Books: Cosmopolis, v1
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Paul Bourget >> Cosmopolis, v1
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Yet the native elegance of that face and form gave grace to his
lassitude. Boleslas, in the vigorous and supple maturity of his thirty-
four years, realized one of those types of manly beauty so perfect that
they resist the strongest tests. The excesses of emotion, as those of
libertinism, seem only to invest the man with a new prestige; the fact is
that the novelist's room, with its collection of books, photographs,
engravings, paintings and moldings, invested that form, tortured by the
bitter sufferings of passion, with a poesy to which Dorsenne could not
remain altogether insensible. The atmosphere, impregnated with Russian
tobacco and the bluish vapor which filled the room, revealed in what
manner the betrayed lover had diverted his impatience, and in the centre
of the writing-table a cup with a bacchanal painted in red on a black
ground, of which Julien was very proud, contained the remains of about
thirty cigarettes, thrown aside almost as soon as lighted. Their paper
ends had been gnawed with a nervousness which betrayed the young man's
condition, while he repeated, in a tone so sad that it almost called
forth a shudder:
"Yes, I should have gone mad."
"Calm yourself, my dear Boleslas, I implore you," replied Dorsenne. What
had become of his ill-humor? How could he preserve it in the presence of
a person so evidently beside himself? Julien continued, speaking to his
companion as one speaks to a sick child: "Come, be seated. Be a little
more tranquil, since I am here, and you have reason to count on my
friendship. Speak to me. Explain to me what has happened. If there is
any advice to give you, I am ready. I am prepared to render you a
service. My God! In what a state you are!"
"Is it not so?" said the other, with a sort of ironical pride. It was
sufficient that he had a witness of his grief for him to display it with
secret vanity. "Is it not so?" he continued. "Could you only know how
I have suffered. This is nothing," said he, alluding to his haggard
appearance. "It is here that you should read," he struck his breast,
then passing his hands over his brow and his eyes, as if to exorcise a
nightmare. "You are right. I must be calm, or I am lost."
After a prolonged silence, during which he seemed to have gathered
together his thoughts and to collect his will, for his voice had become
decided and sharp, he began: "You know that I am here unknown to any
one, even to my wife."
"I know it," replied Dorsenne. "I have just left the Countess. This
morning I visited the Palais Castagna with her, Hafner, Madame Maitland,
Florent Chapron." He paused and added, thinking it better not to lie on
minor points, "Madame Steno and Alba were there, too."
"Any one else?" asked Boleslas, with so keen a glance that the author
had to employ all his strength to reply:
"No one else."
There was a silence between the two men.
Dorsenne anticipated from his question toward what subject the
conversation was drifting. Gorka, now lying rather than sitting upon the
divan in the small room, appeared like a beast that, at any moment, might
bound. Evidently he had come to Julien's a prey to the mad desire to
find out something, which is to jealousy what thirst is to certain
punishments. When one has tasted the bitter draught of certainty, one
does not suffer less. Yet one walks toward it, barefooted, on the heated
pavement, heedless of the heat. The motives which led Boleslas to choose
the French novelist as the one from whom to obtain his information,
demonstrated that the feline character of his physiognomy was not
deceptive. He understood Dorsenne much better than Dorsenne understood
him. He knew him to be nervous, on the one hand, and perspicacious on
the other. If there was an intrigue between Maitland and Madame Steno,
Julien had surely observed it, and, approached in a certain manner,
he would surely betray it. Moreover--for that violent and crafty nature
abounded in perplexities--Boleslas, who passionately admired the author's
talent, experienced a sort of indefinable attraction in exhibiting
himself before him in the role of a frantic lover. He was one of the
persons who would have his photograph taken on his deathbed, so much
importance did he attach to his person. He would, no doubt, have been
insulted, if the author of 'Une Eglogue Mondaine' had portrayed in a book
himself and his love for Countess Steno, and yet he had only approached
the author, had only chosen him as a confidant with the vague hope of
impressing him. He had even thought of suggesting to him some creation
resembling himself. Yes, Gorka was very complex, for he was not
contented with deceiving his wife, he allowed the confiding creature to
form a friendship with the daughter of her husband's mistress. Still,
he deceived her with remorse, and had never ceased bearing her an
affection as sorrowful as it was respectful. But it required Dorsenne to
admit the like anomalies, and the rare sensation of being observed in his
passionate frenzy attracted the young man to some one who was at once a
sure confidant, a possible portrayer, a moral accomplice. It was
necessary now, but it would not be an easy matter, to make of him his
involuntary detective.
"You see," resumed he suddenly, "to what miserable, detailed inquiries
I have descended, I who always had a horror of espionage, as of some
terrible degradation. I shall question you frankly, for you are my
friend. And what a friend! I intended to use artifice with you at
first, but I was ashamed. Passion takes possession of me and distorts
me. No matter what infamy presents itself, I rush into it, and then I am
afraid. Yes, I am afraid of myself! But I have suffered so much! You
do not understand? Well! Listen," continued he, covering Dorsenne with
one of those glances so scrutinizing that not a gesture, not a quiver of
his eyelids, escaped him, "and tell me if you have ever imagined for one
of your romances a situation similar to mine. You remember the mortal
fear in which I lived last winter, with the presence of my brother-in-
law, and the danger of his denouncing me to my poor Maud, from stupidity,
from a British sense of virtue, from hatred. You remember, also, what
that voyage to Poland cost me, after those long months of anxiety? The
press of affairs and the illness of my aunt coming just at the moment
when I was freed from Ardrahan, inspired me with miserable forebodings.
I have always believed in presentiments. I had one. I was not mistaken.
From the first letter I received--from whom you can guess--I saw that
there was taking place in Rome something which threatened me in what I
held dearest on earth, in that love for which I sacrificed all, toward
which I walked by trampling on the noblest of hearts. Was Catherine
ceasing to love me? When one has spent two years of one's life in a
passion--and what years!--one clings to it with every fibre! I will
spare you the recital of those first weeks spent in going here and there,
in paying visits to relatives, in consulting lawyers, in caring for my
sick aunt, in fulfilling my duty toward my son, since the greater part of
the fortune will go to him. And always with this firm conviction: She no
longer writes to me as formerly, she no longer loves me. Ah! if I could
show you the letter she wrote when I was absent once before. You have a
great deal of talent, Julien, but you have never composed anything more
beautiful."
He paused, as if the part of the confession he was approaching cost him a
great effort, while Dorsenne interpolated:
"A change of tone in correspondence is not, however, sufficient to
explain the fever in which I see you."
"No," resumed Gorka, "but it was not merely a change of tone. I
complained. For the first time my complaint found no echo. I threatened
to cease writing. No reply. I wrote to ask forgiveness. I received a
letter so cold that in my turn I wrote an angry one. Another silence!
Ah! You can imagine the terrible effect produced upon me by an unsigned
letter which I received fifteen days since. It arrived one morning. It
bore the Roman postmark. I did not recognize the handwriting. I opened
it. I saw two sheets of paper on which were pasted cuttings from a
French journal. I repeat it was unsigned; it was an anonymous letter."
"And you read it?" interrupted Dorsenne. "What folly!"
"I read it," replied the Count. "It began with words of startling truth
relative to my own situation. That our affairs are known to others we
may be sure, since we know theirs. We should, consequently, remember
that we are at the mercy of their indiscretion, as they are at ours.
The beginning of the note served as a guarantee of the truth of the end,
which was a detailed, minute recital of an intrigue which Madame Steno
had been carrying on during my absence, and with whom? With the man whom
I always mistrusted, that dauber who wanted to paint Alba's portrait--but
whose desires I nipped in the bud--with the fellow who degraded himself
by a shameful marriage for money, and who calls himself an artist--with
that American--with Lincoln Maitland!"
Although the childish and unjust hatred of the jealous--the hatred which
degrades us in lowering the one we love-had poisoned his discourse with
its bitterness, he did not cease watching Dorsenne. He partly raised
himself on the couch and thrust his head forward as he uttered the name
of his rival, glancing keenly at the novelist meanwhile. The latter
fortunately had been rendered indignant at the news of the anonymous
letter, and he repeated, with an astonishment which in no way aided his
interlocutor:
"Wait," resumed Boleslas; "that was merely a beginning. The next day I
received another letter, written and sent under the same conditions; the
day after, a third. I have twelve of them--do you hear? twelve--in my
portfolio, and all composed with the same atrocious knowledge of the
circle in which we move, as was the first. At the same time I was
receiving letters from my poor wife, and all coincided, in the terrible
series, in a frightful concordance. The anonymous letter told me: 'To-
day they were together two hours and a quarter,' while Maud wrote: 'I
could not go out to-day, as agreed upon, with Madame Steno, for she had a
headache.' Then the portrait of Alba, of which they told me incidentally.
The anonymous letters detailed to me the events, the prolongation of
sitting, while my wife wrote: 'We again went to see Alba's portrait
yesterday. The painter erased what he had done.' Finally it became
impossible for me to endure it. With their abominable minuteness of
detail, the anonymous letters gave me even the address of their
rendezvous! I set out. I said to myself, 'If I announce my arrival to
my wife they will find it out, they will escape me.' I intended to
surprise them. I wanted--Do I know what I wanted? I wanted to suffer no
longer the agony of uncertainty. I took the train. I stopped neither
day nor night. I left my valet yesterday in Florence, and this morning
I was in Rome.
"My plan was made on the way. I would hire apartments near theirs,
in the same street, perhaps in the same house. I would watch them, one,
two days, a week. And then--would you believe it? It was in the cab
which was bearing me directly toward that street that I saw suddenly,
clearly within me, and that I was startled. I had my hand upon this
revolver." He drew the weapon from his pocket and laid it upon the
divan, as if he wished to repulse any new temptation. "I saw myself as
plainly as I see you, killing those two beings like two animals, should
I surprise them. At the same time I saw my son and my wife. Between
murder and me there was, perhaps, just the distance which separated me
from the street, and I felt that it was necessary to fly at once--to fly
that street, to fly from the guilty ones, if they were really guilty; to
fly from myself! I thought of you, and I have come to say to you, 'My
friend, this is how things are; I am drowning, I am lost; save me.'"
"You have yourself found the salvation," replied Dorsenne. "It is in
your son and your wife. See them first, and if I can not promise you
that you will not suffer any more, you will no longer be tempted by that
horrible idea." And he pointed to the pistol, which gleamed in the
sunlight that entered through the casement. Then he added: "And you will
have the idea still less when you will have been able to prove 'de visu'
what those anonymous letters were worth. Twelve letters in fifteen days,
and cuttings from how many papers? And they claim that we invent
heinousness in our books! If you like, we will search together for the
person who can have elaborated that little piece of villany. It must be
a Judas, a Rodin, an Iago--or Iaga. But this is not the moment to waste
in hypotheses.
"Are you sure of your valet? You must send him a despatch, and in that
despatch the copy of another addressed to Madame Gorka, which your man
will send this very evening. You will announce your arrival for
tomorrow, making allusion to a letter written, so to speak, from Poland,
and which was lost. This evening from here you will take the train for
Florence, from which place you will set out again this very night. You
will be in Rome again to-morrow morning. You will have avoided, not only
the misfortune of having become a murderer, though you would not have
surprised any one, I am sure, but the much more grave misfortune of
awakening Madame Gorka's suspicions. Is it a promise?"
Dorsenne rose to prepare a pen and paper: "Come, write the despatch
immediately, and render thanks to your good genius which led you to a
friend whose business consists in imagining the means of solving
insoluble situations."
"You are quite right," Boleslas replied, after taking in his hand the pen
which he offered to the other, "it is fortunate." Then, casting aside
the pen as he had the revolver, "I can not. No, I can not, as long as I
have this doubt within me. Ah, it is too horrible! I can see them
plainly. You speak to me of my wife; but you forget that she loves me,
and at the first glance she would read me, as you did. You can not
imagine what an effort it has cost me for two years never to arouse
suspicion. I was happy, and it is easy to deceive when one has nothing
to hide but happiness. To-day we should not be together five minutes
before she would seek, and she would find. No, no; I can not. I need
something more."
"Unfortunately," replied Julien, "I cannot give it to you. There is no
opium to lull asleep doubts such as those horrible anonymous letters have
awakened. What I know is this, that if you do not follow my advice
Madame Gorka will not have a suspicion, but certainty. It is now perhaps
too late. Do you wish me to tell you what I concealed from you on seeing
you so troubled? You did not lose much time in coming from the station
hither, and probably you did not look out of your cab twice. But you
were seen. By whom? By Montfanon. He told me so this morning almost
on the threshold of the Palais Castagna. If I had not gathered from some
words uttered by your wife that she was ignorant of your presence in
Rome, I--do you hear?--I should have told her of it. Judge now of your
situation!"
He spoke with an agitation which was not assumed, so much was he troubled
by the evidence of danger which Gorka's obstinacy presented. The latter,
who had begun to collect himself, had a strange light in his eyes.
Without doubt his companion's nervousness marked the moment he was
awaiting to strike a decisive blow. He rose with so sudden a start that
Dorsenne drew back. He seized both of his hands, but with such force
that not a quiver of the muscles escaped him:
"Yes, Julien, you have the means of consoling me, you have it," said he
in a voice again hoarse with emotion.
"What is it?" asked the novelist.
"What is it? You are an honest man, Dorsenne; you are a great artist;
you are my friend, and a friend allied to me by a sacred bond, almost a
brother-in-arms; you, the grandnephew of a hero who shed his blood by the
side of my grandfather at Somo-Sierra. Give me your word of honor that
you are absolutely certain Madame Steno is not Maitland's mistress, that
you never thought it, have never heard it said, and I will believe you,
I will obey you! Come," continued he, pressing the writer's hand with
more fervor, "I see you hesitate!"
"No," said Julien, disengaging himself from the wild grasp, "I do not
hesitate. I am sorry for you. Were I to give you that word, would it
have any weight with you for five minutes? Would you not be persuaded
immediately that I was perjuring myself to avoid a misfortune?"
"You hesitate," interrupted Boleslas. Then, with a burst of wild
laughter, he said, "It is then true! I like that better! It is
frightful to know it, but one suffers less-- To know it' As if I did not
know she had lovers before me, as if it were not written on Alba's every
feature that she is Werekiew's child, as if I had not heard it said
seventy times before knowing her that she had loved Branciforte, San
Giobbe, Strabane, ten others. Before, during, or after, what difference
does it make? Ah, I was sure on knocking at your door--at this door of
honor--I should hear the truth, that I would touch it as I touch this
object," and he laid his hand upon a marble bust on the table.
"You see I hear it like a man. You can speak to me now. Who knows?
Disgust is a great cure for passion. I will listen to you. Do not spare
me!"
"You are mistaken, Gorka," replied Dorsenne. "What I have to say to you,
I can say very simply. I was, and I am, convinced that in a quarter of
an hour, in an hour, tomorrow, the day after, you will consider me a liar
or an imbecile. But, since you misinterpreted my silence, it is my duty
to speak, and I do so. I give you my word of honor I have never had the
least suspicion of a connection between Madame Steno and Maitland,
nor have their relations seemed changed to me for a second since your
absence. I give you my word of honor that no one, do you hear, no one
has spoken of it to me. And, now, act as you please, think as you
please. I have said all I can say."
The novelist uttered those words with a feverish energy which was caused
by the terrible strain he was making upon his conscience. But Gorka's
laugh had terrified him so much the more as at the same instant the
jealous lover's disengaged hand was voluntarily or involuntarily extended
toward the weapon which gleamed upon the couch. The vision of an
immediate catastrophe, this time inevitable, rose before Julien. His
lips had spoken, as his arm would have been out stretched, by an
irresistible instinct, to save several lives, and he had made the false
statement, the first and no doubt the last in his life, without
reflecting. He had no sooner uttered it than he experienced such an
excess of anger that he would at that moment almost have preferred not to
be believed. It would indeed have been a comfort to him if his visitor
had replied by one of those insulting negations which permit one man to
strike another, so great was his irritation. On the contrary, he saw the
face of Madame Steno's lover turned toward him with an expression of
gratitude upon it. Boleslas's lips quivered, his hands were clasped, two
large tears gushed from his burning eyes and rolled down his cheeks.
When he was able to speak, he moaned:
"Ah, my friend, how much good you have done me! From what a nightmare
you have relieved me. Ah! Now I am saved! I believe you, I believe
you. You are intimate with them. You see them every day. If there had
been anything between them you would know it. You would have heard it
talked of. Ah! Thanks! Give me your hand that I may press it. Forget
all I said to you just now, the slander I uttered in a moment of
delirium. I know very well it was untrue. And now, let me embrace you
as I would if you had really saved me from drowning. Ah, my friend, my
only friend!"
And he rushed up to clasp to his bosom the novelist, who replied with the
words uttered at the beginning of this conversation: "Calm yourself, I
beseech you, calm yourself!" and repeating to himself, brave and loyal
man that he was: "I could not act differently, but it is hard!"
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Follow their thoughts instead of heeding objects
Has as much sense as the handle of a basket
Mediocre sensibility
No flies enter a closed mouth
Pitiful checker-board of life
Scarcely a shade of gentle condescension
That you can aid them in leading better lives?
The forests have taught man liberty
There is an intelligent man, who never questions his ideas
Thinking it better not to lie on minor points
Too prudent to risk or gain much
Walked at the rapid pace characteristic of monomaniacs
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