you who are so good, tell me what you know. i am not like some people. i have brought her up since she was little, and it was on her account that i did not leave madam when the crash came. but don’t let the porter see me talking to you for so long. i have already had some difficulty in explaining why camille did not come home last night.”
“alas!” i replied without obeying her request to go upstairs, for i feared the mother’s grief too much, “i know nothing more than you do, and the proof of that is that i came to inquire after mademoiselle favier, who appeared to me to be unwell last evening.”
“she is not at your rooms, is she?” the woman asked struck by my embarrassment. her suspicion revealed to me what passionate affection she bore the little one, as she called camille. the mother’s despair and the servant’s distraction completed the breaking of my heart. once more i realized in what an atmosphere of na?ve and simple tenderness the poor blue duchess had grown up. 262she had been one of those little girls whose coming into the world is treated as a festival, and the steps towards their womanhood are festivals too: baptism, birthdays, her first sacrament, and her first long dress—and all that for the object of so much moving solicitude to end in the defilement of gallantry! the faithful servant continued like a na?ve echo of my own bitter thoughts: “no, she cannot be with you or m. molan, nor with m. fomberteau; you are all of you too good fellows to turn a girl like her into a kept woman. she will be that now, camille, camille, camille!”
forgetting her own precautions to prevent the gossip of the porter, the good woman began to sob. i calmed her to the best of my ability by swearing to her that i would make every effort to see camille during the day and to tell her the state into which her mother had been thrown by her departure.
“make her come back!” was the only answer i obtained through her tears coupled with this sublime expression of shameless devotion: “if she wants to have adventures i will help her as much as she likes. tell her so, only let her remain and live with us!”
the struggle then was over. the drama of passion and perfidy at which i had assisted for the last few weeks had reached its logical conclusion. my dream had lied to me. it was too late to prevent that adorable child, born with the most rare and delicate romance in her heart and head, becoming nothing more than a courtesan. her pride itself, that pretty, vibrating pride for which i had 263loved her so, would hate her degradation. when she emerged from the furious crisis which had sent her to the bed of a man like tournade, the contempt she would feel for herself would vilify her so in her own eyes and her inner nausea would have two results equally frightful to imagine: either she would not bear her life a day longer and kill herself, or else she would take a sorrowing pride in incarnating in herself that outrageous type of luxury and triumphant shamelessness which become a great actress who is also a great courtesan. which of these two solutions should a man prefer who loved her as i did, first of all with a somewhat obscure sentiment, but now with one which was very full of misery and suffering? both perspectives seemed so horrible to me that in spite of the promise i had given the old servant i made a fixed resolution never to see the unhappy child again, and a wiser one still of putting into execution a plan i had long pondered over, ever since, in fact, i had begun to understand my poor heart: to go away, and return either to spain or italy, to one of those sunny lands where a soul wounded to death can at least wrap up its wound in solitude, light and beauty.
i ordered my astonished servant to pack up at once for a long absence, and i set to work to classify studies and then run through guide books, compelling myself to become absorbed in the hustle of this unexpected departure. this new and monstrous fact, the fall of camille into tournade’s arms, had suspended every other thought in my 264mind. i had forgotten madam de bonnivet, the scene of the previous evening, and molan himself. it was therefore like a sudden displacement of the atmosphere, a recall to an abolished reality, when i saw the latter about half-past two enter the studio. it was molan, however, who was the cause of the moral shipwreck from which i was suffering. he was the man i ought to curse and hate. i perceived him, simply recognizing his face, hearing his voice and touching his hand. he wore his evil expression, that of his periods of ferocious hardness, and his supreme excitement was betrayed at least to any one of experience like myself, by a way he had of biting his lower lip with his teeth, thus imperceptibly lengthening his already somewhat lengthy profile, and the animal hidden in every one of us—which in his case was the fox—was so cruelly in evidence that even the friend most hypnotized by affection could see at those times his real character. for my own part i experienced, on discovering in his face the traces of his real nature, a start of antipathy which inundated me with rancour. all my sufferings of the last few hours exploded and i received him with a torrent of abuse.
“you have come to tell me, have you not, you who have behaved so badly, that poor camille is utterly lost now? i went to her house this morning, and i learned that she had spent the night from home. we know where. that is the work of your egoism. but there will be a reckoning with you for this infamy; there is justice somewhere. 265it is a crime, do you hear, a crime to play with a sincere heart and to behave as you have done.”
“let me alone,” he quickly interrupted with a shrug of the shoulders. “when a young girl takes a lover, she will take two, three, four, and the rest. if camille had been an honourable creature she would have said to me when i courted her: 'will you marry me? no? then good-bye.’ she did not say so. so much the worse for her! besides, if i did her a wrong, it seems to me that now we are quits, mean trick for mean trick, her scene of last evening was equal to all my infamy!”
“ah! the scene from adrienne!” i cried. “are you thinking of that to try and quiet your remorse instead of shedding every tear in your body over the moral assassination you have committed. let us talk of that evening! what painful consequences can it have which you can put in the scale to counterbalance a ruined future and a poor soul defiled forever? has bonnivet turned his wife out? has he sent his seconds to you? no, i answer myself, and i will save you the trouble of comparing the bad five minutes you passed and deserved with the vertigo which has just seized and destroyed this poor girl for the whole of her life; i repeat, and you shall hear, for the whole of her life.”
“what heat!” he replied with an ironical smile. “what eloquence! we are engaged in telling the beautiful truth. come, you are angry with yourself for not having the courage to put yourself forward in tournade’s place. that is the truth, 266no denials, please. i know the cause of it, poor la croix. hard words are useless between us, you know that, so let us change our subject of conversation, shall we?” then after a short silence he continued: “i am not annoyed with you, and i am going to prove it by asking you to do me a service. guess whence i have just come?”
“from the house of that hussy, madam de bonnivet, naturally,” i replied. i was quite determined to end the interview with a quarrel, and i had used the phrase which i thought most likely to bring that about quickly. my anger changed into stupor at hearing him reply to me with a chuckle—
“yes, with that hussy, madam de bonnivet. you hate her very much, do you not? you think i am very infamous to sacrifice camille for her, don’t you? ah, well!” he went on in a singularly bitter tone which made me realize that something very new and unexpected had taken place in that quarter, “i have come to ask you to aid me in my revenge. that surprises you, does it not?”
“confess that there is a reason,” i answered him. “i left you at eleven o’clock last evening, only thinking of her and indignant with camille on her account. then you treated as a dirty trick the foolish prank of that poor child because she——”
“i repeat the expression,” he very quickly interrupted me. another period of silence followed. i could see that a combat between most contradictory sentiments was taking place in him. what he had to tell me wounded his vanity sorely. 267on the other hand the same vanity desired to wreak upon madam de bonnivet the immediate vengeance of which he had spoken, and i alone was able to help him effectively. but this man, who was usually master of himself, had just been so completely overwhelmed by an affront, which was all the harder for him to bear as he was unprepared for it. his anger was very great, and he went on in a hissing voice which vibrated with absolute sincerity: “yes, a dirty trick. i stand by the expression, and i am almost happy to have to do so, for it constitutes a hold over her. listen,” he went on, putting his hand on my arm, and pressing it as he spoke. “i called upon madam de bonnivet directly after lunch to-day. i was uneasy. it is in vain that we know that women are like cats, and always fall on their feet, keeping something in their disposition with which to twist a husband who loves them round their fingers when and as often as they please—do you understand me?—we have to be so very careful! i was afraid that bonnivet had made a scene with his wife after camille’s escapade last evening. now you will admire my foolishness and cease to reproach me with heartlessness. for once i obeyed my poor heart and it was a success! so i called upon her and was received in the small drawing-room, which you know, by the woman, reclining in a long chair, clad in a thin dressing-gown. you can imagine that clad in lace, with just enough light to give her a shadowy charm like a phantom, she looked like a picture of the ideal capable of bewitching 268a lover who is about to be dismissed. listen: 'have you a headache?’ i asked her. 'i ought to have one at least,’ she replied, looking at me with eyes i cannot describe—eyes in which there was hatred and fury; but at the same time they were cold and venomous eyes. 'you have the audacity,’ she continued, 'to return here after what took place yesterday.’ i was so dumbfounded by this reception that i had no answer ready. she was making me responsible for the insult camille had levelled at her!”
“it is a little severe,” i said, laughing in spite of myself at this prodigious change of front, and the sheepish look of the pseudo don juan before this surprising display of feminine malice. “between ourselves you well earned it.”
“but listen,” he went on more violently than ever, “you will chaff me presently, and you will be right. i thought i had touched this icy soul in a spot with some feeling in it. i was taken in, that is all. you cannot imagine what hard, cruel things she said to me in that quarter of an hour; and though i very well knew to what risk i was exposing myself by allowing camille to act there, yet i had naturally felt flattered at having my two mistresses face to face, and at being received there myself as a man of the world and camille as a lady; and though i had conducted myself as a man of letters while she behaved like a common actress, yet she dared to make use of words which indicated that it was a scheme devised between us to satisfy my vanity and to revenge the insolence 269she had suffered, that it was the last time her door would be opened to me, and that she had spoken to her husband—she dared to tell me that—yes, that she had spoken to him and explained to him this girl’s ignoble conduct by a boast on my part! but if you had heard her tone of voice when she insisted: 'my first vengeance shall be, since it appears she loves you, to send you back to her, and she shall see you unhappy, and unhappy through me; for you shall be, you shall be!’ she laughed her bitter laugh, which you know, and i, the jacques molan you know, listened, so terrified at the baseness of soul which these phrases proved, that i did not stop her. i might say if i posed to you that i amused myself by studying it. alas, no! at that moment i was paralysed, i do not really understand by what. but i was. can you imagine pierre de bonnivet entering in the midst of this scene, and the silence which fell upon the three of us in that little drawing-room? i swear to you i thought of crying out to that fool of a husband then: 'you know i have been your wife’s lover.’ i believe that would have soothed me! what would have followed? a duel. i should have survived it, and i should have been revenged through this woman’s dishonour. but the prejudice which requires a man to bear everything rather than to betray a woman who has given herself to him, even when she deserves it, stopped me. and so, here i am.”
“but what motive has she obeyed?” i cried, so astounded by the story that it did not occur to 270me to laugh at the contrast between jacques’ triumphant attitude of the previous evening and the piteous confession he had just made in a hesitating though furious way, being so overwhelmed that he had told me everything haphazard, this time without calculation and without posing. it was the shriek of the wounded animal. “yes,” i repeated, “what is her motive? she has been your mistress. consequently she must have thought something of you!”
“her object was to take me from camille,” he interrupted. “that i have always known. now that she has succeeded i no longer interest her, which is quite natural. the spite of outraged self-conceit has done the rest. for a few minutes i represented camille to her and she detested me with the hatred she bears her. that is also very natural. she has found a means of satisfying everything at once: her caution concerning her husband’s suspicions, which were now very much aroused; her ferocious hate, and without doubt her natural fund of brutality by that unlikely rupture. but i am not turned out just like that. i have a revenge to take, and i will take it. you will aid me, and at once.”
“i?” i replied; “how?”
“by going at once to camille,” he told me, and as i made a gesture he insisted: “yes, to camille. there is a first night at the théatre fran?ais for which i have a box. i wish to attend the performance with her tête-à-tête, do you understand? madam de bonnivet will be there. i want the 271wretch to see me with little favier, and i want her to realize that we are reconciled and happy, for that will wound her self-conceit. it is the only place where i can attack her. ah! she is convinced that i left her house in tears with my heart torn, and that i am miserable! she will have before her fine guinea fowl eyes the proof that she will no longer be of any more account in our lives, camille’s and mine, than that,” and he threw down a match with which he had just lit his cigarette; “and she will have to say to herself: 'all the same, this man has had me.’ for i have had her; she cannot alter the fact that she has been my mistress. what a revenge it is even to think that a woman can never efface that!”
this horrible explosion of evil sentiments had made the face of jacques, who not without reason passed as a handsome man, and who could make himself so feline, so gentle, and so caressing, quite sinister. he was hideous at this moment when he was justifying in a striking way the theories of poor claude upon the savage hatred which is at the root of sexual intercourse. this so-called love, which has cruelty for its root, has always been so repulsive to me that it was impossible for me to pity jacques, although i felt that he was as unhappy as it was possible for him to be. besides, i could clearly see the absolute uselessness of the mission which the discarded lover wished me to undertake. madam de bonnivet’s character became quite clear to me. i realized that even with his subtle pretensions to trickery my companion 272had been in the hands of this woman what the most corrupt of writers would always be in the hands of a really wicked creature who did not dally with depravity. a child, a poor, little swaggering imp of vice immediately unmasked and bound.
this implacable coquette had amused herself by destroying little favier’s happiness with the joy those beings who cannot feel experience in torturing the sentiments of others! she had seen clearly into molan’s heart. she had man?uvred so as to bury the knife in the vulnerable part and at the desired moment. she turned him out, after that had been done, with the only pleasure she could feel—that of causing suffering. he, the theorist of all parisian depravities, had allowed himself to be cornered at this little execution without any suspicion. now he was foaming at the mouth with impotent rage against the mistress who had played with him as long as this sport had suited her despotism, her ennui, and her moral depravity. but she had not left in his hands a line of her writing, a portrait—nothing in fact which could bear witness to their liaison. no. molan was no match for her, and had i not been influenced by other motives i should have refused to undertake the commission he desired. the only service to render him was to take him away from any intercourse with this terrible woman. besides, again making use of the unfortunate actress in this affair would have appeared to me the misery of miseries, and i told him so. “be satisfied,” i said, “with 273this revenge, for when you speak of the other you forget what your relations with camille are.”
“how?” he said, and he made use of the most astounding expression his egoism had ever uttered in my presence: “since i forgive her that night with tournade!”
“but,” i replied, “perhaps she does not forgive you.”
“now,” he said, “you have only to go and ask her to give me a ten minutes’ interview here. you will see if she will refuse. do it for me and for her!”
“no, no,” i gave as my final reply with the brutality of real indignation, which made him shrug his shoulders and pick up his hat as he said—
“very well, i will go and find her myself.”
“where?” i asked.
“where she is,” he answered.
“at tournade’s house?”
“yes. after all an encounter with that funny fellow would rest my nerves. then the bonnivet woman will hear of it, and it will be another proof that i still love camille. but i shall find a letter from her at home waiting, asking me to see her. it is surprising that she has not reappeared this morning.”
he had again become the jacques molan of his best days, the man of such assurance, of such imperturbable personal affirmation, from which a curious authority emanated. henceforward i was refractory on my own account. was it the same with camille? would he not succeed in 274recovering his influence over the poor mistress he had tormented and vilified? then what worse degradation would she have to suffer? that question which i asked myself when jacques had at last gone so overwhelmed me with bitterness that my desire to go away, to see neither him nor her and to know no more about them, became irresistible. i decided to start for marseilles that same evening. there i would decide upon my destination. i spent the rest of the day in making the necessary arrangements and visiting a few relatives. from time to time i looked at my watch, and at the thought that the time of departure was approaching a hand seemed to clutch my heart. i felt beforehand the chill of the solitude which i was about to enter in leaving the city in which my only love lived and breathed. how great was my discomfiture when at six o’clock, just as i was sitting down to dinner, i heard a carriage stop. the bell rang and then i heard a voice, that of the person i most desired and at the same time most feared to see, the voice of camille favier!
“are you going away?” she asked me when i went to her in the studio, where i had told the servant to take her. “i saw your trunks in the anteroom.”
“yes,” i said, “i am going for a tour in italy.” she had not raised her veil, as if she did not wish me to see her face. this sign of the shame which she felt was very pleasant to me. it was a proof, after so many others, of her natural delicacy, which 275made her lapse into prostitution all the more heart-breaking to me, and which made her more sadly, though madly, dear to me.
“when?” she again asked me.
“in an hour and twenty-five minutes if the train is not late,” i said in a joking tone looking at the clock, the sound of whose ticking filled the empty room. for a time we remained silently listening to this noise of time, the unalterable step of life which had led us to that moment which would lead us on to other moments, moments we foresaw likely to be dishonourable for her and melancholy for me. although we had only exchanged those insignificant words, she saw that i knew everything. she sat down, leant her forehead on her hands, and went on—
“so much the worse. i wanted you to take a message for me to jacques.”
“what?” i said tremblingly; i anticipated the horrible confidence. but i added: “if i can be of service to you by postponing my departure——”
“no,” she said with strange energy. “it is not worth the trouble. it is better that i should never see you again. it was to return him this letter he sent me to-day—see to what address,” and she held out the envelope on which i could see the name of tournade and the rue lincoln; she added in a voice which was less firm: “i wished to ask him not to write to me nor seek for me again, either there or elsewhere, as i am no longer free.”
then followed another period of silence, after which she got up and offered me her hand, saying—
276“i will send him back the letter myself through the post. it will be better. now, vincent, good-bye, and a pleasant trip. you will remember me, will you not, and not judge me too harshly. come, give me a kiss, as we shall not see one another again till god knows when!”
as i pressed my lips upon her cheek i felt through her veil that it was moist with tears. not another word was spoken between us. i could not find a question to ask her. she did not think of a plaint to make. even at the deathbeds of those i loved most i have never said a good-bye which has cost me more.