Complete Works of Emile Zola (156 page)

Then she calmed down, and added quickly:

“But, my dear, Tiburce would never consent to go away. Ah! you don’t know him! If I were to talk to him of separation, it is quite likely he would beat me to death. No, no, I am his, and I must bear it to the end.”

She was telling a most shameless lie, for that very afternoon her lover had threatened never to set foot in her bedroom again, if she did not find him at once some honourable post.

“Ah! how I envy you,” she said again, “and how pleasant it must be to be virtuous!”

And she began to whine once more, never giving Madeleine a chance of speaking, and varying her lamentations with curious smiles as she remembered her pleasures. For nearly an hour, it was a horrible drivel of silly regrets, and sudden longings for debauch, of avowals of tranquil cynicism, and supplications which asked for help and pity from all honest people. At last Madeleine felt her feeling of uncomfortableness increasing every moment as she listened to these moans; this unreserved confession embarrassed her, yet she said nothing, simply answering by a nod or a shake of the head. Occasionally she would cast an uneasy glance at Monsieur de Rieu; but there was always the same vague smile on his lips, always the same expression of ironical assurance on his face. Then, as Hélène repeated for the tenth time, the same dirty story, the young wife looked on her own history; she thought of the drama which was crushing herself and William: and she half began to wish to see her husband, deaf and idiotic, sitting rooted in his chair, and to find herself 60 sunk in the mire that she no longer felt any pricks of conscience, but wallowed peacefully in her shame.

While the two women had been talking in this fashion, William and Tiburce had retired into a little adjoining room which was used as a smoking room. William, who now sought every opportunity of talking on ordinary topics of conversation, asked his old schoolfellow if he liked his stay in Paris. Whether he did or not, was perfectly indifferent to him, for he detested the fellow, hut he was not sorry to have him near him to help him to forget his trouble. Tiburce replied in a somewhat irritated tone, that he had had no success as yet. William’s innocent question had touched his wounds to the quick.

He began to smoke excitedly, and then after a few minutes’ silence he gave full scope to his latent fury. He confessed to William as his mistress had confessed to Madeleine, but with far more energy in the coarseness of his words. He spoke of Madame de Rieu in the terms that men only use among themselves when they are talking about prostitutes. This woman, he said, with barefaced cheek, had taken a mean advantage of his youth; but he did not intend that his life should be wrecked for a ridiculous love affair like this, and he was fully determined to tear himself from the arms of this shrew, whose kisses filled him with disgust. What he did not confess was the vexation he felt at his blighted ambition. All his present distress proceeded from the reflection that he had received hitherto such little profit from his kisses. This allowed him to set up as a young man led astray through his inexperience by the wiles of an old woman. If Hélène could have got him a government appointment, or a post as attaché to some embassy, he would have had nothing for her but mealy-mouthed praises, and he would have sought to justify the relationship between them. But, you see, his caresses were not even paid for, and Tiburce Rouillard was not the man to confer favours for nothing.

He was not unaware, however, that the poor woman had left no stone unturned. But her ardent desire to be of service to him went for very little; he wanted results, and his mistress by a sort of fatality had obtained none as yet. This fatality was nothing else than the hand of Monsieur de Rieu. The old fellow, seeing that the comedy would lose half its charm if Tiburce were to receive the price of his kisses, made stealthy moves in his wife’s rear, and counteracted each fresh attempt and undermined her cleverest schemes. This was a splendid way of rousing the exasperation of the lovers against each other, and to cause between them those terrible scenes over which he smacked his lips like a connoisseur. When he had contrived to spoil a specially good move on the part of his wife, he feasted his eyes for hours together on Hélène’s cringing fears and Tiburce’s irritated attitude. The young fellow would come, with clinched lips and pale face, doubling his fists and trying to get his mistress into a corner so as to bully her. But, on these days, he could never get her far away from her husband; she would look at him with tear-strained eyes and trembling lips, as if Imploring him to have mercy. And the old man would pretend to be deafer than usual and look on with an air of contented imbecility. Then when Tiburce had succeeded in getting Hélène to the other end of the room, when he had so far lost his temper as to shake her roughly, although the deaf man pretended to be turning his back, he seemed to hear everything, both words and blows. His face could not be seen, but it had an expression of diabolical cruelty.

Thus Tiburce was beginning to think that his mistress had no influence, and that she was unable to be of any service to him, and this was making him quite ruthless. He had now only one idea in his head, and this was to avenge himself for his four years of useless service, and to cast one parting shaft at Hélène as he gave her the slip. Hitherto, he had not dared to leave her entirely, since he could not make up his mind to give up all hope of the benefits he might derive from an undertaking which had already cost him such painful efforts. He had always come back to the grindstone, trusting to Providence, and telling himself that heaven would be very perfidious if it did not reward him for his constancy. But to-day all hope had left him and he was firmly resolved to break with his mistress.

William listened compassionately to Tiburce’s violent words. He was of course somewhat disgusted with the young man’s intimacy with Hélène, but he allowed himself to be talked over by his comedy of regrets and indignation. The other was simply making this confession to ease his mind, and also as a sort of rehearsal before his friend, whom he knew to be somewhat nice and prudish, of the apology he would make to the world for his ridiculous connections with Madame de Rieu. He felt that if this woman did not succeed in procuring him a position in the world, he would be jeered at and despised for having shared her bed; success would have made him a clever man, worthy of every favour, but failure was ruining him for life. Thus he wanted to anticipate the scorn and raillery of the world and pose as a victim who has a claim to pardon. He played his cards with remarkable skill, and William actually offered to assist him and lend him the support of his name and fortune. If he wished, he said, he would recommend him to an old friend of his father’s, and he strongly approved of his determination to break with his mistress. Besides, William himself was acting a part, for he was trying to feel an interest in a story, about which he did not care a straw, hoping by this means to forget his own affairs by busying himself in those of others.

Their cigars being finished, William and Tiburce returned to the drawing-room. Hélène, interrupted in the middle of her mournful lamentations, suddenly stopped short, casting a glance of terror at her lover, as if she were afraid he would ill-treat her for having dared to complain. She sat uneasily, venturing on a word now and then, but only to be taken up sharply by Tiburce, who interrupted all her remarks, giving her clearly to understand that she did not know what she was talking about, and making no attempt to conceal his irritation from the company. You might have thought he was trying to show William how little he cared for her. Everybody seemed relieved when the visit came to an end. Just before going away, Monsieur de Rieu, who had scarcely opened his lips during the whole evening, spoke, in his cold tone, at considerable length in praise of Tiburce, this fine young fellow whose friendship was so precious to himself and his wife: he was not like those hare-brained dandies, who were always running after pleasure, he had a love and respect for old age, and he wound up by asking him to go and look for a cab. He usually treated him like a servant, and never gave orders to be fetched, when he left home. It was raining. Tiburce came back splashed up to the knees. Monsieur de Rieu leaned on his shoulder from the house to the cab, and then sent him to fetch his wife, who was sheltering under the awning at the top of the stone steps. He almost asked him then to mount the box with the driver.

William and Madeleine saw that visits like this one would not be sufficient to prevent them from brooding over their sorrows. They could not think of receiving company at their own house in the Rue de Boulogne, which was too small, and hardly allowed them to invite the De Rieus to a friendly party. Thus they determined to go out and spend the evening at other people’s houses, in the noisy commonplace chatter of those drawing-rooms, where a few dozen men and women, who are perfect strangers to each other, meet together and sit simpering and twirling their thumbs from nine o’clock till midnight. The very next day, Monsieur de Rieu gave them an introduction to seven or eight houses, which were only too delighted to give a hearty welcome to the name of De Viargue. From one end of the week to the other, the young couple soon had every evening engaged. They left home together at dusk, got their meals in different places like strangers on a journey, and only came back to sleep.

At first, they felt relieved, for the blank of this existence calmed them both. It mattered little what house they went to: every drawing-room was the same for them. Madeleine would take a seat at the end of a sofa with that vague smile on her lips so peculiar to every woman who has not one idea in her head: if there was music, she stared at the piano as if in ecstasy, although she was not paying the slightest attention to the piece; if there was dancing, she accepted the invitation of the first person that asked her, and then sat down again, unable to say whether her partner was fair or dark. Provided she was surrounded with abundance of light and abundance of chatter she was perfectly content. As for William, he was quite lost among the black coats. He sat for whole evenings in the embrasure of a window, staring, with haughty gravity, at the rows of bare shoulders that sat, shivering and shining, in the glaring light of the candles; or he would plant himself near a card-table, seeming to be enormously interested in certain tricks, though he understood nothing whatever of the game. He had always detested society, and he had only entered it in despair, in order to lose Madeleine in the crowd for a few hours. Then, as the parties broke up, the young couple ceremoniously withdrew, and as they descended the staircase, they would fancy that they were strangers to each other rather more than they were when they had come.

But though their evenings were always engaged, their days were still a blank. Then Madeleine threw herself feverishly into Parisian life; she trotted from shop to shop, visited dressmakers and milliners, became quite coquettish, and tried to take an interest in the new inventions of fashion. She formed a friendship with a silly creature, who had left the convent and just got married, and was fast ruining her husband with all the avidity of a Magdalen. This little woman took her off to the churches to hear the sermons of the chief preachers in vogue, and from there they went to the Park where they discussed the toilets of the girls. This life of bustle, which was a round of silliness and excitement, produced in Madeleine a sort of intoxication, which gave her the besotted smile of drunkards. William, too, was leading the life of a rich bachelor cloyed with pleasure; he lunched at the café, rode in the afternoon, and tried to become conversant with the’ thousand trifles which are discussed for days together at the clubs. Now, he only saw his wife at night, when he was taking her to a party.

The young couple led this sort of life for a month. They were trying to look on their union from the standpoint of fashionable people who get married from expediency, to increase their fortune or perpetuate their name. The young bridegroom gets a position, and the bride gets her liberty. Then, after one night together, they occupy separate beds, and exchange more bows than words. The gentleman goes back to his bachelor life, the lady commences her life of adultery. Very often all intercourse ceases between them. A few, the more amorous, have a passage that connects their bedrooms. From time to time, the husband pays a visit to his wife’s bedroom, when he feels inclined, just as he would pay a visit to a house of ill-fame.

But William and Madeleine were too subject to passion to put up with such an existence for long. They had not been brought up in the selfish ways of the world, and they could not learn those little habits of ceremonious politeness, and that indifference to affection and feelings which permit a husband and wife to live side by side like strangers. The way in which they had become acquainted, their five years of solitude and affection, and even the mutual pain that they had inflicted would not allow them to forget one another, or live apart. It was all in vain that their efforts were tending to a complete separation of their existence, their joys, and their sorrows, for they always found themselves with the same feelings, and the same thoughts. Their lives were irrevocably united in every place, and in everything.

They had not had three weeks of this separation before their painful feelings came back again. Their change of habits had, it is true, been able to divert them for a moment from their fixed ideas. They had allowed themselves to be deceived by the excitement of this new existence. These parties, where they had lost sight of each other, had produced in them, at first, a sort of pleasant stupor: they had been dazzled by the glitter of the candles, and the hum of voices had deadened their tumultuous feelings. But, when the first surprise had worn away, when they had grown accustomed to these lights, and to this smiling and gaily-dressed crowd, they retired within themselves, for it seemed to them that the world was disappearing, and that they were falling back into their solitude. From this time, they carried their sufferings with them every night. They continued to go from party to party, in a sort of stupor, and spending hours surrounded by thirty or forty people, seeing nothing and hearing nothing, entirely taken up with their anxiety of body and mind. And if, to forget their feelings, they tried to interest themselves in what was taking place around them, their sight was dimmed, and they fancied that a grey smoke filled the air, and that each object was tarnishing and becoming faded and sullied. In the harmonious movements of the dances, in the sweet notes of the piano, they found the nervous shocks that were assailing them. The painted faces seemed red with tears, the seriousness of the men terrified them, and the bare shoulders of the women became, in their eyes, a sort of indecent show. The surroundings in which they lived were no longer exciting enough to lull them with their smiling luxury, nay, on the contrary, they themselves were imparting to these surroundings a portion of their dejection and despair.