Books: Gerfaut, v2

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Clemence could hardly stifle a sigh as she gazed at those rosy checks,
those sparkling eyes, that life so full of the rich future. She recalled
a time when she was thus, when grief glided over her cheeks without
paling them, when tears dried as they left her eyes; she also had had her
happy, careless days, her dreams of unalloyed bliss.

Aline, after presenting her face like a child who asks for a kiss, wished
to tease her as usual, but, with a tired gesture, her sister-in-law
begged for mercy.

"Are you ill?" asked the young girl anxiously, as she seated herself
upon the edge of the bed.

Madame de Bergenheim smiled, a forced smile.

"Thank me for my poor health," said she, "for it obliges you to do the
honors; I shall doubtless not be able to go down to dinner, and you must
take my place. You know that it tires my aunt to have to trouble herself
about others."

Aline made a little grimace as she replied:

"If I thought you were speaking seriously, I would go and get into my own
bed at once!"

"Child! will you not in your turn be mistress of a home? Is it not
necessary for you to become accustomed to it? It is an excellent
opportunity, and, with my aunt as a guide, you are sure to acquit
yourself well."

These last words were spoken rather maliciously, for the young woman knew
that of all the possible mentors, Mademoiselle de Corandeuil was the one
whom Aline dreaded most.

"I beg of you, my kind sister," replied the girl, clasping her hands, "do
not be ill to-day. Is it the neuralgia of the day before yesterday you
are suffering from? Do be a good sister, and get up and come and take a
walk in the park; the fresh air will cure you, I am sure of it "

"And I shall not be obliged to preside at the dinner-table, you would
add; is it not so? You selfish girl!"

"I am afraid of Monsieur de Gerfaut," said the child, lowering her voice.

When she heard pronounced this name, so deeply agitating her, Madame de
Bergenheim was silent for a moment; at last she said:

"What has Monsieur de Gerfaut done to you? Is it not downright
ungrateful to be afraid of him so soon after the service he has rendered
you?"

"No, I am not ungrateful," replied the young girl quickly. "I never
shall forget that I owe my life to him, for certainly, but for him, I
should have been dragged into the river. But he has such black, piercing
eyes that they seem to look into your very soul; and then, he is such a
brilliant man! I am all the time afraid of saying something that he may
laugh at. You know, some people think I talk too much; but I shall never
dare open my mouth in his presence. Why do some persons' eyes make such
an impression upon one?"

Clemence lowered her own beautiful eyes and made no reply.

"His friend, Monsieur Marillac, does not frighten me one bit, in spite of
his big moustache. Tell me, does not this Monsieur de Gerfaut frighten
you a little too?"

"Not at all, I assure you," replied Madame de Bergenheim, trying to
smile. "But," she continued, in order to change the conversation, "how
fine you look! You have certainly some plan of conquest. What! a city
gown at nine o'clock in the morning, and hair dressed as if for a ball?"

"Would you like to know the compliment your aunt just paid me?"

"Some little jest of hers, I suppose?"

"You might say some spiteful remark, for she is the hatefulest thing!
She told me that blue ribbons suited red hair very badly and advised me
to change one or the other. Is it true that my hair is red?"

Mademoiselle de Bergenheim asked this question with so much anxiety that
her sister-in-law could not repress a smile.

"You know that my aunt delights in annoying you," said she. "Your hair
is very pretty, a bright blond, very pleasant to the eye; only Justine
waves it a little too tight; it curls naturally. She dresses your hair
too high; it would be more becoming to you if she pushed it back from
your temples a little than to wave it as much as she does. Come a little
nearer to me."

Aline knelt before Madame de Bergenheim's bed, and the latter, adding a
practical lesson to verbal advice, began to modify the maid's work to
suit her own taste.

"It curls like a little mane," said the young girl, as she saw the
trouble her sister-in-law had in succeeding; "it was my great trouble at
the Sacred Heart. The sisters wished us to wear our hair plain, and I
always had a terrible time to keep it in place. However, blond hair
looks ugly when too plainly dressed, and Monsieur de Gerfaut said
yesterday that it was the shade he liked best."

"Monsieur de Gerfaut told you he liked blond hair best!"

"Take care; you are pulling my hair! Yes, blond hair and blue eyes. He
said that when speaking of Carlo Dolci's Virgin, and he said she was of
the most beautiful Jewish type; if he intended it as a compliment to me,
I am very much obliged to him. Do you think that my eyes are as blue as
that of the painted Virgin's. Monsieur de Gerfaut pretends that there is
a strong resemblance."

Madame de Bergenheim withdrew her hand so quickly that she pulled out
half a dozen or more hairs from her sister-in-law's head, and buried
herself up to the chin in the bedclothes.

"Oh! Monsieur de Gerfaut knows how to pay very pretty compliments!" she
said. "And you doubtless are very well pleased to resemble Carlo Dolci's
Madonna?"

"She is very pretty!--and then it is the Holy Virgin, you know--Ah!
I hear Monsieur de Gerfaut's voice in the garden."

The young girl arose quickly and ran to the window, where, concealed
behind the curtains, she could see what was going on outside without
being seen herself.

"He is with Christian," she continued. "There, they are going to the
library. They must have just taken a long walk, for they are bespattered
with mud. If you could only see what a pretty little cap Monsieur de
Gerfaut has on!"

"Truly, he will turn her head," thought Madame de Bergenheim, with a
decided feeling of anger; then she closed her eyes as if she wished to
sleep.

Gerfaut had, in fact, just returned from paying his respects to the
estate. He had followed his host, who, under the pretext of showing him
several picturesque sights, promenaded him, in the morning dew, through
the lettuce in the kitchen garden and the underbrush in the park. But he
knew through experience that all was not roses in a lover's path;
watching in the snow, climbing walls, hiding in obscure closets,
imprisonment in wardrobes, were more disagreeable incidents than a quiet
tete-a-tete with a husband.

He listened, therefore, complacently enough to Bergenheim's prolix
explanations, interested himself in the planting of trees, thought the
fields very green, the forests admirable, the granite rocks more
beautiful than those of the Alps, went into ecstasies over the smallest
vista, advised the establishment of a new mill on the river, which, being
navigable for rafts, might convey lumber to all the cities on the
Moselle, and thus greatly increase the value of the owner's woods. They
fraternized like Glaucus and Diomede; Gerfaut hoping, of course, to play
the part of the Greek, who, according to Homer, received in return for a
common iron armor a gold one of inestimable value. There is always such
a secret mental reservation in the lover's mind when associating with the
husband of his inamorata.

When he entered the room of his wife, whose indisposition had been
reported to him, Christian's first words were:

"This Monsieur de Gerfaut appears to be a very excellent fellow, and I
shall be delighted if he will stay with us a while. It is too bad that
you are ill. He is a good musician, as well as Marillac; you might have
sung together. Try to get better quickly and come down to dinner."

"I can not really tell him that Monsieur de Gerfaut has loved me for more
than a year," said Madame de Bergenheim to herself.

A moment later, Mademoiselle de Corandeuil appeared, and with a prim air
seated herself beside the bed.

"Perhaps you think that I am fooled by this indisposition. I see plainly
that you wish to be impolite to Monsieur de Gerfaut, for you can not
endure him. It seems to me, however, that a relative of your family
ought to be treated with more respect by you, above all, when you know
how much I esteem him. This is unheard-of absurdity, and I shall end by
speaking to your husband about it; we shall see if his intervention will
not have more effect than mine."

"You shall not do that, aunt," Clemence interrupted, sitting up in bed
and trying to take her aunt's hand.

"If you wish that your discourteous conduct should rest a secret between
us, I advise you to get rid of your neuralgia this very day. Now, you
had better decide immediately--"

"This is genuine persecution," exclaimed Madame de Bergenheim, falling
back upon her bed when the old lady had departed. "He has bewitched
everybody! Aline, my aunt, and my husband; to say nothing of myself,
for I shall end by going mad. I must end this, at any price." She rang
the bell violently.

"Justine," said she to her maid, "do not let any one enter this room
under any pretext whatsoever, and do not come in yourself until I ring;
I will try to sleep."

Justine obeyed, after closing the blinds. She had hardly gone out when
her mistress arose, put on her dressing-gown and slippers with a vivacity
which betokened anger; she then seated herself at her desk and began to
write rapidly, dashing her pen over the satiny paper without troubling
herself as to blots. The last word was ended with a dash as
energetically drawn as the Napoleonic flourish.

When a young man who, according to custom, begins to read the end of his
letters first finds an arabesque of this style at the bottom of a lady's
letter, he ought to arm himself with patience and resignation before he
reads its contents.

CHAPTER X

PLOTS

That evening, when Gerfaut entered his room he hardly took time to place
the candlestick which he held in his hand upon the mantel before he took
from his waistcoat pocket a paper reduced to microscopic dimensions,
which he carried to his lips and kissed passionately before opening. His
eyes fell first upon the threatening flourish of the final word; this
word was: Adieu!

"Hum!" said the lover, whose exaltation was sensibly cooled at this
sight.

He read the whole letter with one glance of the eye, darting to the
culminating point of each phrase as a deer bounds over ledges of rocks;
he weighed the plain meaning as well as the innuendoes of the slightest
expression, like a rabbi who comments upon the Bible, and deciphered the
erasures with the patience of a seeker after hieroglyphics, so as to
detach from them some particle of the idea they had contained. After
analyzing and criticising this note in all its most imperceptible shades,
he crushed it within his hand and began to pace the floor, uttering from
time to time some of those exclamations which the Dictionnaire de
l'Academie has not yet decided to sanction; for all lovers resemble the
lazzaroni who kiss San-Gennaro's feet when he acts well, but who call him
briconne as soon as they have reason to complain of him. However, women
are very kind, and almost invariably excuse the stones that an angry
lover throws at them in such moments of acute disappointment, and
willingly say with the indulgent smile of the Roman emperor: "I feel no
wound!"

In the midst of this paroxysm of furious anger, two or three knocks
resounded behind the woodwork.

"Are you composing?" asked a voice like that of a ventriloquist; "I am
with you."

A minute later, Marillac appeared upon the threshold, in his slippers and
with a silk handkerchief tied about his head, holding his candlestick in
one hand and a pipe in the other; he stood there motionless.

"You are fine," said he, "you are magnificent, fatal and accursed--You
remind me of Kean in Othello--

"Have you pray'd to-night, Desdemona?"

Gerfaut gazed at him with frowning brows, but made no reply.

"I will wager that it is the last scene in our third act," replied the
artist, placing his candlestick upon the mantel; "it seems that it is to
be very tragic. Now listen! I also feel the poetical afflatus coming
over me, and, if you like, we will set about devouring paper like two
boa-constrictors. Speaking of serpents, have you a rattle? Ah, yes!
Here is the bell-rope. I was about to say that we would have a bowl of
coffee. Or rather, I will go into the kitchen myself; I am very good
friends with Marianne, the cook; besides, the motto of the house of
Bergenheim is liberte, libertas. Coffee is my muse; in this respect, I
resemble Voltaire--"

"Marillac!" exclaimed Gerfaut, as the artist was about to leave the room.
The artist turned, and meekly retraced his steps.

"You will be so good as to do me the favor of returning to your room,"
said Gerfaut. "You may work or you may sleep, just as you like; between
us, you would do well to sleep. I wish to be alone."

"You say that as if you meditated an attempt upon your illustrious
person. Are you thinking of suicide? Let us see whether you have some
concealed weapon, some poisoned ring. Curse upon it! the poison of the
Borgias! Is the white substance in this china bowl, vulgarly called
sugar, by some terrible chance infamous arsenic disguised under the
appearance of an honest colonial commodity?"

"Be kind enough to spare your jokes," said Octave, as his friend poked
about in all the corners of the room with an affectation of anxiety,
"and, as I can not get rid of you, listen to my opinion: if you think
that I brought you here for you to conduct yourself as you have for the
last two days, you are mistaken."

"What have I done?"

"You left me the whole morning with that tiresome Bergenheim on my hands,
and I verily believe he made me count every stick in his park and every
frog in his pond. Tonight, when that old witch of Endor proposed her
infernal game of whist, to which it seems I am to be condemned daily,
you-excused yourself upon the pretext of ignorance, and yet you play as
good a game as I."

"I can not endure whist at twenty sous a point."

"Do I like it any better?"

"Well, you are a nice fellow! You have an object in view which should
make you swallow all these disagreeable trifles as if they were as sweet
as honey. Is it possible you would like me to play Bertrand and Raton?
I should be Raton the oftener of the two!"

"But, really, what did you do all day?"

Marillac posed before the mirror, arranged his kerchief about his head in
a more picturesque fashion, twisted his moustache, puffed out, through
the corner of his mouth, a cloud of smoke, which surrounded his face like
a London fog, then turned to his friend and said, with the air of a
person perfectly satisfied with himself:

"Upon my faith, my dear friend, each one for himself and God for us all!
You, for example, indulge in romantic love-affairs; you must have titled
ladies. Titles turn your head and make you exclusive. You make love to
the aristocracy; so be it, that is your own concern. As for me, I have
another system; I am, in all matters of sentiment, what I am in politics:
I want republican institutions."

"What is all that nonsense about?"

"Let me tell you. I want universal suffrage, the cooperation of all
citizens, admission to all offices, general elections, a popular
government, in a word, a sound, patriotic hash. Which means regarding
women that I carry them all in my heart, that I recognize between them no
distinction of caste or rank. Article First of my set of laws: all women
are equal in love, provided they are young, pretty, admirably attractive
in shape and carriage, above all, not too thin."

"And what of equality?"

"So much the worse. With this eminently liberal and constitutional
policy, I intend to gather all the flowers that will allow themselves to
be gathered by me, without one being esteemed more fresh than another,
because it belongs to the nobility, or another less sweet, because
plebeian. And as field daisies are a little more numerous than imperial
roses, it follows that I very often stoop. That is the reason why, at
this very moment, I am up to my ears in a little rustic love affair:

Simple et naive bergerette, elle regne--"

"Stop that noise; Mademoiselle de Corandeuil's room is just underneath."

"I will tell you then, since I must give an account of myself, that I
went into the park to sketch a few fir-trees before dinner; they are more
beautiful of their kind than the ancient Fontainebleau oaks. That is for
art. At dinner, I dined nobly and well. To do the Bergenheims justice,
they live in a royal manner. That is for the stomach. Afterward I
stealthily ordered a horse to be saddled and rode to La Fauconnerie in a
trice, where I presented the expression of my adoration to Mademoiselle
Reine Gobillot, a minor yet, but enjoying her full rights already. That
is for the heart."

"Indeed!"

"No sarcasm, if you please; not everybody can share your taste for
princesses, who make you go a hundred leagues to follow them and then
upon your arrival, only give you the tip of a glove to kiss. Such
intrigues are not to my fancy.

Je suis sergent,
Brave--"

"Again, I say, will you stop that noise? Don't you know that I have
nobody on my side at present but this respectable dowager on the first
floor below? If she supposes that I am making all this racket over her
head we shall be deadly enemies by to-morrow."

"Zitto, zitto, piano, piano,
Senza strepito e rumore,"

replied Marillac, putting his finger to his lips and lowering his voice.
"What you say is a surprise to me. From the way in which you offered
your arm to Madame de Bergenheim to lead her into the drawing-room after
supper, I thought you understood each other perfectly. As I was
returning, for I made it my duty to offer my arm to the old lady--and you
say that I do nothing for you--it seemed to me that I noticed a meeting
of hands--You know that I have an eagle eye. She slipped a note into
your hand as sure as my name is Marillac."

Gerfaut took the note which he held crumpled up in his hand, and held it
in the flame of one of the candles. The paper ignited, and in less than
a second nothing of it remained but a few dark pieces which fell into
ashes upon the marble mantel.

"You burn it! You are wrong," said the artist; "as for me, I keep
everything, letters and hair. When I am old, I shall have the letters
to read evenings, and shall weave an allegorical picture with the hair.
I shall hang it before my desk, so as to have before me a souvenir of the
adorable creatures who furnished the threads. I will answer for it that
there will be every shade in it from that of Camille Hautier, my first
love, who was an albino, to this that I have here."

As he spoke, he took out of his pocket a small parcel from which he drew
a lock of coal-black hair, which he spread out upon his hand.

"Did you pull this hair from Titania's mane?" asked Gerfaut, as he drew
through his fingers the more glossy than silky lock, which he ridiculed
by this ironical supposition.

"They might be softer, I admit," replied Marillac negligently; and he
examined the lock submitted to this merciless criticism as if it were
simply a piece of goods, of the fineness of whose texture he wished to
assure himself.

"You will admit at least that the color is beautiful, and the quantity
makes up for the quality. Upon my word, this poor Reine has given me
enough to make a pacha's banner. Provincial and primitive simplicity!
I know of one woman in particular who never gave an adorer more than
seven of her hairs; and yet, at the end of three years, this cautious
beauty was obliged to wear a false front. All her hair had disappeared.

"Are you like me, Octave? The first thing I ask for is one of these
locks. Women rather like this sort of childishness, and when they have
granted you that, it is a snare spread for them which catches them."

Marillac took the long, dark tress and held it near the candle; but his
movement was so poorly calculated that the hair caught fire and was
instantly destroyed.

"A bad sign," exclaimed Gerfaut, who could not help laughing at his
friend's dismayed look.

"This is a day of autos-de-fe," said the artist, dropping into a chair;
"but bah! small loss; if Reine asks to see this lock, I will tell her
that I destroyed it with kisses. That always flatters them, and I am
sure it will please this little field-flower. It is a fact that she has
cheeks like rosy apples! On my way back I thought of a vaudeville that I
should like to write about this. Only I should lay the scene in
Switzerland and I should call the young woman Betty or Kettly instead of
Reine, a name ending in 'Y' which would rhyme with Rutly, on account of
local peculiarities. Will you join in it? I have almost finished the
scenario. First scene--Upon the rising of the curtain, harvesters are
discovered--"

"Will you do me the favor of going to bed?" interrupted Gerfaut.

"Chorus of harvesters:

Deja l'aurore
Qui se colore--"

"If you do not leave me alone, I will throw the contents of this water-
pitcher at your head."

"I never have seen you in such a surly temper. It looks indeed as if
your divinity had treated you cruelly."

"She has treated me shamefully!" exclaimed the lover, whose anger was
freshly kindled at this question; "she has treated me as one would treat
a barber's boy. This note, which I just burned, was a most formal,
unpleasant, insolent dismissal. This woman is a monster, do you
understand me?"

"A monster! your angel, a monster!" said Marillac, suppressing with
difficulty a violent outburst of laughter.

"She, an angel? I must say that she is a demon--This woman--"

"Do you not adore her?"

"I hate her, I abhor her, she makes me shudder. You may laugh, if you
like!"

As he said these words, Gerfaut struck a violent blow upon the table with
his fist.

"You forget that Mademoiselle de Corandeuil's room is just beneath us,"
said the artist, in a teasing way.

"Listen to me, Marillac! Your system with women is vulgar, gross, and
trivial. The daisies which you gather, the maidens from whom you cut
handfuls of hair excellent for stuffing mattresses, your rustic beauties
with cheeks like rosy apples are conquests worthy of counter-jumpers in
their Sunday clothes. That is nothing but the very lowest grade of love-
making, and yet you are right, a thousand times right, and wonderfully
wise compared with me."

"You do me too much honor! So, then, you are not loved?"

"Truly, I had an idea I was, or, if I was not loved to-day, I hoped to be
to-morrow. But you are mistaken as to what discourages me. I simply
fear that her heart is narrow. I believe that she loves me as much as
she is able to love; unfortunately, that is not enough for me."

"It certainly seems to me that, so far, she has not shown herself madly
in love with you."

"Ah, madly! Do you know many women who love madly with their hearts and
souls? You talk like a college braggart. There are conquerors like
yourself who, if we are to believe them, would devour a whole convent at
their breakfast. These men excite my pity. As for me, really, I have
always felt that it was most difficult to make one's self really loved.
In these days of prudery, almost all women of rank appear 'frappe a la
glace', like a bottle of champagne. It is necessary to thaw them first,
and there are some of them whose shells are so frigid that they would put
out the devil's furnace. They call this virtue; I call it social
servitude. But what matters the name? the result is the same."

"But, really, are you sure that Madame de Bergenheim loves you?" asked
Marillac, emphasizing the word "love" so strongly as to attract his
friend's attention.

"Sure? of course I am!" replied the latter. "Why do you ask me?"

"Because, when you are not quite so angry, I want to ask you something."
He hesitated a moment. "If you learned that she cares more for another
than for you, what would you do?"

Gerfaut looked at him and smiled disdainfully.

"Listen!" said he, "you have heard me storm and curse, and you took this
nonsense for genuine hatred. My good fellow! do you know why I raved in
such a manner? It was because, knowing my temperament, I felt the
necessity of getting angry and giving vent to what was in my heart.
If I had not employed this infallible remedy, the annoyance which this
note caused me would have disturbed my nerves all night, and when I do
not sleep my complexion is more leaden than usual and I have dark rings
under my eyes."

"Fop!"

"Simpleton!"

"Why simpleton?"

"Do you take me for a dandy? Do you not understand why I wish to sleep
soundly? It is simply because I do not wish to appear before her with a
face like a ghost. That would be all that was needed to encourage her in
her severity. I shall take good care that she does not discover how hard
her last thrust has hit me. I would give you a one-hundred-franc note if
I could secure for to-morrow morning your alderman's face and your
complexion a la Teniers."

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