CHAPTER VII

Three more weeks had passed, and the never-ending picture had undergone so many touches that it was a little less advanced than before. It is the certain sign that an artistic creation will not result: work destroys it instead of improving it, and it is a proof, too, that we do not accomplish works worthy of the name, they are made in us, without effort, without will, almost unknown to us. The sittings, too, became more and more irregular. Camille began to rehearse the piece to follow La Duchesse Blue, and sometimes from one excuse, sometimes another, one day because she was fatigued, another because she was studying her part, she found a way of putting off half her visits to the studio. When she did sit it was under very different conditions to the first sittings. Her tête-à-tête with me had been a necessity to her at the time of her sweet confidences and even at the time of her tender uneasy complaints. A fear came to her now that her jealousy of her rival would endow her with an acute character of suspicious inquiry.

Not once during the three weeks, the anxious expectancy of which I am summarizing here, did 171she come alone to the studio. Sometimes her mother, sometimes her cousin, sometimes a companion accompanied her. I should have known nothing of her but for guessing at her troubles from the very pronounced alteration in her face and her increasing nervousness on the one hand, and for having, on the other hand, three conversations with Jacques which were very brief but well calculated to edify me as to the cause of the poor Blue Duchess’ terrible trouble.

“Don’t talk to me of her,” he said on the first occasion with angry harshness; “I should be unjust, for she loves me after all. But what a character she has! what a character!”

“Ah! so she still continues to play to you her comedy of the beautiful soul unappreciated,” he jeered on the second occasion. “Come, don’t let us talk about her any more.”

On the last occasion he said violently: “As you are so interested in her, I am going to give you a commission. If she wants to reach the stage when I shall not recognize her if I meet her, you can tell her she is well on the way to it. If I did not need her for my new comedy I should not do so now.”

On neither of these three occasions had I insisted on knowing more. His harshness, irony and violence made me a prey to a very strange fear. I apprehended with real anguish the moment when he would say in his own way. “It is all over. Madam de Bonnivet is my mistress.” Under any circumstances it is saddening to receive such confidences. At least I have always felt it so. It is 172so repugnant to me as to almost become painful. Is it a result of the prudery with which Jacques reproached me? Is it a persistent prejudice, the remains of a conventional imposition before the woman’s modesty, as he also pretended?

I don’t think I am either prude or dupe. I see rather, in this aversion for certain confessions which no longer allow any doubt as to certain faults, first of all an excess of jealousy—why not?—and then the drawing back before brutal reality which is in me a malady. Actually it is without a doubt a relic of respectable and pious youth, and the evidence that a woman who has been well brought up, who is married, is a mother, and holds a position, has degraded herself to the physical filth of a gallant adventure is intolerable to me. In its way this apprehension was the more illogical and foolish as my comrade’s indiscretion had edified me as regards the flirting and coquetry of which Madam de Bonnivet was capable. Between coquetry, even foolishly light, and precision of the last detail there is an abyss. In conclusion, if ever Jacques came to pronounce to me that cruel phrase: “It is all over. Madam de Bonnivet is my mistress,” I should have to see Camille with that phrase in my memory, and then the reply to her questions would become to me a real penance. To know nothing, on the other hand, was to retain the right to reply to the poor actress without lying to her.

This voluntary ignorance did not prevent me from realizing that the whole of Camille’s drama 173of sentiment was acted on this single point: on the degree of intimacy established between Molan and Queen Anne depended the sad remnant of happiness, the last charity of love which the poor child still enjoyed. So although I tried not to find out anything definite as to the result of the intrigue between Jacques and Madam de Bonnivet, I did nothing but think of it, multiplying the hypotheses for and against the latter’s absolute downfall. Alas! they were almost all for it. How was I to wait for the revelation which put an end to my uncertainty in a startling and entirely unexpected way?

It was towards the close of a February afternoon. Camille had missed three set appointments without sending me a word of apology. I had spent several hours, not in my studio, but in a little room adjoining it which I adorned with the title of library. I keep there a number of books which a painter, caring for his art alone, ought not to have. Why is it that a poet and a novelist, even the most plastic, can teach an artist who must live by his eyes and the reproduction of forms? It is true I was not engaged in reading but in dreaming, glasses in hand, before the half-burnt fire. The lamp, which had been brought in by a servant, lit up half the room. I abandoned myself to that nervous languor which resolves itself into, at such an hour, in such a season and such a light, a half unconscious semi-intoxication. Anything accidental in us is removed at such times. We seem to touch the bottom of our fund of sensibility, the nerve itself of the internal organ through which we 174suffer and enjoy, and the pulp which composes our being.

I felt in the twilight that I loved Camille as I imagine one must love after death, if anything of our poor heart survives in the great mute darkness. I told myself that I ought to go and see her, that there was in the excess of my discretion apparent indifference. I evoked her and spoke to her, telling her what I had never told her, and what I should not dare to tell her. It was at the moment, when this opium of my dream-passion most deeply engulfed me, that I was snatched with a start from my dream by the sudden arrival of her who was its chief character. My servant, whom I had told that I could see no one, entered the room to tell me, with an air of embarrassment, that Mademoiselle Favier was asking for me, that he had answered her according to his instructions, and that she had sat down in the anteroom, declaring that she would not go without seeing me.

“Is she alone?” I asked.

“Quite alone,” he answered with the familiarity of a bachelor’s servant who has been in the same situation for twenty years—he saw my father die and I am quite familiar with him. “I must tell you though, sir, that she seems to be in great trouble. She is as white as a sheet; her voice is changed, broken, and choked. One would think she cannot talk. It is a great shame, considering how young and pretty she is!”

“Ah, well, show her in,” I said, “but no one else, you understand.”

175“Even if M. Molan comes to see you too, sir?” he inquired.

“Even if M. Molan calls,” I replied.

The good fellow smiled the smile of an accomplice, which on any other occasion I should have interpreted as a proof that he had guessed the ill-concealed secret of my feelings. I did not have time to reflect upon his greater or less penetration. Camille was already in the studio, and the image of despair was before me, a despair verging on madness. I said to her as I made her sit down: “Whatever is the matter?” and sat down myself. She signed to me to ask her no questions, as it was impossible for her to reply. She put her hand upon her breast and closed her eyes, as if internal anguish there in her breast was inflicting upon her suffering greater than she could bear. For a moment I thought she was about to expire, so frightful was the convulsive pallor of her face. When her eyes opened I could see that no tear moistened her blue eyes, eyes which were now quite sombre. The flame of the most savage passion burned in them. Then in a raucous and almost bass voice, as if a hand had clutched her throat, she said to me as she pressed her fingers on her forehead in bewilderment—

“There is a God, as I have found you. If you had not been at home I think I should have lost my reason. Give me your hand, I want to clasp it, to feel that I am not dreaming, that you are there, a friend. My sufferings are so great.”

“Yes, a friend,” I replied, trying to calm her, 176“a true friend ready to help you, to listen to you, to advise you, and to prevent you, too, from giving way to your fancies.”

“Do not speak like that,” she interrupted, freeing her hand as she drew back with almost hateful aversion, “or else I shall think you are in the plot to lie to me. No. This man deceives you as he has me. You believe in him as I have done. He would be ashamed to show himself in his true colours before the honourable man you are. Listen.” She seized my arm again and came so near me that I could feel the feverish heat of her rapid breath. “Do you know where I, Camille Favier, have come from; I, the recognized mistress of Jacques? I have come from a chamber where that wretch, Madam de Bonnivet, has given herself to him, where the bed is still in disorder and warm from their two bodies. Oh, what a hideous thing it is!”

“Impossible!” I murmured, overwhelmed with fright at the words I had just listened to and the tone in which they were spoken. “You have been the dupe of an anonymous letter or a fancied resemblance.”

“Listen again,” she went on almost tragically, and her fingers bit into my flesh, so furious was their grasp. “For a week I have had no doubt as to the relations between Jacques and this woman. Suddenly he had become tender to me with that tenderness which a mistress never mistakes. He was humouring me. There was a certain expression in his eyes when he looked at me. I would 177have liked to snatch away that look to read what was behind it. Then I found around his eyes that voluptuous hollow I knew in him too well. I recognized in his whole being that exhausted languor which he used to have in the days gone by when we loved passionately, and he avoided our appointments. He always had an excuse to change and postpone them. You see, I am talking to you as I feel. It is brutal, but what I am telling you is true, as I have always told the truth to him and to you. It was I, you understand, who asked for these appointments, I who did the hunting, while he refused me and escaped from me. Is any other proof of a lover’s deception necessary? But this week I began again to doubt. I received a visit from this woman’s husband. She had the audacity to send him to me! He came with Senneterre to ask me to act at a grand affair they are having next Monday.”

“I have an invitation to it,” I interrupted, suddenly recollecting that I had received an invitation for it. “I was astonished at it, but I understand now. It was an account of you.”

“Ah, well! you will not see me there,” she replied in a tone which froze my heart, it was so ferocious, “and I have an idea that this function will not take place.” Then with rising anger she said: “Now, see how innocent I am still! When the fool of a husband asked me that, and I said 'yes,’ seeing that Jacques displayed no emotion, it seemed to me impossible that this woman could 178really be his mistress. I did not believe it of her, nor did I believe that he was her lover. I knew she was a famous coquette, and you remember how I judged him? But this was on her part such insolent audacity, and on his shameful cowardice! No. Had you come yourself, even this morning, to tell me that she was his mistress, I should not have believed it.”

She was so agonized at what she was preparing to tell that she had to stop again. Her hands, which had let go of me again, trembled and her eyes closed from her excessive suffering.

“And now?” I said to her.

“Now?” She burst into a nervous laugh. “Now I know of what they are capable, he in particular. She is a woman of the world who has lovers. But for him to have done what he has done! Oh, the wretch, the wicked monster! I am going mad as I talk to you. But listen, listen,” she repeated in a frenzy, as if she feared I should interrupt her story. “To-day at two o’clock there was to have been a rehearsal of the new comedy by Dorsenne at the theatre. He is altering an act and the rehearsal was countermanded. I did not hear of it till I got to the theatre. For that reason I found myself about two o’clock in the Rue de la Chausée d’Antin with the afternoon before me. I had one or two calls to make in the neighbourhood. I started, and then some clumsy person trod on my skirt, tearing a flounce almost off. Look.” She showed me that a large piece of the bottom of her skirt was torn. “It happened 179at the top of the Rue de Clichy near the Rue Nouvelle.”

She had looked at me as she pronounced and emphasized these last few words, as if they ought to awaken in me an association of ideas. She saw that I made no sign. A look of astonishment passed over her face and she continued—

“Does that name tell you nothing? I thought that Jacques, who confides in you, would have told you that as well. Well”—she dropped her voice still lower, “that is where we have our place of meeting. When he became my lover, I should so much have liked to have belonged to him at his own place, among the objects in the midst of which he lived, so that at every minute, every second, these mute witnesses of our happiness would recall me to his memory! He did not wish it to be so. I understand the reason to-day; he was already thinking of the rupture. At that time I believed everything he told me, and did everything he asked me to do. He assured me that the rooms in the Rue Nouvelle had been fitted up by him for me alone, and that he had put there the old furniture from the room in which he wrote his early books: the room he lived in before moving to the Place Delaborde. How stupid I was! How stupid I was! But it is abominable to lie to a poor girl who has only her heart, who surrenders it entirely as well as her person and would despise herself for any distrust as if it were a crime! Ah! it is very easy to deceive any one who surrenders herself like that.”

180“But are you sure he deceived you?” I asked.

“Am I sure of it? You too—-” she replied in tones of passionate irony. “Besides, I defy you to defend him when you hear the whole story. I was, as I have just told you, near the Rue Nouvelle with my dress torn. I must add, too, that in my foolishness I had left all sorts of little things belonging to me in the rooms there, even needles and silk. It had been one of my dreams, too, that this place might become a beloved refuge for both of us, where Jacques would work at some beautiful love-drama, written near me and for me, while I should be there to employ myself—as his wife! It occurred to me to go there and mend my torn flounce. I want you to believe me when I swear to you that there was no idea of spying mixed up in my plan.”

“I know it,” I replied to her, and to spare her the details of a confidence which I saw caused her great physical suffering, I asked her: “And you found the room in disorder as you told me?”

“It was more terrible,” she said, and then had to remain silent for a second to gain strength to continue: “The way in which these apartments had been selected ought long ago to have told me that Jacques used them for others as well as me. They are in a large double house, the rooms face the street and are far enough from the porter’s lodge for any one to ascend the staircase without being seen. What would be the use of all these precautions if I were the only person to go there? Am I not free? Am I afraid of any one but 181mother seeing me enter? Then there was the porter’s glances, his indefinable expression of politeness and irony, and his servility to Jacques, all of which would have proved to any one else that the rooms had been for years in his occupation. I can see it so clearly while I am talking to you! I cannot realize how I was so long deceived! But I am losing myself, ideas keep rushing into my head. I had got as far as the Rue Nouvelle with my dress torn. I had no key. Jacques had never given it to me in spite of my requests. What another sign, too! I knew that the porter kept one key so that he and his wife might look after the place. An inside bolt allowed, when once a person was inside, of the door being fastened against any intruder, so that very often Jacques did not trouble to take the second key which was kept in one of his drawers, and you may imagine I went to the porter’s lodge as little as possible. I preferred, when I followed Jacques there, to go straight upstairs and ring. Without these details what happened to me would be unintelligible to you though it is so simple. This time I went to the lodge for the key. There was no one there. The porter and his wife were probably busy elsewhere, and the last person who went out had neglected to shut the door. I saw our key in its usual place and took it without the least scruple, and making as I did so a little motion of joy at avoiding the porter. I must repeat—I swear it to you—that I was absolutely ignorant of the incident I was about to encounter. I entered 182the rooms with a certain feeling of melancholy, as you may imagine! It was a fortnight since I had been there with Jacques. The windows were closed. The little drawing-room with its tasteful tapestry and furniture was still the same, and so was the bedroom with its red furniture. I found out, on looking in a drawer where I had put my work-basket with my odds and ends, that it was no longer there, and I was somewhat astonished. But there was still a dressing-room and a little room which we sometimes used as a dining-room. I thought that perhaps the porter, when cleaning, had moved the things into the little room and forgotten to replace them. I looked there, found the work-basket, and began to mend my skirt. I took it off to do it more quickly. Suddenly I seemed to hear the opening of doors. I had taken the key out of the lock without shooting the bolt. My first thought was that Jacques was the unexpected visitor. Had he not told me, and I had believed him, as usual, that he sometimes came there to work out of remembrance of me and to assure himself more solitude? I had not time to give myself up to the sweet emotion this thought awakened in my heart. I could recognize two voices, his and the other woman’s.”

“The voice of Madam de Bonnivet?” I asked as she remained silent after the last few words, which were hardly audible. I was as much moved by her story as she was herself. She bent her head to signify “yes” and maintained her silence, so I dare not insist. The tragedy of the 183situation, the facts of which she had placed before me so simply, crushed me. She went on—

“I cannot describe to you what passed in me when I heard this woman, who, thinking herself alone with her lover, was laughing loudly and talking familiarly to him. I felt a sharp pain, as if the keen point of a knife had wounded me in the inmost part of my being, and I began to tremble in the whole of my body on the chair upon which I was sitting. But even now at the thought, look at my hands! I desired to get up, to go to them, and to drive them away, but I could not. I could not even cry out. It seemed to me as if my life suddenly stood still in me. I heard and listened. It was a pain greater than death, and I really thought I should die where I sat! But here I am, and do you know the reason? In that small room where I stayed like that without moving, after the first moment of fearful pain had passed, I was overcome by disgust, by inexpressible repugnance and horror which was absolutely nauseating. Without a doubt if I had distinctly heard the words of this man and woman the need of immediate vengeance would have been too strong for me; but the indistinct, confused murmur, consisting of words I could hear and words I could not hear, combined with the picture of what I guessed was taking place on the other side of the wall, besides the unutterable suffering it caused me, gave me an impression of something very dirty, very ignoble, very disgusting, and very abject. There was one phrase in particular, and such a phrase which 184made me feel that I despised Jacques more than I loved him, and at the same time—how strange the heart is!—I could only grasp the idea that if I entered the room he would think that I came there to spy upon him. That pride in my feelings ended by dominating everything else. I remained motionless in this small room for perhaps an hour. Then they departed and I went into the room they had just left. The bed was in disorder, but the pillows and bedclothes were the same. Ah,” she groaned, uttering a cry which rent my heart, and pressing her fingers into her eyes as if to crush the eyeballs and with them a horrible vision of other infamous details which she would not, could not mention then she cried: “Save me from myself, Vincent. My friend, my only friend, do not leave me; I believe my head will burst and I shall go mad! Oh, that bed! that bed! our bed!”

She got up as she said these words, rushed towards me and buried her head against my shoulder, seizing me with her hands in an agony of supreme grief. Her face contracted and turned up in a spasm of agony, and I had only just time to catch her. She fell unconscious into my arms.

Without doubt this unconsciousness saved her, with the help of the torrent of tears which she shed when she recovered her senses. I saw her reawaken to life and realize her misery. Her confidences and the period of unconsciousness which followed them had moved me so deeply that I could find nothing to say except those commonplace words used to comfort a suffering person; 185and there is such difficulty in making use even of those when one takes into account the legitimate reasons the person has for suffering. Camille did not allow me to exhaust myself for long in these useless consolations.

“I know that you love me,” she said with an attempt at a broken-hearted smile, which even now when I think of it makes me ill, “and I know, too, that you sincerely pity me. But you must let me weep, you know. With these tears it seems to me that my folly departs. I would like only one promise from you, a real man’s promise, your word of honour that you say 'yes’ to the request I am going to make you.”

“You believe in my friendship,” I said to her. “You know that I will obey all your designs, whatever they may be.”

“That is not sufficient,” she said at my evasive reply, behind which, seeing her so excited, I had sheltered a last remnant of prudence. What was she going to ask me? And she insisted: “It is your word of honour I want.”

“You have it,” I told her, overcome by the sad supplication in her dear blue eyes from which the tears still flowed.

“Thank you,” she said as she pressed my hand, and she added: “I want to be sure that you will not say anything to Jacques of what I have told you?”

“I give you my word of honour,” I replied; “but you yourself will not be able to tell him.”

“I?” she replied, shaking her head with grim 186pride. “I shall tell him nothing. I do not wish him to suspect me of spying upon him. I will quarrel with him without giving a reason. I shall have courage against my love now from disgust. I shall only have to recall what I have seen and heard.”

After her departure my heart-broken pity for her changed into increasing uneasiness. Was I to keep my word to the poor girl and not warn Molan? I knew too well the value of lovers’ oaths to believe that, after assisting in concealment at this rendezvous between her lover and her rival, she would keep to her resolution of a silent rupture without vengeance. It is in vain for a woman to try and bear in her heart that sentimental pride, of which she had given proof in a very unlikely fashion by remaining in her hiding-place; she is still a woman, and sooner or later the pressure of her instinct will overcome her reason and dignity. If a fresh attack of grief overwhelmed the outraged mistress, would she not, when a prey to the delirium of jealousy, write the truth to her rival’s husband? The look came to my mind which Bonnivet had given at his table the woman who bore his name and who was now the mistress of Jacques. How was it that this coquette, so obviously gaunt, so profoundly ironical, and so little impulsive, had given herself thus?

Curiosity to learn the details of this culpable adventure did not enter into the temptation which seized me directly Camille had gone to go and see my friend. At least I could warn him against 187danger and a surprise likely to be tragic. I, however, resisted this desire, which was almost a need, of warning him through a point of honour which I have never yet failed to keep. That is the result of being the son of a Puritan. My father’s words always came into my mind at times like this: “A promise is not to be interpreted but to be kept.”

I have this principle in my blood and marrow. I cannot recall circumstances when to keep a promise has cost me such an effort.

To remain faithful to my oath, I forbade myself going to see Jacques. He came to see me on the day following the day I had received his mistress’ confidences which were so hard for me to keep. He had the previous evening been to the theatre to see Camille. He had not been able to talk to her because of her mother’s presence. This presence, which was obviously at the daughter’s desire, had astonished him a little; then he thought he noticed in the latter’s eyes and also in her acting something strange, a sort of unhealthy excitement. As often happens when a person has not a clear conscience, this something had sufficed to make him uneasy. He therefore, had come to the studio with the vague hope of meeting Camille and the certain object of making me talk. His epigrams upon my part as eternal confidant were well justified. It is true that a very simple pretext offered an explanation of his visit.

“I have had an invitation sent you for Madam de Bonnivet’s evening party,” he stated after our greetings; “you will go, won’t you? Shall we 188dine together that evening? Has Camille told you that she is acting there?”

“Yes,” I replied, “and I thought the idea was in somewhat doubtful taste.”

“It was not my idea,” he said with a laugh; “I am a little afraid of complications, and I avoid useless ones as much as possible. There are already too many unavoidable ones. Senneterre and Bonnivet arranged the party, one advising the other. They want to know the truth of my courting Queen Anne. Seeing that Camille is my mistress, they think that if Madam de Bonnivet is really her rival, the two women must detest each other. You follow their reasoning? In that case Madam de Bonnivet would refuse to have Camille there and Camille would refuse to go. I should also decline the invitation to avoid any meeting between the two women. But I accepted and so did Camille. Madam de Bonnivet placed no obstacle in the way. I should like you to have seen the stupor, and then the joy, first of Senneterre and then of Bonnivet. Ah! they are observers, analysts, and psychologists, like Larcher or Dorsenne.” After this irony he added: “I have not seen Camille for some days. How is the portrait progressing?”

“You can judge for yourself,” I hastened to say, only too happy to seize this pretext to avoid his questions, and I turned to show him the tall canvas upon which was drawn the slender silhouette of the Blue Duchess offering her flower—offering her flower to him who hardly looked at her. Has he ever given five minutes’ attention to the artistic 189efforts of a comrade? That day at least he had as an excuse his little inquiry to make, and thus his critical situation between his two mistresses rendered urgent. I was not offended when he continued, without the least gleam of interest lighting up the glance, almost a wandering one, which he fixed upon the picture.

“Is she still jealous of Madam de Bonnivet?” he asked.

“We have hardly mentioned that subject,” I replied with a blush at my impudent untruth.

“Well, so much the better,” he went on without insisting. “She would choose her time very badly. I must tell you that Queen Anne and I have recognized that we have made a misdeal and have given up the game. Yes, we are in a state of armed peace. We have measured our weapons and concluded an armistice. It was written that I should not seduce her and that she should not seduce me. We are good friends now, and I think we shall remain so. I like it better that way, it is more comfortable.”

He looked at me, as he delivered this speech in a hesitating way, with a keen perspicacity before which I did not flinch. If my face expressed astonishment, it was at his assurance in the comedy. He no doubt attributed it to my surprise at his fresh relations with her whom he continued to call Queen Anne, and whom I knew deserved to be brutally called Anne the Courtesan. I realize to-day that in observing this strange discretion about his triumph he did not yield to a simple prudent calculation. Without a doubt he was prudent, 190but he also counted on my thinking him sincere, and putting more energy into destroying my model’s ever-recurring suspicions. There was, too, in this discretion succeeding the cynicism of his former confidences a singular turn in his self-conceit, which is more obvious now at a distance of time.

I have often noticed in the person whom women call in their slang “the man who talks” this anomaly. It is quite apparent. He tells you one by one, embellishing them where necessary, the least important preliminaries of an adventure with a person whose most trifling imprudence ought to be sacred to him. Then when he sees that you are quite convinced that he is going to become that woman’s lover, he defends himself at the last stage with a defence which compromises her as much as a positive avowal. This final silence prevents him from judging himself too severely. The same vanity which made him talkative before makes him silent afterwards. Vanity or remorse, calculation or a last remnant of honour, whatever was the cause of this sudden interruption in Jacques’ confidences, it is certain that on this occasion he did not depart from his correct attitude of discretion. It made my discretion seem the less meritorious. But suddenly events were precipitated with the frightful rapidity of catastrophies in which discussions and half-confidences have no place. I should like to narrate this dénouement, not such as I saw it, but such as it was told to me. God! if I could reproduce for this story the natural and violent eloquence with which 191little Favier used to retrace these tragic scenes, this clumsy narrative would live and become tinted with passion’s warm tinge. Why did I not at once put it on paper in the form of notes, these burning avowals which so long pursued me?