rnia il Hi PF CALIF. LIBRARY, LOS DOMESTIC DEAMAS (DRAMES DE FAMILLE) DOMESTIC DEAMAS (DRAMES DE FAMILLE) BY PAUL BOURGET TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM MARCHANT NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1900 COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS Norfoooto 13rtB3 J. 8. Gushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith Norwood MM*. U.S.A. 2T0 JHg JJttenti GEORGES SAINT-RENE-TAILLANDIER 2125866 CONTENTS nun I. THE DAY OF RECKONING 1 II. OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 83 I. A Parisian Family : the Husband . . 85 II. A Parisian Family : the Wife . . .100 III. A Parisian Family : the Daughter . . 119 IV. The Cost of the Show 138 V. Mme. Le Prieux's " Day " . . . .167 VI. Charles Huguenin 191 VII. Revelations 212 VIII. Hector Le Prieux's Plan . . . .252 IX. Epilogue 274 III. CHILDREN'S HEARTS 281 I. The Talisman 283 II. Precocious Feelings ..... 326 III. Resurrection . 348 I THE DAY OF RECKONING DOMESTIC DRAMAS I THE DAY OF RECKONING WHEN a history of ideas in France in the nineteenth century is written, one of the periods most difficult fitly to characterize will be that of the generation immedi- ately succeeding the war of 1870. Never, indeed, did more contradictory influences act simultaneously in the guidance of human minds. The young men who entered upon life at that date met in those next older than them- selves the whole sum of philosophic conceptions elabo- rated under the Second Empire. M. Taine and M. Renan were the two most illustrious representatives of these doctrines. This is not the place to mention them in detail. We need only remember that an absolute faith in Science was, so to speak, their basis, and that the dogma of necessity pervaded the work of these masters from beginning to end, in formulas more sharply distinct with Taine, more subtly disguised with Eenan. Whether 3 4 THE DAY OF BECKONING or not they desired it, their teaching resulted in complete fatalism. The historian of English Literature taught us to regard all civilization as the product of race, of the environment, and of the period; and the author of the Life of Jesus showed us the evolution of religious thought throughout the centuries as ruled by natural laws no less fixed than those which govern the development of an animal or vegetable species. These hypotheses may be reconciled, in mature minds, with energetic action and a recognition of the moral law. But for the young there resulted from them only pessimism and agnosticism, and this precisely at an hour when the disasters of war and of the Commune had smitten the country so severely and forced upon every man's conscience the evidence of his duty to the community, his obligation to direct and use- ful effort. The contrast was too sharp between the theo- ries of our most loved and admired masters, and the necessity of action which the country's disaster laid, despite ourselves, upon our hearts ; and one, at least, of the two great writers I have just mentioned, felt this himself. Had not M. Taine dreaded the paralyzing influ- ence of his work, would he have devoted his mature age to those exhaustive studies in contemporary history which make his magnificent last work the political brev- iary of all good Frenchmen? It took him a quarter- century of persistent labour to effect a reconciliation between Faith and Science, between civic morals and psychology, between the fabric of his philosophy and THE DAY OF BECKONING 5 national realities. Such a problem was not within our scope at twenty years of age. We saw, on the one hand, France stricken down. We felt the responsibility which lay upon us as to her future recovery or ruin. Eecognizing the crisis, we desired to act. On the other hand, a doctrine of despair, impregnated with the most nihilistic determinism, discouraged us in advance. The divorce was absolute between one's intellect and one's emotional nature. Most of us, if we will look back, will perceive that the task of our youth was to reconcile a contradiction from which there are those who suffer even now, although life has brought to us all its inevitable discipline which consists in making us accept these inconsistencies as the natural condition of modern souls, made up of elements too incongruous ever to be entirely simplified. A strange youth it was that found its keenest pleas- ures in the discussion of abstract ideas ! In relating an episode of this period it has seemed to me needful to give its moral tonality by this reference to the conditions of intellectual anxiety under which we lived in our youth. The domestic drama which I am about to relate would be, by itself, merely an incident a little less commonplace, perhaps, than most incidents. But my friend who was its hero and its victim had, in a very high degree, this character common to our generation: with him, the problems of daily life transformed themselves at once into problems of thought, and this incident became 6 THE DAY OF RECKONING for him a crisis of truly tragic responsibility. Did lie take a very lucid view of the situation in which he found himself involved ? Or did he give to events, in themselves peculiarly sad, an altogether arbitrary sig- nificance, and decide in the direction of excessive scru- pulousness a question certainly very painful ? I myself a troubled looker-on have passed through two very different states of opinion in regard to my friend and the decision which he made. At the time when these events of which I speak took place, I had adopted it as an indisputable axiom that there is in nature no trace what- ever of a personal will. Hence, I had no faith in that secret logic of chance which religious people call Provi- dence, and the positivist defines, not less obscurely, as immanent justice. The tragedy which, to my friend's view, revealed an avenging power, always ready to reach the criminal through the unexpected results of his crime, to me was one of the innumerable freaks of chance. Experience has now shown me how true was Napoleon's saying, at Saint Helena, " Tout se paie " ; it has shown me by what circuitous paths punishment follows and overtakes the wrong-doing, and that chance is usually only an unlooked-for form of the expiation. I incline, therefore, to believe with Eugene Corbieres this was my schoolmate's name that the drama to which these over-long reflections are a prologue, was really one of those payments of debt in which the Emperor believed. This one was obscure and humble. Sometimes they are THE DAY OP RECKONING 7 conspicuous and resound afar. It is possible that the spirit of justice which governs human things appears more formidable in its more obscure acts. I have said that Corbieres was my schoolmate. We had known each other at the lycee Louis-le-Grand, when we were both day-scholars ; but our acquaintance was nothing more than a reason for tutoiement. We had heard the same lecturers, learned the same lessons, put the same material into Latin verse, for a number of years, without having spoken to each other, except to say " good morning," and " good night." We made the discovery of each other, as schoolmates often do, after we were out of school, and after having entered upon paths which were widely dissimilar. But we both brought to our respective pursuits in themselves so different that one might say they were diametrically opposite that same anxiety as to the problems of our time, that same need of harmonizing intellectual determinism with civic action which seems to me the peculiar characteristic of our generation. It was in the spring of 1873 that this renewal of acquaintance took place, as the result of a meeting that can hardly be attributed to anything but chance. Its least details are present to my mind with extreme precision. I was coming out of a cafe', now destroyed, which once occupied the corner of the rue de Vaugirard, opposite the Luxembourg and the Ode'on. Little groups of young writers, now dispersed, were accus- tomed to meet there, who had the ingenuous whim of 8 THE DAY OF RECKONING calling themselves the " Living Ones." I felt myself a man of letters, in that I spent several hours daily in the merry and paradoxical society of these amiable compan- ions, who left the deepest part of my intellect unsatis- fied. They were, all of them, literary artists exclusively, some of them already distinguished, while I, even then, cared more for analysis than for style and for psychology than for aesthetics. When I left them, I was always dissatisfied with myself first, because I had been talking instead of working, and further, because the feeling of their personality, too opposite to mine, made me doubt my own. I can see myself, that afternoon, about three o'clock, entering the garden of the Luxembourg, and walking along the avenue, a prey to that melancholy of men- tal solitude so intense with the young. I can see Corbieres coming from the opposite direction, and accosting me with one of those cordial smiles which, in the case of old schoolmates, are addressed less to the individual than to that common past for which one has already begun to feel some faint regret. Thereupon we begin making inquiries of each other, as we walk a few steps together. I tell Corbieres that I have taken up literature. He tells me that he has taken up medicine, and in the course of this conversation, which might easily have been altogether superficial in its character, he explains to me this choice of a career by motives so peculiar and so much THE DAY OF BECKONING 9 like my own habitual turn of mind, that, on the moment, I was his friend. At the age where we then were, certain resemblances in ways of thinking are equiva- lent to years of intimacy. " My father and mother," he said, " desired to have me study law after my military service. My father was, for thirty years, usher at the Ministry of the Interior. He resigned a year ago. He adores the administration. He saw me, in advance, sub-prefect. I should be of his own type. Fortunately, he is very good to me, and so is my mother. If I will always stay with them, they are satisfied. When I announced my wish to study medicine, they were rather surprised, of course, but they gave their consent. I alleged as a pretext that with the present instability in political affairs, civil office no longer offered the same guarantees as during the Empire. My true reason I did not give. The dear old people have no other philosophy than that of the heart. They would not have understood my point of view ; but you will understand. What decided me to follow this path you may think it singular was the need of certainty. My personal taste would have led me to more abstract studies. I should have entered the licole Normale, and pursued the study of metaphysics, but I had read Kant and Taine's V Intelligence, and it appeared to me that the subject, in the philosophic sciences, is far too much beset with doubts. My mind is, I may say, hungry 10 THE DAY OF RECKONING and thirsty for something certain, unquestionable. The natural sciences give this. Then I reflected. I do not know how you stand as to moral convictions ; I myself am absolutely an agnostic. It is my opinion that we cannot know whether there is a God to take the simplest formula or not; whether there is Good or Evil, or not; merit or demerit, or not; a future life, or not. And still we must act. I, at least, feel obliged to act, especially since the war. I feel as I should in a storm, upon a vessel that was in danger. It is a shame not to be of use, if you can be. I recalled Pascal's argument, you remember, of the wager. I said to myself, which is there among the natural sciences that is capable of a practical application of such a kind that under any hypothesis it will be worth while ? It seemed to me that medicine, regarded nobly, answered to this pro- gramme. Look at it from either point of view. Sup- pose demonstrated all theories of a soul go further, say all Christian theories. What is duty? To relieve suffering. The physician does this. Suppose all the opposing theories demonstrated. To what, then, is morality reduced ? To an altruistic instinct which must be recognized and gratified, like all the other instincts, and consists in a need of associating our- selves with our kind, aiding them and being aided by them in the presence of hostile nature. Who performs this task better than the physician? He is, par THE DAY OF RECKONING 11 excellence, the altruist. He is right, whatever be the metaphysical postulate that we adopt. And the proof is, that since I was first matriculated and crossed the threshold of the hospital, I have enjoyed a kind of tranquillity before unknown. I have had the evi- dence that, mentally and morally, my feet were on solid ground, that I could walk safely. Since then, I have never doubted it." It was iery striking to look at Corbieres while he thus spoke. The flame of thought transfigured his irreg- ular and rather ugly features. This son of a petty employee of government betrayed, in his very build, that half-peasant, half-townsman heredity which has neither the integrity of rustic strength nor the refine- ment of the true city-bred race. He had big bones and small muscles, coarse features and impoverished blood. The beauty of the eyes and the mouth cor- rected the paltriness of the face. It was a mouth of charming goodness, which sMiled with free ingenuous- ness, and they were blue eyes of such loyalty that it seemed impossible that the man who looked at you like that could ever lie. Withal, a taking voice, in which vibrated the ardour of inmost conviction. Does it need more, to explain the profound impression produced upon me by what he said, which I give textually as he said it? I wrote it down that very evening in my journal of that time, with many other details needless to relate, in which I find indices of the lightning stroke of enthu- 12 THE DAY OF RECKONING siasm that struck me there, under the leafy trees of the old garden. I imagine I hope that to-day, as then, those peaceful avenues, along which stand statues of queens and busts of poets, serve as the theatre for conversations between young men, of the same high bent with this one, whose remote memory I recall. Hours like these I am glad to remember, from an ill- governed youth; these, and, with them, the naive plas- ticity of soul capable of noble infatuations, like that which made me, the very same afternoon, abandon other plans to accompany Eugene to his home. No sooner were we there, than he proposed, in turn, to go home with me. It was after dark when we separated, after having, in this interminable conversation, touched on all subjects of human thought, and agreed to meet in the morning. I was to accompany my comrade to the Pitie, where he attended the clinic. " I believe," I said to him, grasping his hand, " that I shall do as you have done, and study medicine." I did not study medicine, and this sudden resolution to imitate Corbieres was reduced to a few visits to the hospital, which had at least the good effect of bringing me into the presence of realities a contact of which I had most need. My , error, which was that of so many young men led astray by a precocious ambition to write, consisted in making literature an end, while it is in truth only a result. I was trying to compose romances, and I had observed nothing; poetry, and I THE DAY OF RECKONING 13 had experienced nothing. The great service to be ren- dered me was to draw me out of the altogether arti- ficial, bookish surroundings in which I was becoming more and more enfeebled, and show me human nature, simple and needy, life, humble and narrow, but true. This service Eugene did me unconsciously, and in two ways : first, by these salutary visits to the Pitie, and then by giving me access to the home life of his family, that original and mysterious home life, in which, for a long time, I saw only the picturesque. The mystery was visible to me later. The elder Corbieres, with their son, lived in the third story of a very old house in a very old street near the Pantheon. This street, formerly rue du Puits-qui-parle has nothing modern about it except its more recent name of rue Amyot. Not a house in it appears to have changed inmates since that remote period when the Scottish and Irish colleges, of which the frontal inscriptions remain to this day, flourished there side by side. In my occasional pil- grimages thither, I still find the place exactly as it was twenty-five years ago. The uneven paving-stones, over which carriages rarely risk themselves, are still rimmed with verdure, as in some little country town. Branches of trees still stretch out over garden walls ; concierges still hold upon the sidewalk long sessions of open-air work and gossip with tenants of the ground-floor ; and children play ball and diable without having to fear the 14 THE DAY OF BECKONING abrupt passage of vehicles. The irregular houses, of dif- ferent dates and styles, show that the quarter grew like a creation of nature, slowly, usefully, as it was needed, and not by one of those municipal edicts which impress upon new Paris a stamp of universal monotony. No frame was more appropriate to the set, rigid faces of my friend's parents. The retired employee, who came himself to open the door when a visitor rang the bell, was a man of fifty-eight, very straight and very thin, with an inexplicable face which had nothing expressive in it except the eyes, blue like his son's, but with a singular brilliancy, in which I discern, at this distance, the hidden fever of a constant remorse. At that time I was disposed to see in it only the ardour of a paternal idolatry of which I have never seen a second example. This worthy old fellow, whose life had been spent in an anteroom in the place Beauvau, in a chimney- corner heated at the expense of the tax-payers in making petitioners endure delays, seemed to have found in his son all the compensations of his wearisome exist- ence. To judge by the humble apartment, the simple furniture, the dress of both father and mother, the resources of the household must have been extremely slender. And yet never had a book been refused to Eugene for his studies, and never had the father been willing that the student of medicine should be distracted from his studies for an hour to give a lesson, to write for some little newspaper, in a word, to earn money THE DAY OF BECKONING 15 in any way. The intensity of his affection made him comprehend that for a future savant the years of youth have triple value, and that the entire command of one's time during that period is the most precious of ad- vantages. " 1 say to Eugene," he would often repeat, " ' Don't think of us. Our happiness is to be with you.' I should not be a Picard si je n'appendais pas avec mon fieu." He had retained from his native place, which was Peronne, some patois phrases that he loved to use, with a pretence of being a peasant. "He must become a famous man," he would add; "and he will. I have always thought so, ever since he was in school, monsieur. See his prizes ! There are eighty-seven volumes." And with a hand callous from his humble labours, the father pointed out to me the rows of books in a mahogany bookcase with glass doors securely locked. All the story of his devotion to his son clung about those miserable prize volumes, which the old man would sometimes call simplicity ! his " patents of nobil- ity." You can trace the steps of the boy's progress : the child goes to the clerical school of the neighbour- hood; he is intelligent, he learns rapidly. "It would be a pity that he should not go on," says the Superior. The parents consult together. "Bah! we can do with less tobacco and sugar. We can dispense with the char- woman." The boy is sent to the lyce*e near by. He 16 THE DAY OF RECKONING does well. It had been intended to take him away after the fourth year and the examination in grammar. Then comes his success at the concours. He must go on, as far as the baccalaureate. The rest follows. Habits of the severest economy were manifest by many signs in the household. Of course it was the father who under- took the heavier work polishing the floors, rubbing the furniture, chopping wood, emptying water, even mak- ing the beds. He had evidently given up his place at the office that his son might be better served. His red face had a skin honeycombed, as it were, with wide wrinkles, of which each one bore witness to the endur- ance, the persistency, of a rude and substantial race. An extreme neatness also a trait of his native coun- try, on the confines of Flanders prevailed in the six rooms that composed the apartment, namely : a kitchen, an entry, the bedroom of the parents, a dining room, a parlour, which quickly became Eugene's study, and the son's bedroom. Thus the student had the occu- pancy of more than a third of the humble suite, and, as a matter of course, the portion that was the largest and most airy, with windows looking out into gardens, and also the only part that was almost luxuriously furnished. My comrade accepted all that was done for him partly, it must be owned, with the egoism natural to those who are working hard, but chiefly, with the idea that his future was preparing an ample compensation for his par- ents' present sacrifices. How often have I heard him say, THE DAY OF BECKONING 17 when I tried to drag him off on some excursion or to some place of amusement : " I cannot. I must think of my old people." I knew well enough that his " old people," as he called them, with loving familiarity, would never have said a word of blame to him, in whatever way he might have spent his afternoon or evening. No. What he meant by that was the expression of his own passionate desire to merit their admirable devotion. And he was all the more industrious, because he suspected in them a strange apti- tude for suffering. It was very true, this most excellent couple did not seem to live in that atmosphere of cheer- fulness of which their devotion, prolonged through so many years, rendered them worthy. On the reddened forehead of the father, where projecting veins marked in the temples the strong current of the blood, there seemed to weigh a constant anxiety. Did he fear that he might die before his work was finished, before he had seen his son a graduate, a professor in the Faculty of Medicine, a member of the Academy ? Had he spent all his savings in this long and costly education, and was his little pen- sion from government, which would cease with his life, the main portion of his present means ? Was he merely a man of melancholy disposition, saddened by his wife's feeble health? These were questions that the son no doubt asked himself, as I asked myself, whenever I noticed, during my visits, traces upon the father's face of this mys- terious gloom. In the case of Madame Corbieres, the 18 THE DAY OP BECKONING answer was simple, or at least it appeared so to me. Eugene had too often spoken to me himself of his fears as to his mother's health. He believed her threatened with some disease of the liver. She was a short, thick-set per- son, who must, at twenty, have been a handsome girl, with that beauty of the southern mountaineers, at once light and sturdy, in which there is so much vitality packed, as it were, crowded, into a little figure. She was from La Eoquebrussane, a village of Var, perched on a spur of the Maures, between Brignoles and Toulon. She had the pretty feet and small hands of the Provencal women real slipper-feet, straight and slender, able to climb, at fifty and over, without a stumble, the steep sides of her native hills, hands, thin and agile as an olive- picker's should be. And what a black flame in her eyes ! They seemed literally to burn in her thin and sallow face. Although this woman always received me with extreme courtesy of manner, why did I never feel at ease with her ? There was, in her whole being, a something shy and, as it were, defiant, which even her son's pres- ence did not appease, did not smooth away completely. " She is not a soul at peace," Eugene once said to me, when I inquired about her. "If I believed in a God, it is something would make me doubt His justice. You know my mother. You see what her life is. From my earliest infancy, I remember her as a person who has lived only for others for us two, my father and me. With her marketing, her cooking, the care of our clothing, her life THE DAY OF RECKONING 19 has been spent in the humblest duties of the humblest of servants, and she was born a lady and has had some education! If any person deserves to have peace of heart, certainly it is she : and she does not have it. She is religious, devout even ; and she uses her religion only to torture herself with scruples. Feeble as she is, every Lent I expect to see her fall ill, and there is no way to pre- vent her excessive austerities. I should have spoken to her confessor, but I don't know who he is. She is very secretive on some points, especially on that one ; and if one ventures to question her, even I, it is evident that it causes her pain. They talk to us of a good conscience. It is a good stomach and a good liver that we need. At each digestive period, the liver fills with blood. Let this blood, by some accident, be loaded with irritants for the hepatic cells, and the whole moral being is physically poisoned." " But," I said, " are there not also cases where grief kills, that is to say, where the physical being is mor- ally poisoned ? " " Perfectly true," he rejoined ; " and this completes the proof that we know nothing about anything. And still, we do. I know that on the day when my good mother sees me a graduate, that success will be more useful to her than all the water of Carlsbad or Marienbad. And so I will leave you and go to work." 20 THE DAY OP BECKONING II I HAVE lingered over these reminiscences, of which I could multiply details. They sum up the impressions of many years years extending from the spring of 1873, when I renewed with Eugene Corbieres the acquaintance begun at school, to the winter of 1882, when occurred the events I have to relate, which are the real subject of the story ; incoherent years for me, spending them, as I did, and as most apprentice-authors do, in all sorts of unfruitful attempts and unwise experiments, more or less dangerous for my intellectual future : fruitful and well- ordered years for my friend, who had made his way at once. I saw him, successively, assistant, then house-sur- geon in the hospital and winner of the gold medal, then doctor, and he was approaching steadily toward that position of hospital-doctor and title of associate, which he had made the object of his ambition. The divergence of our pursuits had been too great to make daily relations possible for us all through this period. We had had, therefore, during these nine years, merely one of those intermittent intimacies which do not give opportunity to observe certain slight changes in the domestic life of those whom we thus meet from time to time. At each of my visits in the rue Amyot I had found the situation very much the same, the father a little redder in col- ouring and a little less active, the mother a little more THE DAY OF RECKONING 21 leaden of face and more settled down in figure. But noth- ing in their way of living had changed. When I arrived it was always the old man who answered the bell, usually in shirt sleeves, a scrubbing-brush in hand, or a broom or a duster ; and through the half-open door into the kitchen, I could see the mother at her stove, preparing some southern dainty a rizot or a fish soup for the evening meal of the patient day-labourer of Science whom I found at his table surrounded by his papers and his books, arranging his notes of the day or day before. Although he now began to be called in by his instructors for profitable consultations, and did some work for medi- cal journals for which he was suitably paid, scarcely did his "old people" tolerate the intrusion into their household of a charwoman at five cents an hour, who came only for part of the morning. "I no longer insist," said Corbieres, explaining to me the situation. " If either of them were to be really ill, I should at once employ a regular servant. Mean- time I am afraid, if I should interfere with their mode of life, even a little, it might derange their health. My mother especially could not endure being thwarted. You know my former anxieties about her. I see that she worries still, and about everything. My father feels the effect. They succeed in making themselves unhappy, such good people as they are ! No, certainly, there is no Providence." At the beginning of the year 1882, the situation 22 THE DAY OF RECKONING however, underwent a change. Eugene had mani- fested a desire to leave the rue Amyot, alleging the necessity of establishing himself more suitably. Then followed the first serious disagreement between the son and his parents. After having approved of his decision, and aided him in his search for a new abode, and superintended its being made ready for him, the father and mother suddenly declared that they could not think of leaving the place in which they had lived for over thirty years ; and their determina- tion was invincible. In the light of the facts which I came to know later, I now see that this resolve of the old people contained an idea of expiation sug- gested by the mother. But in ignorance of the wrong- doing whose secret shame weighed upon this husband and wife, how explain this obstinacy except as a form of mania? This the physician did not fail to do. But already the suspicion that his parents' mental state concealed a mystery, had begun vaguely to dawn in his mind. He perceived in them a determination to have no share in the comfort of which his situation would henceforth admit. Almost without effort on his part, and without interruption of his work for the examinations, the preceding year had brought him in more than two thousand dollars an enormous sum for ways of living so simple as theirs. He came to see me, I remember, after his last attempt to persuade his parents, and related to me the conversation he THE DAY OF BECKONING 23 had had with them, his own urgency and their more and more positive refusal. "There is some kind of mania in their case, with- out doubt," he said. " But I also see, on my mother's part, a religious idea. It is her way of wearing sack- cloth, I think. She gives me the impression of wishing to punish herself. But for what ? Poor saint ! It can only be for having loved me too well, for having been too proud of me. What I wonder at most is that she can persuade my father to take the same view. He is not at all pious. He goes to mass but seldom now, and when I was a child he never went. What arguments does she use to persuade him ? And he is growing old, he needs rest, and to be better fed, better lodged, better served. And there is no way of bringing these old heads to reason. It is past comprehension ! " And so indeed it was. But why was it that this eccentricity of the old man and his wife did not surprise me beyond all measure ? Is there, in that sum of vague impressions which the personality of another gives us, a hidden logic, whose unexpressed intuitions go beyond our own knowledge? I should have been incapable of explaining why this attitude of the parents of Eugene coincided with the idea of them which I had in the depths of my consciousness. What an unlikely thing it was, however, this sudden effacement of a father and mother who had lived only 24 THE DAY OP BECKONING for their son, in the presence of this son's success! What an anomaly, thus to renounce the daily joy of sharing his triumph, which was their own work ! I had seen them for ten years living and breathing with no other aim than to secure to their son leisure to follow his chosen career, to prepare for his exami- nations, to become the distinguished doctor that he was destined to be that he already was ; and now they refused to take any share in this fulfilment of the passionate desire of their lives. Was it that they judged themselves too low-born, too ill-bred ? Did they foresee that their son would marry into a world above their own, and were they making the final separation from him in advance ? Some of these hypotheses seemed probable, others not. The only thing of which I had not thought was that these people had com- mitted a deed for which they could not forgive them- selves. How could I imagine that regret for this act weighed upon their declining years with a weight all the more heavy (and upon this point Eugene did not deceive himself) because Mme. Corbieres, with her half-Italian religion, terrified herself and terrified her husband with the idea of approaching death and sure perdition? And indeed when I think of the succes- sion of slight occurrences which unveiled to the son this abyss of misery, I repeat it, I cannot but see in them myself that punishment which the mother dreaded ; and I think of the strange proverb in which the Italians THE DAY OF RECKONING 25 those cousins by blood of the Provenqaux depict, with their vivid imagination, this return of the crime upon him who has committed it : " La saetta gira, gira" they say, " the arrow turns torna adosso a chi la tira, and strikes him who shot it." Something like a month had passed since Eugene had lamented to me, in the language I have related, the persistence of his parents in refusing to share his new home. I had not again seen him since that day, which, however, was no surprise to me, knowing as I did the engrossing character of his pursuits. I never suspected that, during these four weeks, his mind had been occupied with something very different from dis- eases of malnutrition, his favourite object of study, and that he had entered, almost against his will, upon an investigation from which he would perhaps have shrunk back if he could have foreseen its result. But no ; his was one of those virile minds some there are, even in his profession in which no feeling can overpower the brave desire to have the truth at all times, no matter how harsh it may be. I can see him now, as he came to my room, after these four weeks had passed, one morning shortly after eleven o'clock. It was inconvenient for him to leave his work at that hour, and the very fact that he had done so showed that something unusual had occurred. The expression of his face also showed this, even more plainly a certain agitation which he could not conceal, and in his eyes, 26 THE DAY OF BECKONING usually so candid and so full of the beautiful clear light of study, something like an imploring anguish, as of one about to venture upon a step which he could not bear even to have discussed. He made no preface to what he had to say, but with true surgical decision came at once to the point : " I want to ask you to do me a very delicate service. I will say in advance that, if you are not willing, I shall not be offended. I only beg you to reflect before saying no." "I promise you that I will say yes, if it is possible for me to do so," I replied, in the same grave tone as his own. Knowing his distaste for all parade, I felt from his manner of opening the subject that there was some fixed resolve in his mind, and I esteemed him too highly not to place myself at once on his own level of seriousness. "Thank you," he said, as he grasped my hand. Then, without other preamble, he continued: "I have told you how persistently my parents refuse to live with me. And I have also told you that this refusal is merely part of a general determination to make no change in their way of living, now that they can do this and ought to do it. It seems as if they felt that in sharing my life henceforward they would be shar- ing in ill-gotten wealth ; and yet, all that I have, all that I ever shall have in the world, is the result of my own labour and of theirs. It is they who, by THE DAY OF BECKONING 27 their sacrifices, made me what I am. Of this you are a witness. I had my time for myself, all my time I was absolutely free to work to the best advantage ; and this was so, solely because they made it possible for me, by their devotion, every hour in the day and every day in the year, from my boyhood until now. And I accepted this devotion, but only with the hope, with the certainty, of making their old age happy and comfortable. This they now deny me this poor- pleasure, the expectation of which alone justified me to myself in receiving from them so much." "Do not give way to that feeling," I said; "it is worthy neither of you nor of them. There are hearts toward whom it is ungrateful to seek to show gratitude. One must take what they give you as they give it, freely. One pays them by loving them." " It is because I do love them," he said, " and because I know how much they love me, that their attitude toward me tortures me. You remember I believed there was some mania in their case. I had the idea that especially my mother, a southern Catholic in her reli- gion, might be swayed by some ghost of a scruple. Well, during this month since I saw you last, I have ceased to argue with them this question which ought to be so simple, don't you think so ? I have gone to live in my apartment in the rue Bonaparte, keeping their room always ready for them. And, in spite of myself, I have begun to look at them, since then. You are surprised at 28 THE DAY OP RECKONING my saying this, because I have always been with them. But it is the fact, however. Except at the time when I feared for my mother a beginning of hepatitis, I had never before used toward them that acuteness of observa- tion which is developed in us by our profession. It was as if the son in me were suddenly removed to give place to the medical man. It is extremely difficult for me to explain to you a state which doubtless is absolutely peculiar. I can make you understand it, however, in this way: if the professional faculty were not at mo- ments asleep, as it were, within us, no physician would ever be a lover ; and if, on the other hand, this faculty, awakened, did not dominate the whole man, no fair patient would be safe with her doctor. I know no example that better shows this division into two, of which our technical education renders us capable. I ascertained then, in the course of this close analysis, that my parents were both more impaired in health than I had heretofore noticed, and each one in the way indi- cated by the temperament of each. He is in danger of Bright's disease; she, of disease of the liver. But let that pass ; I spare you the details of an investigation which is connected with what I have to ask you only by its result, which is this : I became convinced that there has been in their minds a hidden cause of anxiety which I had never suspected " " An anxiety of which you were not the object ? " I interrupted. "I have observed them, too these poor parents of yours. It is not possible " THE DAY OF BECKONING 29 " Listen to me ! " lie broke in impatiently. " A week ago, coming out of the hospital, I am acting as substi- tute at the Hotel-Dieu, these ideas were distressing me more than usual. The evening before, mamma had been looking unusually worried when I left her. My duties at the hospital had been over sooner than I expected. It occurred to me that I had time to go over to the rue Amyot and see how she was. I reached the house. I went up the three nights of stairs. On the landing, just as I was about to give the double ring, by which for more than twenty years I have been accus- tomed to announce myself, I heard loud talking from inside. It seemed as if there were a quarrel going on. It was not possible to distinguish the words, but I recog- nized a voice my father's. The other was unknown to me. For a moment I listened, catching only fragments of sentences, among them this exclamation by my father, twice over : ' But it is a shame, it is a shame ! ' Suddenly the thought that, if the door opened, I should be detected, by him or my mother, playing the spy, led me to grasp the bell handle. At the double ring, which made known that it was I, the voices ceased. My father's step ap- proached. I was at one of those moments when the nervous machine is so strained that it registers the smallest signs. Merely by the creaking of the floor under his feet I should have known that my father trembled. I should have known it also by the way he fumbled with the key, turning it again and again before opening the 30 THE DAY OF BECKONING door. He was so disconcerted that he could hardly find words to answer my question : ' You have some one with you ? Do I interrupt you ? ' - ' Not at all,' he said, and then he went on : ' Mamma is not in. But if you will wait a minute, I shall be at liberty, and will come to you.' He did not wish me to see the person with whom he had been having this violent altercation. That person, however, wished to see me; for, at the moment my father opened the door to show me into the dining room, the door of the kitchen, into which he had pushed his visitor, was thrown wide. The same voice which I had heard quarrelling with my father said: ' Monsieur Corbieres, I will not inconvenience you ; I will return for that little matter ; ' and, at the same mo- ment I saw a man appear, of about our age, with rather good features in a horribly worn face, with sharp shoul- ders and an emaciated form very shabbily clothed. You know how they look, those old clothes of the profes- sional beggar, to whom our worn-out coats and trousers and hats fall, in the end. This man reeked of liquor and tobacco, and he had in his eyes, with their reddened lids, that brutish and insolent look one sees so often in people of his kind a mingled pride and stupidity which announces general paralysis close at hand. He stared at me, repeating, 'I shall come again,' and went out, shuffling over the floor in his ragged shoes with an arrogant gait." " It is some poor wretch to whom your excellent father THE DAY OF BECKONING 31 is giving money," I said, " that is all. It would be wiser for him not to receive such individuals when he is alone, it is true. But these beggars are organized here, as they are in Naples, in camorre. They give each other infor- mation, and this one knows that M. Corbieres is not very rich, you may be sure " "Yes," Eugene rejoined; "it was a beggar, without doubt. But he was not merely a beggar." " What do you mean to say ? " " I mean to say that, in the tone of his voice, while I listened outside the door, in his manner of leaving the house, in his way of saying, ' I shall return,' there was something threatening, almost authoritative. And if he had been a mere beggar, would my father have been so disturbed by my arrival ? Would he have evaded my questions when we were together ? Would he have asked me not to mention the subject to my mother?" " Why, certainly," I replied. " It is all explained if you suppose merely that this is some worthless wretch to whom your mother, more wisely, refuses charity, and who makes his way in when she is absent, to secure a handful of sous from the compassion of M. Corbieres." " You have not seen that man and my father face to face," Eugene answered. "I, having seen them, feel a mystery, just as positively as I feel that fire." And he extended a hand toward the flame which, yellow and supple, blazed upon the hearth. "I felt it," he con- tinued, " to the degree that I allowed myself to be drawn, 32 THE DAY OF BECKONING under the influence of that feeling, into doing an incredi- ble thing. When I had reached the house, I had sent away my fiacre, intending to walk to the cole Pratique after seeing my parents. As chance would have it, in going away from the rue Amyot, I went by the rue de la Vielle-Estrapade, and thence by the rue Saint-Jacques. Perhaps you may remember that before you reach the rue Soufflot there is on the left a kind of tavern, a drinking shop rather, with a frontage of barrels and unpainted wooden tables. It is not a wine dealer's, and it is not a cafe. The men who frequent the place are not the customers of a wine dealer or the patrons of a cafe. There are a few workmen who go there, a very few, but especially you will see there men who are losing caste : teachers who have no school, painters without a studio, political writers without a newspaper, poets with- out a publisher, prospective lawyers without cases, medi- cal students whose names are nowhere registered. The favourite drink of the place is absinthe. I never go past it without glancing in, almost in spite of myself. Now and then I have dragged out of this place some old fellow-student. I looked in this morning, and I recog- nized, leaning on his elbows at a table in the back of the shop, with a glass before him of the vile, greenish, milky drug, the mysterious rascal whom I had just met at my father's. As I stood still, struck motionless by curiosity, he lifted his head and looked in my direction. I drew back, like a criminal caught in the act, and hid THE DAY OF RECKONING 33 myself behind the awning of an adjacent shop. It was labour wasted. The fellow was already completely in- toxicated and incapable of recalling my face. His struck me now more gloomily than before, because of the con- trast behind the haggard stupor of intoxication and the refinement of features of which I told you. There are two very distinct types of drunkards : the brutal and if one may employ such a word for such degradation the refined. There is the man who drinks from coarse- ness of nature and the man who seeks cerebral intoxica- tion from some form of neuropathy, that he may forget most frequently that he may forget himself. This is the absinthe-drinker's intoxication, Musset's and Ver- laine's. And it was that of my unknown man. This is the saddest kind. It is impossible for me to give you an idea of the singular melancholy stamped upon that face. It was no longer arrogance or insolence that I read in it, but an infinite and irremediable distress, that of a life which has missed its destiny. As I watched him, he lifted his glass and laughed convulsively at some thought. His front teeth were gone, and the black hole in that livid and distorted face, over that milky poison, in that vile den whose acrid reek came out to me, was a spectacle almost terrible, I swear to you. He emptied the glass at one swallow. It must have been his fourth or fifth, for he laid down, to pay for it, a silver coin and received no change in return. Now in a place like that his dram would cost three or four sous. Then, stiff and 34 THE DAY OF BECKONING automatic, with the shaking somnambulist step which betrays the incoordination of the muscles of the extrem- ities, the fixity of the aim, in the vacillation of the movement, he rises, comes out of the shop, walks along the sidewalk. I follow. Where he goes, I go. We cross the rue des Feuillantines, the Val-de-Grace, the boulevard Port-Royal. Finally he stops in the rue du Faubourg- Saint-Jacques, before one of those houses inside a court- yard which are veritable cities of the destitute. I wait, but he does not reappear." " And then ? " I asked, as he hesitated. " Then," he resumed, with the visible embarrassment of a very scrupulous man, to whom underhand inquiry, in whatever circumstances, is repugnant, " I entered, I found the concierge, I questioned him and I learned the man's name. He lodges there and his name is, or is given out to be, Pierre Kobert." " Very well, then you have to go to the prefecture of police," I said, " and you can hear about him, having his name and address." " I thought of doing that," Eugene replied, " and then I gave it up, for a very simple reason : my father has been employed at the ministry, and he would know per- fectly well how to protect himself from a blackmailer. If he has not done it, there nmst be a reason." " But what reason ? " I urged. " Ah ! " he said, with increasing emotion. " How do I know? By thinking the whole matter over and over, THE DAY OP RECKONING 35 I came to the suspicion that this fellow was an illegitimate child of my poor father, born before his marriage, whose existence he conceals from my mother ; and that she, sensitive as she is, suspects the truth without really knowing it and this explains so many things ! No sooner did this hypothesis dawn in my mind than I became certain of its truth. I tell you this to show you that I am morbid in presence of this trouble in which I see that my parents are involved. I no longer distinguish between the possible and the real. Since this I have been constantly walking up and down the street in front of that house. It attracted and, at the same time, it terrified me. The idea that this horrible degenerate, whose stumbling footsteps I had followed along the sidewalks of those crowded thoroughfares, might possibly be my brother, gave me one of those inde- scribable shuddering fits that one feels to the very roots of his being. It is not worth while to dwell upon my own insane acts and thoughts for insane they are, I am ready enough to admit. But my father's attitude toward me was what distracted me. I have not been alone with him once since the scene that I have related to you. As I told you, he evaded my inquiry why I should not speak of it to my mother. I read anew in his eyes, every time I went to the house, this entreaty for silence, and it had the effect of deepening my suspicion, until yesterday, in the afternoon, as I was again in the rue Saint-Jacques, I beheld my mother entering that house." 36 THE DAY OF BECKONING " And you conclude from that ? " I asked, sharing unconsciously in the passionate quest which he was following out in my presence. " Nothing," he said, " except that my supposition is false. If my mother, also, knows this man, he is not what I had supposed. There is a deduction that may seem specious : to me it is evident in imploring me, as he did, not to speak of meeting this Robert in his house, my father had no wish to conceal from my mother any- thing concerning this man, he wished to hide from her something concerning me. Now, why ? Yes, why ? " He was silent, and I could not even find a word to express my sympathy for the strange anxiety with which I saw him overpowered. That there was some- thing abnormal, even to the extent of mystery, in the sum of the facts which he had just made known to me, I was indeed forced to admit. But the sequence of the whole narrative supposed some connection between these facts, on the one hand, and, on the other, his parents' refusal of his request that they should come to live with him. Now how was it possible there could be any such connection ? And, further, how was it possible that the impaired health which he believed that he detected in them both had any connection whatever with the exist- ence of this Pierre Robert unless, indeed, it were the fact that this probable blackmailer, and evident beggar and drunkard, was the illegitimate child, not of the father, but of the mother? This was the hypothesis THE DAY OF BECKONING 37 which suddenly thrust itself forward in my mind, and I perceived this horrible complication: a young girl is seduced ; a son is born to her ; she marries without confessing the truth ; the child grows up at a distance from the mother, whose life is now irreproachable. She again has a son, this one born in wedlock. Suddenly the first-born son reappears. He has found his mother's track. He threatens. The unhappy woman confesses all to her husband, who forgives her. But would the legiti- mate son forgive ? The mother is ready to die with ter- ror at the thought of forfeiting this precious esteem, and the husband carries magnanimity so far as to understand her terror, and even to share it such were the thoughts which rushed in upon me while my friend, in gloomy silence, paced back and forth in the room. Were they not also his thoughts, at that moment ? I dared neither speak to him nor even look at him, lest this identity of conclusions should suddenly reveal itself to us both. Such a truth would have been extremely painful to him. Could I foresee that the actual truth would be more painful still ? Ill AND it was for this reason not to betray the gravity of my suspicion to this tortured son that I accepted the proposition, singular though it was, with which this con- fidence ended. It seemed to me that the quickest way to 38 THE DAY OF RECKONING tranquillize him was to enter into his ideas, even though to me they seemed far from reasonable. "Now," he resumed, "let us come to the object of my visit. I have concealed from you nothing of all that causes me anxiety, first, because I know you are my friend, and next, that I may have the right to ask of you a service which, I am aware, lies very much outside our usual habits of action. And I say again, as I said at first, if you wish to refuse, you will do so. It is this : I am resolved to know the facts about this Robert. / am resolved" and he put into the words all the indomi- table energy of his extremely concentrated nature. " I had the idea of going to him myself, to make him speak. Then I thought it over. He saw me at my father's. Very probably he supposed me to be the son of the family. He will be on his guard against me. Well then, will you, whom he does not know, and against whom he will not be on his guard, undertake it in- stead? The man is poor. He begs from my father, and from others. This I learned from the concierge. You will go to him on an errand of charity. You will give him money. Thus you will satisfy your conscience. And yoti will make him talk. You will learn about his life, who he is, whence he comes, in short, something " "I shall learn," I said, "whatever he may please to tell me; but for your sake I will try to make him talk. Do not thank me," I continued, as he grasped my hand anew, with one of those virile grips that are THE DAY OF RECKONING 39 more eloquent than words ; " it is too easy a thing. And when shall I go to see this man ? " "At once, if you can," he rejoined eagerly. "I have just come from the Faubourg-Saint-Jacques. He is at home." This proof that Corbieres had counted on me so fully would have conquered any last reluctance that I might still have felt. "Very well, then, let us go," I said, and my words brought a smile of gratitude to his anxious face. We went downstairs; his fiacre stood at the door. In his certainty that I should accede to his request he had not sent it away. From the quarter of the Invalides, where I was then living, to this rue du Faubourg-Saint-Jacques, where dwelt the unknown individual whose father-confessor I must seek to be- come, was scarcely fifteen minutes' drive. But the dis- tance seemed very long. If the step I was about to take was unusual, at least its failure would be without result. But nevertheless my heart was heavy, as at the approach of a formidable trial, so powerful is the contagion of certain anxieties. It is an altogether physical phenomenon, which I have often experienced, but never as in that carriage which bore us on, Eugene and myself, toward a scene that I could not, however, foresee would have results so cruelly irreparable. My companion, on his part, said not a word, except to order the driver to stop a few doors off from the house. He pointed it out to me and gave me the number, adding : 40 THE DAY OF BECKONING "I shall wait here for you in the carriage." Two minutes later I had crossed the threshold of the great dilapidated building which Corbieres had so properly characterized as a city of despair. I had asked of the concierge the number of M. Robert's room. I had entered, following the woman's directions, a damp and fetid court, above which opened six stories of shut- terless windows, between which ropes were stretched across supporting ragged and tattered clothes, patched trousers, faded petticoats enough to poison a whole neighbourhood with microbes ; and I had ascended a staircase which gave access to many little numbered rooms, and at last, under the roof, reached a garret door bearing the number 63. The key was in the lock. I knocked. A voice called out, "Come in." It was somewhat indistinct, but not the kind of voice I expected to hear. It had neither the accent of the Faubourg nor the rude brutality of the lowest class ; and the individual whom I beheld when I opened the door was plainly the man of this voice. Doubtless the torn and faded rags which Pierre Robert wore gave him a sordid aspect which accorded with the miserable room, almost unfurnished and repul- sive with filth. But vileness of dress and surroundings only made more noticeable in the inmate of this den the singularly refined features which had struck Cor- bieres so forcibly. The extreme fineness of the fair hair, which had not at all turned gray, and the very THE DAY OF RECKONING 41 soft blue of the eyes, while the complexion was so faded, bleached out, as it were, by the use of powerful drugs, still attested the real elegance of the original design, in this face now so debased. The ill-kept hands, with nails gnawed to the quick, were neither scoundrelly nor vulgar. The fingers were still thin and slender. And especially the sadness of the face told, more sincerely than words could do, of personal and social downfall. The outcast had scarcely raised his head as I entered. Although it was now nearly noon, everything in this den had remained untouched over night. A torn blanket lay over a straw bed, heaped together in a corner, just as the sleeper had left it, to make a breakfast whose miserable remains lay on a table which had once been white, a piece of a loaf of bread from which he had pulled the crumb, leaving the crust for lack of teeth to bite it, and a morsel of Italian cheese in a greasy paper. This miserable food seemed to have been to him only an incitement to drink, for an empty quart bottle was near by which must have contained white wine, to judge, not at all from the tumbler, for there was none, but from the colour of the wet rings made on the table by this bottle, drained to its last drop. Two chairs, a bat- tered zinc slop-pail without a handle, a basin and broken-lipped water-jug, a broken comb, and a frag- ment of glass on the wall completed the furniture. 42 THE DAY OP RECKONING I have omitted to mention a dozen books, ranged on a shelf with a certain care. They were the last relic of an education, which I afterward knew to have been brilliant, resulting at last in what ? in this victim of intemperance, who sat carelessly smoking a short clay pipe, and was already half intoxicated, though he had not yet left his room. Whence the tobacco came with which the pipe was filled, appeared from the heap of cigar-ends that lay on a corner of the table. The vaga- bond had picked them up in the streets. This philoso- pher in rags did not put himself to any trouble in receiving me ; he did not rise from his seat ; he did not abate one whiff of his pipe ; and his blue eyes showed no curiosity, no surprise, when I asked him, "Is this M. Pierre Robert?" " It is, monsieur ; what do you want with me ? " I began to explain to him, as had been agreed with Corbieres, that I belonged to a benevolent society, and having learned from one of his neighbours that he was in need, had come to see if it were so. I felt myself frightfully awkward in this rdle, altogether new to me, of district visitor. I apprehended an out- break of that haughty arrogance of which Eugene had spoken. This revolt of offended pride did not occur. He listened as passively as he had received me. He took no trouble to know the name of the society I was supposed to represent, or of the neigh- bour who had mentioned him to me. He said only, THE DAY OP RECKONING 43 calling my attention to the remains of his breakfast on the table and the cigar-ends beside it, "It is quite true that at this moment I am not very well off. You see what I eat, and what I smoke. But I lived very differently in Africa." Then, with an air of politeness which seemed like a last remnant of the habits of civilized life, he pointed to the other chair, and said, " Do me the favour to be seated, monsieur." "In Africa? You have been in the service, then?" I asked, as I sat down, taking advantage of the oppor- tunity offered by his remark. My question set him off at once. If I had not asked it, he would have talked all the same, with that loquacity of the victims of alcohol so painful to hear because it is so evi- dently morbid, by turns voluble and hesitating. It is the first phase of that which will be, in three months, in a week, to-morrow, free delirium with its uncon- trolled swagger and boasting. His confidential talk was not addressed to me. It was the monologue, scarcely guided by my questions, of a half maniac thinking aloud, his head already unsettled by the poison. He had taken but little of it this morning; and still in his condition of frightful saturation this small amount, just one bottle of white wine, sufficed to make him almost unable to control his movements and not at all his words. "I have served my time twice," he said; "I ought to be commandant to-day and officer of the Legion of 44 THE DAY OF BECKONING Honour, if I had not been so unlucky. I am Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Science, monsieur, just as you see me. I have even had a prize in the General Examina- tions. I still have one of the books that I received. Look, there it is," and he pointed out to me, motioning with his pipe, which he took out of the corner of his mouth, the row of books, among which I distinguished, placed conspicuously on the shelf, the gilt edges of a volume bound in green morocco, with the arms of the Empire. " It is a Horace that I re-read sometimes. I have not forgotten all my Latin. " ' Qui fit Maecenas, tit nemo, quam sibi sortem, Sen ratio dederit, sen fors objecerit, ilia Contentus vivat." 1 "Contented with his lot! Keally, I can't be with mine. Look at it, monsieur. At twenty-one, I enter the army. I choose the artillery. With my diplomas and what I know of mathematics, I say to myself, I shall reach the School at Versailles, and in three years I shall be an officer. I happen upon a quartermaster who doesn't like my looks. It takes me two years to become cor- poral two years, with my education, yes, monsieur! Not till the fourth year do I reach the School. I am received there. During my time with the regiment, I was unhappy. I drank a little. It was natural, don't you see ? The colonel in command at the School had a grudge against me for it. I don't know why he had. He meets me one evening, as I was coming in, rather THE DAY OF RECKONING 45 lively but nothing more. If he had had the least tact, he would have let me pass without seeming to notice it. But instead of that, I am sent to the guard-house, and two days later, I am dismissed I go back to the regi- ment. My five years were just ending. I enter the marine artillery. No more hope of Versailles. It was a pity. I should have made a good officer. I look it over thoroughly. I say to myself I will go to the colonies as a soldier, and I will remain as a colonist. I had two years' service in Algeria and two in Tonkin. When I saw what a humbug life is out there, I was disgusted. And then I was ill. Is it worth while, I ask you, to conquer countries where a decent man cannot even take his pousse-caf^ without his liver's getting wrong ? As soon as I got my liberty, I swore to myself I would never again leave Paris. I have been here now three years. It is hard to live here when a man has no profes- sion, and at my age " "But," I suggested, "you have a right to a pension, being a discharged non-commissioned officer ? " " They had reduced me to the ranks before I left," he replied. " They pardon nothing in a man who has no friends ! " Who were these mysterious They but the imaginary persecutors whom his disordered brain made the poor fellow see behind all his failures, until later, the hallu- cinations of delirium tremens would come to besiege him with their shapes of terror. So far, it was the lament- 46 THE DAY OF BECKONING able confession of the ordinary outcast, who through lack of will, through lack of helpful surroundings, through lack of fortune, also, has slipped rather than walked down the fatal slope. It is the cruellest of all the consequences of the inevitable social inequality that the margin of the irremediable faults is so broad for the rich, so narrow for the poor ! A few words more, and this commonplace aspect of one of the numerous victims of modern education would be lighted with a gleam which appals me even now, when my thoughts revert to that far-distant moment. "You have no relatives, then?" I said. "I am an illegitimate child," he replied; "all my misfortunes arise from that. They were not my father's fault, however. He was married, and he held a posi- tion of importance. He did for me what he could. He supplied my mother with money to bring me up, so long as she lived. I was eight years old at the time of her death. He placed me at school and paid for me. If he also had not died just as I left school, my life would have turned out differently, or, indeed, if I had received what he left me." "He did not leave a legal will, then?" I asked, as he suddenly stopped speaking. I dreaded one of those sudden fits of reticence which will happen some- times to these strange talkers who tell you the most intimate facts of their life, the most disgraceful, even, then stop short at some perhaps insignificant THE DAY OF BECKONING 47 detail and become obstinately silent, as unreasonably and inconsiderately as they had, just before, been con- fidential. Impulsive creatures of the moment, they obey only their entirely subjective impressions. As I questioned him, Eobert looked at rne with those blue eyes whose softness of expression I had at first re- marked, and whose strange changefulness now attracted my notice. Was he tired with his long story, in which his occasional hesitations before some word revealed latent aphasia ? Had I expressed too eagerly an unjus- tifiable curiosity, before which he stopped in surprise ? It was the fact, certainly, that instead of giving me any answer he resumed, " You see, monsieur, that you have not been deceived, and that I have much need of assistance from the charitable." "You already know some benevolent persons," I said, taking from my pocket the gold piece I had ready, and I laid it on the table, as I mentioned the name of Eugene's parents. "I know that the Corbieres are very good to you." " You know the Corbieres ? " he said to me, and, taking his pipe out of his mouth, he leaned forward and looked at me, with a singular gleam in his eyes. Then, shrugging his shoulders, he began again to smoke, saying, "I understand; it is they who have sent you. I know it, and I also know why. Would you like to have me tell you? You are going to advise me to 48 THE DAY OF BECKONING leave Paris. Isn't that true? They have told you that I am drinking myself to death here. That is what they tell me every time I go there. Well, then, no, no, no ! I will not go away. I will not leave Paris. These people shall see me, I tell you, they shall see me I This is my vengeance, and they shall endure it to the end." While he talked to me, taking my silence for acqui- escence, his face grew animated. I recognized that expression of arrogant authority that Eugene had men- tioned. This change of demeanour was so singular, in the case of a beggar just now so humble, there was a threat so mysterious in the words he employed, and at the same time the certainty of an invisible right, that I allowed him to go on uncontradicted. I had a crushing premonition of what I was about to hear. What he had said a few minutes before, if he had received ichat his father left him, was suddenly illuminated for me with frightful clearness. This impression, however, was but momentary, and I said to him, "You are unjust. I do not come to you from the Corbieres; but suppose I did bring you such a mes- sage from them, why not? If the Corbieres advise you to leave Paris, it is for your own welfare. If they reproach you with fatal habits of intemperance, they are no more than right. And since you tell me that you have been well brought up, you must know that you ought not to speak thus of your benefactors." THE DAY OF BECKONING 49 " They ? " he exclaimed, " my benefactors ? They have given themselves out to you as my benefactors ? " He began to laugh, as Eugene had seen him laugh in the liquor shop of the rue Saint- Jacques over his glass of absinthe. A sudden change of semi-intoxication carried him at once from torpor to excitability. His irritation rendered his speech still more hesitating, and his words, uttered with this difficulty, almost stam- mered out, had a more poignant power of truth. It was like a symbol of the repression against which he had struggled all through his youth, because of the crime to which he now testified. " No, monsieur," he repeated, " they are not my bene- factors. They are my murderers. That I am what you see me, a withered fruit, a failure, a melancholy failure, that I ani a drunkard, is their fault. I have not the proof; it is true I have nothing that I could produce in court to show that these so-called benefactors have robbed me; yes, monsieur, they have robbed me. And besides, what could I do with that money now? Instead of having it when I was twenty ! At twenty, I should have bought off my military service. Then I should have studied law or medicine. I should be now a great lawyer or a great doctor. You must not judge me by what you see me now 'a ruin'd piece of nature,' as the poet says." He quoted the English sentence, with a very incorrect accent, and yet clearly enough for me to recognize the 50 THE DAY OF BECKONING famous cry of King Lear. That he could, degraded as he was, quote Shakespeare, were it but a chance phrase, after having quoted Horace, were it but two lines what proof more heart-rending could be given that there had been in the Pierre Robert to whom I lis- tened an original design for a very different man? Alas ! There remained of it only the refined features of the wasted face, these little fragments of culture, and these spasms of bitterness against the persons whom he accused of having ruined him. It is probable enough that he would have ruined himself, by his own character. His nature would have proved itself the same under other circumstances. Still he had a right to formulate the accusation as he now did. "It is their fault, monsieur," he said, "it is their fault, and theirs alone. If this is not true, monsieur, let them justify themselves. Go and talk to them, you who are their friend ; go to them and repeat what I tell you. It will teach them to send people to me ! Then you will see them turn pale and tremble before you, as I have seen them do before me. They will tell you that I am mad, as they have told me. No, not they, he. The old woman has never done anything but weep, since she knew that I had found it all out. But I am losing my thoughts. Where was I ? I feel as if I had wad- ding in my head. Ah ! When I was a schoolboy, I was living at Versailles. It was not till long after that I knew who my father was. I used to call him M. Robert. THE DAY OF BECKONING 51 This was his first name, and he gave it to me for my surname. I believed him to be my godfather. I used to see him in Paris on holidays at the house of relatives of my mother who were my guardians. It was through them that I learned many things after- ward. My father was married, as I told you before, and had other children. He had a very good office, chef de bureau in the Ministry of the Interior, where M. Corbieres was usher. You begin to understand? My father had never been willing that his wife and his other children, the legitimate ones, should know of my existence. He had had M. Corbieres under his orders for years. In his last illness, he intrusted to this man the sum which he had been able to lay aside from his property enough, as he thought, to complete my education, thirty-five thousand francs, if I am correct in my figures." " And you believe that M. Corbieres took this money for himself ? " I interrupted. " But that is impossible. Why should he do it ? I know how they live, he and his wife. They are the most simple, upright, honest people " "These honest people have plundered me all the same," sneered Pierre Robert, shaking his head, and his face expressed that bitterest of all contempts, that of the despised man who can in his turn despise. " Why ? Yes, why ? Their son, monsieur, how have they brought him up? He was able to finish his military 52 THE DAY OF RECKONING service in one year ; he has had his medical education ; and with what money ? A man who is a doorkeeper in a Ministry has no fortune, of course. And you think it would be by his own savings that that man had laid aside money to keep his son a student to the age of thirty ? Come, now! It was my money, I tell you, that they spent ; you understand me, my money" " But you confess yourself that you have not a single proof of what you say," I protested; and while I was protesting, I was overwhelmed by the evidence that he spoke the truth. His words were like the key to a page of cipher, which makes the whole clear. The feeling that I had so often had of a mystery connected with the elder Corbieres ; the sadness which made the background of their lives, so little in keeping with their devotion to their son; the latter's confidential talks with me re- cently, even this very morning: all was explained by this revelation which Robert now made still clearer. " A proof to offer in court was what I meant. Proofs for myself, I have more than enough. Would you like to know what they are? Before my father died, he wrote me a letter. I have his letter here. He told me that he was not my godfather, but my father. He for- bade me ever to seek to see his widow or his other chil- dren. He went so far as not even then to tell me his own name. Monsieur, I have suffered greatly, I swear to you, but I have always obeyed this order of the dead. I have never asked anything from his widow or my THE DAY OF RECKONING 53 brothers. There are two; they are well off and would help me. I am not willing. My father added that he had provided for my future, that I should receive fifteen hundred francs a year until I was thirty years of age, and then a small capital. It was the amount of the income which made me reckon the principal at thirty-five or forty thousand francs. In his resolve to make an abso- lute separation between the life of his regular household and my life, he did not tell me from whom I should receive this annual income and the principal in the end, nor how he had planned that even this way of communi- cating with his other children should be debarred me. Afterward I knew, however. I knew that he died very suddenly, and evidently without having time to take the measures which he had deferred, perhaps with the ex- pectation of giving me personally this little fortune when I should attain my twenty-first year. Then he employed Corbieres, because he was sure of his secrecy. And this Corbieres, at that time, was an honest man. How do I know this ? My income for the first and sec- ond years was paid me. The third, not. This was the year of the son's military service. The money for these two years came to me semi-annually, in bank-notes in a registered envelope, without other words than these, By the wish of M. Robert. Very well ! monsieur, I have since then had the handwriting of M. Corbieres, and it is the same ! But I return to this year, 1873. The money did not arrive. I had to make my military 54 THE DAY OF BECKONING service. I had some debts; who has not? I had not the means to seek the reason why my income ceased to come to me or to undertake a lawsuit. Besides this, I was very young ; and, at that age, one is careless. One expects to have good luck. In short, I entered the army, and the rest you know." "But how did you find the Corbieres again?" I asked. "You mean, how did the Corbieres find me? For it was they who sought me out. They felt remorse; that was the reason. When one conies near the end, one has these terrors, it appears. One would like then to humbug le bon Dieu." He laughed again, with that silent laugh which showed the black space of his tooth- less mouth. "They wanted to know what had become of me. They found me. How, do you want to know ? I will not tell you that. Finding me poor, they began to give me a bit of money now and then, to quiet their consciences, and also to keep off bad luck. They have not succeeded very well ! When I saw old Corbieres for the first time, sitting where you are, monsieur, I let him talk, just as I let you talk just now. He said that he knew I was poor, and that he came to help me a little. I can appear to believe anything, don't you know? But I think it over by myself. I said to myself: 'Well, old fellow, what do you want of me ? Why have you come here ? ' I couldn't understand it. Then he came again, and THE DAY OF RECKONING 55 his wife; first, every month; then, every week. They brought me my week's living. This was their pretext; but, in reality, they could not stay away. I attracted them with a kind of fascination. I looked them in the eye, and they dropped their eyes. They could never look me in the face, monsieur. Why ? And then the idea came to me that they had had something to do with my affairs. I spoke to them of the money that I ought to have had, and of my father's letter. From that day I felt that I had them in my power. Oh ! " he ended, " so far as my ill will is concerned they are very wrong in being afraid, and in wishing that I would go away. A five-franc piece, now and then, to get something to drink ; and I call it quits. If I cared, their son is rich. He would give me back the whole. But if I had it all, now, what could I do with it? I do frighten them a little now and then, I admit. That is for my amuse- ment. Life is not very amusing. Happily it won't last always ! " He broke out again with his sinister laugh. Then, seeing the napoleon that I had placed on the table, he picked it up, slipped it into the pocket of the jersey which served as a waistcoat under his coat, and, rising from his chair, made a gesture as if to usher me out, saying, "I am much obliged to you, monsieur. But will you tell them that it is not worth while for them to send other charitable persons to me to advise 56 THE DAY OF BECKONING me to leave Paris. It is not worth while. To all who may come from them to all, you understand I shall relate their story. And I shall never leave Paris. I shall never leave it, and I shall go to their house, and they will receive me, you may tell them. Adieu, monsieur, adieu!" It was not until I was outside of the room, where I had listened to this tragic confession, that I realized its immediate consequence with a shudder of alarm that I do not remember to have experienced before or since. Eugene Corbieres awaited me below. What was I to say to him ? My fear of meeting his search- ing gaze was so great that my knees bent under me as I went down the steps of that staircase at whose foot I must, however, arrive. And then ? I remember stopping for several minutes on the landing of the second story, trying to recover myself. I must at all hazards find strength to ward off Eugene's questions by replies calculated as well as might be to turn him away from the pursuit of this frightful investigation. The first condition was that my face should not belie my words. Would my compassion for my friend, threatened with this fearful revelation, have given me this strength? I had not the occasion to put my will thus to the proof. I had not taken into account the fever of impatience by which Eugene was devoured. As my absence became more prolonged, he had come, himself, to the door of the house, then into the court, THE DAY OF RECKONING 57 then to the foot of the stairs ; so that when I came to the last step, hesitating and upset as I was, he appeared before me, with the question, " You have been very long. What did he say ? " "Nothing of interest," I rejoined. "It is what I supposed. A poor wretch to whom your father had given money." " Why, then, are you so agitated ? " he went on. "You tremble. You are pale." "His wretched condition affected me," I answered; and I added, seeking to drag him away, "come out; a little fresh air will do me good." "Yes," he said; then, stopping short, he fastened his eyes upon mine. "No, there is something. I feel it. I see it. You are not telling me the truth. You will not? Well, then, I will go up myself." "You shall not go," I said, barring his way. But no sooner had I uttered the cry than I felt its impru- dence, and I tried to repair the harm, saying, "It is useless and dangerous. The fellow gets too much from your father." " You are not telling me the truth," Eugene repeated, still more sharply ; and before I could be aware of what he was about to do, he had flung me aside with violence and was running upstairs, four steps at a time. I stood still, paralyzed by emotion, and mak- ing no further attempt to detain him. Knowing what I knew, it seemed to me that I felt upon my brow the 58 THE DAY OF RECKONING breath of fate, as I stood on the staircase of the miserable house. That the two men should meet appeared to me inevitable. It was better this should happen now, and I be there to support my friend at the very moment when he received this terrible blow if he must receive it. I forced myself to hope, there in that dismal barrack of poverty, that a last remnant of humanity might stay the outcast's hand. The fact that he had limited his demands for money to the elder Corbieres, when he could so easily have levied blackmail upon Eugene, struck me suddenly as very significant. He had said it to me himself, and with a certain emphasis. I tried to feel that here was the proof of a reluctance to make so cruel a revelation, and one so unjustifiable also. The son had had no share in the father's fault. If he had profited by it, he had done so unwittingly, and to denounce it to him was a savage act. Pierre Robert had not shown himself, in his interview with me, to be either unjust or savage. I reasoned thus, and I forgot that a man insane from the habitual use of liquor, as he was, is always ready, under the moment's excitement, to commit acts the most con- trary to his natural character and to his more consid- erate will. He had thought, in his bad hours, of addressing himself to the son, but had always recoiled from it as an infamous deed. I was about to find that the instinct for revenge, awakened unawares, was to be the stronger. It was indeed astonishing that a THE DAY OF RECKONING 59 scruple, really of great magnanimity, could have held out so long in a being so degraded. The victim of alcohol had not been master of his words with me. How could he become so once more in these few min- utes that had passed, and in the presence of the per- son who excited in his mind the bitterest memories ? Without my very clear consciousness, all these contra- dictory ideas struggled together in my mind, as I waited for my friend's return. I was now outside of the house. The need of relieving my excitement by motion had made me leave the staircase and then the courtyard. I now stood on the sidewalk, counting the minutes, asking myself if I ought not again to go upstairs, a prey to one of the deadliest agonies that has ever tortured me, when Eugene Corbieres appeared upon the threshold of this door to the house of woe. We looked at each other. Robert had told him all. IV THERE are, in every great doctor, as in every great dramatic author, and probably in every great actor, certain faculties much nearer akin to the type of the man of action than to that of the man of thought. These complex professions, which require so much ani- malism, presuppose also an exceptional capacity for per- sonal affirmation, for immediate decision, for resolve carried at once into action. They call for a direct grasp, 60 THE DAY OF BECKONING so to speak, of reality. There is needed that bodily vigour which enables the man to conquer his nerves. I have often had occasion to verify this remark in my relations with the higher individuals of these three intellectual species. Never more fully than in the moments that followed the interview of Eugene Corbi- eres with the man whom his parents had plundered, have I witnessed this almost soldierly virtue of the medical training. Eugene was undoubtedly crushed with grief by the revelation that he had just undergone. He had not the least doubt of its truth; this I perceived at once in his eyes. But not a gesture, not a word betrayed, even to me, the fearful inner storm. He said to me simply, "You will not mind leaving me at the rue Arnyot? The carriage will then take you home." And upon my affirmative reply, he gave the man his father's address in a perfectly tranquil voice. While the fiacre bore us along through the old quarter of Val-de-Grace, he could see through the carriage window the succession of street corners we both knew so well, the fronts of shops, the hundred familiar aspects that brought up to his mind, as it did to mine, the ghosts of so many hours of his studious youth. Had we not often wandered together along these sidewalks, he going to a lecture and I accompanying him, or else perhaps I going toward the Luxembourg and he with me, to pro- long one of our interminable talks about ideas ? All THE DAY OF BECKONING 61 these hours, yes, all of them, those of ardent labours, those also of noble pleasures, was it possible that they were due to an abominable crime, that his father and mother had stolen for him the opportunity, for them all, from the wretched man whom we had just left ? If this evidence overwhelmed with distress me, who was but a witness, what must be the despair of him, the living actor in this frightful drama a drama of which he was the hero, and of which he had known nothing ! He preserved, however, that absolute mastery of him- self which I had often witnessed in him beside hospital cots. He seemed to be present at his own death-bed, with the same mental firmness he had shown in alleviating so many other death pangs less agonizing than his own. His face had the determination of a clenched fist, his eyes were tearless, his lips shut. No more now than in the previous drive did we speak to each other. Why should we have spoken ? It was I, the person not con- cerned, in whom emotion triumphed first over this manly reserve. When he got out in the rue Amyot, I could not help saying, in a tone smothered by anguish, as I grasped his hand, " Remember how they have loved you." " It would have been better that they had hated me," he answered; "I should be less angry with them now." These sacrilegious words were said in a tone vibrat- ing with such an impulse of indignation, at once implac- 62 THE DAY OF RECKONING able and cold, his look had such an intensity of contempt, I felt that he had come to such a state of concealed frenzy under his calm exterior, that I let him enter the house and disappear without making him any answer. And again, why should I have spoken ? I threw myself back in the carriage, abandoning myself com- pletely to the pity that overflowed my heart, and I could only say over and over again the same words, " Dieu ! those poor people ! those poor people ! " The vision which wrung from me this cry of terror was that of my friend appearing as a minister of justice before this old man and this old woman, and disowning them, heaping upon them reproaches for having made him the accomplice in an infamous act, in this violation of a trust left them by the dead. I saw the son enter- ing that apartment that I knew so well ; I saw them, the parents ; I heard their voices : " Will you kill your mother, my son!" "It 'is not I who take your life; it is yourself who have done it ! " The dialogue between the eternal Clytemnestra and the eternal Orestes came into my mind ; and I was afraid. When, later, Eugene related to me through what emotions he had passed during that hour which truly was the hour of his life, that in which his life's destiny was determined, I felt how rightly I had apprehended a tragic scene, and a frightful denouement to this frightful occurrence. " My resolution was made," he said to me ; " I THE DAY OF RECKONING 63 intended to question them, to know the truth from them also ; to curse them ; and then to kill myself." It was with a heart shaken by emotions of such violence that the unhappy son reached the door of his guilty parents. In this acute crisis of inner revolt, his past existence caused him such repulsion that it hurt him to give the habitual double ring at the door; this recognized signal, to which he knew they would respond, represented to him, for an instant, the long years that they had lived here together, they and he they, the thieves, he, their accomplice. Without doubt, if it had been his father's footstep that approached, and if, the door being opened, he had been confronted with a person of his own sex, his anger would have wreaked itself in some irreparable outburst. Fortunately, the old man was not in the apartment. Eugene heard, through the thin door, the light step of his mother, arid when the bolt had slidden back, he found, to welcome him, the eyes and the smile of the old woman tKose eyes whose painful feverishness he understood now, that smile which played over features whose change he had studied for days : to-day he knew its cause. And suddenly, before this feeble creature, who had carried him in her breast, who had fed him with her milk, ill, because of remorse for the crime she had committed for his sake, the son felt his indignant revolt stop short, break down, dissolve in a poignant emotion that made him tremble from head to foot. 64 THE DAY OF RECKONING Meantime the old mother, whose aged eyes, in the half darkness of the little anteroom, had not seen his face clearly, reclosed the door with the accustomed precau- tions, and began relating to him, as usual, the humble domestic chronicle of her home. "If I had only known," she said, "that you would come this morning, I would have had a good breakfast for you, eggs cooked with tomatoes, as you like to have them. I saw some fresh eggs at the market in the rue Monge when I was there this morning. And your father has just now gone out. He was not very well this morning. He has his suffocating fits all the time. You must examine his heart. But, my child, what is the matter with you ? " As she talked, she had followed him into the dining room, and now looking at him in the broad light, she became aware that her son was suffering from some extraordinary emotion. "My child!" she repeated. "My child! Eugene! Ah!" She ceased speaking. The cry, which came from her mother's heart, warned by the most overwhelming of intuitions, stopped short before the explosion of despair of him to whom she spoke. Corbieres had dropped into a chair and burst into convulsive sobs. To find himself knowing what he now knew thus in the midst of these humble objects among which he had lived, in this atmosphere which had been that of all his youth, was THE DAY OF RECKONING 65 more than he could bear, and he was swept away by the wave of violent emotion which rose within him. It may be that this outbreak of tears saved him from madness and suicide, breaking through the frightful tension which had seemed to shrivel up his whole being; and in this little domestic spot, where all the successes of the schoolboy and the student had been feted, the mother listened with terror to that storm of sobs and stifled cries which a man's extreme suffering utters. As to its cause, the unhappy woman could scarcely have a doubt. Long had she dreaded the discovery by her son of the crime she and her husband had committed committed for him, but, all the same, a crime ! And she said, leaning over him, throwing her arms about him, herself almost frantic : " My Eugene, it is I, it is your mother ! Look at me. You are suffering ? What is it ? Why do you weep ? Ah ! tell me " Then, with violence : " Speak to me ! Whatever you have to say to me, say it ! You hurt me too much " She had made this last appeal with such a fierce energy of maternal love, that it had in it that irresist- ible suggestion which goes to the very depths of the soul and compels confession. The man raised his head and said to her, putting into the words all his grief, but, also, all the tenderness which now mingled with it,- 66 THE DAY OF RECKONING "My poor mother, I have just come from the rue du Faubourg-Saint-Jacques." She made no answer. Against his will, after having spoken to her, he had looked at her. He saw her re- coil, her aged hands outstretched as if to push some- thing away, and she became so frightfully pale that he thought she might be dying. The physician was aroused in the son, and in his turn, he sprang toward her, calling her by the same name that he would have used twenty years before, if he had seen her grow pale like that. " Mamma ! " he cried. " Leave me alone," she said, still shrinking away from him until she had reached the other side of the room. Then she turned, covered her face with her hands, and knelt to pray. When she rose to her feet, after some time, she had in her eyes, upon her brow, around her mouth, a kind of serenity in the midst of despair, which was a very marked contrast with the expression of deep- seated worry which had caused her son anxiety for so many years. "It is better so," she moaned, with a strange exalta- tion. "It has stifled me for too long. God has been merciful to me. Yes," she continued, with still more ardour, " I have felt that it would be deliverance if you knew, if I could talk to you, explain to you, if I had this suffering in the present life ! You would have known it at the day of judgment, when all secrets will be revealed, THE DAY OF BECKONING 67 and then it would have been too horrible." Closing her eyes and shuddering, she went on : " I am ready to drink the cup. The good God has given me strength. Tell me all, Eugene, tell me all that you know ; and I will tell you what is true and what is not. You must obey me, my child, because I am your mother, who has loved you only too well. Question me, I command you, that there may be nothing between us now but the truth " "I will try," Eugene said, after a moment's silence. He felt, in the presence of the suddenly firm attitude of her whom he knew so anxious, so hesitating, a senti- ment of respect, all the more strange because he had come to have an explanation which, in itself, was an outrage. But there is in the heroic acceptance of cer- tain trials a secret grandeur, before which even the judge who condemns must bow; and it was with this emotion the noblest that he could have at that moment, the only one which could save him from moral parricide in this interrogatory that he went on, " Is it true that the wretched outcast who lives over there, in the rue Faubourg-Saint-Jacques, this Pierre Robert, is the illegitimate child of a man who once befriended my father ? " " It is true," she said ; " he is the son of M. Pierre Eobert Haudric. That is why he has his name. This M. Haudric was your father's foster-brother. Your grandmother was his nurse at Peronne. It is he who gave us our place in the office." 68 THE DAY OF RECKONING "Then," resumed the son, who could not find words to express the hideous fact, " the rest is true also ? " "That M. Haudric intrusted to us a sum of money for this son ? That is also true." " And that you have used it for me ? " Eugene asked in a faint voice, scarcely audible, as if he feared if he should hear his own words he might again be seized with a frenzy of revolt against that disgrace with which he felt himself covered. And it was almost inaudibly that she answered him, " It is true." Then, supplicating, with clasped hands she went on : " Listen to me, Eugene, listen : we have been very guilty ; but to understand us, you must know all ; and, first, that this son of M. Haudric had already caused his father great anxiety. He was in- telligent, but a worthless fellow even while a boy in school. On this account M. Haudric said to Corbieres, ' He must not have anything before he is thirty except just the money indispensable for his education.' The sum he fixed was twelve hundred francs a year. The entire principal was thirty-six thousand francs. We were not to let him know us because M. Haudric had a wife. The mother of Pierre Robert was a near relation of his wife's, an own cousin. How could he have been guilty of such a fault, and he such a worthy man ! I used to judge him very severely, but I know now that I was wrong, and that we should judge no one. He had other children, and it was his wish that THE DAY OF BECKONING 69 the secret should die with him. I explain all this to you that you may understand how we came to be tempted. Your father was to keep watch upon the boy from a distance. The first year we sent him his allowance as we ought, and we knew that he lived in the Latin Quarter, with disreputable women, going about from one cafe* to another, attending no lectures, nor working at any useful thing. He was already a drunkard, at nineteen! The second year we again sent his money ; he did the same and even worse. Your father made inquiries and learned that he had contracted many debts. The third year," she stopped a moment, then, with the fervour of one consummating her sacrifice, continued; "the third year was the time for your military service. That you might be let off with only one year, we needed to pay fifteen hundred francs. We had not the money. Our poor little savings seven thousand francs, laid aside, sou by sou had been lost in a bad investment. You were so industrious. You had done so well in reaching the point where you then were. What could we do? We could not endure the thought that your studies must be interrupted ; and it was not merely the question of a longer or shorter military service, but of all the future. Oh ! if the other had been like you; if we had been able to feel that the money would not be wasted on him, that he would use it to become somebody, the temptation never would have 70 THE DAY OF RECKONING taken hold of us. I know, we had not the right. The money was his, not ours. But you were so worthy of it, Eugene, and he so unworthy ! And we yielded " "And you never thought," Eugene said, "that just because of this very feebleness of character that other had more need of the money than I ? Did you never say to yourselves that, in taking away this little prop- erty, you left him more helpless; that, with his lack of energy, having no means, he would fall lower and lower, and I, your son, would be the person responsible for this ? " "You?" cried the mother. "You, you responsi- ble ? Don't say it, my child, don't think it ! Neither you nor your father," she continued, smiting her breast as she did in church. "I take it all upon myself. It was I who had the idea of using a part of the money for your military service. It was I who persuaded Corbieres. He did not wish to do it, and I urged him. Then he proposed to go on sending the allowance, taking it out of the principal. I pre- vented him. I was afraid that there would not be money enough left for your studies. And so it was done. I tell you, I loved you too well, more than my eternal salvation, more than God. Here was my sin. The rest followed naturally. I knew that I should lose my soul, but it was for you. It is ten years, Eugene, ten years since I have been to confession, THE DAY OF BECKONING 71 for fear the priest might tell me to give back what was left of the money. You might need it. Yes, I have loved you too well, my child; and through you God has punished me from the very first. Not that you have ever caused me pain, you, perfection upon earth ! But for that very reason, because you were so perfect, I began to have an anxiety, a presentiment, that this would not last, that we should not succeed, that you would be taken away, suddenly, in the midst of youth and hope. I assure you, if we had had diffi- culties, if you had been less industrious, I should not have had this impression of a threat always hanging over us because of what we had done. I tried to get rid of this terror by punishing myself voluntarily; your father the same. After he had allowed himself to be persuaded by me, he deprived himself of every- thing, tobacco, coffee, and he eats no more than just enough to keep himself alive. We can do ourselves the justice to say that we took nothing for ourselves. But for all I fasted and mortified the flesh, I could never get rid of the idea that the day would come when I should be struck through you. The years have passed, Eugene, and have brought me only reason to love you more, and be more and more proud of you. And the more I was happy through you, the stronger grew the feeling that I had not the right to this happiness. I hardly know how to express it. Every success of yours, every time you gave us reason to rejoice, it 72 THE DAY OF RECKONING was as if the debt grew larger. You can see that I was right in thinking that we should have to pay it all some day, since I am talking now like this. This thought had grown so strong and haunted me so, that two years ago I thought I would try to get a little relief from it. Your father and I knew that the other was in the regiment, and then in a school at Versailles, and had been expelled for misconduct. Then we had lost sight of him. I had the idea that if we could find him and restore to him, not the whole but some- thing could help him, I should be relieved from part of the burden, should no longer have this terror at my heart. And Corbieres sought for him, and at last found him. Why did I also want to see him? I could not help it. It seemed as if I must have him before my eyes. Then I felt that I was having my punishment. When I saw what he had become, remorse seized me, and I was afraid, not for ourselves, but for you. I said to myself what you said to me just now, that perhaps, with this money of which we had de- frauded him, he would not have fallen so low. I no longer saw in this use of the money an unlawful thing merely; I saw that it was a crime. You understand the rest. My anxiety was so great that this man could not help noticing it. Before his death, M. Haudric had written to him what his intentions were, but with- out giving his own name or ours. He knew that a little money had been left for him. Two years he THE DAY OF KECKOXING 73 had received an allowance, but after that nothing. He guessed it all ; and for the last fourteen months we have lived with the idea that he would do what he has done this morning, that he would speak to you, and that you would judge us, condemn us, despise us. Ah ! " she continued, in passionate supplication, "judge me, condemn me, despise me, Eugene, but not your father! Spare him. He is not guilty, I swear to you. It was I who planned it all and carried it all out. I am the only guilty one. The good God knows this, and the proof is, that He has permitted you to find me alone here. I should not have dared to ask Him for that. It was more than I deserved. But He has forgiven me now, I am sure of it. I have suffered so much. I can bear it now. I can go to confession and com- munion. Ah, Eugene, have pity upon your father!" "I have not the right to judge either you or him," Eugene said. This man, habituated by his profession to contact with suffering, was entirely overcome before this abyss of misery, on whose edge he had lived all his youth without seeing it, or even suspecting it. Neither had he suspected the frenzy of this mother's love, whom he, of all men, could not possibly condemn. He had before him a human heart laid bare, bleeding and whose? That of his own mother. How had she suf- fered, this poor soul ; and how repentance and faith had marked her with their strong touch ! How in her secret punishment she had been washed from her sin! She 74 THE DAY OF RECKONING accepted all her chastisement, she claimed it all, taking everything upon herself, only eager to expiate for both, anxious to spare her accomplice the old companion of her life this death-blow which had now fallen upon her. In what recess of his heart could her son have found the strength to judge her, or to act otherwise than he did act ? He went to her, and clasping her in his arms, "Mamma," he said, "my dear mamma, suffer no longer, weep no longer. All can be wiped out, can be made good. I shall be a rich man. I will pay the money back. I will save this unhappy man. Look at me. Smile once more. You know you can believe what I say. I swear to you that I have in my heart for you nothing but affection and respect. Your tears have washed everything away, and I will do what remains to be done. And we shall all be happy, I promise it to you." She had laid her head against the young man's shoulder, and she heard him through without making any reply, only shaking her poor white head, with a gentle movement that seemed to say "no" to those hopeful promises the resigned " no " of the dying to whom one talks of exciirsions that they will never make, of pleasures that they will never enjoy. And this mute negative expressed so fully the truth of an irremediable distress that at last he was silent too, still keeping the old head against his shoulder, with many a caress, until suddenly a well-known sound made them separate THE DAY OF BECKONING 75 abruptly. A hand was introducing a key into the lock in the door of entrance. It was the father, returning home. "Courage, mamina," Eugene said, "I promise you that he shall not know " "And I kept my promise," he said to me, when we met later, and he related to me all that had taken place, " with what difficulty you may imagine. I went into the next room to dry my eyes and tranquillize my face. Then I heard my father's voice, asking, ' Eugene is here ? That is his hat.' And my mother said, ' Yes, he is look- ing for a book in the library. It was very fortunate that he came in this morning ; I was very ill after you went out. He has been questioning me. But it is noth- ing.' Her pious falsehood gave me an excuse for appear- ing with red eyelids and signs of distress in my face. Otherwise my emotion must have betrayed me. I left them immediately. I could bear the strain no longer. Would you believe this, it was the first hour of my being alone that was the hardest of all. I walked on, uncon- sciously, not knowing whither I went. I could have wished to get away from myself, never to encounter my own thoughts again. It seemed to me that they were no longer mine, that I had stolen them, had stolen my intel- lect, my ideas, all the best that is in me. These years of study that had made me what I am, this science that I had so loved, this culture I was so proud of I repeated to myself that it was all stolen, stolen, stolen ; that I had had it all at another's expense ; with another's 76 THE DAY OF RECKONING money ; and that other, I saw him again in my thoughts in that vile room, with his degraded face, speaking those brutal words, and all his debasement recoiled upon me. In vain I said to myself what my mother had said to me : that I was not responsible for it. There are things that no more admit of argument than life or death. It is so, or it is not so. This responsibility was upon me, was within me. If you chanced to learn that a jewel which had been given to you, a ring, had been obtained by a murder, you would not wear it for a moment, you would pluck it off, you would throw it from you, that you might not have blood upon your hands. But in my case, can I pluck out my brain, and with it all that comes to me from this other man's murder? For it is a murder what they have done ! There are other ways of assas- sinating besides with a pistol or with poison. You can kill a living creature by taking from him all that would have made him live. It was this, at the first moment, that maddened me with shame and grief; that this stolen money had become part of myself, of my mind ; that I could not give back these funds which had been thus misused for my benefit. But I will restore them ; I will do it ! " " Now you are reasonable," I said ; " your poor mother was right when she said to you that you were not respon- sible for what they had done for you, she and your father. Believe me, your duty is perfectly simple, and you discovered it at once when you followed the guid- THE DAY OF BECKONING 77 ance of your heart, which led you to have pity upon your mother, to spare your father's old age this mortal grief, and to relieve the poor fellow in the Faubourg- Saint-Jacques. You owe to him, first of all, a restitu- tion of the money which is his, and then to assist him to free himself from this terrible slavery, to cure him of the alcohol habit into which he has fallen, into which he would have fallen, whether poor or rich, you may be certain. If you succeed in this, you will be clear, upon my honour ! }) 11 No," he said, and I saw in his steadfast eyes that same admirable ardour of spiritual life which had made me his friend at once, on that day in the Luxembourg garden; "no," he insisted, "that is not enough." And as if, by a mysterious mental telepathy, at this moment of solemn confidence, the same thought came back to the minds of both of us. " You remember," he said, " when we met each other again, after we had left school, our discussions about ideas and the reasons which had led me to begin the study of medicine? I said to you that I hungered and thirsted after certainty, and that I believed I had found it, in a kind of alternative, after the manner of Pascal. Do you remember it? I dreamed of a way to pass my life that would be jus- tifiable whether there were or were not a God ; whether or not free agency ; whether another life or annihi- lation. Well! I have come to a moment when this double hypothesis is no longer possible to me. I am T8 THE DAY OF RECKONING driven into a choice between the alternatives. You speak of money restored and of care bestowed. But though I should pay this man the amount twenty times, thirty times, a hundred times over, though I should be able to rescue him from his frightful vice, how shall I restore to him his youth, all his lost possibilities, how re- pair the irreparable? If there is no God, this is my condition. But if there be a God, and if human action has another horizon than ours, I might merit something for this wretched man. This is not the first time that this idea has haunted me. Since I have seen the sisters in hospitals, taking care of the patients, with no other support than the idea that they were meriting for others, I have reflected much on what theologians call reversi- bility. The whole question is, Does experience show us this phenomenon in nature, or does it not? For some years it has seemed to me the sole interpretation of very many things, and I defy you to explain otherwise the severe trial from which I now suffer. Yes, or no? Am I smitten for my parents' crime ? And this Robert himself, of what is he the victim but of his father's wrong-doing? How many of these allotments have I seen ! And, behind them, there must be a Power which allots. If there are reversions of evil, there must be also a reversion of good. These are not theories, they are experience. And a matter of experience, also, is this inevitable justice, in terror of which my poor mother has lived these ten years by which she has now been THE DAY OF BECKONING 79 stricken down, through me, as she says. Behind justice, there must be a judge. Behind the day of reckoning, a creditor." " And you infer ? " I said. " I infer," he rejoined, " that if there is no God I can- not make good the loss. I can if He exists. Ah ! would that I could believe in Him," he added, with a sigh that I still hear after sixteen years. YES, it is now sixteen years since Eugene, under the immediate stroke of the events which I have related, expressed to me these convictions, whose logic I do not discuss ; and in these sixteen years he has arrived, through what inner storms I have never known, at the solution which he indicated to me in this conver- sation a solution which he so passionately desired, while as yet his mind did not fully surrender to those reasons of the heart that cried out in him. I repeat what I said at first : I am but a witness narrating, and expressing no opinion. Eugene to-day has neither father nor mother. Both are dead : she, appeased by her son's forgiveness; he, having never suspected that his son knew all. Pierre Robert is dead, also, although Corbieres strove hard to preserve his life. And Cor- bieres himself his colleagues saw, with an amazement that years have not dispelled, shortly after these three 80 . THE DAY OF BECKONING deaths, which occurred in rapid succession, abandon his envied position as hospital physician, his important Parisian clientele, the certainty of honours of every kind, to enter the congregation of the Brethren Saint- Jean de Dieu, devoted, as is well-known, to the service of the sick. I was far away from Paris at the time of this decision, and it is easy to see that, in any case, I should never have ventured to question him. We have not ceased to see each other, however, and when by chance, in travelling in the south of France, I pass through Marseilles, where the Order has a large house, I never fail to visit their hospital, and to see Father Saint Kobert. Under the black robe of the brethren, I find my old fellow-student in philosophy, the savant destined to a European renown, the child of the two poor parents whom parental love led into crime. And at each visit I find him more and more tranquil, more and more irradiated by that certainty which he so eagerly sought, with a freer expression in his eyes, which are still singularly youthful. And I comprehend two things : first, that he has now entire and absolute faith ; and next, that, in putting his science at every one's service, a wealth lavished because he does not regard it as his own, he has discovered what was perhaps the only way to solve the saddest problem I have ever seen set before a man. He makes good the trust to which his parents were unfaithful; and, since he remains even under his frock a lover of classic THE DAY OF BECKONING 81 souvenirs, he quotes to me sometimes it would be his only proselytism, if there were not his example also the saying of the Phoenician merchant, cast by storm upon the shore of Attica, where he meets a philoso- pher, " I came to port in making shipwreck." Of all the men of my generation, I have never been sure whether it were he whom I pitied, or whom I envied, the most. DECEMBER, 1898. II OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY I A PARISIAN FAMILY: THE HUSBAND IF you read many newspapers and who of us, now- adays, has not this habit of wasting one hour of his morning and another of his evening to discover in half a dozen journals the same inaccurate information, the same ardent sophistry, the same unjust partialities ? you will have seen a hundred times, a thousand times, the names of M. and Mine. Hector Le Prieux. Both of them figure, and with good reason, in the front rank of those who are called by common consent Parisian notabilities : he, as one of the veterans of the dramatic feuilleton and chronique boulevardidre, she, though the wife of a mere journalist, as a fashionable woman, who gives grand dinners that are mentioned by the daily press, and is never absent from the first performance of a new play or the opening of an exposition or, in short, from any of those functions where that special, indefinable "All Paris " which foreigners and people from the country dream about is on view. This "All Paris" is not 86 86 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY " society " ; the elements which make it up are too com- posite for this heterogeneous mixture ever to repre- sent, even imperfectly, the world of fashion. Still, it is a world, and has its exclusions, its manners, its hierarchy. The "beautiful Mme. Le Prieux," as she is still called, despite her forty years and over, must be surely one of its queens, if this royalty be decreed from frequency of mention in the reports of this almost daily parade. But to be very celebrated, it has been said, is to be misunderstood by a great number of people. The seeming paradox is as true of this odd Parisian celebrity as it is of celebrity of every other kind. Do you sometimes take the trouble to think of the married life that two persons, so plunged in the social whirl as the Le Prieux, are likely to have when you read, nearly every day, the wife's name in the " Society Notes," arid the husband's at the foot of an article. If you do, I will wager that these are the images which present themselves to your mind: him you imagine after the legendary type of the boulevardier, of doubtful fidel- ity as a husband, more or less a man of pleasure, duel- list, frequenter of green-rooms in second-class theatres, habitue of gambling saloons ; her you fancy after the no less legendary type of the Parisienne in fashionable novels, thoughtless even to "bad form," if she be not absolutely disreputable. You are ready to believe anything of them except that the brilliant Bohemianism of such a couple can be legitimately associated with the idea of OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 87 a hearth and a home. And in thus thinking you are at once right and wrong, as is usually the case when opinions are too broadly generalized. You are wrong as to this individual instance, for Hector Le Prieux, journalist though he be, is, at the same time, the very best husband that ever a respectable and anxious middle class father could have wished for his "young lady"; and Mme. Le Prieux, in respect to conjugal fidelity, is the most irreproachable of wives. You are right as to the principle, as to the paucity of chances for serious and solid happiness that married life offers, lived under such conditions and in such an atmosphere. The domestic life of the Le Prieux rests, indeed, upon an anomaly, which must be explained in order to render intelligible the little emotional drama to which these first reflections, and those which are to follow, form the long, but needful, preamble. More- over, to relate the history of this couple will give to this very simple little story its full value as a social lesson. The reciprocal situations of Mine. Le Prieux and her husband do not result from the husband's rather unusual profession. If he were making at the Bourse, in business, or in manufactures, the twelve or fourteen thousand dollars a year that he now earns by the heavy labour of journalism, the singularity of his relations with his wife would be quite the same. This strange household, whose desolating scourge is, we shall see, that special malady of the day, the passionate 88 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY desire for the same luxury that others have, is exceptional only in its circumstances. This desire to shine to the very extremity of one's means, this wish to rise above one's class, to equal, in every respect and at any price, in their mode of living, their surroundings, their pleasures, those whose station is next higher than one's own, what else is this but an individual form of the great democratic degeneracy ? One hesitates to use expres- sions so serious when it is a question of such an every- day incident, and of people who believe themselves so simple and natural. But, if you reflect, the broad changes in manners which history records are nothing more than this : an indefinitely multiplied addition of minute individual habits, like a vast tide, which is nothing more than the advance of many milliards of tiny waves. At the moment when begins this drama, without great events and yet tragic, of which I speak, that is to say, in the month of January, 1897, this family, the Le Prieux, had already been in existence twenty-three years, Hector at that time Leprieux in one word, so spelt before it began to figure in the " Society Notes " having married Mile. Mathilde Duret in 1874. The marriage was celebrated in a very simple way, and was far from giving any hint of the future elegance of the " beautiful Mme. Le Prieux," in two words. Scarcely was the ceremony mentioned by the two newspapers on which the journalist was at that time employed. This reticence had been desired by Hector himself, anxious OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 89 to avoid all allusion to the recent financial disaster in which the father of his fiancee had perished. So many occurrences of this kind have taken place since then! No one, assuredly, remembers to-day that dar- ing Armand Duret who, just before and just after the fall of the Empire, set on foot such extensive and venturesome enterprises, founded with so much nourish the Credit Departemental, displayed such inso- lent luxury, controlled so many newspapers, and ended in a horrible scandal, with ruin and suicide. The widow and daughter of this unfortunate speculator were but just able to secure, after his death, a little income of eight hundred dollars, no more than enough to keep them from dying of hunger amid the few pieces of furniture that had escaped the hammer of the auc- tioneer and appraiser. On his part, his work for the two newspapers gave Hector a thousand dollars a year, as follows: on one of his two journals he had the posi- tion of reporter of the courts, with a salary of four hun- dred and eighty dollars ; to the other he furnished, under an assumed name, a semi-weekly courrier de Paris, at five dollars the article, to wit, five hundred and twenty dollars annually. Three farms, leased in cooper- ative farming, which he had the good sense to retain in the Bourbonnais, his native province, represented the least aleatory but most slender portion of his income, bringing in, on average, a hundred and eighty dollars yearly. These figures suffice to explain why it was at 90 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY once decided that the young couple should live with the mother. The two women demonstrated to the journal- ist, profoundly ignorant of the affairs of everyday life, that there was, in this family combination, a certainty of economy. Mme. Duret, the widow, insisted, above all, on the necessity of avoiding the purchase of new furni- ture. Up to the time of his marriage, Hector had occu- pied a furnished room in a little hotel in the rue des Martyrs, near his two newspaper offices. " Mamma is so kind ! She will let me have her salon for my day," Mathilde had said, with a gratitude that moved her lover to tears, while he might have perceived, in this simple phrase, what a conception of their joint future his fiancee already had. But where could the young man, who did not know the true price of anything, have learned to understand character, the most difficult lesson of all? Himself an orphan, he had no person who could outline for him, in advance, the curve of his conjugal future, and indicate to him what serious consequences would result from little faults of generalship made early in his married life. Every- thing contributed to render him the slave that he was destined to remain his life long, without being conscious of it : his being thus alone, then his education, his turn of mind and feeling, everything, even to his race, even to those first hereditary traits of temperament, which are all the stronger in us because we ourselves are scarcely conscious of them. OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 91 I have said that Le Prieux to give him hence- forward the semi-ennoblement of the separate Le was a native of the Bourbonnais. His very name betrayed his native province. In. the patois of Central France, the peasant, fluent of speech, who is sent to carry wedding invitations from hamlet to hamlet, is called to this day a prieux or a sermonneux. Was this rdle of rustic messenger filled with special unction by one of Hector's peasant ancestors ? The modest archives of Chevagnes, his native village, bear no testimony to such a fact. They do, however, attest that the Leprieux have been known at Chevagnes for many generations with this sobriquet as a patronymic. They must have lived there for many centuries, for their descendant with his head broader than it is long, his rather flat face with its round chin, his smooth hair remaining reddish brown under the gray, his brown eyes, his powerful neck and broad shoulders, his solid torso and short stature presents the perfect type of the Keltic peasant who occupied this part of France when Caesar appeared here. It is an autochthonous race, whose characteristics remain strikingly the same through history : a sagacious mind, without strong creative imagination, a will patient but without initiative, what scholars now call the gregarious spirit, a desire not to act alone and almost a necessity for being led. It is true that it is dangerous to generalize in respect to characteristics like these. And still, the annals of Auvergne and the Bourbonnais seem fully to 92 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY justify us in this generalization. In the case of this latter province, with which we are especially con- cerned, through one of the humblest of her sons, the predominance of the Keltic element impresses an evident unity upon her history. Who sprang from this province, during the long period of the Middle Ages and the ancient regime, when local independence gave scope for a freer expansion of native powers ? There were almost no great soldiers, or very few ; almost no, or very few, great artists as if the race were repugnant to such excessive development. On the other hand, men of prudent minds, lawyers and churchmen, were very nu- merous. When a man is of his native land to the degree that Hector is, its virtues and its defects always reappear, even though he spend his life amid surround- ings and follow a profession the most opposed, it would seem, to this influence of the ancestral soil. Read one of Hector's dramatic feuilletons, or one of his Causeries Parisiennes, and you will find the cautious mind, the narrow view, the judicial spirit, timidity, a slightly dull accuracy, and a somewhat paltry sagacity. His is a talent which too early lost its venturesomeness, and a character which too early became enslaved. While a passivity of soul, altogether hereditary with Hector, explains why the household authority must im- mediately have belonged to his wife, an enigma comes before us which must be solved before showing this control of Mine. Le Prieux over her husband's sayings OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 93 and doings : why, with this innate lack of the spirit of enterprise, out of the many safe public careers with fixed salary and pension, which are open in our time to the Frenchman of sheeplike tendencies, choose the most adventurous, the most fruitful in things unex- pected, the least conformed to respectable and prosaic prudence ? But here also, where he seemed to give proof of courage and originality, the young man had simply proved his docility to influences, and his lack of confidence in his own strength. And in this way : the most unforeseen of chances had brought it about that the father of Hector, established as a doctor at Chevagnes, renewed acquaintance at the springs of Bourbon-Lancy, very near Chevagnes, with one of his old comrades in the hospital, who was himself living near Nohant, and was Mme. Sand's physician. Being invited to visit the Le Prieux, the Berrichon doctor talked much of his illus- trious patient in the presence of Hector, who was at that time finishing his course in rhetoric at the lycee de Moulins, and, like all the schoolboys of his age, secretly composed poor poetry. A passionate admirer of Lelia and Indiana, the young fellow ventured, after this con- versation, upon the first bold act of his life. (This present story will relate the second.) He wrote to the mistress of Nohant a letter, in which he begged her advice as to the direction of his religious ideas. With that admirable generosity of the pen which she kept to the end of her life, notwithstanding her vast literary 94 OTHER PEOPLE S LUXURY labours, George Sand replied to the schoolboy. She did not anticipate that the four pages of her letter, in the big round chirography, slightly backhanded, of her later years, would exercise upon the future of her improvised correspondent a most fatal influence. He replied to the letter, and, emboldened, sent her some of his verses. The former friend of Alfred de Musset was nearly as saga- cious about poetry as she was about politics. To make up for that, however, she excelled in building romances. She constructed one concerning the young Bourbonnais rhymester, solely because he had embodied in mediocre verse a picturesque local legend. She saw him inaugu- rating in France that provincial rustic poetry which had always been a favourite dream with her. She encouraged him by praise that dangerous, imprudent praise, of which famous artists are not as sparing as they should be. They do not measure its influence upon a beginner's imagination. A visit at Nohant, where he was received with the most cordial good-nature, still further turned the youth's head, who now believed in his future as a poet. The result was that, instead of beginning his medi- cal studies on leaving school, as his father desired, he begged to be allowed to take up law, seeing in that pur- suit an opportunity for studies less definite and more ca- pable of being harmonized with his secret wishes. Then, upon his father's death, which very soon followed, the son, free to act his own pleasure, he had lost his mother when a child, quickly turned into money the small OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 95 inheritance left to him. In this first fervour of hope, the three farms, which later constituted the solid portion of his means, were spared only on account of the diffi- culty of cancelling the leases. The study of law, which from motives of economy had been begun at Dijon, was abandoned; and the pupil of Mme. Sand established himself at Paris, to lead there the life of a candidate for literary fame. This event for the departure of young Le Prieux to Paris made a sensation in the district of Chevagnes, where the late doctor had as many self-styled cousins, that is to say, almost gratuitous patients, as there are hamlets in this Bourbonnais Sologne this event, then, occurred in 1865. The result was as you foresee : once more Icarus burned in the fire of reality the wax of his imprudent wings. In 1870, at the time of the war, dur- ing which he did his duty bravely and simply, Hector had published at his own expense two volumes of verse ; the Gen&ts des Brandes, and the Rondes Bourbonnaises, and also a novel, the Rossigneu, this is the patois name of a red ox, the whole composed in that intentionally rustic and provincial colouring which is a sort of conven- tionality peculiar to authors who have come to Paris for the purpose of being provincial. Taking them all to- gether, the three works had sold to the extent of a hun- dred and fifty copies. Meanwhile, the author had learned to his cost what brutal positivism, implacable vanity, and base self-inter- 96 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY est are concealed under the pompous declamations or the whimsical paradoxes of artistic Bohemia. Ilegarded as rich and truly so, by comparison in the reunions of the Latin Quarter, and, afterward, of Montmartre, whither his literary aspirations naturally led him, the country youth had soon experienced all the numer- ous varieties of systematic exploitation which the argot of the beer shops disguises under the familiar, joking name of " tape." He had been the obliging comrade who cannot enter a cafe without five or six of the men present coming to sit down at his table, to rise, after long dis- course upon the high aesthetics, leaving him to pay for innumerable orders whose saucers pile themselves up in monumental columns; then, when the host of the pre- ceding evening next day enters the cafe, he hears the refined aesthetes pass judgment upon his work and him- self, with a " fa n'existe pas " (" he doesn't exist "), which plunges like cold steel into the most sensitive region of his self-love. Le Prieux had also been the "gogo" who takes shares to the value of twenty -five louis in a review destined " to defend young authors," then finds in it some cruelly allusive article referring to himself, with the vexation of having paid for being slashed as other men pay for being commended. He had been also, not once but fifty times, the Maecenas, at first sympathizing, later browbeaten, who begins by opening his purse to professional literary beggars ; then, at his first refusal, encounters the insults of rascals whose OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 97 impotent and arrogant laziness he refuses longer to feed. But why enumerate annoyances so common ? What happens less frequently is, that the young man who experiences them does not lose his mental balance. Fortunately, while Hector was striving to express in prose and verse, systematically and laboriously made simple, that poetry of the native soil which he had foolishly left, the native soil wrought in him unawares. The wary prudence of his peasant ancestors interpreted these strange experiences. He got out of them, by an obscure, irresistible instinct of self-preservation, a clear view of the conditions in which he must live, and he divined the surest way to put himself in har- mony with the conditions. He reflected seriously during the cruel campaign of 1870, in the field, and, later, in Germany, where he was a prisoner. Finding that he had reached, without any result, almost the limit of his small capital, he became aware that his dream of immediate fame was chimerical. He judged himself, as poet and as novelist; and while still pre- serving in petto a secret complacency as to his youth- ful efforts, he sought to postpone the realization of his ideal. He saw himself at the age of twenty-five, with- out property, without helpful friends, without a career begun. He said to himself that he must devote his life partly to art and partly to a profession. Now, con- sidering professions generally, he recognized that liter- 98 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY ature was as good as any, if it were followed with the virtues of assiduous labour and punctuality, which are necessary in them all.. Here was the master-stroke of the good sense which came from his peasant ancestry. He said to himself that a great newspaper is, after all, only a vast commercial workshop, involving a certain quantity of positive work, regularly executed. He resolved to be one of the good hands in one of these workshops, and he carried out his intention with a patience and a method no less worthy of the old farmers whose slow and sagacious energy reappeared in him under the most unexpected of forms. His first care was to profit by the forced dispersal of the literary groups of which he had more or less made part to isolate himself from almost all his former companions. Then, remembering that he had passed a part of his legal examinations, he had the courage to complete his studies, that he might be ad- mitted to the bar and then apply for a place on some small newspaper as chronicler of the courts. He obtained it, thanks to one of his comrades of the beer shop who, also acting with good sense, had gone into journalism. The punctuality with which Hector brought in his copy, the precision and clearness of his reports, with which he took great pains, the amenity of his character, soon made him appreciated in this first journal. The managing editor spoke highly of him to the proprietor, who was no other than Duret. OTHEK PEOPLE'S LUXURY 99 The latter desired to gather about him human tools, good and trustworthy secretaries, who would be to him intelligent collaborators in the political fortune which he hoped to rear upon his financial fortune. He made Le Prieux's acquaintance. Thus Hector entered, a petty reporter newly appointed, and by the back stairs, the princely house that Duret at that time possessed in the avenue de Friedland. The specu- lator was at once pleased with him, and, struck by his clear-headedness, formed the design of making him a confidential clerk. The tragic circumstances so well known and the collapse of the Credit Departe- mental, abruptly interrupting Duret's prosperity and driving him to suicide, seemed likely to put an end to all relations between Le Prieux and the two women who survived this disaster. Such was not, however, the case. He put himself completely at the service of the poor widow, who was only too happy to find, amid the frightful confusion of this ruin, the de- votion of the modest chronicler of the courts. The young man lavished his services, with the fervour of an ardent admiration for the beautiful and unfortunate Mathilde. It is easy to conjecture the rest : the increasing intimacy, and Hector's passion, at first too timid even to dare to hope ever to please ; the pathetic gratitude of the two women ; the almost frightened rapture of the lover before the suddenly discovered prospect of a possible union; and the result an inno- 100 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY cent and delicious idyl whose recollection, a quarter of a century after, made the heart of the middle-aged journalist beat as if he were still the humble beginner, twenty-nine years old, who superintended the transpor- tation of his clothes and his books to his mother-in- law's apartment a somewhat melancholy apartment, it is true, looking into a courtyard, far out in the rue du Rocher and scarcely dared to believe that his hap- piness was real. II A PARISIAN FAMILY : THE WIFE BUT, in truth, the first period of his married life was for Hector completely, absolutely happy. It lasted about seven years, and was the period during which he made his reputation, during which, also, Mme. Le Prieux formed an idea of her husband's work which was destined to have an unfortunate influence upon their common future. Mathilde was one of those women whose extraordinary stupidity and noble face make such a contrast that they confuse the observer without them- selves having need to dissimulate, especially if that observer be a lover. Her mother, a Mile. Huguenin, was a native of Aix-en-Provence ; her father was the son of a petty trader in the north. This crossing of races, so frequent in modern families that it is scarcely noticed, has often for result an heredity of contradictory ten- OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 101 dencies which in finding their equilibrium paralyze each other. Perhaps the cause of the decline of the race in Prance may be found in this continual mingling of north and south, of east and west, by intermarriage among persons too dissimilar in origin. From her father, Mathilde had retained the desire to shine, an implacable selfishness, and that unemotional nature which distinguishes gamblers of every kind, especially those of the Bourse. From her mother's family she had that admirable southern type which, when it is very pure, has all the fineness and elegance of a Greek coin. Her forehead, low and curving, joined the nose in that almost straight line which has so much distinction, and, under the masses of black hair, her small head revealed that long oval build in which is per- petuated the race of that homo mediterraneus, that fine and supple brown dolichocephalus, praised by anthro- pologists. With this, pretty teeth, white and regular, between lips perfect in their outline, a firm and dimpled chin, the neck set on like that of a figurine of Tanagra with a graceful curve at the back, the shoulders of Diana, the figure rather tall but well built, the feet and hands of a child, and that gait that the Arlesian women have rendered legendary. In whatever social position Fate has cast a creature thus endowed with great beauty, she only need be seen to exercise, even without adorn- ment, an irresistible prestige. Nothing could be more dangerous for a nature already inclined by instinct to 102 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY make an undue use of her own personality. An excess of continuous admiration quickly abolishes, in the women who are its object, all capacity of judging. It is with them as with princes too much nattered and artists too famous. These victims of their own success end by making their me the centre of the world, with a frank- ness at once simple and savage. In the case of Mathilde this autolatry had an excuse : Nature had completely denied her a faculty, less common indeed than we generally suppose, which for lack of a better term may be called the altruistic spirit, that power of forming an idea of another person's heart, understanding his ideas, detecting his shades of feeling. Behind this fine, noble masque of an antique goddess was hidden that kind of mind almost animal, very frequent in the south, whose thoughts one might say are purely objective. She had been flattered by Hector's devotion, without perceiving its secret principle the noble pity of this poet, all the more poet in action because he failed of being so in expression. She regarded as natural this triumph of her beauty, and, in consent- ing to become Mine. Le Prie-ux, honestly believed she was making a sacrifice to her mother, who, much more reasonable and much more emotional also, had insisted upon this union. Mme. Duret, on her part, had been really touched by the treasures of self-abnega- tion of which she recognized the existence in her daugh- ter's suitor. Herself enlightened by cruel experience, 103 she saw in Hector qualities precisely the opposite of the faults which had hurried her husband to his fright- ful catastrophe. She had, therefore, implored her daughter to accept a trustworthy protector; and the latter had consented, justifying to herself the humble character of this marriage as a self-immolation to her mother's welfare. Though it was but little that the young man brought into the family, still it was passing at once from eight hundred dollars a year to two thou- sand enough to employ at once a second servant and relieve this poor mother of part of her domestic cares. As to the inner drama which had been acted in the soul of the poet-aspirant now an artisan in prose; as to the secret aspirations that Hector still cherished of pursuing yet, amid his mercenary labour, the composition of some artistic work, a collection of poems, a volume of stories, a novel Mathilde had no suspicion of all this at the date of her marriage. Nor had she after twenty years of married life and before the occurrence with which this story deals. She believed, and to this day she still believes, that she has been the most irreproachable, the most devoted of wives. She takes pride in having "gained a posi- tion " for her husband, which means that she has something like five hundred visiting cards to leave in her own and her husband's name during the month of January ! She will die without being aware that she has sacrificed the most unusual, the most delicate heart 104 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY that man ever had to the most contemptible, the most selfish of all vanities a desire to play the part of a woman of fashion, and to be mentioned in these society articles of which I have spoken as the " beautiful Mme. Le Prieux." Perhaps you will no longer be inclined to smile at the epithet when we reach the end of this analysis and you will have seen to what real distress it corresponds. It must be owned that, in the first period of his married life, Hector began by enjoying this vanity, before suffer- ing from it. It is very seldom that family tragedies fail of having for their first authors the very persons who are destined to be their martyrs. It is the fathers and husbands, the wives and mothers, who most frequently develop, in their children or in the persons who share their conjugal life, the faults of which one day they themselves will bitterly complain. True it is that so many faults are graces, at first, falsehood begins as compliance ; coquetry, as a desire to please ; hypocrisy, as reserve, and so on. During the first years, Hector saw with delight everything working together in his house and in his life to set off to its utmost the beauty of his young wife. How could he but rejoice, from month to month, from year to year, in increasing his labours, that he might be able to double the income with which they began ? What a happiness to give Mathilde those little luxuries so natural to a young and beautiful creature that it was brutal to deprive her of OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 105 them ! Between a bonnet at five dollars and an exquisite capote at fifteen, between a dress at thirty dollars and a costume, very simple indeed, at sixty, between a jacket or shoes bought outright and the same made to order, the difference in style is so great, and the difference in money so little ! At least, how could it fail to seem so, to a very loving husband, when the figures in his con- jugal account were thus translated: three hundred dol- lars more, annually, under the item of toilette, would mean twenty-four more articles to write, two a month, at ten dollars each ; or, forty-eight more at five dollars each, that is to say, one a week. One article more a week, that is nothing. And, quite naturally, less than a year after his marriage the journalist had added to his tasks one weekly letter each to two great country newspapers, and so Mine. Le Prieux's " tea-gowns " were provided for, without her even knowing of this increase of work. Now "tea-gowns," we must admit, require, of course, a salon in which to show them off. This salon supposes " a day " that "day" about which Mathilde had immediately spoken to her fiance. The " day " aforesaid supposes a man-servant to open the door, flowers in the vases, petits fours in dishes to offer with the tea or chocolate, lamps to make the room light. So many more expenses, in respect to which Hector would have been the more ashamed to hesitate for the reason that he was himself, also, the dupe of a strange retrospective illusion. Dur- ing the period of his engagement, whenever he chanced 106 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY to notice in the poor apartment in the rue du Kocher pieces of furniture which had once figured in the grand house of the millionnaire speculator, he felt an emotion akin to remorse. This remorse continued after his mar- riage. It was as if Mathilde, in becoming his wife, had sacrificed to him the possibility of again beholding these splendours. It seemed to him that this past of luxury gave the young woman a right to a broader life, more elegant, more conformed to her original habits. A like hypnotism emanated for Mathilde from these pieces of furniture and these bibelots, wreckage from her previous existence an existence still so recent that the fall from this Olympus of sumptuous things was like a dream to her. The mirage of former opulence, that mental malady common to those who have lost a for- tune, acted upon her, unconsciously to herself. It was to become, without her suspecting it, the ruling idea of all her thoughts and acts, and would lead her by degrees to produce a copy, a parody rather, of the life that would have been hers without the paternal downfall. The earliest satisfactions accorded to this nostalgia of the past took the form of little domestic expenses, which, taken together, represented two or three hundred dollars more for Hector to earn. But, almost immediately, the occasion offered for nearly doubling his income; an illus- trated journal offered him twenty dollars a week for a chronique to be signed with a pseudonym. He took O irony ! the name Clavaroche. OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 107 And now the man-servant was put into a modest livery: the flowers for the "day" came from a famous shop, and so did the petits fours; there were new lamps, and the chairs were re-covered; and all these elegances ended in an indispensable change of residence. From the dismal rue du Eocher, the tempter furniture, the draperies of evil advice, the bibelots too loaded with memories of the past, emigrated to a dainty little new house in the Monceau plain, rue Viete. Another engage- ment, this a daily one, to send every evening a hundred lines to a French newspaper in St. Petersburg, was to pay the rent. What is a hundred lines, when it is only to sum up, as fast as the pen can move, and for foreign readers, news that one breathes in with the air, in Paris ! And neither Hector nor his wife took any note of this new labour added to the rest. Two serious events, however, at this time prevented the Le Prieux household from going too far upon this expensive road of mock fashion. One was the birth of a daughter who was called Eeine, after her grandmother Duret ; the other was the death, after a very painful ill- ness, of Mme. Duret herself. The long detentions at home which were imposed on Mathilde, first by her con- dition, and then by her very slow recovery after the birth of her child, and after that by her mother's fatal illness and the period of mourning, deprived her of the opportu- nity to enlarge her circle of acquaintances. This circle, at that time, was quite limited. Not being Parisians by 108 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY birth, neither she nor her husband had that group of relatives in Paris which cousinship constitutes in the middle class as well as in the aristocracy ; and neither Hector, in the humble beginning of his literary life, nor the late Duret, in the ostentatious displays of his quickly gained and quickly lost wealth, had been able to attract any large group of acquaintances. The financial schemer had had at his entertainments, when he gave them, only chance guests, almost all now vanished with his millions. There exist, in Paris, hundreds of these demi-parasites, enigmatically called boscards, by fashionable irony, who form an escort to be had on demand, at the service of every fortune ample enough to admit of dinners of eighteen covers, and hunting parties, and balls with val- uable gifts as favours in the German, and a box at the opera. Among these professional boscards you will find men of rank, more or less damaged, in search of means to repair their fortunes ; intriguing artists in search of an order bust or portrait; brokers in evening dress, on the track of a profitable transaction ; foreigners with doubtful references, who play "the gentleman" with rather too decorative correctness. Add to this a staff of more or less compromised women, and of gam- blers, and, also, certain very practical epicureans frankly in search of nothing more than the good dinner, the choice cigar, the fine wines, and, in the season, pheasant shooting of the best kind. This population of sharpers is divided into gangs of different sorts, more or less OTHEK, PEOPLE'S LUXURY 109 choice in quality, according to the rank of the moneyed man whom it is proposed to boscarder. The gang gathered around Duret, a promoter of doubtful enter- prises, could have been only second-rate. It is the same with the guests of the nouveaux riches as with their maladies. The doctor's remark to his parvenu patient, the victim of excesses at table, "You are not entitled to have the gout ! " contains a whole philosophy of the social species. The shabby character of the boscards of the Duret gang was shown by their immediate desertion after his ruin, which ought to have disgusted Mathilde forever with that half-and-half position to which those are condemned who are determined to visit and enter- tain, without having a position fixed by birth and kin- ship. But no. This disenchanting experience had passed over the girl without being of any profit to the young woman. So true is it that vanity will not learn from experience, and precisely because of the lack which the etymology of the word indicates, that radical lack of solidity and truth, that desire to produce an effect, at any cost, even though one knows the effect to be deceitful and the people upon whom it is produced to be contemptible. Accordingly, the proofs of cynical ingratitude lavished upon her mother and herself, after their downfall, by those who luid been constant guests at the entertainments of the avenue Friedland, did not prevent Mme. Le Prieux, immediately after her marriage, 110 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY from making everything subordinate to a recovery of position. She lived only to invite and be invited, to receive and be received. If her father, in his brilliant days and with his millions, had at his house only para- sites of a low class, it may well be supposed that the persons with whom the wife of the journalist exchanged expensive civilities did not belong, to use the jargon of the day, to the creme de la cr&me, the gratin du gratin. There were three or four families, selected among those of Hector's fellow-journalists, who also had set up some- thing like an establishment. There were three or four others, recruited, through the agency of those just men- tioned, from among rich Parisian merchants ; for, since the profound modification or, it might be more correct to say, the complete disappearance of the great middle class, as it existed still at the beginning of the Second Empire, the men who have made fortunes in business find it difficult to create a social place for themselves, which leads them to seek the society, in some cases, of politicians, in others, that of authors and artists. There were also a few wives of lawyers, anxious to secure for their husbands favourable notice in the reports from the courts. There were but the enumeration of these gentry would be as wearisome as their companionship. They, however, composed " the salon. " of the little residence in the rue Viete a gallery to which Mathilde could act her part of the woman of fashion; a court over which she could reign ; a public from whom she could receive OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 111 that homage to her beauty the sole true passion of her life, to which an unforeseen circumstance was about to furnish opportunity for development in a broader scene. This circumstance, strictly a professional one, and but little freighted, it would seem, with social results, took place during the year 1883. The manager of a great Parisian newspaper offered to Le Prieux the post of dramatic critic, left vacant by the sudden death of the man who held it. Although the theatrical letter has no longer its old importance, since the next morning's report takes the place almost everywhere of the former Monday feuilleton, made famous by a Gautier, a Saint- Victor, a Janin, a Weiss, a Sarcey in earlier days, not to mention others still living, no position is more eagerly desired by journalists, and each vacancy calls out twenty candidates. Le Prieux had not even the trouble of making application. The sagacious plan that he had formed, in entering the profession, and to which he still remained faithful, was fulfilled step by step. He reaped the fruit of that quality which in all professions secures success the technical conscience. While the constant appearance of his name at the foot of articles, all carefully thought out and written, brought him celebrity, he acquired that mysterious power which we call authority by that very carefulness of his work, by the fairness of his judgments, and by the accuracy of his information. A word will tell the whole, to those 112 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY who know the incredible thoughtlessness with which newspapers are made up. Hector had never written about a book until he had run through it. Moreover, notwithstanding his evident luck, he had had, in his early days, the gift of not exciting envy. This obscure and implacable passion, the scourge of the literary exist- ence, has the strange perspicacity of attaching itself much less to successes than to persons. The man of great talent does not envy the man of inferior talent who succeeds where he himself has failed ; and it is the inferior man who, at the moment even of his own vic- tory, will envy the other in his failure. We are never truly jealous with that jealousy that seeks to injure its object of those whose superiors we, in our hearts, believe ourselves to be. This was Le Prieux's strength, at the beginning; neither by literary, nor personal, nor social advantages did he humiliate any man. Envy came later, with the fine acquaintances, the toilettes of madame, and her coupe hired by the month. In short, Hector's entrance upon dramatic criticism would have passed unnoticed, like himself, had he not immediately formed the habit of appearing at first per- formances with his young wife, whom very few of his comrades in the profession knew, as we have seen. The beauty of Mathilde, at this time scarcely twenty-eight years of age, was too brilliant not to be at once noticed in the well-worn crowd that frequents these great Pari- sian functions, where, as has been said, "it is always the OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 113 same persons who are getting killed." Among all those faces, killed, in truth, by late hours, by nervous excesses, by rouge and the rest, she obtained at once a very great success as something new. Hector, as dramatic critic, did not at first have the box or the baignoire available for invitations, which later his wife induced him to claim. Their places, at the Theatre-Franqais, the Vaudeville, the Gymnase, the Varietes, the Odeon,. being only bal- cony seats, all the opera-glasses in the house could freely scrutinize that beautiful face, of a type so pure, which, in repose, in fixed attention to the performance, was capa- ble of a marvellous assumption of emotion and intelli- gence. Mathilde would not have been the woman that she was if she had not been in every fibre of her inmost being aware of this triumph, and desirous to increase it by ex- tending it as far as possible. Nor would Paris have been Paris, had she not met among the habitual frequenters of first performances some one to make himself the Bar- num of this dawning success. These voluntary heralds of a triumph which they foresee, and enhance by tak- ing part in it, abound in this strange city, where there prevails something like a mania, a mad infatuation for whatever can shine, were it but for a day, in the change- ful sky of fashion. There are those who cry up books and pictures; others, foreign princes and explorers; others still, plays and pretty women. Let me say at once, so that no uncertainty may be possible and that, at least, Mme. Le Prieux may incur no unjust suspicion, 114 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY the Barnums of this latter sort are most frequently Platonic patitos. They have usually some thought at the back of their heads which has nothing to do with that which our fathers gayly called " la bagatelle." If they wish to profit by the success of the pretty woman whom they seek to bring forward, it is for reasons of vanity or interest. If they devote themselves to her, it is very discreetly, as a father or a brother, accord- ing to age. Their attentions consist in giving, at elegant restaurants, dinners at which she presides, and where she meets other women and other men, whom it is for her advantage to know, and even more for the advantage of her showman to cause her to know. If the Barnum begs an appointment with her, it is that he may accompany her as escort, and be seen with her, in some of the places where this special All Paris is on view: an Exhibition of Water-colours, a Flower Show, the opening of the Horse Show, or a special reception at the Academy. Usually, also, it is not the patronage of one elephant-driver that the pretty woman must endure, but there will be two or three, or four of them, who watch each other as jeal- ously as if they were really lovers instead of being merely, in some cases, persons seeking to promote their own interests, and, in others, only foolish, inoffensive little " snobs," of a species so peculiar that it really deserves a sketch. But this is not the place for it. To indicate, to the eyes of readers who are familiar OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 115 with the masks of la comedie parisienne, the cate- gory in which belonged the discoverer of the "beau- tiful Mme. Le Prieux," it suffices to mention his name. It was Cruce, the celebrated collector, that adroit sexagenarian who, having lost his fortune more than thirty years ago, obtained the means to support a very expensive way of living by the private sale of the objects of art in his collection, indefinitely and mysteriously renewed. He had been, in this character, one of the earliest frequenters of the Duret house; then, in the same character, one of the first to forget that the ruined speculator possessor through his agency of some precious, half -false bibelots had left behind him a wife and daughter. But meeting this daughter again, now become a regal beauty, his memory returned to him, and the more rapidly because Mathilde was now the wife of one of the great lords of the press, and at that particular moment Cruce was in search of gratuitous advertising for a sale which he had in view. He has, since then, carried out this intention ; we all -remember with what tact and address, and with what success! The old boulevardier had caused himself to be again presented to Mme. Le Prieux, tenderly recalling to her that he had known her "no taller than that." And it was under the auspices of this self-styled " friend of the family," who would have been repulsive to her had not the desire to shine stifled every other sentiment, that the 116 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY young woman entered upon her profession of being a great Parisian personality, whose balance-sheet must now be shown here. Dry as figures are, their brutal eloquence carries a power of instruction which any commentary would diminish. In 1897, then, I have already said that this was the period when the domestic drama took place at whose core we have placed these preparatory details, the annual expenses of the Le Prieux household were thus apportioned : sixteen hundred dollars rent (the little house in the rue Viete having been ex- changed for a large apartment in the rue du General- Foy, better suited for receptions) ; twenty-four hundred dollars for a carriage, the famous coupe by the month which made Hector as many enemies as he had fellow-journalists who went about in fiacres with its two horses for alternate use. How do with less where one must pay visits all day and go out every evening ? For wages reckon eight hundred dollars, keeping the number of servants as low as possible : a steward, chambermaid, cook, kitchen- maid, a "groom" for the antechamber or for errands, and extras for dinners and receptions. To this add twenty-four hundred dollars for the toilette of Mme. Le Prieux and her daughter, and four hun- dred for flowers, and we have seven thousand six hundred dollars ; to which must be added about a thousand for Hector's personal expenses. Notwith- OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 117 standing his old habits of economy, he is obliged to take a cab for himself when he returns from the theatre, and the ladies are using the carriage. Then there is his dress, in regard to which his wife is very punctilious. These are the thousand and one little expenses of his profession, from gratuities to the ouvreuses at the theatre to the five dollars that he must subscribe when one of his newspapers makes appeal to public charity, with lists for some "very Parisian" object. We have reached eight thousand six hundred dollars. If now you take into account that Mme. Le Prieux gives two great dinners a month, and that her table is remarkably good ; that she has three or four evenings of music and drama every season ; that her gifts are mentioned among the richest in the reports of a dozen marriages; also, that the family must live the rest of the time, that certain articles of furniture must be renewed, and that there must be provision for unforeseen expenses, for illness, for visits to the sea- shore, and who can tell what else, you will acknowledge that three hundred and twenty dollars a month will be no more than just enough, and we have slightly exceeded the twelve thousand a year which Hector earns an income which causes people to say of him that he has " arrived." Let us now go over the figures that represent in de- tail the husband's work, insisting, for the honour of the corporation of journalists, by turns too much extolled 118 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY and too much calumniated, upon the integrity of this hard-working penman. He has no knowledge of any schemes for making money; all he has ever received has been payment for work delivered. Le Prieux has, first, twenty-four hundred dollars a year as theatrical critic for, on an average, three articles a week, that is to say, twelve a month. He has left the courts, naturally, but is chroniqueur de tete in another great journal of the boulevard where he has large pay, fifty dollars an arti- cle. This gives him five thousand two hundred dollars a year, for two articles a week, eight a month, that is to say. Eemaining faithful to his early illustrated jour- nal, which has prospered like himself, he has thirty dollars an article for a weekly " Clavaroche" which means fifteen hundred and sixty dollars a year, and four articles a month. He sends a letter every fortnight to a South American newspaper once more, two arti- cles a month. He has the art criticism in a fifth news- paper, which, with the report of the Salon, requires from him about an average of thirty-six articles or para- graphs to be written during the year, or, again, three a month. A correspondence, daily and telegraphic, with the most important nouvellistes throughout the country, completes his total of receipts, which balances at least, so he believes very nearly the total of expenses, leaving him enough for a very small life insurance. This shows, if you will add the figures given above, an average of sixty articles a month, or seven hundred OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 119 and twenty a year. This is what the " beautiful Mme. Le Prieux " calls " having gained a position." Ill A PARISIAN FAMILY: THE DAUGHTER BUT how did Le Prieux himself regard this "posi- tion/' he, George Sand's former pupil, the man whom she used to call, in her letters, her " little Bourbon- nichon," the poet of lonely heaths and misty lakes, who came to Paris to win the fame of a Mistral of the Allier, and is now transformed, by hereditary prudence, and then by marriage, into a living machine for the making of copy. Had his nature also, unresisting and patient to the extent of docility, undergone the contagion of his wife's malady, that fever of worldly egoism which com- pels one forever to compare himself with his richer neigh- bour and to go on increasing his expenses, complicating his life, foolishly, sometimes tragically, sacrificing the reality to the appearance ? Or did he, on the other hand, remain, in the depths of his soul, the rustic, simple- minded as before, and witness the triumphs of his Mathilde as a lover who sacrifices himself with delight- to the tastes of her whom he adores, only too grateful if she deign to accept the sacrifice ? Or else, again, had he judged this woman, and did he now belong to the immense herd of resigned husbands, who make no at- tempt to struggle against the pressure of circumstances, 120 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY against the irresistible machinery in which they have become entangled ? Very shrewd the man who could have read the answer to these questions in the face of the indefatigable journalist. The young fellow from the cotmtry, timid and frank, had by degrees, as the years passed, since 1866, changed into a man circumspect in manner, distant, talking but little, except now and then to relate some anecdote of Parisian life, in a tone of the undeceived moralist, conformable to the character that he adopted in his chronicles, that of a Desgenais of the upper middle class. Grown a little heavier with years but always vigorous and sturdy, the habit of being on parade at the theatre, on the boulevard, at innumerable dinners and still more innumerable receptions, had im- pressed upon his whole person that air of importance and prosperity, that almost official bearing which one might call " I'air ancien prfet." The traces of his use- less and enormous labours were visible in his complexion, rendered leaden by late hours, and on his brow, crossed with long furrows, under his grayish hair cut after the military fashion. But what thoughts were astir be- hind this fades of truly administrative coolness ? The mouth, purposely ironical under the cropped moustache, had never told this, and would never tell it. For one who had the inclination and the time to decipher faces but who has both ? Hector Le Prieux was not the only enigmatic figure in his house. For about two years, at this date of 1897, the frequenters OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 121 of first performances had been accustomed to see, from time to time, when the play was of a nature suited to a young girl, a play " with marriages in it," as the saying is. the beautiful Mme. Le Prieux accompanied in her box by a refined and beautiful young girl, dressed almost exactly like herself, and resembling her, from a distance, like a younger sister a Cinderella, one might say. It was her daughter, that Heine who had almost cost the mother her life. Like most children born of a mother who has suffered too severely in their ante-natal period, Eeine had a certain delicacy, almost fragility, in contrast with her mother's opulent beauty, whose fortieth year showed a Juno-like majesty. The girl, at twenty-one, scarcely seemed eighteen. She was fresh and yet frail, with slender shoulders and bust, as if something hindered the full blooming out of her physi- cal being ; while her look, too pensive for her childish face, had a disquieting precocity of expression. She had her mother's long oval head, straight profile, and regular features ; but this handsome type of pure race was in her case made more faint, so to speak, attenuated, and under her clearly arched eyebrows there were, instead of the brilliant black southern eyes of Mme. Le Prieux, the brown, thoughtful eyes of her father. From this father she also inherited the chestnut hair and the slightly full lips, with a melancholy droop at the corners Never was a blending of two types more visible. Was it to the inner hesitations, the secret contrasts of an atavism far 122 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY too duplex, that Mile. Le Prieux owed the singular melan- choly of her look ? or had she, young as she was, passed through some mysterious trial, and undergone one of those emotional disappointments which, though mainly imaginative, none the less profoundly affect a youthftil soul ? When one spoke of Heine to her mother, asking about the girl's health with anything like anxiety, Mme. Le Prieux would reply, " She is a little pale, is she not ? She develops slowly. But that is her nature. She has never had two days' illness since she was a child." And if her mood was confidential, she would add, "I do not say it because she is my daughter, but she is perfection upon earth. I have never had to say one severe word to her since I have known her. I have only one fault to find with her, she is too good. She is not young when I was of her age, a ball would make me wild with pleasure. It amuses me still ! She goes to a ball just as she used to do her writing lessons when she was a child. You would say she went as a matter of duty. Her father was like that, formerly. I must say he has changed completely. Eeine will change also. But, for the moment, nothing amuses her. It is extraordinary." And there was a kind of haughty surprise in the eyes of the "beautiful Mme. Le Prieux." You could divine in the straightening of her figure, impeccably laced in a corset of the latest style, the conscience of the wife and the mother, maintaining her husband and daughter OTHEE PEOPLE'S LUXURY 123 in the social rank to which she had raised them by her unaided efforts. If it happened that Le Prieux was pres- ent when his wife thus gave her opinion as to Heine, he never failed to say, shrugging his shoulders, the "Oh, no, no ! " indulgently reproachful, of the husband who thinks that his wife talks a little too much, and he would turn the conversation by one of his favourite anecdotes. Like all story-tellers, he has but a few of these, always the same, and he relates them always in the same tempo, with the same stress on certain syllables, the same effects. This, alas! is his one weakness, and the story is too often at the expense of some fellow-craftsman who has committed the offence of abandoning the newspaper for the book, and gaining from literature what he ought to have continued to seek from journalism. "Reine amuses herself quietly," he would say, "like myself, that is true. That is all the difference. You like to be amused in a noisy way. But she is too bright and too sensible to fall in with the present fad of as- suming to be bored at places of amusement, after having done one's utmost to get there. I saw that thing when it began. I remember now, and it was a long time ago, when Jacques Molan, the novelist, came to my house in the rue Viete, begging me to obtain an invitation for him to the Countess Komow's animal party. After a good deal of trouble I got it for him the good countess was always so fond of us ! As it happened, that night about eleven o'clock, before I had put on my 124 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY costume, I went down to the office, and who should I find there, surrounded by gazing reporters, but my Jacques Molan, dressed as a bear, with the muzzle pulled over his head like a hood, and his grand, fatigued air, for the benefit of his humble comrades : 'I could not refuse the countess. She made snch a point of it. Ah, boys ! it's a hard trade, going into society ! ' ' In these two sentences: "Reine is too old for her age," and "Reine amuses herself in a quiet way," lay the gist of hundreds of talks that M. and Mme. Le Prieux had together in respect to their child. These con- versations, so intimate, and so serious, also, since their theme was the character, and consequently the chances of happiness or misery promised to their only daugh- ter, usually had taken place in the coupe which was bringing them back from some first performance at the theatre which it had not been suitable for Reine to attend. These were the only opportunities of being alone with each other which these two people had, a devoted couple, nevertheless, or at least a couple who believed themselves to be so. But, between the demands of society upon the wife, and the demands of copy upon the husband, at what hour could they have talked with each other long and confidentially ? The necessity for the dramatic critic to be at the office till one o'clock in the morning to compose his article, or to finish it if he had begun it at the dress rehearsal, had decided them OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 125 to have separate rooms. Hector needed to be able to come in without disturbing his wife's sleep when she had gone to bed early; and, on the other hand, when it was she who was late, returning from a ball with her daughter, she would not disturb him. Hector could not have kept up with his enormous tasks without having his mornings to himself. Seated at his table punctually at nine o'clock, with entrance strictly forbidden, he did not leave his chair till noon, at which time the greater part of his day's work was completed. The circumstances must be exceptional which would lead him to go to his wife's room to take his black coffee and boiled egg, and he saw her for the first time, as a rule, only at the mid- day meal, where Heine was present too. Heine also was at dinner, on the rare occasions when they dined at home. At other hours of the day they were occupied, she with her visits, he with his outdoor work, the remainder of his writing, and his enormous correspondence. Like another prolific journalist, Le Prieux made his corre- spondents his collaborators, very frequently taking their letters as subjects for his own articles. The evening belonged to society and the theatre. It is not surprising, therefore, that the more serious conversations of this married pair took place in the sole te"te-a-tete that this existence granted to these two victims of Paris on their return from the theatre ; and so it happened that the first scene of the domestic drama to which, at last, I come, was played in the interior of a hired carriage, between 126 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY the door of a theatre and the door of a newspaper office. This is the picture before us : the January night crowd- ing down over the city an acrid mist through which the gaslights can scarcely penetrate ; on the sidewalks the rapid passing of shivering pedestrians ; the carriage roll- ing silently upon its rubber tires, the coachman, his hands icy under his heavy gloves, restraining his steam- ing horse with jingling bells, who is looking forward to his stable. Behind the mist-covered windows of the car- riage, the figures of Mathilde and Hector : she in an exquisite theatre bonnet of delicate colour, her Juno head emerging from the white fur which lines her ruby velvet cloak; he showing within the otter of his overcoat the shirt-front with gold buttons and the white waistcoat of the club-man. You would say, to see them, an idle couple a fashionable man whom his wife was on the way to leave at his club before returning home herself. But the man is a hard-working journalist on his way to earn this costly fragment of luxury by labouring, at this hour, over his proof-slips, steaming from the press. What a symbol of their entire life is this midnight drive across Paris under these conditions ! I neglected to say that the drama which they had just witnessed was given at the Odeon, and that the newspaper on which Le Prieux is the dramatic critic has its office in a building in that rue de la Grange-Bateliere which shares with the rue du Croissant the honour of having seen the birth and death of numberless journals. Mme. Le Prieux had OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 127 without doubt counted upon the duration of this noctur- nal drive to have, with her husband, the conversation which she entered upon, as soon as the coupe, making its way out through the crowd of the square, had begun moving rapidly. " Shall you be long at the office, mon ami ? " she asked. " Not very long," Hector said. " I wrote nearly all of my article this morning, following the great rule, ' Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day.' Nothing has been changed since the final rehearsal. A few words, to mention the success of the play, and the proof -slips to look over it will take me a short half hour. But why do you ask ? " "Because I want to talk with you about something of importance," Mathilde replied. This lady, even in a conjugal te"te-a-tete, was always the "beautiful Mme. Le Prieux." She still used the ceremonious "vous." The familiar tutoiement of the middle class husband and wife was always with her a special grace, something like a derogation from her rank of goddess. " If you are to be no longer than a half hour, I will wait for you in the carriage." " Will you wait ? " exclaimed Le Prieux. " In that case I will not read the slips. That good fellow, Cartier, will do it for me." This Cartier was the secretary, and, as Hector had given him this position in the office, was naturally willing in turn to oblige. 128 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY Hesitating for a minute, he then put a question which was an ingenuous proof to what a degree a certain idea was in his thoughts : " Something of importance ? Is it about Eeine's being married ? " "It is," Mine. Le Prieux replied. Then with the slightest possible hesitation on her part also, and something like a shade of uneasiness, which Hector remembered later, she continued, " Why did you think so ? Has anything been said to you ? " "To me? Oh, no!" he rejoined. "But when you speak in that tone, what else could it be but some- thing that has to do with Heine's happiness ? You love her so, and you have so much reason to love her. She is so much like you " And he pressed his wife's hand with the extreme affection which had just betrayed itself both by the form of praise and the tutoiement of his last few words. Mathilde had no need of these little signs of emotion to know that this man of so faithful a heart and so unweary- ing devotion was her lover as on the first day. Was she touched, in being thus made aware, yet once more, of her husband's profound feeling ? Or again, did this sponta- neous homage to the lofty and precious virtues as wife and mother which she believed herself to possess, agreeably titillate some hidden spot in her self-love ? Or, still again, apprehending objections to the idea which she had been turning over for months behind her narrow, tyrannical forehead, did she wish to crush OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 129 them at once ? The fact remains that she returned the clasp of Hector's hand, and condescended also to tutoyer him. " I have only one merit," she said. " I have always been a woman devoted to my duty, and you reward me for this, I assure you. Listen," she continued ; "Cruce last week came to speak to me about this. I did not think it right to mention it to you before the matter was more advanced, not to distract you need- lessly from your work. To-day he came again, and asked me, in the most distinct terms, this time, what we should think of Reine' s marriage to young Faucherot ? " "Edgard Faucherot?" exclaimed Le Prieux. "Fau- cherot would like to marry Reine ? " " And why not ? " Mathilde said. " What is it that surprises you so much in this step? For the Fauche- rots have taken a first step, you see. Cruce did not profess to be an official envoy ; at most he was only a very obliging messenger." " What surprises me ? " Hector said. " Why, first of all, Faucherot is not free. Have you forgotten that only last autumn his mother was complaining to you of his infatuation for that little Percy. She wanted me to advise the girl to go to America, in order to get her away from Edgard. But there she still is at the Varietes " " This only means that he has given her up. He has broken with her," said Mme. Le Prieux, "and just for the reason that he is in love with Reine. Do not be 130 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY anxious about that, mon ami. I have made inquiries myself. Mme. Faucherot exaggerated the case. Being a widow and having only one son, it was natural that she should take alarm. The young man simply was vain of the notoriety of being talked about in connection with an actress who is the fashion. It was not one of those liaisons which have a serious influence upon the whole life, and might well cause anxiety to a girl's parents " "That may be," Hector interrupted, "but I have dreamed of another kind of souvenirs of youth for the man to whom we shall give our charming Heine than those of suppers with that little Percy ! Besides, there is not only the little Percy, there is the mother. You were several years, you will remember, before you would receive Mme. Faucherot. You see her now only through kindness, because she is a good woman I admit that and because you are so good yourself. But if she became the mother-in-law of Eeine, it would be family relations that you would be obliged to have with her you who have been brought up as une grande dame" (He believed this, the Parisian newspaper man !) " And she ? I don't reproach her for having begun as a sales- woman in the Faucherot business before being promoted to the rank of the proprietor's wife. There are sales- women who are ladies. But she ! I am perfectly right in saying that there is a strong perfume of the shop about that woman, and all the millions of the late Faucherot cannot help it. She has been able to take OTHEK PEOPLE'S LUXURY 131 down the great gilt letters that I used to see on the front of their balcony in the rue de la Banque when I went that way going to the office: Hardy, Faucherot Successeur, Sole et Velours, but she carries them with her, stamped upon her whole being! She remains exactly what she was behind her counter, and she always will be that, whatever she may do, and with her ten- thousand-franc horses ! She didn't fail to let us know what they cost, just as she tells the price of the foies-gras and the wines on her table ! And her invitations to great celebrities whom she did not know at all, in the hope of getting into society ! And her blunders ! Why, they are famous. You, a woman of society, par excellence, how could you endure them? My poor darling, even with all your tact, fine as it is, you could not get along with her ! " Mme. Le Prieux had allowed her husband to go on; he had acquired from his profession, it will be noticed, a habit of talking somewhat as he wrote, in paragraphs and at some length ; and while Mathilde was, as I have said, totally lacking and her whole life showed this only too clearly in that comprehension of the feelings of another person which requires true refinement, she had that other comprehension, so feminine that it is woman herself, which consists in knowing perfectly that which the most refined of the great classic poets long since called " Man's weak sides and his moments." 1 i " Sola viri molles aditus et tempora nor as." VERGIL. 132 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY She had had her reason for not abridging Le Prieux's prolonged harangue. The main objection to this mar- riage, for which she had long been scheming, was not that which arose from the greater or less elegance of Mme. Faucherot, of the house of Hardy, Faucherot Suc- cesseur, Sole et Velours. In allowing her husband to talk freely, she knew well enough that he would finally let her see his underlying thought, and this is what he did, in conclusion, after a few minutes' silence, which was not interrupted by her. "And then, even if I could tolerate the son and you could tolerate the mother, we should still have to know what Reine thinks." " Ah ! " said the mother, in a singular tone, all sarcasm and curiosity ; " do you know what Reine thinks ? It is true. She is a little more frank with you. What has she said to you, then ? " There was silence again. The imperious woman, in her desire to know if anything had been said to Hector, had just touched the most secret and sensitive, and also the most painful, spot in the heart of this husband and father, a spot almost unknown to himself. In this respect resembling all men with whom timidity is the result not of circumstances but of their own nature, and who even feel with timidity, Hector found himself completely disconcerted in the presence of very reticent persons like Reine. How often, in the eyes of his daughter, fixed upon him, he had perceived, or rather divined, a mys- OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 133 tery thoughts and feelings that he had at once a desire and a fear to understand, perhaps because these feelings and these thoughts corresponded to secret things in his own heart that he would not consent to acknowledge to himself ! Yes. He knew what Eeine was thinking, but he would not know it. He knew that the sadness in the eyes of this charming girl came from a profound, an in- finite pity for himself, for his existence as a literary galley-slave, held to his tasks, why, and by whom ? To answer this question would have been to condemn some one whom he loved with that ardent affection that does not judge, however conclusive the evidence; and that which made the mystery of his daughter's thoughts and feelings more painful still to him was, precisely, the fear that he might not be alone in suspecting its nature. And so this sentence of his wife's had startled him, and he replied, with a constrained smile, trying to feign an indifference which he did not feel, "What has she said to me? Why, nothing; abso- lutely nothing. Do not suppose that she is any more frank with me than with you. Besides, when could she have any confidential talk with me ? I almost never see her alone. But, without any words from her, I have " an evident embarrassment made him hesitate for words. He repeated : " I have impressions. And since we are speaking on this subject, I have thought that I noticed, if she preferred any one, it certainly was not Faucherot." " And who is it ? " asked the mother, sharply. 134 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY " It is her cousin, Huguenin," replied Le Prieux ; and, as if defending himself from the lack of confidence which his previous discretion on such a subject implied, he added, "I repeat to you, this is a purely gratuitous supposition. Heine has never, never spoken of it to me, nor has Charles. You may be sure I should have mentioned it to you at once." "In any case," said Mme. Le Prieux, with a slight shrug, " such an inclination is not at all to be encouraged. You know how good I am to my own family," she went on, " and how kindly I received Charles Huguenin, although after all he is only a second cousin, and I had not seen his father for years. But Charles has very little money. He has no position. It is not a position, merely to have finished his studies in the law and to have been admitted to the bar in Paris. If he were to marry now, he would be obliged, in order to support a wife, to go home to Provence, to his father's, and make wine and oil and raise silkworms. And frankly, do you see Heine on a farm there in Provence, superintending workmen, and no more theatre, no more visits, no more balls ? I know I know she always says she is not fond of society. Mamma also said this during the lifetime of my poor father ; and then, when we were ruined, it was I who had to cheer her up. But there is no occasion to discuss the matter. Fortunately, Charles is no more thinking of Eeine than Heine is of him. Let us return to the Faucherots. What answer am I to give to OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 135 Grace ? I must tell you at once that the question of dowry is settled. I have concealed nothing from our good friend; and this worthy Mme. Faucherot who has her weak points, I admit, but less than formerly ; she is improving has always been most good-hearted. She understands perfectly. One cannot do everything in life. Her husband and she have made money; we have made position. It is not your fault, mon ami, that we have nothing to give to Heine. It is the fault of your profession. I knew this when I married you; but I have promised myself to spare our child, if possible, all these troubles that we have had. Very well ! Here we are at your office. Do not feel in a hurry. Take all the time that you need. I will wait for you." The coupe was just turning the corner of the rue Druout as the generous Mathilde granted this magnani- mous pardon to her husband, and condescendingly offered to wait for him half an hour in a soft and well-warmed carriage. Why did Hector, descending from this car- riage, and ascending in his patent-leather shoes the con- taminated steps of the staircase, suddenly have a vision of Heine's brown eyes and the sadness of their gaze? What relation was there then between that look and the words which her mother had spoken ? Why, also, when the good Cartier brought him his slips, did the journalist see clearly, instead of the printed pages on which he mechanically wrote in the cabalistic signs of corrections why did he see the Provencal landscape which he had 136 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY contemplated but once, for a dozen hours in the month of September, passing through on his return from a press congress the farm of the Huguenins, sheltered from the mistral by the black screen of its cypress trees, the lines of vine stocks displaying their denticulated leaves and the opulence of their heavy bunches of purple grapes above the red earth, a rose garden in flower, a silvery olive grove near by, and rocks separating this wood from the blue Mediterranean, white with sails? How did this vision concern the writer who, with a slender, well-kept hand, where sparkled two fine gems, was now scribbling the few lines which completed his article ? This hand had never touched any rustic imple- ment since early childhood. And still, was it nostalgia of the soil that seized the renowned journalist? Was it the man of the country reappearing in the Parisian, after thirty years and more ? Or, indeed, did he divine that the happiness of the daughter, who resembled him in her soul as she did in her eyes, was there far, far away from young Faucherot's millions, far from Paris far from what and from whom, also? But already the vision had vanished. Hector had gathered up the cor- rected slips and had given them to Cartier ; he had but- toned his overcoat, and touching his hat coldly and with dignity, as befits one of the princes of criticism toward mere reporters late at work, he left the editorial room, and he did not overhear the remarks which the petty journalists, thus saluted, interchanged concerning their superior. OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 137 " That is another of our fine crush hats, old Le Prieux," one observed. "And to think that at his age you perhaps will be just as much of a ' snob/ " said another ; and he added, laugh- ing, " and just as infirm ! " " The fact is, he is a perfect cipher ! His last chron- icle was infantile. How has he made his way, a fellow like that ? " "New method of making one's way, by Hector Le Prieux, in one volume, 3 fr. 50," said the good Cartier, jokingly ; " axiom : first, you marry a very pretty woman." " What do you mean by that ? " asked the other. "I mean just what you mean," rejoined Cartier, who had just pressed a button, and interrupted his chaffing to say to the boy who answered the bell, "Notify the com- posing room that Le Prieux will make a column and three-quarters. I am looking over the proof. You shall have it in ten minutes " And the man under obligations to Hector " the snob," Hector the infirm, Hector the husband who had suc- ceeded because of his pretty wife, carefully filled a meerschaum pipe, and lighted it, with his sly air of being an excellent fellow, while he looked over the slips that Le Prieux had already corrected, to clear them from any remaining typographical error. This was his way of paying his debt toward his benefactor. The secretary was sincere in his defamation, and no less sincere in the 138 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY good-will with which he rendered this service to the senior journalist. He was grateful to him, and he en- vied him, not for his literary position but for his car- riage by the month, his acquaintance in fashionable society, and, most of all, for being the husband of the " beautiful Mme. Le Prieux ! " IV THE COST OF THE SHOW ON the morning after this conversation whose second part was a repetition of the first, with this difference only, that Hector's objections finally gave way, one by one the refined and beautiful child who had been unconsciously its subject, Reiiie Le Prieux, rose as usual before eight o'clock. It was under- stood in the family that she did not need much sleep. In reality, the young girl, when she had been out the evening before, and waked at this early hour, felt herself very tired, very much exhausted. But she never acknowledged to this fatigue, which took the colour from her girlish cheek, made dark circles around her beautiful brown eyes, and sometimes drove into her temple a stinging point of headache; for, if she had not allowed this fable to pass for truth, how could she have been able, herself, to superintend, as she did every morning, the little details of her father's study ? It was she who arranged, with delicate, careful hands, OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 139 the letter-paper and envelopes in their pigeon-holes over the desk ; she who changed the calendar to the day's date ; she who put new pens into the pen- holders; she who took care that the writing-pad had leaves enough for the day's articles. While she was busy with these little cares an inexpressible emotion sometimes saddened her face. When she had finished her pious task she would often look long at a portrait of her father, banished hither by Mme. Le Prieux, which represented Hector at a very early age, and quite sufficiently Bohemian in dress to justify this exile from the salon. A comrade of the Latin Quarter had painted him in a red jacket, a foulard around his neck, his hair long, in the act of writing, with the paper on his knee. This studio skit had the merit common to work done with verve it had life in it, and gave a true idea of what the young peasant of the Bourbonnais had been, in his early years of ingenuous fervour and enthusiasm, with light upon his brow and in his eyes. How pathetic it was to Reine when she compared this remote image of her father with that father himself, as he would look when he came to sit down in that arm-chair, before that table which she had prepared, putting on his harness for a labour which the attentive Antigone could measure materially by the rapidity with which the thickness of the pad diminished ! And she would go to the bookcase and take down three volumes, more 140 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY carefully bound than the others, containing the two collections of poems and the novel by Le Prieux, those Gen&ts des Bmndes, those Rondes Bourbonnaises, and that Rossigneu, which the gentle child was now the only person in the world to re-read and admire. She was not a literary person, Reine, and was not capable of judging these feeble poems and this not very origi- nal novel. She turned their pages with the ardent partiality of one who loves. She knew nothing in the world which seemed more beautiful to her more beautiful and more pathetic. For, while she had not the critical sense to discern the insufficiency of these first attempts, her heart made her feel, with the most painful clearness, what mutilations their author must have practised upon his own soul in order to become the literary job-hand that he now was. By what miracle of affection had this quiet creature, so naive, so inexperienced, divined the secret life-drama of the unsuccessful artist, which he had never even related to himself? Emotional resemblances between a father and a daughter produce phenomena of moral second sight. The father feels in advance the sufferings that merely threaten the daughter. The daughter pities her father for the griefs that he undergoes without being willing to admit them ; and, for this reason, it was that during her morning visits to this laboratory for copy, Beine turned her eyes away from another portrait, that of her mother, placed on the desk, OTHEE PEOPLE'S LUXURY 141 representing her as indeed the "beautiful Mme. Le Prieux," in the dress of a princess of the Renaissance which she had worn with brilliant success, at a cos- tume party. The great photograph, in its frame of chiselled silver, dominated the paper, pens, ink, blotter, all the humble implements of the patient labour which had paid for that toilette, and for how many others ! Did the young girl already judge her mother, that she seemed to have a horror of this portrait, or did she fear that she might do this, and, like her father in this respect also, did she refuse to acknowledge to herself certain impressions, obscure and too painful, which lived and throbbed, nevertheless, in the depths of her soul ? This sympathy, whose hidden bond thus united Hector Le Prieux to his daughter, must have been very strong, for, as she had guessed his secret, he found that, almost without a clew, he had become aware of hers. If he had been able on that January morning to follow her in the coming and going of her thoughts, he would have ascer- tained that in mentioning the name of Charles Hugue- nin, the night before, he had not been mistaken as to Seine's preference. But he believed that she merely had a preference for her cousin, as he had said ; while, in fact, she loved him. This love owed its existence, as happens often when one is twenty years old, to a reac- tion. We almost always begin by loving some one against some other person or against something. This 142 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY pity that Heine Le Prieux felt for her father translated itself into an instinctive, irresistible, and almost animal aversion toward the environment of which her father was the victim. Too delicate and too scrupulous to hold her mother responsible for what she regarded as a misfortune of destiny, she laid the blame on everything which this mother loved, and she herself at once detested. Not dar- ing to condemn her in her person, she condemned her in her tastes. She hated, accordingly, with this unreasoning hatred, all this stage-setting, whose cost she knew too well, Paris, and society, and dinner-parties, and balls, and receptions, and first performances, and toilettes, and luxury. The vision of the Provencal farm which, the night before, had so strangely crossed the imagination of the journalist as he corrected his slips, had never left her since the September day when that nook of southern country had been visible to her also. She saw herself, in thought, dwelling in that quiet house, living a simple life there, with some one who would love her in a simple way, and this cousin Charles, this shy young fellow, three-quarters Provencal, had found the road to her heart by his very awkwardness. She had taken pleasure, in the innocent privacy of their cousinship, in striving against a certain ambition in him for a more brilliant existence, which was urging him, a very remarkable student as a lad, and now a prize-winner in the Law School, to make his career at the Paris bar. And, out of endless conversations and much giving and accepting OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 143 of advice, the two cousins had reached at last, each for the other, that stage of feeling which has need neither of declarations nor of promises to communicate and affirm itself, a feeling penetrated with enthusiastic respect on the young man's part, and with confiding modesty on the part of the girl which had invaded their souls till it enveloped them like an atmosphere, without any words too definite, any glance too ardent, any too lingering pressure of the hand. And when the moment had come for the definite avowal, it had seemed to them, so sure had they both been of each other's hearts, that they had long before confessed that they loved each other. This inevitable avowal, which was destined to over- throw the skilful plots of those two Macchiavellis in petticoats, Mme. Le Prieux and Mme. Faucherot, and of that third Macchiavelli in evening coat, the subtle Cruce, had been exchanged only the preceding week. The thing had happened under those conditions of half badinage which were due to the friendly, almost frater- nal familiarity of the relations between the two cousins. It was at a grand ball given by the president of a bank, an invitation to which Mme. Le Prieux had obtained for the young man, who, of late, had been much less shy than formerly. The mother, blinded, as parents often are, by her preconceived ideas as to the character of her daughter, had expressed to the latter that very evening her gratification at the change. And Eeine, taking her 144 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY cousin's arm to go to the buffet after a quadrille, had reported to him the maternal commendation. "Then you think," Charles had asked at once, "that I am no longer disagreeable to her ? " "You have never been that," Eeine rejoined eagerly; " but now you are a great favourite. I shall have to ask you to speak for me, when I have any difficulty with mamma ! " "I will, cousin," the young man replied, smiling and growing red, as he spoke. " And perhaps," he continued, " now would be the time for me to write to my mother, and ask her what I have so much desired to ask ; and still, I scarcely dare." " What, then ? " Reine had asked, she also with a smile on her parted lips and a thrill at her heart. She had with- drawn her arm, and stood still for a minute as if to fan herself. Although it was scarcely the place, this corner of a ballroom, in front of a loaded buffet, to speak certain solemn words, the young girl expected to hear them spoken. Had they been alone anywhere, her modesty would not have allowed her to hear them, and Charles would not have ventured to speak them ; but here, with the excitement of the soft rhythm of the music, so shel- tered and yet so isolated amid these couples light gowns and black coats gliding past, returning, revolv- ing, within a few steps from them, he was not afraid to say, "I shall not do it, unless you are willing, cousin. I OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 145 should like, then, to ask my mother to write to yours, to know if she may come to Paris to make a certain pro- posal. In a word, cousin, if I begged you to change your name, and become Mme. Charles Huguenin, what should you say ? " While Charles was speaking, Heine could see that he also was agitated. An extraordinary emotion had seized her, and with a tremor in her voice she had replied, " If my father and mother say yes, so will I. Please say no more," she had added, and he had simply answered in a half-suppressed voice, "I will write to-morrow. In four days your mother will have the letter. How long four days will seem to me! And yet, cousin, I have loved you for two years." As some one at this moment drew near, who chanced to be no other than M. Cruce himself, Reine had been excused from replying to this too tender sentence. How grateful she had been to her cousin for at once disappearing ! He had appreciated her agitation at hearing words to which no scrupulous child could listen without the feeling that she ought to let her mother know at once what had been said to her. And how grateful, also, that during the four days he had never once appeared in the rue du General -Foy! Although she feared objections on her mother's part, the young girl never doubted that her parents would leave her free to follow the dictates of her heart, in her reply to the proposal made by the 146 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY parents of Charles, and neither did she doubt that they would make this proposal, which would mark for her the beginning of a new life. This little fever of love and hope which had stirred her since the conversation at the ball did not fail of having, as may be supposed, contra- dictory impressions. And it was these impressions which, on that January morning, rendered Reine so nervous before her father's portrait, while she was completing her usual arrangement of his table. She felt too strongly that when once she was gone, the solitude of the journalist would be entire ; and, as it was now the sixth day since the ball, and Mme. Huguenin's letter to Mme. Le Prieux must have arrived, she reflected on the future : "Poor dear P6e," she said to herself, employing in her thoughts the little patois abbreviation he had taught her, " it is too bad I should want to leave him ! Who will arrange his papers for him as he likes them, when I am not here any more ? Mamma could not. And then she does not rise early enough in the morning. Who will talk with him about his plans ? Who will encourage him to write at least his book on Bourbonnais poetry ? " This was, in fact, one of the plans cherished by Le Prieux. This humble ambition was his last artist-dream. No longer hoping to find leisure for a work of imagination, or to recover that elasticity of the whole being which is necessary for poems or novels, he had undertaken a labour of special erudition, which satisfied at once his need for OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 147 some non-mercenary work and his early and still enduring taste for the literature of his native soil. He had proposed to himself to write a study of the poets of his province, Jean Dupin, Pierre and Jeannette de Nesson, Henri Baude, Jean Robertet, Blaise de Vigenere, Etienne Bour- nier, Claude Billard, Jean de Lingendes. These names and others still, unknown even to the most prying bib- liophiles, were familiar to him and, through him, to the young girl who had copied with her own hand all the extracts from these authors destined to appear in the volume. She went on with her monologue : " But no ! He shall finish his book at our house. He will come to stay with us in the summer when there are no new plays to be criticised, instead of going to Trouville, where it is so expensive. I will give him a room looking out upon the pines, and perhaps he will find inspiration again: who knows ! " And in thought she beheld him seated by the open window, the wind in the pine forest filling all the air, mingled with the far-off sound of the waves upon the beach and the shrill cry of the grasshoppers. Reine saw her father's hand upon the table and his pen scrib- bling incomplete lines, which were verses ! Then another image presented itself : " And mamma ? " she queried, "how will she endure this banishment to the country ? Oh, we can take her out among the neigh- bours. We will plan some parties for her. Charles is so kind ! He has so many ideas ! He will find some way 148 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY to amuse her. Besides, if P6e writes this volume, it will be the Academy ! " This desire that, at the end of his long career, the journalist should wear the coat with the green palms and deliver, beneath the dome, the official address in presence of the usual audience on these occasions, was the one sentiment in common held by Mme. Le Prieux and her daughter; and the latter found, in this union of their wishes on one point, a secret solace for the remorse she felt every time she was constrained to recognize her mother's egotism : " Mon Dieu ! " she said to herself, " it has so often been said to us: 'If M. Le Prieux would only write a book, he would be chosen at once.' Charles and I will make him do it now, when he comes to stay with us. And we will have poor dear Fanny, too " "Poor dear Fanny" was an elderly demoiselle, Perrin by name, who had given Beine her earliest lessons on the piano, and remained attached to the family as a species of " companion." For a small salary, she came in from remote Batignolles where she lived, sometimes to take the young girl out for a walk, sometimes to share Reine's solitary meal and evening when her parents had gone out to dinner or to the theatre. This modest, good creature was E-eine's only real friend, notwithstanding her mother's astute endeavours to impose upon her the elegant comradeships of aristocratic lectures, "select" catechism classes, and well-supported charitable works. Beine included all these distinguished intimacies in her OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 149 insurmountable antipathy to the life of luxury and chic. And the idea of an escape from these burdens of false friendship was another of the reasons that rendered so attractive to her the dream of life in the remote Pro- venqal mas, surrounded by those who truly loved her. Among this number, she included poor Fanny, that aged child of the Parisian suburbs, and fancied her happy, with a rather comic and entirely out-of-placo happiness, in these surroundings of Southern rural life. Heine was smiling at her own thoughts, as Perrette in the fable smiled at her hopes from the milk-pail, and was so completely magnetized by her vision of the future that she did not hear the entrance of her father, who waited at the door a moment to observe her, as she stood dreamy and motionless, before he spoke to her. And in truth she was an adorable picture of grace and youth, in that little literary workroom, its walls adorned with books, and its one window, which looked into an inner courtyard, supplying it on this cold January morning with only a yellowish, foggy, and, so to speak, impoverished light. Already dressed for the day, and her chestnut hair in its usual simple arrangement, with gloves protecting her hands and an epauletted apron of gray silk protecting her dress, she looked the most ex- quisite household fairy that ever gave poetic charm to the little duties of domestic life. In thus surprising her, so pretty, so dainty, just now busy with such humble little cares with so much quiet application, how could the 150 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY father fail to think of his recent conversation with his wife, in which all the future of this exquisite creature had been at stake ? And how could he fail to experience anew the shock which he had received when Mme. Le Prieux had spoken the name of Edgard Faucherot ? Was that fellow the husband to whom this girl ought to be given ? A temptation seized him to question her, there, at once, and to make her say " no," that the affair might be immediately abandoned. And then he remem- bered his promise, renewed that same morning at his wife's bedside, whither he had gone to take his first breakfast a sign of grave deliberation. He had there formally agreed not to put this question to Heine. He kept his word, in fact, though with a little stretching of the conscience, very unusual with him, as a rule scrupu- lous in his fidelity. The young girl at last saw him, and came forward to receive his kiss. " Well ! little moigne," he said, also using, as he spoke to her, one of the pretty little words of his province. Moineau (sparrow) became moiniau, and from this came moigne, which is the affectionate word of the peasants for their baby girls. "Were you gone to the moon? Of what or of whom were you thinking?" " Of nobody and of nothing, in particular," Reine said, colouring slightly, and she continued quickly : " How are you this morning? You were not kept very late at the office last night. Were you satisfied with your article ? " OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 151 "Fairly," the father said, "except that there was a bad typographical error. Cartier is getting spoiled." " Ah ! " Reine interrupted eagerly, " if I could go to the office and read the slips ! " " That's all I need," Hector replied gayly ; " but I am wasting time. It is a busy day with me," and, holding up the handful of newspapers that he had brought with him, he added : " I ran over these, as I was dressing. Not a subject in any one of them, and it is the day for my Clavaroche. Then, observing a pile of the morning's letters on the table : " Happily, some of these good correspondents of mine will help me out! And you, Mademoiselle Moigne, are expected by mamma. She has something of importance to say to you. Do not tell her that I told you. But try, in answering her, to be sure that you know what you wish. Don't ask me anything. Only be sure that you remember Goethe's fine sentence: We are free at our first step; we are not free at the second. We say that more simply at Chevagnes : Qui ne se m$le ne se dem&le. Kiss me, my dear, dear child." Although Heine, quiet and gentle, accustomed to live much within herself and to take life rather seriously, had not that light-heartedness natural to her age, the period of gay hope, how could she fail, as she kissed her father with infinite gratitude, of interpreting as a glad promise this transparent allusion to a marriage pro- posal? Without doubt Mme. Huguenin's letter had 152 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY arrived. Her parents had deliberated upon it, and would leave her free to dictate the answer. Once more, for a minute, in her imagination, she heard the sound of the wind in the pines, and the shrill chirp of the grasshoppers; once more she saw the little mas, in its atmosphere of much-desired peace ; and, flinging her- self into her father's arms, she whispered, "How good you are to me, and how I love you ! " "Can it be true, as her mother thinks, that she is favourably disposed toward this Faucherot marriage ? " Hector asked himself, as he sat down at his table and began counting the leaves destined for his Clavaroche. " She understood perfectly well that her marriage was under consideration, and she is too acute not to have guessed the person unless " And the good man rested his head upon his hands, in an attitude of pro- found meditation. For the first time in many years he sat there, his paper ready before him, without a thought about his task. Yet he dared not translate his " unless " into its true significance, nor again put into words the idea uttered by him the night before, and rejected by her with such scornful irony. The sway of strong characters over weaker ones is exercised in the domain of thought before being exercised in the domain of will. The energy with which Mathilde had protested against the supposition of any affection on the part of Heine for Charles Huguenin still influenced Le Prieux, and, doubting his own intuition, he sighed heavily, un- OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 153 covered his inkstand, and began to write, saying to himself, " Nobody but a mother can understand her daughter. I must wait till they have talked together." While the paper creaked under his pen, at last started, the two women indeed were talking, a few steps away, in the bedroom of Mme. Le Prieux, separated from the narrow workroom by the yet narrower bedroom of the literary craftsman. Certain it is, that this indefatigable pen would have dropped from his hand in his amaze- ment if, the frail partitions suddenly falling down, he had surprised in its cruel reality the conversation between mother and daughter. The latter, for the first time in years, since the moment when her pity for her father's servitude had begun to awaken, had entered Mme. Le Prieux's room confidingly, with open heart, her filial affection shining in her eyes, ready to show itself in grateful and happy tears, the confession of her ingen- uous love almost on her lips. And immediately this first impulse had been, not destroyed, but, as it were, arrested, merely in meeting the look of the domestic despot, upon whom her heart's future depended. At the moment when the young girl entered the room, Mme. Le Prieux was in her bed, having lain down again as she did every day, not to rise till late in the morning after her bath, which she took with conditions of temperature and dura- tion prescribed by her physician. The practical charac- ter of the Southern people, so positive in all that they 154 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY wish or comprehend, caused her to observe with extreme strictness the slightest precautions of the regime which was to preserve her health and, with it, her beauty. Many details in the room attested, besides, that the cult of Mme. Le Prieux for this beauty never relaxed, even outside of her hours of exhibition, or rather that she was always on exhibition, even when the spectators were only her husband, her daughter, and her maid. Accord- ingly she had, for this hour passed in reposing after her bath, a complete set of fine morning jackets of foulard, of surah, of cre"pe de chine, of batiste, according to the season. This morning she was wearing one of old rose bengaline. A lace scarf was drawn over her hair which she kept loosely braided by night, and artificial waves framed her forehead. These she used, until she dressed for the evening, to save her own hair from being waved twice. The general colour scheme of her room its walls hung with yellow silk, in stripes alternately dull and lustrous, the dark mahogany of its furniture in the style of the Empire, and its delicate green carpet had been skilfully combined to harmonize with her colourless bru- nette complexion. She had before her, placed upon an eider-down quilt of yellow silk, which matched the shade of the walls, a broad movable table with short legs, on which lay the blotter destined for her correspondence, and beside it the box containing all the little implements of manicure. She was occupied, when Keine approached to say OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 155 good morning, in rubbing with the polisher her nails, lustrous as enamel. A slight and refreshing fragrance of amber and verbena had already been vapourized in the room, which was almost cold, notwithstanding the supple flame on the hearth, the windows, upon which was designed a fantastic foliage of frost, having been hygienically open for more than a half hour. Thus surprised at this work, and with this toilette, in these surroundings and this perfumed air, Mme. Le Prieux would have given an impression of incurable childish- ness, had not her face, white with powder, been rendered tragic by the traces of age imprinted, notwithstanding all, upon her eyelids, around her temples, in the lines of the mouth and the creases of the neck. Everything, even to the intentional contrast between the wall colouring of the room and her own pallor, brought out the singular hardness of her features, still beautiful, but with an almost sinister beauty, augmented still further by the black splendour of her eyes. She fixed them at once upon Reine's, while her mouth, so imperious in repose, opened to say the first inquiries as to the sleep and the health of each being exchanged " My dear child, I want you to give me your whole attention. I want to have an interview of extreme importance with you." " Mamma, I am listening, I am ready," Reine replied. Although her ardent hope of the moment previous was already changed, at the mere sound of this voice, into 156 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY a fear that her mother would make very serious objec- tions to her marriage with their cousin, she had no doubt that it was this marriage about which her mother was going to speak ; and the thought that she would have to strive for her love brought a little flash of pride to her beautiful face, as she said, " Father has told me " " Ah ! your father has anticipated me ? " said Mme. Le Prieux. "He had promised, however, that he would let me speak to you first "He told me only that you desired to see me," the girl interrupted, colouring slightly, because of this half falsehood, which, also, only half deceived the mother. Again Mme. Le Prieux had to read the depths of her child's heart the same sharp look with which she had questioned her husband in the coupe, when she had asked him, " Do you know what Reine thinks ? " She had there, hidden in her blotter, Mme. Huguenin's letter, received the evening before, with its request almost in due form for the hand of Eeine for her son. This letter Mme. Le Prieux considered it her duty not to mention at all to Eeine; and it was her intention not to speak of it to her husband till later, when the Faucherot marriage had been announced. She justified herself for this double silence by the absence of the final formalities in the step taken by Charles's mother. She justified herself for it especially by the conviction OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 157 that she was working for Eeine's happiness. After all, was she to blame for conceiving of th^s happiness in accordance with her own nature ? Was she to blame considering her husband as a visionary, a person of weak character whom she had been obliged to protect, for not consulting him in a decision whose true motives could not be, and must not be, made known to him ? She was about to tell them to her daughter, these true motives, and that amount of frankness justified, in her eyes, the silence she preserved upon another point. " My child," she began, after having observed that Eeine's brown eyes remained, as usual, impenetrable under hers, " I must go back a long way. You will soon understand why." Then after a silence : " When I married your father, you know that we were not rich, and you also know why. We should have been rich, if your grandfather had done as so many financiers are doing at the present time who have a few more millions after each failure. He was a great and honest man, as you know; and thanks to him and to your grandmother, we can look every one in the face. We wronged no man out of a centime, in our disaster. Your father and I began our married life with just enough not to die of hunger. Yes, that is the point from which we started, to gain the position in society which is ours to-day ours, and, consequently, yours. Ah! I can do myself the justice to say that I have 158 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY laboured for years at nothing else, and, as for your father, he has spared no effort to assist me. It was not an easy thing. Society is prejudiced against liter- ary men, especially against journalists. And I admit these prejudices are often well founded. Your father was faultless. He never wrote a single article with- out remembering that he was a man of the world. I must add that this has been appreciated. And I tell you this that you may always be grateful to that poor man who has laboured so hard." Unconsciously arrogant, Mme. Le Prieux accom- panied with another brief silence and a sigh this eulogium which she decreed to the conjugal day- labourer whom she had exploited, whom she continued still so implacably to exploit. Reine had felt, as she listened to this exordium, that sensation of cold at her heart which she knew only too well from having endured it whenever she encountered certain senti- ments of her mother's. This vague uneasiness was still further increased by the solemnity with which Mme. Le Prieux seemed to invest this preparatory address. For what purpose this evoking of the memo- ries of her own life ? Reine would not, however, leave without response this appeal to her filial gratitude, and she said, " I know how much father works, and how much I owe to him. I assure you that I am not ungrate- ful. I even feel that he works too much " V OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 159 She had not measured the scope of these words, which had escaped her so involuntarily that she was discon- certed by them herself. She was still more confused on seeing her mother take them as a text for a new and very serious confidence. "I perceive with great joy that you so fully under- stand me, my sweet Reine," the mother had replied. " You feel the same anxiety about this poor man that I do. It is true. He works too hard for his age. He fatigues himself. He would work harder yet if he knew what you are about to know. But you must swear to me, understand me perfectly, you must swear that this secret shall die with us." " I promise you, mamma," Eeine said, and added not another word. But if Mme. Le Prieux had again bent her scrutinizing gaze upon her daughter, she would have noticed that the girl trembled. Why all these preambles before the question that she expected, that seemed to her so simple to ask: "Your cousin Charles wishes to marry you. What answer shall we give him ? " And instead came these words : " The secret, my daughter, which is entirely unknown to your father, is this that, notwithstanding his exces- sive labour, and prodigies of economy on my part, we have not been able to secure that social position of which I just now spoke, without our expenses during the last ten years and each year more and more exceeding our income. You know our home life, how- 160 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY ever; you see, yourself, that we economize at every point in respect to the table, when we are alone, and in our dress. You know the care I have always taken to avoid any marked styles, so that we can make our clothes last. You know how often they are made over or repaired, in the house. We go to the great makers only when it is necessary that we should. We have a cheap milliner, a cheap jeweller. We keep no horses. When we travel, your father always applies for a pass, and we avail ourselves of his connection with the press to obtain the lowest rates at hotels. In respect to all this I make no complaint, although I was brought up in ignorance of these annoyances. What is cruel for me is this, that with all the trouble I have taken for him, that he might have the social position which he has, notwithstanding his profession, and for you, that you might have, as a young girl, the acquaintances that you ought to have I have not been able to avoid that which my dear mother taught me to hold in the greatest detestation. One word will tell you all, my child: we are in debt." " In debt ? " repeated Heine, whom the sentence as to the expenses incurred for her sake had struck to the very heart. It was indeed true that nothing had been spared in her education, her adornment, her pleasures. She no longer thought of asking herself the reason for all this confidence now reposed in her by her mother. She felt only how devoted her mother had been to her, after OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 161 her fashion, doubtless, but it had been devotion all the same, and the voice of the lovely child sank very low as she answered : " In debt ? You have incurred debts, and for me ? Ah ! mamma, you are quite right not to let father know this. But how can they be paid unless he can work still more than he does ? Mon Dieu I " she added timidly, "now that our position is made, as you say, is it not possible to restrict ourselves ? " " And in what ? " said the mother, " and why ? To lose all that has been won with so much difficulty ? No, my child, you are ignorant of life. In Paris, to reduce one's style of living is social suicide. Once in my life, when I was at your age, I had the experience of that fatal facility with which the world forgets those who have been unfortunate. Besides, there is no need of exag- gerating. It is only that we have run behind. We owe, among the various people we deal with, about forty thou- sand francs; and this trifle would be soon paid even with your father's working less than now, if " " If ? " asked the girl, with more anxiety than ever. Although she did not allow herself to judge her mother, she could not but understand her character, and she knew, by the very tone in which this word "if" had been spoken, that here was the important point in the conversation. Yes, she knew it by the tone of voice, altered almost imperceptibly, but altered, nevertheless, with the changed subject by the look, also, which, fearing to meet resistance, grew more gentle, almost sup- 162 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXUKY plicating. Evidently the confidential disclosure of the previous moment was only a preliminary but to what ? Between the simple life in the little Provencal mas and the payment of the eight thousand dollars of debts that enormous sum, as it seemed to her Eeine could not establish the connection. Her heart beat violently as she perceived suddenly what it was, while she listened to Mme. Le Prieux's commentary upon this formidable " if." " Mon Dieu ! it is perfectly simple. If, pretty and well bred as you are, there should be found some good fellow who had money, a great deal of money, and, consequently, had no occasion to require a dowry ; if you were thus married, well married, what a relief it would be to your father ! And I, too, should be rewarded for the sacrifices of a lifetime. What is it that I have desired, I ask you again? One thing only that your father and you should have a real position in the world. You would have it and for life. The rest would become easy. We could then economize, pay our debts, and your father could take some rest. Do you not see how it is ? When a girl is very closely bound to her parents, as you are to us, there are a great many little ways in which she can be useful to them. We should have the same acquaint- ances. If you received every week, for instance, I could make my dinners and receptions less frequent. The civilities that you offered would count for both. You would have a place in the country in Touraine, say, OTHEK PEOPLE'S LUXURY 163 not too far from Paris. Naturally, we should be there two months in the year. Your father could come and go, keep on with his work, and get a little fresh air, and our household expenses would be just so much lessened. It is a dream, is it not? But there are dreams which come true. All we need is that my charming Eeine should meet at a ball, at a dinner, wherever she goes, in her home, even a young man who would appreciate the treasure that she is, a young man who would under- stand, too, what we are, and to whom we should bring what is lacking to himself, a valid social position, and who would bring to you that which your father and I to our despair cannot give you." " And do you know this young man ? " E-eine asked. " Tell me his name, mamma, I beg you. It is " "There is such a young man," the mother replied. " It is Edgard Faucherot." " Edgard Faucherot ! " Eeine exclaimed. " Ah ! it was to speak to me about Edgard Faucherot that " She stopped. The image of her father came before her mind, and the recollection of what he had said, and the emotion they had both felt. "And does my father know that Edgard Faucherot wishes to marry me?" "Certainly," said the mother. "And he approves of this marriage?" Eeine continued. " Why should he not ? " replied Mme. Le Prieux ; and she added, "and yet the dear man has no idea of our situation in regard to money." 164 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY Such a pallor had spread itself over the young girl's face, her smothered voice revealed such a shock, that the implacable woman was struck by it. She was not a monster, this "beautiful Mme. Le Prieux," although her prolonged exploitation of her husband's labour in the interest of a vain passion for luxury was very nearly ferocious; and very much like ferocity, also, was her present procedure in forcing her daughter to a cruelly utilitarian marriage. It was simply that her conscience had been vitiated by the germs of corruption with which the social atmosphere is filled a corruption which current morality, solely concerning itself with breaches of the seventh commandment, scarcely at all notices. Mme. Le Prieux believed herself a good woman, and so she was, in the ordinary meaning of the word. On the other hand, the world had completely abolished in her, by daily abuse of compromises, that noble virtue of uncompromising veracity, which would not have suffered her to conceal from her husband and her daughter the advances made by Mme. Huguenin. But, when one has spent years in receiving cordially the per- son one despises, in complimenting the person one hates, how and why should one hesitate to practise, with a motive considered beneficent, toward one's family, the convenient old maxim that the end justifies the means ? When one has, during these same years, invariably found, behind even the least acts of life, money, always money ; when one has seen on every side, this all- OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 165 powerful money solely and constantly respected, how and why fail to make wealth the supreme condition of happiness ? The world teaches further to the common- place nature and, do not deceive yourself, vanity of whatever kind implies some coarse and brutal streak in the character this sad truth, that, in the end, need is victorious over feeling, and that, especially in marriage, the surest chance for harmony lies in the union not of hearts but of interests. And so let us give due credit to this mother, who was so serenely preparing to sacrifice her daughter, for the scruple which made her say now to the young girl, " But what is the matter, Reine ? You are agitated, you are pale!" " It is nothing, mamma," the girl said. " I was so unprepared for what you have just told me. I was taken by surprise, that is all." "Answer me frankly," said the mother. "There is no one else ? If you love any other person I am your mother, you must tell me. If you would prefer to marry some one else ? " " Certainly not, mamma," interrupted Heine, and her voice grew more steady as she went on : " There is no one else that I should prefer to marry. Only " she added, with a half smile, in which quivered, in spite of herself, the revolt of her youth, asking, imploring, a little respite before the sacrifice the respite of Jephthah's daughter, going away into the 166 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY mountains to weep there her adieu to life, and hope, and love " only, I should like to have a few days to accustom myself to the prospect of so great a change, to the idea especially of leaving you and my father. It is now Tuesday. Will you give me until Saturday to reply to M. Faucherot's proposal? I expect to say yes," she had the strength to add; "but," and, in turn, her voice grew solemn, "I am not willing to say it, until I have had time to think very seriously on the subject." " Very well," rejoined the mother, " we will wait till Saturday." She would undoubtedly have preferred an immediate acceptance, enabling her to set Cruce at work at once. This same half remorse, which had driven her to question Heine, now made it impossible for her to refuse to the girl this few days' grace. In replying, as she did, so indulgently, did she not deceive herself into thinking that she respected her child's free will ? This, at least, is what she said to Hector when, as soon as Heine had left the room, he came in, testifying thus to the solicitude he felt, and showing that, notwithstanding his work, he had been watching for this interview to terminate. " Well ? " he said anxiously. " Well ! " the mother rejoined. " She was very much disturbed, very much touched, also. Very much dis- turbed at the idea of leaving us, which was perfectly natural ; very much touched also by the feeling which OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 167 Edgard's advances reveal." She already called young Faucherot by his Christian name, so positively did she already regard him as her son-in-law. "I did not wish to urge her. I gave her until Saturday to reflect; but she said to me that she should accept him. Ah ! mon ami, if you knew how happy I am ! " MME. LE PRIEUX'S " DAY " WHILE this devoted mother as she believed herself to be was announcing in these terms to her husband the result of her interview with their daughter, what was that daughter doing, that other victim, but alas ! a more clear-sighted one, to the social ambitions of this terrible woman? At the first moment, as we have seen, Reine had been, so to speak, struck down by the double revela- tion which had broken in upon her dream of happiness : she had shuddered with pity at the gloomy financial situation of her parents ; and with disappointment a disappointment that was akin to despair on being told by her mother that her father desired this marriage with young Faucherot's millions. She had shuddered, and, shuddering, she had also yielded. In saying, as she had" done, that she should probably accept, she had but thought and felt aloud. This suddenness in renouncing what she considered her own happiness will appear singular only to those who have forgotten their own 1C8 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY youth and how ready the soul is, at that age, for mag- nanimous impulses. In any case, Heine would have found it hard to repulse an appeal like that which her mother had so artfully addressed to her. Resistance became impossible when her father also asked of her this sacrifice ; and, as we have seen, it was Mme. Le Prieux's supreme diplomacy to make her believe that he did ask it. Yet, as we have also seen, the gentle Iphigenia of this domestic tragedy, without refusing herself to the knife, had asked a respite. Why ? For the reason that, in accepting the idea of self-immolation to her parents' will, she could not fail to remember that she must also sacrifice, at the same moment, another ; and she would not she could not consent to this second immolation, without having flung out in different words toward this other, the cry of the real Iphigenia : " Heaven has not to the life of this unfortunate Attached the happiness of your destiny. Our love deceived us " This had not taken the distinctness of a plan in her thoughts. No. She had only, while her mother was talking, felt a great place in her heart that where her dream of a life with Charles grew and blossomed begin to quiver and bleed. She realized the whole truth of the martyrdom to which filial love was about to condemn her only when she was alone in her room, waiting for by a cruel irony of fate, this Tuesday was Mme. Le OTHEII PEOPLE'S LUXURY 169 Prieux's "day" until it was time to dress and aid her mother in receiving the fellow-actors in this social drama, where she herself was about to play a cruelly tragic rdle. The young girl sat down in her little room after she had locked the door, and then began, as she looked around her, to weep big, continuous tears, which ran down her cheeks as she sat there, silent and motionless. She was bidding adieu to the Heine not very happy, but still always hopeful who for years had lived her best hours, those that she could win from society, within the four walls of this narrow cell, surrounded even there by the symbols of that contradiction which underlay her whole life. It was a room decorated by one person and lived in by another. Mine. Le Prieux, from her daughter's earliest infancy, had resolutely trained her to luxury, as other mothers train theirs to economy. This appar- ent eccentricity had its motive ; determined, even then, to select a rich son-in-law, she had, as it were, pre- pared Heine for her future position ; and this young girl's bedroom told the story of the strange maternal romance, in its hangings of pink muslin over delicate blue striped silk, its silk curtains of the same tone, its lacquered white furniture also covered with blue silk, and the many silver objects of the toilet-table. But the photo- graphs scattered through the room were Heine's choice, not her mother's ; and they spoke not of luxury and dis- play, but of family affection and simple friendships. 170 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY These portraits were not of the rich and stylish young acquaintances whom, her mother had sought out for her: there were the likenesses of the grandparents at Chevagnes, whom she had never seen ; a picture of her father in his youth, and one of her mother, before the epoch of the social successes, in a very simple gown; there was a group representing the Huguenin cousins, at the door of their mas, the father and mother, and Charles himself, in the background. There was also, in this museum of Heine's affections, a picture of the not very aristocratic Fanny Perrin this was all ; no cotillon favours, none of those souvenirs of fetes that are the usual decorations of a girl's bedroom. In a corner by the window, a little old Auvergnat writing-table of walnut that Mme. Le Prieux had retained as of the nature of a bibelot, with the chair belonging to it, had been the property of Hector as a boy. Upon the two shelves above it were the books which Heine specially preferred : her father's three volumes, of course, and with them the gifts of this father, who had delighted to cultivate in his child the tastes akin to his own: the tragedies of Kacine, among the classics, and, among modern writers, the Marie of Briseux, the Stances et Poemes and the s Epreuves of Sully-Prudhomme, and the Dernieres Pa- roles of Antony Deschamps. A few religious works filled out the upper shelf, and below there were certain mysterious volumes, unusually tall, with merely dates OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 171 stamped upon the back. These contained, cut out and pasted upon leaves which were afterward bound, year by year, those of her father's newspaper articles which Reine's ingenuous idolatry had led her specially to admire. Among all these poor objects old, faded photo- graphs, old provincial furniture, beloved books, at home, in short how miserable and deserted the sacri- ficed girl felt herself ! Into what an unspeakable abyss of misery she had suddenly fallen with that instan- taneousness of submission which was due to the appeal her mother had had the skill to make. Alone with herself, how she again felt herself ruled by a duty which she was incapable even of questioning! When the master feeling of her life had been, for years, a pity every day growing more intense for the slavery under which her father was smothered, how could she see a chance of lessening that slavery, and refuse it? And this was more than a chance, it was a certainty. While her mother went on talking, the sum of the debts that had been thus revealed to her was translated instantly in her thoughts into the amount of labour that the jour- nalist must undertake in order to pay them. She had so often made this mental translation, when her mother had taken her to the dressmaker's or the milliner's and discussed in her presence the order of a gown or a bonnet with which she could so easily have dispensed. What was this expenditure, which had always caused 172 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY her a slight remorse, and the labour corresponding to it, in comparison with the eight thousand dollars confessed by Mme. Le Prieux, and the frightful number of pages that must be blackened to earn them ? Eeine computed them anew, these pages, in the soli- tude of her room, and she was all the more crushed because she knew well her father's scrupulous integrity. She knew well that from the day when he should learn the truth he would have no rest until every bill had been paid in full. And it rested with her that these arrears should be liquidated without effort ! How could she have the strength to hesitate, even for a moment ? To her mother's unanswerable arguments, which showed her, in the opulence of her future life, an almost daily relief for her parents, what could she reply ? Nothing, except that her affections called her in another direction. The question lay, therefore, between her happiness and their happiness; and when a generous heart, at twenty years of age, recognizes a dilemma like this, it is at once resolved. But to renounce one's happiness is not to lose the right of weeping, of weeping for oneself, and it was these tears of the suicide that wet the young girl's face, in the virginal cell where she had had, for com- panions of her solitude, so many sweet, innocent dreams of the future, and whither she had now fled, not to argue with herself, but to suffer. And she wept silently, how long she could not have told, until the moment when an idea presented itself to her mind, OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 173 and brought her at once to her feet. Her slender hands wiped the tears away, she threw back her head with a gesture of resolve, and said aloud, "If I have no more courage than this, how can I give any to Charles ? " The brave girl completely ceased thinking of herself. To feel for others was the natural instinct of the exqui- site sensitiveness which, while she was still very young, had developed itself as pity, in divining and in shar- ing the quiet and hidden sadness in her father's destiny. And now she was thinking only of Charles. She knew that he loved her so truly. She herself loved him, with an affection which was all devotion how he would suffer in knowing that she was the wife of Faucherot, without himself having, in bearing this grief, the im- perative reasons of filial duty which would support her, which were already supporting her! She took up the photograph in which he was represented stand- ing behind his parents. It was only the work of an amateur of herself made at the time she visited Provence, and though it was far from distinct, and the figure of the young man in the background was the most confused of all, it was still perfectly recogniz- able, the hair, the eyes, the smile, and a certain car- riage of the head, slightly to one side, which was familiar to her. In an hallucination that vanished as suddenly as it came, Reine saw him thus, as he would be, withdrawn to his own home, devouring his heart with sadness while 174 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY she would be the wife of another, and what another ! The vision caused her such distress that she laid down the picture, and began to walk up and down in the prison of her narrow room, turning over in her mind the one question on which all the living strength of her soul was absorbed: "In what way shall I make known to him this frightful news, and what shall I say ? " Yes, what could she say ? And yet, it must be that she herself should speak to him. Heine was too loyal to her heart's core not to understand that, from the moment when she accepted the idea of marrying another man, after the conversation she had had with Charles, she owed to him an explanation, and owed it to him immediately. Had she not authorized him to have his mother make advances the idea of which now increased her distress ? Having too much confidence in her own mother to imagine that the latter could have received this communication from Mme. Huguenin and concealed the fact from herself, Eeine trembled, now, lest this letter lately so much desired should be on the way. If only Mme. Huguenin had delayed, if the letter had not yet been sent, if there were still time to prevent its being written, and to spare this mortification to the parents of him she loved ? On this account she must speak, and at once. To this point she continually returned to speak ; but how ? An interview, in which she would see her cousin suffer, and suffer at OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 175 her hands, appeared to her at once inevitable and impossible. What pretext could she find to justify a withdrawal from the promise given an act which she herself, with the fine strictness of the emotional con- science that one has at twenty years of age, would have characterized as monstrous, if she had seen a friend guilty of such a thing, without knowing its real motive, and this real motive must, at all risks, be kept secret from every one, most of all from Charles. Even though a solemn promise had not prohibited it to her, all her family feeling, all her modesty of soul revolted also at the thought of admitting the man she loved into this sad domestic secret, the hidden martyrdom of her fath'er, her mother's ways of feeling. She still refused to judge them her mother's ways of feeling even now, but she had not the least doubt what Charles's opinion of them would be. But alas ! if she did not confess this to him, and she would rather die, how explain to him her own conduct, so that he should not judge her, herself also, with severity ? What could she say to him? That she had reflected and found that she did not love him ? After their so recent conversation at the ball, when she had spoken to him so frankly, he would not believe her. And then, some- thing in herself protested against thus calumniating her own heart. The very young have a scrupulous respect for their emotions, because they are also proud of them. And this too legitimate pride, this desire to 176 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY show herself in the truth of her deepest feelings, with- out revealing their mysterious cause, at last inspired the romantic girl, after prolonged and painful medita- tion, with the most na'ive and audacious of projects, the most unreasonable and the most touching yes, she would see Charles as soon as possible, and she would see him alone. She would appeal, in this inter- view, to his esteem, to his confidence in her, to his love. She would ask him to believe her, to believe that she had spoken the truth to him, that she had not changed, and should never change in her affection for him; and she would at the same time declare to him that they must renounce their dream of marriage, and must do this for an insurmountable, a sacred reason, which it was impossible for her to reveal to him. She would implore him, if he loved her, not to seek to know this reason. She would appeal to his faith in her, and he would understand her suffering in this appeal and her sincerity. She would understand it, if it were addressed to her. Their secret betrothal would be broken, and it would be a frightful moment for both. But at least she would leave him, feeling sure that he did not despise her. A woman who loves, though she be as ingenuous and as free from all spirit of intrigue as was this innocent and pure-minded child, is always a little tempted to excuse the means that she employs in the service of her affection, even were they as tortuous as the liea of the Agnes or the Rosine of comedy. Keine OTHEK PEOPLE'S LUXURY 177 was neither an Agnes nor a Rosine. She was one of those charming girls of the old French bourgeoisie, all acuteness, but all truth. She had an innate horror of falsehood which made her hesitate, at the moment of carrying out her plan, before one thing to be done in its execution, which will seem very childish to the emancipated of contemporary feminism. The cause of hesitation was this : to talk with her cousin alone was impossible in the house. He himself would never have asked to be received by Heine in her mother's absence, and at the mere thought that perhaps he would come on their "day," and that, under her mother's eye, she must see him without being able to speak to him frankly, the young girl felt herself grow faint. But time was slipping away. The next day, in the morning, she was to go, accompanied by the faithful Fanny Perrin, to one of the fash- ionable lectures, in the rue Eoyale, that her elegant education required her to attend. Very often, when the day was fine, she would walk for some time with her chaperon, before returning to the house. Her first idea was to send word to Charles to meet her at the Tuileries or in the Champs-3lysees, in the morning. They could meet, as if by chance, and walk a short distance together. This also had often happened. Yes, it was a very simple and very sure way. Heine went to her table and took a little blue telegram, and then, as she was about to dip her pen into the ink, stopped 178 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY short. Another thought came to her suddenly; it was not the writing of a note or the making of an appoint- ment that suddenly alarmed her. Not infrequently Mme. Le Prieux had desired her to write a note to her cousin to change the date of an invitation, or to offer him a seat in their box at the theatre ; and on the other hand, she had a right to say to herself that in planning this meeting she was obeying only the noblest of motives. Nor was it doing a thing with- out her mother's knowledge that disturbed her thus. That fair-mindedness with which natures capable of resolute action judge themselves, made her institute something like a comparison between this lack of con- fidence and the sacrifice upon which she had decided, for this mother. No ; the image which, at this first moment, prevented her from writing her generous, imprudent note, was that of Mile. Fanny Perrin, that good creature whom she knew to be so scrupulous, so attached to her duty. She knew also that Fanny had the blindest faith in her, that never a doubt would arise in the chaperon's mind as to the accidental character of a meeting with Charles, nor any objection if Eeine were to leave her and go a few steps forward with her cousin, offer- ing no explanation to her. To deceive this discreet and humble friend was intolerable to the young girl. And then then, love gained the victory; and for the first and last time in her life the scrupulous Heine OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 179 abandoned herself to the most venial, certainly, and most excusable, of compromises with conscience. She promised herself that she would tell Fanny Perrin, in proposing to go to the Tuileries, that she was expect- ing to meet Charles there. If Fanny objected to going, Eeine would give it up. There would be time to make some other plan. If Eeine had been perfectly sincere with herself, she would have confessed she ran no great risk of being obliged to make a new effort of the imagination. She was too sure that Fanny, who adored her, would never be able to refuse. How- ever, this reservation made it possible to resume her pen and to write the following note : " MY COUSIN : I beg you, to-morrow morning, between half-past ten and eleven, to be on the terrace of the Tuileries, on the side toward the Seine, near the Or- angery. If I have not come by eleven o'clock, it will be because something absolutely insurmountable has pre- vented me. You will understand, after I have spoken with you, how powerful was the motive which has inspired this step on the part of " Your devoted cousin, LE PRIEUX." After she had written the address of this card tele- gram : M. Charles Huguenin, 54 Eue d'Assas, it occurred to her to re-read the lines, so cold though written with burning fingers, and she added this postscript, underlin- 180 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY ing it, " I also beg you not to come to the house to-day." Then, having sealed the little blue paper, she carried it herself to the servant who was laying the table for breakfast, and sent him out with it immediately. She was somewhat pale in doing this thing, for her so extraor- dinary, so far outside anything she had ever done or thought of doing. But inasmuch as she did it openly, frankly, without concealment, at the risk of being sur- prised by her father or mother, she said to herself that she was incurring danger for the honour of her affection. And this was enough to save her from shame or fear. Now, she must wait ; and the tranquillity that the fact of action had restored to her was to be worn out, minute by minute, second by second, during the twenty-four hours which separated her from this interview with her cousin. She was obliged, first, to endure, at the breakfast table, the glances of her mother and her father the former, triumphant and grateful; the lat- ter (and this aspect could not but increase the girl's discomfort) as if touched, surprised, and questioning. Happily, he went away very early, having to attend a rehearsal. " The fourth this week," he groaned, as he took leave of his wife and daughter. Mme. Le Prieux also disappeared very soon, to prepare for her "day," that "Tuesday," to which had been subordinated her own existence, and her husband's, and Keine's! This weekly task had never been agreeable to the girl. She accepted it ordinarily with the good-humour of her age. OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXUKY 181 She even felt remorse, being pious, that sometimes she found this light cross painful. That afternoon the string of visits could not but be, and was, physically, almost intolerable. "Has Charles received the despatch? Yes, if he is at home. Mon Dieu! if only he does not come to-day ! If he has received it, what does he think of me? If only he does not misjudge me ! He must know that there is something serious. If only he is not too much distressed ! I ought to have explained to him. I could not in writing." These were the sentences spoken within her, while she was attending with her habitual carefulness to the small duties assigned to her, before the appointed three o'clock, at which hour the two salons began to fill. She looked at the flowers in the vases, and at the growing plants, at the bibelots in the cabinets, and at the fire on the hearth. She saw to the dining room where the luncheon was laid. Mme. Le Prieux had increased her available space for receptions by mak- ing the doors of this room slide in grooves, so that it could serve as an extension of the grand salon. These very prosaic duties were not of a nature to silence the low voice within her which reminded the young girl of the near approach of the formidable interview, any more than were the remarks to which she must listen, when the usual guests began to arrive. And yet, it was rather a curious sample of contem- porary Paris, this " day " of the journalist's wife, and the aspect of the three rooms, about five o'clock, proved 182 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY that, if Mme. Le Prieux had no comprehension of the feelings of others, she had in the highest degree the social instinct that peculiar and indefinable gift of making desirable acquaintances. Her success was due, as all successes are, to a correct foresight as to causes. The events which followed her father's ruin and death had revealed to this woman of the south the prime and fundamental truth that everything has its price, in society ; and she was able to understand exactly how much her husband's means enabled her to give to that society which she so eagerly loved. She also had discerned this further truth, that in the Paris of our day there is not one circle of fashionable society, but twenty or thirty of these circles ; and that a married couple like themselves, without family support or any past, must be contented with a somewhat peculiar posi- tion, must not push themselves into any one coterie but make their own for themselves, touching upon all but making no effort to belong completely to any one. She had recognized, lastly, this third truth, that it is in social relations as it is with coins. To have a louis is the same as having twenty francs; to have a hundred francs is equivalent to having five louis. There are acquaintances of prime importance that give you at one stroke ten or twenty others, and there are those of secondary value that give you only them- selves. The influence of these practical axioms was shown OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 183 in the very make-up of this salon, on the Tuesday which, this time, seemed to Reine as if it would never end. Why had the journalist's wife a Dowager-duchess, Mme. de Contay, and her daughter, the pretty young Countess de Bee-Crispin, seated there on one of her sofas except because Mme. Le Prieux had found means, in virtue of the first of these three principles, to put at the service of certain charities in which the old duchess was passionately interested the influence of Hector in the theatres, and with the press ? Why, on this same Tuesday, had she there, talking with these two representatives of the purest aristocracy, Mme. Jacques Molan, the wife of the celebrated novel- ist, and Mme. Maxime Fauriel, the wife of the no less renowned pastellist? This was because, in virtue of the second principle, she had never made the mistake of breaking with a society that, in the depths of her soul, she described as Bohemian. She had striven to render her salon amusing by making it a kind of neutral ground where people belonging to a more exclusive circle could meet the very flower of artistic and literary Paris. Why, still on this same Tuesday, were the Countess Abel Mose and her cousin, the Baroness Andermatt, there, who had, each of them, nearly as many million francs as the hard-working Hector wrote articles, yearly ? This was because the two beautiful Jewesses were particularly grateful to the journalist for having, at the opening of the anti-Semitic 184 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY campaign, taken that position of moderate liberalism which he still holds, and for having taken it with absolute disinterestedness. It may be guessed by whose advice. And notice the keen scent of old Grace's pupil : Mines, de Contay and de Bee-Crispin are good for more than ten acquaintances in the best society; with Mme. Molan and Mine. Fauriel, a place is retained in the two houses where young literary Paris is always to be found; with the presence of the Countess Mose* and the Baroness Andermatt, invi- tations are secured in all the high society of Israel. Who can wonder that a house frequented by these heads of columns should never be scant of guests, and that forty persons, ladies and men, may be counted there on this particular Tuesday? And is it not legitimate that she who has created this "salon," should regard with pride the fresh or faded faces that smile under the bonnets, in the light of the elec- tric lamps? She knows both what to say to bring this smile to each visitor's face, and what the cost was of the bonnet. She knows the value of all these toilettes, and how to please each one of these decorated vanities. One thing, however, escapes her knowledge and that is, how tired Heine is of pouring tea or chocolate and offering cake to these indifferent peo- ple, and how worn out with all this talk, which she knows by heart. How wearisome, for instance, to hear the duchess narrate her plans for a charity fe~te, OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 185 the five hundredth that she has organized ! She is an enormous person, with the look of a market woman from the Halles, very red and very haughty, who has a very grand air with a stout figure, and talks in a loud voice, cutting her sentences off with a " not more," inexplicable unless it be because she has begged too often : "This time we should have to have the Palais de 1' Industrie, and for two days. Not more. At twenty francs admission, and five francs each visit to one of the compartments. Not more. There will be twenty of these compartments, not more, and in each one, for a half hour, during those two days, all the famous men in Paris would come and work under the eyes of the public, just as in their own rooms or studios. Not more. Do you see ? Allowing eight hours a day, that would give us thirty-two half hours. We should ask the thirty most famous writers. For the poor, they would not refuse to do it. Yes, we should ask them to sit down for just thirty little minutes at a table, not more, and write what they pleased, the musicians to play what they pleased, the artists to paint what they pleased. The thirty most famous lawyers would argue on any subject they pleased for half an hour, not more ; or else they might prepare a speech. The doctors would bring their students, and give a lecture on whatever they pleased. If we have this in May, when strangers are in Paris, we should have ten thousand visitors. Not 186 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY more. That would make two hundred thousand francs for our poor consumptives ; and each person would visit at least four of the compartments, which would be another two hundred thousand francs. Ask M. Le Prieux what he thinks of my idea ? " Yes, how weary Eeine is of being obliged, again to-day, to lend an appearance of attention to one of the fantas- tic projects in which the activity of the grande dame expends itself, while her mother smiles at sentences behind which the girl, with her sensitive susceptibility, discerns that ingenuous and insulting conception of the famous artist which women too high of rank are so apt to form they are curious animals to be placed on exhibition. In like manner, other sentences interest the mother prodigiously to judge by the expressions of admiration wherewith she punctuates them which appear almost offensive to the sensitive Reine. These pass between the two cousins, Mme. Abel Mose and Mme. Andermatt, talking not less frankly than the duchess, without sus- pecting for they are generous and kindly the sar- casm that, in this atmosphere where elegance is a feat of legerdemain, is contained in their frank allusions to certain figures of expense. "Yes," says Mme. Andermatt, after relating the details of a separation between a husband and wife, who are nearly connected with herself, "Solomon" (her own husband) "succeeded in convincing Saki" OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 187 (the husband in the story) "that he must act like a ' gentleman.' No matter if they could not get on to- gether, there was nothing really wrong about Esther. She is the mother of his two sons. He owes it to himself that she should be able to live decently. Saki admitted it all, and what do you suppose he allows her ? " " Kich as he is," Mme. Mose emphasized, " for he has at least fifty millions." " Very well," resumed Mme. Andermatt, " sixty thou- sand francs a year six thousand a month. Why, she used to spend as much as that on her lingerie. How is she going to live ? " Yes. How was the young baroness, Esther Wismar, going to live ? This is the question put to each other, with evident compassion and the most amusing seriousness, by the five ladies who listened to this reve- lation of the ungentlemanly conduct of Saki Wismar, the rich banker. Heine would have considered this com- passion as gently comic, had it not been that one of these five ladies was her father's wife, and had she not known what she did know about the condition of their affairs. She has not time, however, to abandon herself to this painful feeling, for she has just heard Mme. Molan whom she has approached for the purpose of offering her a second cup of tea say to her friend, Mme. Fauriel, " Tiens, Laurence ! Here comes Snobinette ; and the duchess and the countess are just leaving ! Tableau ! " 188 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY "Marie, Marie," rejoins Mine. Fauriel, "Reine will scold you ; she has a weakness for Mme. Faucherot." And, indeed, it is Edgard's mother who has just entered, and as if to justify, on the instant, Mine. Fauriel's little mischievous remark, she makes her way, through the groups whose idle talk fills the two rooms, to where Reine stands. She kisses her, the poor girl, who grows icy cold under the kiss. Reine is too acute herself not to be conscious that Laurence Fauriel is annoyed that she should have heard Mme. Molan's not particularly witty sneer. But why, unless it were that the plan of her marriage with Edgard Faucherot is already known and commented upon ? And then, the mother of Edgard has, in this sudden affection for herself, a kind of entering into posses- sion ; and this idea sends through the girl's veins the shiver of a gazelle under the paw of a lioness if, indeed, such a comparison is permissible in speaking of a person so far from leonine as the former sales- woman of the house of " Hardy, Faucherot, Silk and Velvet." This individual, six times millionnaire, is a little woman of forty-five, who has remained very slender and still young in her appearance. She pos- sesses, if you observe her in detail, all sorts of traits which should make her a distinguished woman: small feet and slender hands, a fine figure, regular features, large, brown eyes with finely pencilled eyebrows, and regular white teeth. She is dressed in the latest style, OTHEK PEOPLE'S LUXURY 189 and the blue fox that she wears would not disgrace the shoulders of a princess of the blood. With all this explain the mystery ! there is, as if diffused over her whole being, a character absolutely, irremediably com- mon. She is, so to speak, the exact inverse of the duchess, so impressive, with all which would naturally render her vulgar, in appearance, colour, figure, and toilette. During the moment that they were together on the threshold of the door, the contrast in exterior conditions was apparent, as one compared the huge figure of Mme. de Contay and Mme. Faucherot's slender figure, the latter's elegant furs and the faded and yellow old sable of the former. And yet, even at a glance, no person could have failed to know which was the duchess and which the bourgeoise. By what sign ? By the ease of the former, and the stiffness of the latter ? By the kind of imposing good-nature and gay certainty of the one, and the too emphatic arrogance of the other? Who will ever be able to define that assemblage of noth- ings that are summed up in the word " race " ? These nothings are doubtless only the showing through of secret and uncontrollable elements hidden in the inner- most depths of the soul which forbid or command certain methods of thinking. The person whom Mme. Molan had called by the sportive nickname of " Snobinette " gave still further proof of this by saying to Heine, after the first effusiveness, " Is it not the Duchess de Contay who has just gone 190 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY away? And I wanted so much to meet her! Why did you not let me know ? See how unlucky I was. I missed seeing her by being detained in a block of carriages. I told my coachman to come through the narrow streets. After all, there's nothing so disagree- able as to have a pair of horses that have cost ten thou- sand francs. One is always afraid of their getting injured. You are quite right, you and these ladies, in having them by the month. Then you're not afraid to move " And Edgard's mother continues, without remarking the ironical smile on the lips of the two sly Parisian women as they listen, nor the sad look that her foolish- ness brings into the eyes of the young girl whom she has chosen for a daughter-in-law, until at last Eeine interrupts her, saying, " Will you have tea or chocolate ? One ought to take something warm, the day is so cold." "Which did the duchess take?" Mme. Faucherot asked ; and, on being told : " Then I will take some tea, like her. Tell me, does she come here often? Oh, if I had only known ! And I had been so pleased to buy those horses of Mme. de Candale ! For they were hers, you know. They were sent to Tattersall's, and I said I would have them at any price. And see now what they have made me miss ! " OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 191 VI CHARLES HUGUENTN ONE of the poets whose verses Hector Le Prieux had taught his daughter to love the subtle and sensitive Sully-Prudhomme is the author of this line, so strong in meaning while so simple in words, " Et les heures arrivent toutes," a profound expression of the twofold sadness of expect- ancy that of the steady passage of time, and that of its rapid passage. Eeine had experienced the former, while she endured the lazy hours of her mother's " Tuesday " and of the social duties which followed, for Mme. Le Prieux had required her presence at a dinner-party and two balls that evening. And when at last she was at home, and free to remain alone with herself, she began to suffer the other pang that of feeling how brief and few were the moments which separated her from her in- terview with Charles. Twelve times sixty minutes, eleven times, ten times, nine times and she would be face to face with her cousin! What should she say to him? Lying in her little bed, in the darkness, she heard the ticking of the clock fill the room with that implacable sound which is like the irresistible footsteps of Time, and she strove to frame in her thoughts the sentences that to-morrow she must speak. The more she sought for words, the more she found herself powerless to 192 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY express what she desired to say all her love, and this was a farewell; all her fidelity, and this was to break off; all her grief, and it was her absolute duty to con- ceal the sacrifice. After many prayers she slept, with a feverish sleep from which she awakened more tran- quil. The necessity for action, with its strain upon her nerves, was, for the moment, as it will sometimes hap- pen, a tonic. It was her intention to give her morning glance at her father's room so early and so rapidly that she would escape meeting him, fearing that, if he spoke to her, she might lose her self-control, and might betray herself, before the irreparable act was done. This she accomplished so well that her daily inspection was over when Le Prieux, himself somewhat earlier than usual, came to his work. Oh, the misunderstandings of heart between a father and his child, when each has for the other only respect, devotion, adoration ! Hector had taken pains to be early on the spot, in the hope of find- ing his daughter there, as he so often did, and, without seeming to do it intentionalty, bringing about an expla- nation with her as to the Faucherot marriage, which still caused him anxiety. The sovereign ascendency that his wife exercised over him had prevented him, the day before, from asking Heine to come to him alone that he might question her. He felt quite sure that his daughter would be glad to meet him alone, and it was a real disappointment when he entered his room, and saw his table arranged, the paper lying ready, the pens OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 193 in their place, the fire burning brightly, and the gentle fairy gone, who had made the room ready for him. "She was not willing to have me talk with her about this marriage," he thought to himself, " and why ? " While the father was putting this question to him- self and could find no answer and dared not go to his daughter's room, out of deference to what he regarded as her wish, Reine was saying to herself, "Now he is calmly at work. He is satisfied. If he knew what it has cost ! May he never know ! " She was perfectly sincere in what she said, and still the idea of her father's unconsciousness was so pain- ful to her that she experienced a sensation of being really consoled the first feeling of anything but distress that she had had since the fatal interview of the preceding morning when, at about half-past nine, she beheld appearing before her the ugly but affectionate face of Fanny Perrin. This elderly person was short and stout, with a head much too large for her body. Her thick lips and her flattened nose gave her a bull-dog look, corrected by her blue eyes of a frank sweetness almost charming in this face. Her faded complexion, rendered sallow by habitually poor food, looked more withered still from the colourless tone of the hair, still blond but as if washed out or as if faded by the sun. With this, poor Fanny, who had, for many years, worn no other clothes than the cast-off 194 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY things of her rich patronesses, was always arrayed in the garments, at once conspicuous and caricatural, of the poor relation. The material was always sumptu- ous and shabby, the style elaborate and no longer fashionable, the fitting complicated and incorrect. It was the same with her shoes and her bonnets. " I shall never have anything really new and made for me till I have my coffin," the clever creature would say. The misery of such an existence lies more in presents than it does in privations. The insolence with which a favour is done, usually, to these half- parasites, so frequently forces them to be ungrateful that they experience infinite thankfulness toward the considerate benefactor whose gifts they can acknowl- edge, not with the lips only, but with the heart. Reine's thoughtful kindness toward poor old Fanny had been repaid by the most ardent devotion on the part of the latter, and, though in no way akin, it had* seemed to give her that power of discernment in the things which concerned Heine which is a tender mother's privilege, and this she proved anew on the morning of which we speak. No sooner had Mile. Perrin remarked the young girl's pallor and her look of extreme fatigue, than, without any reference to merely physical health, she asked at once, "What is it, Eeine? Something has happened something very serious. Do not deny it. I am sure " OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 195 " Something has happened," the girl replied. " But do not ask me. What I can tell you, I will: and all the more because I expect a great service from you. But I want you to understand that I shall not be dis- pleased if you feel that you must not do what I ask." "I have no fear," rejoined Mile. Perrin; "what could my darling Eeine ask me to do that would be wrong ? " Then, as the young girl remained silent, she continued, with a timidly inquiring tone, like a person who antici- pates a sad confession, and seeks to be forgiven for foreseeing what it is to be, " This thing which has happened, Eeine, has something to do with your being married, is it not ? " " It has something to do with my being married," Eeine answered, in an almost inaudible voice. "And to some one whom you do not love?" Fanny ventured to say. "And to some one whom I do not love," Eeine repeated. And now it was Fanny's turn to be silent. She had long since divined Eeine's feeling for her cousin, with- out ever alluding to it, and she would not have dared to be the first to speak of it now. On her part, Eeine was already repenting that she had said so much. She took the hand of her humble companion. "I have expressed myself badly," she said implor- ingly. "Do not suppose that any one wishes to force me to this marriage. It has been spoken of to me, 196 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY and I feel that it is more reasonable for me not to refuse. However, this has nothing to do with the request I have to make. I want very much," and she put into the words, emphasizing them by repetition, all the sad energy of a supreme appeal, "I want very much to speak with some one for a few moments alone. I have written to this person to meet me on the terrace of the Tuileries when we come from the lecture. If you tell me that you are not willing to go with me, I shall not go. In regard to the motive which requires me to do this, spare me all questions, I beg you, if you love me. Only be sure that I have too much respect for you to involve you in anything that is wrong ! " "Dear Seine," interrupted her visitor, eagerly, "I know it ; " and without direct reply to the request made her, "Come," she continued, "we shall be late for the lecture. Fortunately, it is fine weather for a walk, this morning." There was, in this last little sentence, accompanied by an affectionate glance, all the feminine finesse of which old Fanny, aged fifty-five, was capable, not will- ing to say a distinct " yes," to a request too manifestly connected with a love affair, and yet saying "yes," and feeling greatly upset by this complicity. In fact, when, two hours later, the two, after the close of the lecture, found themselves upon the sidewalk of the rue Boyale, and started, without a word of explanation OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 197 on either side, as if by tacit accord, toward the place de la Concorde and the gate of the Tuileries, the one whose heart was beating quickly was not Reine. Twenty times over, during the five minutes in which they were going this short distance, the scruples of the chaperon came near being stronger than her implied promise; and, each time, a glance at Eeine, and the earnest and suffering look on that noble face, arrested the objection in her conscience and upon her lips. Thus they arrived, without having exchanged a word, upon the terrace of the Orangery, where they perceived, and this time with equal, though so different, emotion, the figure of Charles Huguenin, who awaited them. It was indeed an ideal scene for an adieu like that to which Eeine came, this spot in prosaic Paris, on this icy and misty winter morning. In the place de la Concorde, clear and light, the marine divinities of the two great fountains rose aloft, all covered with glittering ice. The obelisk between them looked pink, and in the distance the Arc-de-Triomphe was indistinct through the mist. A white sun was coming up in the sky, without clouds, yet as if draped with a veil of frost. The basin of the Tuileries, at the foot of the terrace, was covered with ice, grayish, and streaked by skaters, three little boys, whose steel blades, in the silence of the vacant garden, were heard to grate upon the smooth mirror ; and in the centre of the basin, the 198 jet which rose but a little way still kept, with a smothered sob, a trifle of water alive and supple. Be- tween the trunks, slender or robust, of the young or old chestnut trees the stone statues seemed also to have been chilled motionless by the cold of the day. Other ponds of water, frozen under the shrubbery of the alleys, shone here and there like fragments of broken metal that had fallen upon the dull surface of the sand, and a dull, all-pervading sound, the noise of the great city, enwrapped the deserted terrace. Not a person was there besides the two women who had just come and the young man who awaited them but one old lady, a foreigner, in a sealskin coat, who was throwing a ball for two large collies with long tawny hair, who barked furiously as they ran. Yes, what a scene of sadness and farewell! But Charles Huguenin was a lover, and for a lover who knows himself loved, no scene is sad but that where she is not. He had seen Heine appear on the sidewalk at the corner of the rue Koyale, frail and slender in her astrakhan jacket, and, for him, the air became mild, the veiled sky was full of radiance, this landscape of bare branches and frozen waters adorned itself with the gay hues of spring. She was coming, his exqui- site fiancee; long had he desired to call her by this name, without even daring to hope for it, she who, by her advice, her sweet, persuasive influence, had saved him from being ensnared by the factitious life OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 199 of Paris, who had revived in him the love of his distant home, and an affection for a true and simple exist- ence; she would soon be his wife; he would take her away to that beautiful land, to his father's house, so white amid the dark cypress trees ; and the dear face, whose thinness tortured him at times, would grow round and rosy and brilliant in the fragrant southern air. It is true that, the evening before, on reading his cousin's despatch, Charles had had a feeling of surprise and anxiety, but only for a moment, how- ever. His character possessed one of the charming traits of the southern nature that nature, complex and contradictory, whose hard realism can be so im- placable, as in Mme. Le Prieux; whose supple sensi- tiveness can be so graceful, as in Charles. This heir of the Huguenins, those old provincial vine-dressers, so profoundly, so absolutely sons of the soil, had that optimistic patience into which there enters a little of the indolence of too mild a climate, but also a little of that eurythmia of which those Mediterraneans par excellence, the old Greeks, made a virtue. The young man had said to himself, " Cousin Mathilde has made objections, and my poor Eeine exaggerates them." And he had smiled tenderly at this idea of the childish alarms of his fiancee. Why should he doubt for a moment of final success, having on his side Heine's love, first and above all, and then Le Prieux's sympathy, of which he was sure, and, lastly, 200 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY ties of kindred with Mine. Le Prieux, which would ren- der impossible any very serious objections from her ? Though Charles was a fellow of unusual native intelli- gence, as was indicated by the unconscious distinc- tion of his manners, the extreme refinement of his features, his quiet smile, the vivacity and gentleness of his black eyes, great Arab eyes, in a brown, almost amber-tinted face all these signs of the nervous tem- perament and of instinctive shrewdness did not pre- vent him from having kept, all through his four years of the Latin Quarter, a rustic way of regarding certain Parisian things. For instance, the true position of his cousins Le Prieux escaped him completely. He regarded them as rich, sharing in the common opinion as to the enormous earnings of newspaper men ; but it had never occurred to him to think what would or would not be Eeine's dowry, or whether she would have any. Himself an only son, and secure of a liberal indepen- dence, if he should decide to live on the paternal domain, in that fair land of vineyards and olive trees which lies along the bay of Fos, a few leagiies from Martigues, it never occurred to him that money had any more to do with this marriage than it had had to do with his affection. Neither had he reflected upon the anomalies that a young Parisian would have discerned in the social position of his cousin's parents. " Society " seemed to him, as it does to most young men of his class, indefinite and undefinable, a kind of OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 201 vague territory, in which people who were seeking " to get on " of whom he was not one gave themselves up to clever intrigues, matrimonial and other, while simple-minded persons, like himself, were frightfully bored with duties at once frivolous and necessary, when by any chance they were obliged to be connected with it. To Charles Huguenin, M. and Mme. Le Prieux were people in society, as his own parents were coun- try landowners, by some original conformation which he accepted as a fact without attempting to understand either its conditions or its causes. It was so; and that was all there was to it. With this turn of mind and these ideas, could he even suspect the realities against which Heine had struggled since the previous morning, and the motives of the unex- pected decision she came to announce to him ? Poor, romantic Beine, who little dreamed, herself, what inter- pretation she risked by this step, which would be so completely inexplicable to the young man! But they had met, and Charles had stammered awkwardly enough, be it said to his honour a few words des- tined to show to the chaperon his amazement at an unexpected meeting, interrupted by Heine, both to spare him the little falsehood, and to save her companion from the embarrassment of a false position. " No, no, cousin," the girl said, " Mademoiselle Fanny knows that I asked you to be here. She loves and esteems me enough to be sure that the reason why I 202 wished to meet you, was because I must. You had faith in me, Fanny ? " " Oh, yes," was the reply, and stopping short Mile. Perrin made a sign to the cousins to go forward. The humble old woman had expressed so much serious feel- ing, so much dignity, in this gesture which might have been so servile and the seriousness of Reine's voice had been so solemn, that Charles became aware that he had not read between the lines in the despatch that he had received : this appointment, which had seemed to him natural enough, after their secret betrothal, was of exceptional gravity. His mobile face ceased to express its gay tenderness of the moment earlier, and he said, " Why, what is happening, cousin ? You seem so dis- turbed, so agitated. You said you were obliged to have this interview with me, as though it were painful to you. But our last conversation, and my mother's letter " " Has your mother written the letter ? " Reine inter- rupted, with an eagerness that disconcerted Charles. " But why do you ask me in such a strange way ? " he said. " Ah, Heine ! have you forgotten all that we said to each other that evening, and what you allowed me to hope ? Could you doubt that I kept my promise, and at once ? I wrote to my mother that very night, and she. replied by return post with what joy she would have you for a daughter, and with what affection for yourself you will be touched by it ! Her letter to your mother OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 203 was sent by the same post. It must have reached your house Monday morning at the latest. When I received your despatch, I supposed that Mme. Le Prieux was making some objection, and you wanted to tell me about it. But, Eeine, you are ill ! What is it ? " While he was speaking Heine had grown deadly pale. It was a pang of singular sharpness that she had felt in suddenly learning that her mother had received this letter, asking for her hand. And this mother had said no word of it to her had not given her the liberty of choosing between happiness and self-sacrifice ! Mme. Le Prieux's hardness of heart, from which she had so often suffered and been unwilling to acknowledge it even to herself, was once more evinced, and with it even worse ! came the evidence of her mother's du- plicity. She controlled herself, however, and passing quickly over this point of danger, "I am not very well this morning," she said, " and it agitated me when you spoke of Mme. Huguenin's joy and her kind feeling toward me." Then, beseeching and resolute at once, she continued, "Listen to me, Charles; do you believe me capable of falsehood ? " " You ? " he said, more astonished yet. " I know that I have never heard you say a word that was not truth itself." "Ah! thank you," she answered; "say it to me again. It does me so much good. Tell me once more that you believe in me, and that you always will believe in me." 204 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY " I believe in you, I always will believe in you," the young man repeated with docility; then, suddenly rendered anxious by Reine's evident excitement, he asked, " But why ? " " Why ? " she said, " because I need to feel that you, you also, have faith in me ; or else I could not have the strength to speak to you as I must. Yes, I must do it," she repeated, and, as if plucking the sentences out of the depths of her heart, " Listen, Charles. I made this ap- pointment with you this morning at the risk of having you think ill of me, because I was not willing to have you hear from any one but myself a thing which will not grieve you any more than it grieves me, I swear to you ! " Cousin, let me finish," she went on, as Charles was about to speak ; " it was my wish to tell you this thing myself, so that I could also say that to you, and could ask you to feel sure that I did not deceive you the other night in letting you see that I shared your feel- ing. Yes, Charles, to bear your name, to devote my life to you, to be your wife, to live there with you in Provence, would be happiness to me. I ask you to believe this," and in repeating yet again this word "believe," her voice became still more intense, as if she hoped to communicate to the young man who lis- tened to her, and had now himself grown very pale, the fervour of renunciation which possessed her. " And I ask you again to believe me when I tell you that I must renounce this happiness, and for a reason which OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 205 I can neither escape from nor reveal to you, and about which you must not question me." Her charming face, ordinarily so reserved, so closed by the delicate modesty of her own feelings, had never shown more clearly the almost wild ardour of her deepest affections. Never had those soft brown eyes been lighted by a flame more intense, and the smothered tones which came into her voice revealed the extreme emotion of her heart, whose throbbing Charles could almost detect through the thick jacket that she wore. At any other moment he would have pitied this evident distress, but he was himself a prey to surprise too cruel and too violent to think of anything else; and when Heine ceased speaking, this surprise broke out in a cry of almost brutal revolt. " It does not seem possible to me that I have under- stood you correctly," he said. "Let me think for a moment," and he passed his hand over his forehead as if to collect his thoughts. "And yet it is true, I am not dreaming. You are here, B/eine, and you tell me that now you will not marry me ? " " That now I cannot marry you," the girl interrupted him, with a voice so feeble that her cousin scarcely heard it, so carried away he was by the violence of his own emotion. " And you wish," he went on, " that I should accept this resolution, without even seeking to know whence it comes, who has inspired it, why you have changed ? " 206 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY "I have not changed," she again interposed. "You tell me that you were sincere with me the other evening," continued the wounded lover, without taking any notice of her interruption, " and that you feel the same to-day that you did then. If this is true, what is the matter, then ? What has happened ? All a man's joy in life, all his hope, is not to be taken away from him without his having the right to defend that happiness and that hope. No, Heine, it is not possible ; for you to speak to me as you have just done, after having spoken to me as you did speak on Wednesday, something must have happened, I tell you again, some- thing very serious. But what mon Dieu ! what is it ? Is your father opposed to this marriage, or your mother ? No. Since they have not told you that mamma's letter has reached them. Or perhaps you, yourself, have told them ? I beg you, Heine, to tell me is it that ? " " No," she found strength to say. " Then," he insisted, " if the obstacle comes neither from your father nor your mother, it can only come from yourself. It is, then, an idea of your own, which has led you to change your decision. There is nothing else that it can be." And if the innocent Reine had had some knowledge of the depths of man's heart, she would have known that this sentence revealed the recoil at a certain thought, and the sudden appearance of jealousy. "Well, then," he implored, "whatever this idea is, tell it to me, Reine. I believe you. I believe that you love OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 207 me, as I love you. It is not a matter which concerns my happiness alone, but yours as well. Do not sacrifice it to a chimera ; for this cannot be a real thing, I am sure. Tell me your reason. Let us talk it over. If it is a secret, you surely know that I can keep a secret, if it concerns you. When once you have told me, you will be surprised yourself to see how it will vanish. Come, for your part, have confidence in me ; speak to me " " Ah ! " she moaned, in a tone of anguish that this time struck to his very heart; "if I could have told you, should I not have done it at once ? I asked you to have faith in me," she continued, joining her hands, which trembled as she spoke ; " I hoped from you that you would believe in me. I ask you again, believe me. Believe that if I came to tell you that I cannot be your wife, it is because I cannot ; and that if I do not tell you the reason, it is because neither can I do that. No," she repeated, with almost savage energy, " I cannot ! " There are, in conversations like these, where the very depths of the nature are involved, moments when one will or the other asserts itself so forcibly that the dis- cussion stops short. When Reine had thus spoken her last " I cannot," Charles felt himself in the presence of the unconquerable. The two walked on a few steps silently : she, exhausted by the energy she had just dis- played ; he, as if maddened by the shock of having flung himself for the first time in his life against the impene- trable in a woman's heart the worst of tortures in love. 208 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY He looked at her with feelings which he would have sworn he could never feel toward her, irritated even to rancour. The good honest fellow had never dreamed to what irresistible frenzies the sharp sting of passion drives a man's soul, suddenly maddened by the excess of power- less grief. He looked at her, and the girl's soft brown eyes, the ideal nobleness of her profile, the grace of the thin cheek, the fine lines of the expressive mouth with its slightly full lips, the supple silk of her chestnut hair, her slender figure, all that charm of youth which usually made him so gentle toward her, now excited in him a cruel desire to break, to crush her, so much did her invincible resistance exasperate his whole being. What was that mysterious motive, powerful enough to make this fragile creature, whom he had seen so much his own, so touching in her self-surrender, sud- denly withdraw herself from him ? At the first moment he had thought that it might be some religious scruple. Although in Reine's equable, well-balanced nature reli- gion had never gone to extremes, who could tell if she had not, in the fervour of her fifteenth year, made some vow which she had suddenly remembered. But no. She would not have had that evident terror as to confessing such a motive. Charles continued to look at her, and the same frightful suspicion which had presented itself before and been repulsed, besieged him anew: "What if she loves another ? " It was an insane suspicion, for OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 209 she had just told him the contrary, and everything proved her veracity, words, voice, and look ; an out- rageous suspicion, too, for if Heine loved another man, her attitude toward her cousin, the other evening at the ball, and now, was the vilest of coquetry ; and when had she given him the right to believe her even capable of a wrong feeling ? Alas ! Insane and outrageous ideas are exactly those that jealousy aAvakens in us the most instinctively, and its fatal intoxication prevents us from recognizing either their madness or their injustice. Let this be the excuse of Charles Huguenin for having, though but for an hour, been unjust toward the adorable child who walked at his side along the terrace on the water's edge. The frosty gravel creaked under their feet ; the whistle from the tug-boats came to them over the banks of the Seine, very near and green between its quays of stone ; and these sounds appeared not more foreign to himself than did the sound of the words that his own lips now uttered. Was it really he who was speaking thus, and to Reine, to his dear Heine, sur- rounded till that moment by a love respectful as a cult, idolatrous as devotion? "Very well," he had begun, "I shall respect your wish. I shall not seek to know the motive that causes you to break my heart. There is, however, one question that I have a right to ask you, and to which you owe me a reply. Tell me that you do not recall your promise because you wish to marry an- 210 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY other man. Tell me this, and I will submit. I shall leave Paris to-night, and you will never hear of me again. But tell me. I wish to know." He saw that she grew pale and trembled more than ever, but she remained silent, and, his frenzy increas- ing by what he conjectured lay behind her silence, he went on in a still more harsh, rough tone : " It is true, then, since you dare not say no ? It is true ? " "I cannot answer you," she said, in a voice that was scarcely more than a breath, so stifled she was with emotion. " Not to reply is replying," he said. " And so you are going to marry some one else ! " he repeated, " some one else." Then, all the rage of jealousy blazed in his eyes, and no longer measuring his words, he went on : " But this is infamous, this, that you have done ! It is an outrage ! Have I deserved being treated like this? The other evening it was so easy to do when I spoke to you, why did you not stop me at once? And before that, you knew well enough that I loved you! Why did you let me believe that you felt the same toward me ? Why do you come here trying to make me believe it still ? Ah ! it is abomi- nable ! It is abominable ! " " Charles," she interrupted, imploring, " stop ! you hurt me too imich. Have pity you do not know. You promised to believe in me." OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 211 " Ah ! " he said, " how do you expect me to believe in you now?" " You no longer believe in me ? " she said, stopping, as if she could not take another step. "No," he said brutally. He had no sooner flung at her this terrible monosyllable than remorse for his blasphemy entered his soul, when he saAV the change that came in her face. Her eyelids quivered, her lips parted as if gasping for breath, and she leaned against a tree like a person about to fall. He approached to offer her support, but she repulsed him with a gesture. The colour came back to her face. She opened her eyes again, and the indigna- tion of her despised sincerity shone in her beautiful glance, which fixed itself upon him with a strange intensity. Then, instead of speaking, she turned away abruptly, and began running like a person who seeks to escape from some intolerable thing toward Mile. Perrin, who was not far off; and she called to her, in a voice which had regained its firmness, "Fanny, Fanny ! Come ! We must go. We have only just time to get home." The young man made no attempt to speak to her again; he made no attempt to detain her, or to fol- low her. He did not even take leave of the two women. Eeine and her companion had already turned the corner of the Orangery, while he still stood near the tree against which the young girl had leaned, as 212 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY if he were hypnotized by the horror of what had just occurred. He heard the barking of the collies, who had gone off in another direction with their mistress and were now returning. He saw, through the bare branches of the trees, the skaters going and coming upon the icy basin, the gray statues relieved against the sky, the place de la Concorde undulating with carriages, the obelisk lifting its pink shaft be- tween the fountains with the divinities on each side cuirassed in glittering ice, and the dark figure of Heine going away, farther and farther. All these details of the scene in which he and his cousin had parted were very real and true. The truth of the words they had exchanged became very real also to him, especially those that he had himself spoken; and when Heine had finally disappeared from his sight, he sat down upon a bench: "Wretch that T am ! " he groaned, " she will never forgive me." He no longer doubted her. And this was worse ! VII REVELATIONS CHARLES HUGUENIN was not deceived by his own remorse; his cousin's abrupt departure was not the indication of one of those lovers' quarrels which will be followed by a happy reconciliation when next they meet. No; the feeling excited in Seine's heart by OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 213 her cousin's lack of confidence in her was of the kind that drives a young heart to the most desperate extremes. It is the charm and it is the danger of emotions in the very young when first they meet the shock of life, that their entire character predisposes them to uncompromising decisions, too easily irrevo- cable. The same lack of experience which gives them their fervour of aspiration toward the ideal, incapaci- tates them from forming a correct estimate of the impor- tance of their first disillusions in the impulse toward happiness. They dream of an absolute in the emotions, which is not of this world, and to perceive this fills them with despair. Eeine went to meet her cousin, her heart lifted up, it will be remembered, with the thought that she could, by appealing to his affection, perform what she considered to be her imperative duty as a daughter, remain silent as to her motives, and still not be misunderstood. The result was that Charles had told her that he did not believe in her. The only consolation that she could have in her mortal sacrifice was taken from her at once. At the same time, she seemed to herself to have dis- covered in the man whom she loved, a some one whom she did not know, and whom she regarded with terror. What a look of hatred she had surprised in his eyes, what a cruel agitation upon his lips, what a savage tone in his voice! And what completed her desperation even more than this disappointment and this terror, 214 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY was her indignant revolt against so harsh injustice. This thrill of revolt increased within her as she re- flected, while she walked on beside the gentle Fanny Perrin, and her step grew more rapid and more excited, as if fleeing in all haste from that terrace where she had heard those words whose unjust brutality pursued her, that "no," which had struck her to the heart, and rankled like an arrow broken in the wound. She went on, blinded by the intolerable grief of this thought : "He does not believe in me!" and saw neither the streets nor the passers-by, nor yet her quiet companion, who dared not speak to her; and it was like the awakening from a trance of somnambulism, when in the square Delaborde, as they were about to enter the rue du Ge'neral-Foy, the timid Fanny at last decided to speak to her. " I do not ask you any question, Keine ; I have not the right ; and still, before we separate, I want to beg two things of you. I have proved my love for you and my esteem, have I not?" " Dear Fanny ! " said the girl, and grasped her friend's hand with a gratitude that emboldened the other to continue. "Since you feel this, you must be very, very sure that I speak to you for your own interest, as far as I understand it. Even before to-day, you know, I knew many things. My first request is, that you promise me to wait a little before you decide about OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 215 this marriage that they want you to agree to. The second " " Well, the second ? " Reine insisted, as Fanny hesi- tated. " The second is," said the other, with crimsoning cheeks, "not to be unjust to your cousin." They had reached the door of the house where the Le Prieux lived before Heine had made any reply to either the one or the other of her humble friend's entreaties. When they were on the landing of the stairs, and Eeine was about to ring the bell, she said, in a voice whose tremor betrayed her inward disturbance, " Pardon me, Fanny, for not answering you sooner. As to your first request, I can make no promise. As to the second, you have no idea how mistaken you are in regard to me and " She had her cousin's name upon her quivering lips, but she could not bring her- self to utter it. "No," she insisted, "it is not I who am unjust." And she repeated, " It is not I." Then, with a sign to Fanny that she must say no more, and her finger pressing the bell, she added, "I thank you for what you have done for me ; " and as the door opened, kissed Mile. Perrin, saying in a low voice, but in a tone that indicated determined resolution, " Adieu. You must leave me. That will be for the best." One last look to repeat again, with thanks for so much affection shown, the final entreaty to be left to her fate, and Reine disappeared into the anteroom. 216 OTHEII PEOPLE'S LUXURY The door was closed, and Fanny Perrin began to descend the sumptuous staircase a quiet staircase with balusters of carved wood, with windows, with plants in pots, a red carpet, and the warm breath everywhere from invisible hot-air pipes, well suited to give that impression of a private house which, of necessity, made part of the programme of the "beau- tiful Mme. Le Prieux." Ordinarily these trumpery splendours deeply impressed the poor music teacher, who herself felt, in her way, the prestige of other people's luxury. But at this moment, entirely absorbed in the scene she had just witnessed, she no longer made mental comparisons between the cold flags of her sixth floor in the Batignolles, and the soft richness of these stairs on which her feet usually stepped with respect, almost with compunction. She was saying to herself, " To whom is it that they want to marry Reine ? " In her thoughts she went over all the young visitors of the salon Le Prieux whom she knew either by Reine's mention of them or by having met them her- self in her vocation of companion or music teacher. The image of Charles came before her mind, among many others, and finally took precedence of them all. She beheld him as he came forward to meet Reine on the terrace by the river, his face animated and radiant, his eyes full of light ; and then, as the interview was closing, his displeased look, his hard eyes, his threat- ening gesture, and she argued, OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 217 " Separated ? These two handsome young creatures, so well suited to each other ! They love each other, that is evident. If only M. Le Prieux knew how his daugh- ter feels. He is so kind. Would there be any harm in telling him the truth ? " And already a vague scheme began to take shape in the mind of old Fanny, who was as romantic, notwith- standing her ugliness, as Reine herself could be the insane project of giving a warning to the father. Yes, what if she should go and tell him that, in preventing the marriage of Charles Huguenin and his daughter, he was causing unhappiness to the latter, would it be betraying Heine's confidence ? To let the father know ? But when and how ? All women, however nai've they may be, and however unfeminine, have an intuition infal- lible as instinct when it is a question of a love affair. Mile. Perrin neither knew the name of Edgard Fauche- rot, nor had she any idea of the conversation that had taken place between Reine and her mother, or of the letter sent by Mine. Huguenin. She knew none of the secret details of this domestic drama, the ambitions of Mine. Faucherot, the debts of Mme. Le Prieux, the brokerage of Grace. Yet she divined, to the point of feeling an almost insupportable anxiety, that not only the days but the hours, and even the minutes, were numbered. And it was only too true that, at that very moment when, standing still on the sidewalk, she looked up at 218 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY the windows with their little Louis Seize panes, an event which came very near being irrevocable was taking place in one of the rooms lighted by one of those windows with the little curtains of foulard silk and guipure ; and this room was that very same bed- room of Empire style, with light green carpet and yel- low silk hangings, where, the day before, had been made known to Reine the cost of the stage setting in which her youth had been spent. As soon as she had come in from her walk, and without even going to her own room to take off her hat and jacket, the unhappy child had inquired for her mother, and on being told that Madame was in her own room, she had gone thither at once. She had found Mme. Le Prieux seated at her writing-table, dressed for the afternoon's expedition they were to go together to see an exhibition at a club and occu- pied in writing letters. She wore a gown of heavy cloth of a silvery gray, with velvet panels embroidered with great flowers of the same shade and an edge of chinchilla. The perfect fit of this attire gave it, so to speak, an aspect of a uniform, a parade dress; while, at the same time, the order and complication of the objects ranged upon her writing-table testified to the task of an immense correspondence, that of a woman who had never committed the slightest error in polite- ness. How many "expressions of her sincere sym- pathy," how many "cordial felicitations," how many OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 219 "affectionate compliments," she had written in her big handwriting, so hackneyed in its lofty aristo- cratic air, and upon paper all of the correct size and tint! At the bottom of how many answers to invita- tions had she put that Duret-Le Prieux, which had been adopted by her as her signature, in imitation of the etiquette of the Faubourg-Saint-Germain, which couples the wife's title to the husband's ! On seeing her mother thus, just as she had always known her, continuing to practise the smallest rites of her social rdle with the automatic strictness of a smoothly working machine, and without the least suspicion of the moral catastrophes occurring about her, Eeine again had had that feeling of chill at her heart that she had so often experienced before and all the more severe this time because she now knew of the letter which had been sent by Mme. Huguenin. But what was this shiver of hurt sensitiveness in comparison with the frightful suffering which still overwhelmed her, and had, in the short half hour between the Tuileries and the rue du General-Foy, brought on nothing less than an attack of hidden insanity. By what other name could be called that frenzy of grief which had led her, in that thirty minutes, to the mad resolution sus- pected by Fanny Perrin to have done, at once and forever, with Charles, who could be so unjust, and to place between herself and him a barrier forever impas- sable. Everyday language has its familiar expression, 220 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY coups de t&te, for these rash acts of wilfulness so com- mon in youth, when, the violence of emotions being more intact and more intense, the soul is thrown off its balance completely by the shock of certain ob- stacles. And too often, alas ! with irreparable damage. This something irreparable, as Heine's ill luck would have it, was at the moment within her reach. It needed only that instead of waiting till Saturday as had been agreed she should consent at once to the proposition of marriage with Edgard Faucherot. The special characteristic of these coups de t&e is the haste with which, in executing them, we use whatever energy is at our command at the moment, as if we were not sure of having it at any later period. And later, indeed, after having rallied from the first attack of acute suffering and indignation, scarcely would Reine have had the strength to say the words which she now at once said to her mother: " Mamma, I have reflected seriously upon our conver- sation of yesterday, and I can give you my answer now. If M. Edgard Faucherot asks my hand in marriage, I will accept him." As she spoke, her voice was abrupt and, so to speak, metallic, her eyes glittered painfully, and her burning cheeks completed the revelation of the fever within. All these signs, and the sudden change in so serious a resolution, should have enlightened Mme. Le Prieux, especially because, in the letter of Charles's mother, OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 221 she might have read between the lines the secret of the two cousins' romance. But, on the one hand, she was too convinced that she was securing her daughter's future happiness, to feel the least remorse ; and, on the other hand, she had too much practical sense to seek the causes of a consent given more promptly and easily than she had expected. Was it not wise to take advan- tage of this favourable disposition, no matter whence it came? And who can tell? the satisfaction of this woman devoted to worldliness was so intense, at the idea of the social advantage represented to her by the Faucherot marriage, that there was perhaps something as near unselfishness as so self-willed a creature is capable of in the impulse of affection with which she clasped Keine in her arms, saying, " Ah, my child, I expected nothing less from you; and I want to say to you, now that you have decided freely, and I run no risk of influencing you, you could do nothing which would better prove to me how much you love me nor anything more sensible. Some day you will bless me for having proposed this marriage to you. It is some- thing I have long thought of, you may be sure. But let us go and tell your father. Poor dear man, how happy he will be also ! " And taking Heine by the hand, she hurried her away to the journalist's little room, where he was just then it was twelve o'clock numbering the pages of his third and last article for the morning. The tension 222 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY of labour had wrinkled his brow, and swollen his red- dened eyelids, and accentuated still more the wearied droop of his mouth. Besides, his hair, a little ruffled by the pressure of his hands, upon which he had rested his head while reflecting, showed its gray more plainly than usual. Thus, taken by surprise, this hard-worked man of letters looked ten years older than he was. Although Eeine was, at the moment, in that half- insensible condition which accompanies the carrying out of certain resolutions which are nothing less than moral suicides, this forecast of her father's old age touched her heart very deeply, and still more did the look with which that father received the announcement of her approaching betrothal. But both impressions had the one effect of only strengthening her in her fatal resolution. " Mon ami" Mathilde had said, with that blending of familiarity and solemnity in which she excelled, "I present to you the future Madame Edgard Fauche- rot ; " and, at a gesture which he made, " Oh, yes ! " she said, " Reine has given .me her answer. She accepts ; and, from the moment she does accept, we feel, she feels, that it is only right at once to notify the good friend who has undertaken this embassy. I am going to write to Cruce." " She accepts ? " the father had said, and while say- ing these words, in a voice trembling with emotion, he had looked at Eeine. The girl saw in his eyes that OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 223 indefinable expression of astonishment and pity that she had already noticed the preceding day, and that had so much disturbed her. She had believed that it ex- pressed remorse for the sacrifice asked from her. She now turned her eyes away, and, in his own mind, the father attributed this visible embarrassment of his daughter to a kind of shame. Knowing nothing of the conversation that the mother and daughter had had together, why should he not believe that Heine had consented to marry a rich man merely because he was a rich man? Something, however, protested within him against a supposition which contradicted to that degree all his ideas in regard to her. Then, as Mme. Le Prieux was there, radiant, and with so imperative an authority emanating from her, scarcely did this feeble man find courage to reply, "But is she very sure of having reflected sufficiently ? Tell me, Heine, do you not need to think about it longer?" "I have thought about it," Reine said; "I have reflected." "Are you quite sure you would not prefer to wait a few days longer?" he urged. "I offered her more time," said Mme. Le Prieux; and she continued, turning to Eeine, "Your father is right. We should both feel much better satisfied if you would take a few days more." The clear- sighted woman was too certain of her daughter's re- ply; the girl shook her head, and answered firmly, 224 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY " What is the use ? You said yourself, mamma, the sooner the better ! " Never did father and child, who loved each other with all their hearts, exchange so cold a kiss as that with which Hector Le Prieux and Heine sealed this kind of compact, ordinarily so touching, when a daughter, sounded in respect to a proposal of marriage, replies to her parents that she will consent! Never was family repast, taken in circumstances which ought to be so happy, more taciturn, more painful, more weighted with an indefinable uneasiness than the one which followed. Never, through all the years in which he had dragged the weight of his crushed ambitions, of his fallen Ideal, of his life's failure, did the jour- nalist feel his heart more heavy than when, after this gloomy breakfast, he crossed the threshold of the door of his house, outside of which was already in waiting the coupe of Mme. Le Prieux. The husband was about to go, either on foot or in a fiacre, to one of the innumerable committees on charitable fetes of which his wife's acquaintances were perpetually making him president or member. This time there was a per- formance to be arranged in aid of the victims of an earthquake in the Ionian Islands. Ah ! at moments and these moments became more numerous as life advanced how incapable the envied husband of the "beautiful Mine. Le Prieux," the chronicler whose appointments other men desired, the servile producer OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 225 of copy, felt himself of pitying any other misfortunes than his own, so lamentable a failure did his life appear to him ! As a rule, it was the thought of his wife and child that restored to him his needed energy. And now, to think of them was a strange grief to him. One of the two, his wife, had, since their conversation in returning from the theatre, appeared to him as so unlike the image that he wished to have of her and that, in fact, he did succeed in hav- ing ! He succeeded, but like all who love and will not judge the person beloved he did this by an effort of which he was, in spite of everything, conscious. He had, in the depths of his soul, a dark place into which he never looked. Here silently were accumulated the proofs of Mathilde's savage egoism, which he never acknowledged to himself, while yet his sensitive af- fection took account of them, notwithstanding this systematic blindness. Without any doubt, he loved her as ardently as ever. She was always to his eyes the person whom he had seen so unhappy after the paternal disaster, the fatherless girl upon whom he had felt he could never sufficiently lavish the compen- sation of all possible prosperity, elegance, luxury, and, if it had been in his power, magnificence. But all the indulgences, all the kindnesses of this passion, which twenty years of married life had not worn out, did not prevent his having suffered cruelly from the horrible faults of character in the companion of 226 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY his life, even though he would not admit them to himself. For the first time in these twenty years this recog- nition forced itself upon him, for the reason that, also for the first time, an affection equal to that which he bore his wife came into play. That which the hus- band had never dared on his own account, the father would dare on his daughter's. And, indeed, he had already dared. His wife, Hector had never judged. He now judged the mother of his child. From the moment when Mathilde had mentioned the name of Edgard Faucherot he had struggled in vain against this unquestionable evidence : no, a mother who loved her daughter would have no such marriage as that for her ! She would not accept, at the first opportunity and with joy, the idea of giving a creature like Reine, a flower in refinement and innocence, to such a fellow as this Faucherot, so commonplace, so low in intelli- gence and feeling, simply because he is rich ! It is true that Mme. Le Prieux could urge in her defence the consent of Reine herself. It was here that the father asserted himself, and spoke more loudly than the husband. Although the consent had certainly been given, and he had heard Heine, with clear, firm voice, speak the fatal words, " I have reflected," which excluded all idea of an unfair advantage or an act of tyranny, something within him protested, and would not be silenced. His relations with his daughter, from OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 227 her earliest infancy, had been quite different from those which united him to his wife. He had always felt that Eeine was entirely transparent to him. In thinking of her, he never had that feeling of secret restraint which he so often had with Mathilde. The one mysterious point in his daughter's character was only too clear to him. That which he had read in those sweet and sad brown eyes was pity for his toil- some life, was a comprehension of his hidden griefs, was a regret for his artist ambitions sacrificed ; and it was also something more. That something more he refused to read, that condemnation of the mother's egoism, and yet he did read it there, nevertheless. That a young heart of such refined susceptibility and such strength of affection should have accepted instantly the idea most odious to a girl of her age a brutally mercenary marriage, entirely unjustified by any kind of romantic pretext this was something the father could not believe. He detected, behind his daugh- ter's submission, an enigma whose solution escaped him. He had an idea that Mathilde had not told him the whole truth, that between herself and Eeine words had passed of which he knew nothing. A clandestine drama was going on in his house, around him, whose plot he could not understand; and the impression was doubly cruel to him. In the first place, all his Eeine's future happiness was involved. And then, to admit this secret drama in his family was to admit 228 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY the duplicity of the wife and the cruelty of the mother. And with that, how continue to maintain the self-deceit which his love required ? Such were the thoughts which accompanied Hector as he left the house, and began going down by the left sidewalk toward the church of Saint-Augustin, when he saw emerge from the rue de Lisbonne and hasten to meet him, almost running, a woman in whom he recognized with amazement the usual companion of his daughter's walks, none other than Fanny Perrin. She had been lying in wait there, since leaving Reine, neither quite decided to go up again to the apartment and ask for M. Le Prieux, nor yet to go away. She had let the minutes pass, forgetting both her breakfast time and a more unusual oversight in a person so punctual and so poor the hour for a music lesson she had to give in the Batignolles. She awaited M. Le Prieux, but without having formed any precise resolu- tion as to what she should say to him. But she waited, with throbbing heart and parched throat, as if con- strained by some force outside of her own will, with remorse at betraying Heine's confidence if she spoke, and yet feeling it impossible to let the marriage take place of which the young girl herself had told her. At least, she would let the father know the truth. How ? And in what terms ? For the good creature, all whose days were passed in such calm monotony, amid occupa- tions so limited and so regular, these last few hours OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 229 contained more events than she had ever experienced before in her whole life. She had consented to accom- pany one of her pupils to a rendezvous ! She had be- come the depositary of a secret upon which depended the destiny of this pupil, whom she loved to the degree of sacrificing to her her own professional conscience. And this secret she was making ready to reveal ! All the coarse features of her simple face were distorted by emotion, at the moment when she accosted Reine's father. Her thick lips, where rested ordinarily the foolishly amiable smile of an inferior always exposed to rebuffs, expressed genuine anguish; and her words came hurriedly, almost incoherently, mingled with phrases which betrayed the habits of speaking that were appropriate to her humble station, and imploring exclamations, revealing at once her perturbation of mind, and the scruples she felt at her own lack of fidelity toward Reine. But her passionate desire to save the young girl outweighed everything else. "Monsieur Le Prieux," she said, "you will excuse the liberty. I must speak to you. I am only a poor woman, Monsieur Le Prieux, and I know that this is a step which it is not proper for me to take." Then, as if to ward off inquiries, she continued : " Do not question me. I could not answer you. I ought not. I ought not to be here. But it concerns Mademoiselle Reine, who has always been so good to me. There is something that you ought to know, Monsieur Le Prieux, 230 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY you ought to know it," she repeated. "If Heine is married as you wish, she will die of grief. She loves some one. Do not ask me who it is. I must not tell you. But do not compel her to be married against her heart. I tell you again she would die of grief. Ah ! mon Dieu ! there are those ladies now ! They will see me ! Monsieur Le Prieux, never let Reine know that I have spoken to you ! Never, never ! " And leaving her interlocutor literally paralyzed with surprise at the street corner, she fled through the rue de Lisbonne, never turning to look back, like a person who has just committed a crime. She had noticed that the coupe which had been standing motionless was just starting from under the porte-cochere of the house, not more than fifty feet away, and coming toward them, and before Eeine's father, who had turned to look up the street at the exclamation : " There are those ladies, now ! " had entirely recovered his wits, the carriage passed him. The horse was going slow. Le Prieux observed that the coupe was empty and called out an inquiry to the coachman, who stopped to " The ladies are going out in half an hour. Madame has given me a letter to carry to M. Cruce." " I am going that way myself," Hector said, who, as he leaned forward, perceived the letter in the letter-box of the carriage. He opened the door and took it out, saying to the coachman, "You can return and wait OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 231 for the ladies. And say to raadame that I have taken charge of the letter." These two brief scenes the appearing of Fanny Perrin, her words, her sudden flight; and then the arrival of the carriage, its stop, and the taking of the note intended for Cruce had been so rapid, one had followed the other so unexpectedly, that Hector Le Prieux might have thought he had been dreaming, if he had not found himself standing on the corner of the rue de Lisbonne with his wife's letter in his hand. In taking it from the coupe as he had done, and saying to the coachman what he had said, he, the well-balanced man par excellence, had obeyed the most violent and irrational of impulses. He knew, too, what this envelope con- tained, whose address he looked at in a stupid way : "A Monsieur, Monsieur Cruce, 96 Rue de La Bo'etie" and beneath: "A porter, presses." Mathilde had left the breakfast table to write this note, with his appro- bation. Why, then, had he intercepted it ? Why was he now, with hasty steps, walking through the rue de Lisbonne, and then along the boulevard Malesherbes, in the hope that Fanny Perrin might have waited for him, that she would reappear, and talk with him further? What had she, however, to tell him that he did not already know? The few words she had 232 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY said corresponded too closely to his own feelings, their tone was too evidently sincere, for him to have any doubt as to their truth. As to the name, which old Fanny had declared she would never reveal, had the father any need of being told what it was ? As certainly as if Fanny Perrin had gone to the very end of what she had to tell, he knew that the young man beloved of Eeine was Charles Huguenin. But all pas- sions are alike in this twofold and contradictory char- acter: a certainty of intuition, and yet an eagerness, a frenzy to hold positive proof of that which one does not in the least doubt. When he was thoroughly con- vinced that the music teacher would not return, Hector hailed a fiacre, and gave the man an address which was neither Cruce's nor was it that of the place where the committee were assembled over whom he was expected to preside. He would go to the rue d'Assas, where Charles Huguenin lived. As for Mme. Le Prieux's letter, he had torn it into fifty fragments, al- most furiously, and the wind had scattered these scraps of perfumed paper under the feet of pedestrians, under the hoofs of horses, in dusty corners of the pavement, behind the carriage in which Hector was seated, a prey to the most violent emotions that he had experi- enced for years. "No," he said to himself, as the fiacre went on down the boulevard Haussmann, through the rue Auber, the avenue de 1'Opera, the place du Carrousel, OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 233 toward the Seine ; " no, she shall not be married against her heart. She shall not be Mine. Faucherot. I will not have it. / will not have it!" Against whom was this most intense resistance of his whole being directed in this outburst of resolution ? And his inward mono- logue went on, one idea calling out another with that involuntary logic which disconcerts all our resolves and sometimes all our affections: "I knew well enough that it was not possible that she would accept that Faucherot if she were not forced to it. Forced ? She believed herself forced. But by whom ? And by what ? We left her free, however. Again, just now, we asked her to wait." Against what idea was the father defend- ing himself, as he repeated that mendacious "we"? "And she confides her feelings, not to us, but to a stranger. Does she not know that her happiness is our sole care, that we live only for her? When she was to go and talk with her mother about this pro- posed marriage, I spoke to her, and she understood me. At least, it seemed so. I remember her saying, 'Oh, you are so good to me, and I love you so!' And then, this silence, this distrust! It is inconceiv- able. Perhaps she thought that the person who wished to marry her was Charles, and finding she was mis- taken, became vexed, perhaps even desperate. She must have thought that her cousin did not love her." And then he sought to make objections himself. "Is it really Charles whom she loves? I will know about 234 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY that. But how? I should have done better to find Mademoiselle Perrin and make her tell me, to wring from her the whole story. What if it is not he, after all, whom Heine loves, and if he has never thought of his cousin? In any case she shall not marry Edgard Faucherot. I will not have it!" At the moment when Hector, speaking aloud, repeated this determination, the carriage was rolling over the pavement of that long, narrow rue des Saints-Peres, one of the rare arteries of Paris which has not changed at all in thirty years, except at the point where the boulevard Saint-Germain is cut through it. The jour- nalist's excessive labour rarely permitting him to go anywhere for his own pleasure merely, he came but seldom into this part of the city, which was closely associated with the far-off memories of his exodus from Chevagnes to Paris. At that time he had taken lodgings in a little hotel in the rue des Beaux-Arts simplicity of a country lad pining for fame ! because of the name of the street, and of the house, which was h6tel Michel-Ange. By what subtle trick of his overwrought sensibility did the aspect of this quarter, where he had cherished the disappointed ambitions of his youth, give Heine's father an irre- sistible desire to see once more this rue des Beaux- Arts, very close at hand, it is true; but what relation could there be between the asylum of his own youth and the step he was proposing to take, to save from a OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 235 detested marriage the youth of his daughter? Was it that he wished, suddenly perceiving the extraordi- nary difficulties of this step, to plan its details more fully, and have a little time for reflection ? Or, knowing that he should have a formidable struggle to go through with, on his return home, did he go, as if driven by some instinct, to seek an increase of strength from the vision of the Le Prieux that he once was, passionately enamoured of art and of the Ideal, and profoundly, absolutely a stranger to the miseries of social struggles ? More simply still, had the emotions experienced by him during these forty- eight hours, in regard to his daughter, brought into sharp outlines certain ideas which he had so long refused to acknowledge to himself, and did an irra- tional desire get the mastery of him to ascertain whence he had come, where he now stood, and why he stood there? Certain it is that, reaching the rue Jacob, he knocked on the window of the carriage and ordered the man to stop, and instead of going on toward the rue d'Assas, he got out, paid his fare, and walked in the direction of his former abode. He was at one of those singular moments when the resemblance, or rather the identity, of one's own destiny and the destiny of those from whom we derive life, or who derive life from us, awakens in the depths of one's being an intense and almost overpowering feeling of race. Having just suffered a misfortune 236 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY which one's father endured in like circumstances, or seeing one's child about to receive a blow that oneself once received, the profound unity of blood reveals itself, and strangely disturbs the heart. Directed toward the past, toward those who have bequeathed to us their virtues and their weaknesses, this impression results in a kind of almost pious melancholy which pardons all the faults, and is grateful for all the bene- fits. Turning toward the future, toward those to whom we have transmitted that family soul of which we are but a moment, this impression is transformed into a profound and poignant desire to lessen for them, to spare them, if we can do it, the hereditary trials. This gives one those indefinable hours hours in which he does not know if it is himself who is concerned, or his father, or his child. And thus in evoking, along the sidewalks of those old Parisian streets, and before the unchanged faqade of his student abode, the images of his remote youth, Hector could not have told whether it was of himself or of his daughter that he thought, so almost unendurably clear to him was the similarity between his own fate and that which threatened Heine. What else did it say to him that faqade of the hotel Michel- Ange, before which he was now standing motionless but that there was once there, in one of the rooms of that cheap lodging-house, the second on the fourth floor counting from the right, a youth, sensitive as Eeine, capable, like OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 237 Heine, of the most subtle and exalted feelings; and, then, that this young man had been unable to main- tain in the struggle with life that Ideal of art which had been the romance of his youth, as Eeine at the very first encounter was finding herself unable to maintain that Ideal of love which was the romance of her youth. What element of weakness was con- cealed in the inmost nature of them both, that they should be at once so refined in their ways of feeling and so powerless to mould their existence in accordance with their hearts ? But was it weakness in themselves ? Was it not merely that they had been obliged to struggle against a stronger will than theirs ? No, the young man who came up to Paris, to conquer fame by writing mas- terpieces of literature under the eaves of the poor hotel Michel-Ange, was not a weakling. He was simple- minded, doubtless, and did not measure the appalling distance that separated him from his dream ; but Hector now was aware, looking back across the years, that this youth was a patient, persistent toiler, and would have realized, if not all, at least a part of that dream, had not And a woman's figure appeared, whose black eyes darted despotism, whose proud mouth was set in implacable rule, whose beauty, as of an idol, commanded homage. Was it then she who had actu- ally made him fail of his destiny? Was it then she whose imperious authority was constraining Heine to bend also before her wish ? This double vision was 238 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY so painful to the disappointed literary man, the dis- tressed father, that he repelled it with all the strength of his old and ever living love for this woman, so de- votedly obeyed and served for so many years; and now turning his steps toward the rue d'Assas, he argued with himself: "The fault is not my poor Mathilde's. How could she ever know that I desired a different life? Did I ever speak of it to her ? She is so true, so upright, so devoted ! She believed that it was for the best, as she now believes that the Faucherot marriage will be for the best. The fault was in my silence, in this timidity that has always prevented me from letting even her see me in the complete truth of my aspira- tions. Reine is like me in that respect also. Even to me, she has not said that there was some one whom she loved. When we talked about her marriage, the other evening, her mother and I if I had only known what I know now! But I knew nothing except as a matter of intuition. I must have positive facts, a confession. Mathilde would be the first one to give up the idea of this marriage, which was abhorrent to me by instinct ! Mon Dieu I I hope Charles is at home ! But is it Charles whom she loves ? Why not ? Of all the young men we know, he is the only one who de- serves her! And how happy they would be, there in Provence ! " Hector had now just reached the garden of the Lux- OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 239 embourg. He had come from the rue des Beaux-Arts, absorbed in thought, and mechanically taken the route formerly so familiar to him when, unconsciously home- sick for the oak groves of Chevagnes, he had been wont to seek a sensation of nature in looking at the trees and dreaming in the Luxembourg garden. He passed through the entrance adjacent to the gallery, and en- tered that avenue of old plane trees where stands the monument of the pathetic and powerful Eugene Dela- croix. These fine trees, his early favourites, lifted their enormous bare branches against the icy sky of the after- noon. And as if, at contact with the mute witnesses of his youth, the poet, dead in youth, revived within him, the journalist began to think, with inexpressible sadness, of the unbroken flight of time, this succession of sum- mers and winters, of leafage upon trees, and of human lives. Lines of Sainte-Beuve, long forgotten, which he had formerly loved, came to his memory and to his lips : " Simonide Vet, dit, apres V antique Homere: Les generations, dans leur presse epfiemere, Sont pareilles, helas ! auxfeuilles desforets Qui verdissent une heure et jaunissent apres, Qu'enleve VAquilon, et d'autres, toutes fratches, Les remplacent deja, bientot mortes et seches. . . ." He had recited, in this place, this divine elegy of the least appreciated of our great lyric poets, when he was 240 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY himself in the springtime of life, in that age of fresh hopes and radiant beginnings where now Heine and Charles were, age so brief, hopes so quickly vanished, beginnings so soon ended ! At least it must not be that these children, through any fault of his, should lose, without enjoying them, this point and this moment of their youth and their love ! For certainly it was Charles whom Eeine loved. All doubt of this was now gone from the father's mind. He remembered the young man's look, as it rested upon his daughter; Reine's excitement when her cousin was coming; countless lit- tle signs, which he had summed in a single word, when he had said to his wife. " I have impressions." As he remembered these things, the blood coursed through his veins more rapidly, as if the idea of these two young people's love for each other had brought his own youth back to him. He resumed his walk toward the rue d'Assas with an alert and rapid step, and his heart beat quickly as he inquired of the concierge if M. Hugueuin were at home. He was, the man replied ; and the father's emotion had so much increased, as he went up the stairs, that he was obliged to stop, before the door on which was fastened with four tacks the modest card: Charles Huguenin, Avocat d Za Cour. At last he has rung the bell. Steps are heard within, the door opens. Charles appears, and, perceiving who it is, leans against the wall, very pale, and stammers, with an emotion that is a confession, OTHEB PEOPLE'S LUXURY 241 "You, Monsieur Le Prieux! You! Oh! thank you for coming ! " The words " thank you ! " uttered by the young man, were a natural sequence of the thoughts which had followed one another in his mind since his cruel con- versation with Reine. The first stress of despair having abated, there had come to him the renewed energy of a love which, after all, knows itself to be shared. He had risen to his feet, saying to himself, "I love her. She loves me. I cannot lose her in this way ; " and had hastened to his lodgings, as if expecting to find some word from Eeine awaiting him. A mad hope, which proved how sure he was of his cousin's heart, strongly as he had declared his loss of faith in her! But there was no letter. The disappointment had cost him bitter tears, alone in his little student-lodging. Then he had rallied again and had begun to reflect, asking himself what steps he should now take. The passions, however hot, of men of the south of pure race are almost always accompanied by a certain lucidity of mind which reminds one of southern skies, all light as well as heat, and also recalls their Latin heredity. Charles felt, even in his grief, a necessity for under- standing the matter clearly, and he had been striving to ascertain in the present situation what were the unquestionable facts. The first, the most evident, the one to which he had clung instantly, as we have seen, by that instinct of self-preservation which our passions, 242 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY like living creatures, have, was that Reine loved him. The second, and not less evident, was that some obstacle had arisen. Charles could fix this as having occurred within the last forty-eight hours. It had not existed at the time of the ball, when he and his cousin had tacitly become engaged. The insane frenzy which, two hours before, on the terrace of the Tuileries, had wrung from him his unjust insult to Reine's sincerity had passed away. He believed that she had been sincere in pledg- ing herself to him, and sincere also in begging him, with impassioned entreaty, that he would not seek to divine the mysterious hindrance before which she trembled, overcome with terror. This was a third posi- tive fact. And a fourth was, that her marriage with another man was under consideration. That this project had very recently come up was, still further, clear to Charles. In any other case, Reine at the ball would not have been toward him what she was. That, also, her parents were intimately connected with this sudden project of marriage Charles inferred from this, a fifth fact: Mme. Le Prieux had not spoken to her daughter of Mme. Huguenin's letter. At the moment, swept away as he was by jealous anger, he had not given to this singular fact its extreme importance. He now became aware that this silence on the part of Reine's mother signified a very matured purpose not to give the young girl an opportunity to choose between a marriage with her cousin and this other marriage 243 with whom ? And supported by what arguments ? Here Charles could go no further. He was aware that Mme. Le Prieux had found means to convince Kerne by terrorizing her. He could not divine reasons which lay deep in the history of this family of "the non- classed " (to employ a word created by one of the most generous historians of difficult life in Paris). He had turned this enigma over and over in his mind during these first hours of passionate reflection, and he had only discovered in this mystery still another : why had not Reine's parents had at least the charity to give to him an explanation, now that they knew, from his mother's letter, both his feelings and his hopes ? Thus far he had gone in his fruitless analysis, when the ring at his door had made his heart leap in his breast. He had opened the door with again the mad hope of some word from Heine, and at finding himself face to face with Hector Le Prieux had cried out that " thank you ! " so unintelligible to the latter. But there was one thing that was only too clear to the father, after Mile. Perrin's appeal and his own reflections namely, the cause of Charles's evident distress. This proof of the young man's affection for Reine corresponded so well to Hec- tor's own secret wish that it was in the tenderest, the most indulgent of tones that he spoke : "Oh, come, Charles! cheer up," he said; "take courage. You have no occasion to thank me. I am only doing my duty as a father. What a condition 244 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY you are in ! Ah ! my poor boy ! " For Charles, in his amazement at these words and the manner of speaking, so unexpected by him, had flung himself into the arms of Le Prieux, sobbing again, and re- peating, " Oh, yes ! thank you, cousin ! thank you ! How good you are ! how good you are ! " The father himself was deeply moved by this outburst of despair. But he was too much concerned to learn all the truth as to the relations of the two young people, not to make an effort to obtain it instantly. He had drawn Charles into the little office which served also as a salon for this lawyer without clients, still uncertain as to his definite establishment, a charming asylum for reve- ries, whither Le Prieux had come but once, but that visit had sufficed to win the journalist's sympathy for the young occupant of the room, such an atmos- phere of thoughtful and romantic youth pervaded it, with the worm-eaten walnut of its old Provenqal furniture; with its choice engravings on the walls, each representing some fine edifice of Aries, Nimes, or Aigues-Mortes ; the well-arrayed books, evidently well read, in the bookcase, and the papers on the table ; and the trees of the Luxembourg beyond the little balcony. He seemed to himself to breathe, as it were, a perfume of the poetry of his native soil, preserved in Paris amid all contrary temptations. The room was a faith- ful image of the little moral drama that had been going on in the young man's heart, divided between OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 245 nostalgia for his home in Provence and the charm of life in the city; and it was this aspect of the things about him that had long ago given Le Prieux the idea that Charles would be the husband to be desired for Reine. Perhaps there was a recurrence of this now distant impression, in the affectionate persistence with which he sought to make the young man confess all the secret of his feelings. " No," he began, " it is not goodness in me ; and once more I say, you have no cause to thank me. I tell you I am only a father who is doing his duty. But you must do yours, as well, and respond to my ad- vances with absolute sincerity. Come, speak to me freely, frankly, and tell me all." "But," Charles replied, "what can I say that has not already been said to Madame Le Prieux and you, in my mother's letter? I understood, as soon as I saw you, that you came to tell me again what I already knew from Eeine, that the marriage was impossible. I ought to have known it sooner, when you did not send for me on the receipt of my mother's letter. And still, Monsieur Le Prieux, I swear to you that I would have done everything to make Heine happy; I would have devoted my life to her. I am not a person of any consequence, I know; but what little I am, I would have given to her without reserve; and my mother has also told you in her letter, I am sure, that she and my father think as I do." 246 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY If the revelation of Mme. Le Prieux's silence as to the steps taken by Mine. Huguenin had been a great shock to Reine, who knew that a letter was to be written, what a blow it was for the father, in no way prepared for it! In the flash of a sudden light, he had a glimpse of the truth. Was it possible his wife could have been so lacking in frankness toward him, that she could have answered him the other evening as she did answer him, if this letter had really been sent and received? Yes. And that shade of anxiety in her manner, as she said, "You have been ap- proached also ? " was explained. Besides, the young man's tone left no place for doubt, and Heine's father understood it so well that he turned his eyes away to conceal from his interlocutor the pain that he felt at this discovery. He wished, however, to make further inquiries, and he put one of those questions, aside from the main point, which a person will put who has not the strength to express his entire thought. "You say that Eeine told you that some difficulty had suddenly arisen ? She knew, then, of the step your mother had taken?" " Ah ! Monsieur Le Prieux," said the young man, " I beg you, do not think ill of her, and do not think ill of me. My cousin has no reason to reproach her- self, I give you my word. I had never spoken to her of my feelings, never until, last week, it is true, OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 247 when I asked her what her answer would be if my mother wrote that which she has written to you. I know it I know that this was not right. I ought to have addressed myself first to you and Madame Le Prieux. And yet, it is only natural that I could not remain in uncertainty, loving her as I do, and that I tried to know what she thought." " Then she authorized you to have this letter writ- ten to us ? " the father said. " I understood that she did not forbid it." Le Prieux paused a moment in this questioning, where every word, throwing a cruel light upon certain incidents of the last few days, deepened the darkness upon others. The attitude of his daughter toward himself, at the moment when she left him to go to her mother, became clear to him. She had evidently believed that her mother had sent for her to speak to her of Mme. Huguenin's letter. On the other hand, what had passed between the mother and daughter was rendered more mysterious than ever by this under- standing between Reine and her cousin. How and why had she suddenly changed her mind ? Then Reine had seen her cousin in the meantime, or she had written to him ? Having just discovered in his wife such a lack of frankness toward himself, Hector was shocked at the idea that his daughter could have clandestine interviews, or perhaps maintain a secret correspondence. This thought was so insupportable 248 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY to him that he grasped the young man's arm violently, and exclaimed, " Charles, you are not telling me the whole truth ! This is wrong. No ; it is not the whole truth ! " he insisted. "Do not interrupt me again. You acknowl- edge that you and Eeine had an understanding in regard to your mother's letter to us. Eeine had con- sented, then, to marry you. This you acknowledge. You also acknowledge that she has informed you that this plan is impossible. She has seen you, then, or written to you. You have seen her ? Where ? How ? And you expect me to believe that you have nothing to reproach yourself with nor she ? " "Well, then! I will tell you all," the young man said, with a manifest effort, "both for her sake and my own. You, at least, will not suspect her," he continued, with a change of tone, in which trembled the remorse he felt for the injustice of which he himself had been guilty toward her. "Yes, I saw my cousin this morn- ing, at eleven o'clock, at the Tuileries. A third per- son was present. I give you my word of honour that it was the first time that we had ever met in this way. Here is the proof that what I tell you is true." And he drew from his pocket-book Reine's little blue de- spatch, and held it out to Le Prieux. "My cousin wished to speak to me, through pity, as I now understand, that I might not learn roughly, and from some other person, the destruction of my dearest hope. OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 249 And what we said to each other I can repeat to you, so that I may prevent you from being, in your turn, unjust to her." And he began narrating the inci- dents of that sad interview of the morning, the im- pression that the note had made upon him, her arrival on the terrace, and how he had perceived the serious- ness of the step she had taken by her extreme pallor, and the words that she had spoken, and his replies ; lastly, his suddenly aroused jealousy, and the end. The father listened to the story of these simple and poignant episodes, his daughter's letter in his hand. He looked at the writing and perceived its agitation with a passionate pity for the gentle, refined child, who had traced these characters in a moment of distress. He now understood both the feverish brilliancy in her eyes, on her return from this cruel interview, and the deci- sion in her voice as she refused the delay that her parents offered; he understood also the step taken by Fanny Perrin, who was undoubtedly the third person indicated by Charles, the innocent witness of this inno- cent rendezvous between the two cousins. And, amid these thoughts, one point remained darker than ever: what motive had Heine for wishing this marriage with Faucherot when she had freedom of choice ? The answer to this enigma, he knew, alas ! only too well, where to seek. But honour required him to seek it alone. He must not associate with himself in this inquiry at whose end lay, he felt sure, his wife's 250 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY unscrupulous machinations and her discreditable rdle the young man whom, from that moment, he regarded as their son-in-law. He had risen to his feet, when Charles's confession was ended, and he paced the room, back and forth, in a silence that the other dared not disturb. Although Charles, also, found Reine's posi- tion more inexplicable than ever, since he knew that the father was so favourable to him, he understood, with native tact, that Le Prieux's silence must be respected. His heart beat violently when Le Prieux suddenly stopped before him, and looking at him steadily for some time, said at last, with the solemnity in face and gesture of one who has taken a very seri- ous resolution, and makes known to another an irrevo- cable decision, " You have answered me like an honest man, Charles, loyally, bravely; and I will speak to you in the same way. You love Heine, and you are worthy of her. She loves you, and it depends upon herself alone whether she will be your wife, understand me, upon herself alone. There has been another proposal made for her recently, it is true. I can scarcely believe that that is the obstacle to which she referred. There must be some misunderstanding that I cannot now explain. Later I shall know what it is. I repeat this to you, she shall be your wife whenever she chooses. From this day forth, you have my consent. I accepted your word of honour just now, and this gives me the right to OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 251 require it a second time. I require you to promise that you will not try to see her until I authorize you to do so. There is great wisdom in our old French precedent you must be conscious of it yourself that requires the intervention of parents in the marriage of their children. If you had obeyed it strictly, if you had come to me, a few days ago, to speak to me before you spoke to her, you would have spared her much useless suffering, and would not have offended her, perhaps irreparably. She is keenly and deeply sensitive, and your doubt of her must have hurt her frightfully. Leave it to me to probe the wound ; and further, since there is a misunderstand- ing to be cleared up, to clear it up myself. I have your promise that you will do nothing more except upon my suggestions ? " "You have it," replied the young man, in a trans- port of gratitude, grasping the hands of Le Prieux. " And you will obey me in everything ? " "And I will obey you in everything. Ah, Monsieur Le Prieux! I loved you before, but now " " Now," interrupted the father, visibly afraid of his own emotion, "you will begin to keep your promise by sitting down here and writing a letter to Heine, begging her pardon for your words this morning. You are surprised ? But I have a plan ; I have a plan. Come," he added, with that gentle sarcasm which older men like to employ toward younger, at whose love 252 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY affairs they smile, while envying them secretly, "shall I have to dictate this letter? Write and say what- ever you like. I will give it to Reine unopened. Does that content you?" VIII M. LE PBIEUX'S PLAN "I HAVE a plan." With these words repeated still again, Hector Le Prieux took leave of his daughter's lover, taking with him the letter for Reine and also Reine's despatch. "I will return it to you," he had said further, "when I let you know how things are going on. At present I have need of it." The despatch must have touched him very deeply, for Charles Huguenin, who had stepped out upon his balcony to watch his visitor's departure, saw Le Prieux taking his way under the leafless trees of the Luxembourg, the little blue leaflet open in his hand. The father walked on, dwelling upon each word of this dear handwriting, lost in the thoughts that this contem- plation called up, to the degree that he did not notice where he was until he found himself at the gate opposite the rue Soufflot, having crossed the whole garden as in a dream. He recognized the familiar sidewalk, the omnibus station, the shops some changed, others still the same. He had been used, in the early days of his literary career, to go to read the news- OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 253 papers in one of the cafes near the Odeon, and thither he now directed his steps, without being really conscious that he did so, as, in moments of extreme mental confusion, we do things almost automatically. As it happened, the place was unchanged. Decorated in earlier days by artists who had thus paid arrear- ages in their scot, it exhibited in its interior four incongruous panels, representing, one, a Venus rising from the sea; another, a stag dying in a thicket; a third, Pierrot looking at the moon; the fourth, a girl of the Latin Quarter. The Bohemianism of this smoky tavern contrasted no less with the delicate romance of Eeine and her cousin than with the habits of elegance to which the "beautiful Mme. Le Prieux" had trained Hector. But, for the latter, the radiance of his own youth lighted up this resort of students and rapins. He took his seat at a corner table, vacant at the moment, without even remarking the attention excited among the men and girls who frequented the place, all of them rather slipshod in their appearance, by the presence of a man past fifty years of age, attired like a president of the Council, the ribbon of the Legion of Honour in his buttonhole, who called for writing materials. Then, with rapid and steady hand, he indited upon this accidental paper a letter of two pages, which he ended with a signature almost aggressive in its decisiveness. It was addressed to Cruce, and he despatched it at once by a messenger. 254 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY Is it needful to say that these few lines cut short in advance, in his own name and his wife's, the matri- monial advances of the Faucherots? This task accom- plished, which was the first detail in his plan, he looked at his watch. He knew that in returning home at this moment he should find there neither his wife nor his daughter. It occurred to him, as it so often did, to go to the office and get neAvs from the editor- in-chief for his chronicle of the next day. Then the mere idea of the slightest contact with his daily life, before having gone through the two scenes for which he was preparing himself, appeared to him odious. A recollection of the habits of his youth came to his mind : " Why not work here as I used to do ? " He desired the waiter to bring him a fresh half dozen sheets of writing-paper and a new pen, also to fill up the inkstand; then, picking up one of the soiled newspapers of the morning which lay open on an adjacent table, he sought, in the Faits Divers, some material for his article. The rather commonplace incident of a demi-mondaine defending herself against her dressmaker caught his eye, because of the aston- ishing sum at which the vanities of the young woman were rated, $750 for a costume! And he began writ- ing out, with a hand no less deliberate than usual, the reflections which this extravagance suggested to him. Six o'clock struck while he was still there, finishing his twelfth page. His chronique for the morrow was OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 255 written. He read it over with singularly mingled pride and sadness; for the first time, perhaps in years, he had written something of which he was not in his heart ashamed, and it was because he had written, not as a matter of duty, but to please himself, as he had formerly dreamed of writing both poems and novels, when he used to come to talk or scribble in this humble cafe more than thirty years before. This impression, so well in harmony with the rest of his day, would have further strengthened Le Prieux in his desire to spare his daughter the grief of a destiny unfulfilled, had not his nerves been already strained to that degree where the whole being is nothing but will and energy. It was, indeed, this over-excitement of his entire nature, rendering the time insupportable to him, which he had beguiled, so to speak, by writing, one of those phenomena of professional automaton- ism which are found in all vocations, and prove, by the way, how one's trade becomes a kind of second nature, the instinct within us of a veritable social species. This diatribe against luxury and the slavery which it imposes had not merely had the result of help- ing the journalist to pass his two hours. It went on acting upon him in two ways, first, by auto-sugges- tion, as happens often to literary men, so easily intoxi- cated with their own utterances, and then, by recalling to his mind the facts and figures of which he had been thinking. 256 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY " Six o'clock," he said to himself, as he left the cafe, " and I will take a carriage from the Odeon. In twenty minutes I shall be at home. That will be about the time of their return. Then I can talk with Heine before dinner. I must make sure to save the poor child from a night's distress. How glad she will be to have this letter from Charles ! Fanny Perrin was right. The other marriage would have killed her. But why did she consent ? That I shall know, in the end." By this time he had stopped an empty fiacre and taken his seat in it. The question to which his mind had reverted incessantly since the preceding day again had him in its grasp. " Yes," he continued to him- self, " what is it that Mathilde said to her to overcome her resistance, which she would not repeat to her cousin? What is this mysterious reason which evi- dently terrorizes her ? But Mathilde herself, why did she seem to be so very anxious for this marriage ? These Faucherots have nothing to recommend them but their money. Money ! money ! But Mathilde is not so fond of money. She is very generous. And still, in this absurd life that we live, we need it almost as much as that wretched girl about whom I have just been writing. Thirty-seven hundred and fifty francs for a costume ! Mathilde has never been so extravagant as that; but with all her economies and all her good management, she goes to the most expensive places, and since Heine has been out it costs double." OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 257 Le Prieux, like all husbands and fathers, only knew approximately what were the expenses of his wife and daughter. By an unavoidable association of ideas, he suddenly asked himself, " I wonder how much they do really spend ? " and, like a flash, through his attempt to estimate closely these expenses, an unlooked-for hypothe- sis crossed his mind, which he vainly sought to banish. "Mon Dieu!" he said to himself, "what if she has run in debt, and dares not tell me ? What if she has incurred obligations to Madame Faucherot? What if that were the motive, both of her desire for this mar- riage and of Eeine's consent to it ? No, that would be too horrible ! It cannot be ! It cannot be ! " Thus we see that the unconscious working of a mind under the influence of very intense feelings, whose deep and secret life this mental action is, had led this husband, no inquisitor by nature, to the very edge of the truth. He "burned," as children say in their game of hide-and-seek. But this divination would make still more painful to him the execution of the plan he had mentioned to Charles, which was in the main this : to give Heine her cousin's letter, and in her first excite- ment at receiving it, obtain from her a confession and a consent. He would then have to overcome his wife's objections, and it was for this use that he had kept the little blue despatch. Even after so many accusing signs, he did not doubt, he would not doubt, Mathilde; in the presence of a proof so unquestionable as this 258 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY of their daughter's inclinations she would not persist in a project whose savage cruelty she certainly had never suspected. The mysterious reason that Eeine had refused to reveal would prove to be a misunder- standing, as he himself had called it. Though he hammered this idea into his mind, with all the strength of his love for his wife, this man, clear-sighted, not- withstanding his affections, did not succeed in driving out the other idea, sprung, it seemed, from the most accidental putting together of facts ; and when he in- serted into the lock of his door the little gold night- key a gift from his wife, of course which he wore as an elegant bibelot on his watch chain, this other idea again oppressed him, in a way singularly painful. How else should have recurred to him, in these cir- cumstances and at this moment, the words of one of the great Parisian publishers, whom he had chanced to meet at a first performance not long before ? "I am establishing a review, Le Prieux," the publisher had said; "suppose you write your reminiscences for me. Afterward I would publish them in a volume, and we should make it pay twice. What do you say ? " And the newspaper man had replied, "My reminis- cences ? How could I have any ? I have never had time to live ! " Why did this conversation recur to his mind, as he stood on the landing at the door of his apartment, except because he was already thinking how he could OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 259 find means to increase his income for the present year ? He saw before him the possibility of a new engagement, besides all that he now had to do. What deficit was he then trying to make good? But, no sooner had he entered the antechamber than something unexpected turned the current of his thoughts. He perceived a visitor's overcoat and cane on the table; and the groom, who was on duty as footman, replied to his inquiry, that M. Cruce was in the salon with madame. " And also mademoiselle ? " Le Prieux asked. " Mademoiselle is in her own room," replied the boy. " She has not been out this afternoon. She is not well." Cruce there, at that hour this implied, without doubt, that Mathilde was already informed of the domes- tic coup d'etat by which Hector had substituted his letter breaking off negotiations for the letter of ac- quiescence which he had offered to carry, and under what conditions ! It meant, also, that an explana- tion between husband and wife was now inevitable, and must be immediate. Le Prieux did not hesi- tate. First he must see Heine, and have from her full power to act. He said to the little groom, "It is not necessary to disturb madame. Do not announce my return." Then he went to his daughter's door and knocked. The " who is it ? " so faintly spoken that he could scarcely hear the words, touched him almost to tears, such lassitude did it indicate, and still more, the 260 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY total darkness in which he found himself, on entering the room. Under pretext of the coming on of an attack of neuralgia, Eeine had retreated to bed, with the shut- ters closed, the curtains let down, in that intentional darkness in which all women have the instinct to hide themselves, to bury themselves, when they suffer with one kind of suffering, as if even the light were to them one of the brutalities of life. And when she had turned on the electric light, under that hard white glare, which brings out more crudely the stigmata on a face, her father saw such marks of suffering that he was afraid for a moment of the shock of joy that she was about to receive. But already she was leaning on her elbow on the embroidered pillows of her little bed, as she had so often done when, as a child, he had come to take her by surprise and kiss her before going out in the evening ; and now with childish grace, and that care for others, a lovely trait, which was the natural expression of her tender and exquisite nature, she said, "You must not be disturbed about me, dear Pee. I was a little cold, in returning from the lecture; here in bed, I shall soon get warm again. And in the morn- ing, to-morrow, your busy day, I shall be up early to have your things all in order for you." "You will be able to sleep late to-morrow," Hector said, drawing from his pocket the pages scribbled in the cafe. "My morning's work is done in advance. Your Pee will have no need of you, Mademoiselle Moigne, OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 2G1 and for once you can be as slothful as you please. And besides," he said, after a minute's silence, and in a tone which he strove still to render playful, while his concealed anxiety trembled in the feigned gayety; "besides, some one has given me a letter for you." And he held it out to her. " Some one ? " Reine said ; and when she had the let- ter in her hands and recognized the writing, the colour rushed to her face, and she trembled with an almost convulsive movement that shook her whole frame, while her father strove to comfort her. "Read your letter, my adored child," he said, "and do not be afraid. Take courage ! If I bring it to you, you must know that Charles has told me all, and that I approve. We must have no more misunderstand- ings. My sweet lovely Moigne, read your letter. Do not speak to me till after you have read it. I love you so, my daughter, my little girl ! " And once more with that attempt at playfulness in his petting, which seeks to shelter from the excesses of feeling a sensitiveness too young and too keen to bear them, he continued, " If you do not read it, this letter of yours, I shall take it away and read it aloud to you myself." While Le Prieux spoke, the blood rushed again to the forehead and cheeks of Reine, and even to her soft and slender neck rising from the soft batiste of her night-dress, over which lay the long, loose braid of her hair. The open, ruffled sleeves showed her arms, slender 262 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY and very white, with their delicate network of bluish veins. Scarcely was the coverlet of quilted silk lifted by her form, so slender, so very delicate, almost too frail for her age ; and the man who watched her open the envelope with her trembling hands was still further touched by this vision of his child's fragility. He was overcome, in her presence, by that absolutely peculiar pitifulness which makes a father and a mother the passionate slaves of the least wishes of a creature whose delicacy seems to them so exposed to harm, so easily to be wounded ! They would give their own lives to spare their child the least suffering, the least touch of hurt. The sight of any pain inflicted upon this fragile organ- ism is to them almost a physical anguish, touching them at the most sensitive point of their natures. And so it was that, in seeing Reine's face suddenly contract and turn white as she read Charles's letter which begged forgiveness, her eyes close, her head sink back upon the pillow in a half swoon of too intense emotion, Le Prieux was struck with a sudden terror which made him start forward and clasp his daughter in his arms, and kiss her forehead, and say to her, "Reine, calm yourself, Heine, Reine! How could I be so abrupt and stupid ! And I thought she would be glad. My child ! my child ! Joy makes you ill. Smile at me. Ah! you open your eyes, you smile. Thank you ! But how could you keep this secret in your poor heart ? The other day, when your mother talked with OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 263 you, why did you not say to her, ' I love my cousin ; we love each other ' ? But all that is over now ! Smile at me again. He asks your hand. You are going to marry him. Why do you shake your head?" " Because I shall not marry him," the girl said ; and even in her feeble tones, overcome as she was by the excitement of the moment, her father again detected that singular firmness which had struck him so forcibly when she had refused the offered delay. " You will not marry him ? " the father repeated ; "but why not?" " Because I have reflected seriously," Reine answered, in a still more decided tone, "and I do not think we should be happy together." "No, my child," said Le Prieux, sadly, and he laid his hand upon her lips, " do not begin again your attempt to deceive me. You see, now that I know all, it is no longer possible. Yes, I know what passed at the ball, what Charles said to you then, and what you replied. Would you have spoken in that way if you had not already reflected, and been sure that you would be happy with him and that you would make him happy ? When you kissed me before going to your mother's room yester- day morning, I know what you thought. Shall I re- peat it to you? You thought that your mother was about to tell you of a proposed marriage with Charles, and you were very, very happy. Do not deny this. I read it in your eyes that moment, though I did not quite 264 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY understand. But now I do. You had already reflected at that time, surely. And I know, further, that you wrote to your cousin yesterday, and that you met him this morning. Do not blush, my love, nor tremble. If you could read my heart, you would find there no feeling except remorse that I could not have understood yours before. But that heart is transparent to me now. And I also know the reason which prevents you from being willing to marry him whom you love this reason that Charles begged in vain that you would tell him. It is our situation that prevents you. You have said to yourself, 'If I marry Edgard Faucherot, I shall be rich, and my father will not work so hard.' Confess it, this is what you thought. You are like your mother ; you are unhappy in seeing me have so much to do. But it is my life, this writing. I am an old horse that must go on in harness. If I stopped, I should die. What I need is not to work less ; it is to be able to say to myself, as I sit at my table, ' My little Moigne is happy.' And as to our debts " he watched his daughter's face, as he said the word, so terrible for him. If Heine did not start up with an impulsive denial, it would be true that they were in debt, and that she knew it. She did start, but it was only with sur- prise, and without daring to deny what he said ; and the father went on, inventing, to convince his daughter, one of those deceptions that surely are not inscribed above, in the book of our sins : " As to our debts, I OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 265 shall not have to work any harder in order to pay them. I have had an offer lately for my two farms at Chevagnes." (They had been, alas! mortgaged long ago to the utmost extent their value would allow.) " I shall have no need of them now/' he continued, " now that I can go to you in Provence, by and by, when I am old. For you will say yes, I am sure, and marry your cousin. Come what if I make your mother ask you to do it?" " Ah ! " Reine moaned, " mamma never will consent." " But if she does consent, and even asks you herself ? Would it be yes, then, tell me ? " " It would be yes," the young girl said, so softly that this avowal of her feeling for her cousin and renuncia- tion of her great sacrifice, came from her lips rather as a sigh than a word; and passing her arms around her father's neck, she hid her face, covered this time with shy and happy blushes, against his shoulder the shoulder that was a little higher than the other, from the innumerable hours spent at his writing-table, pen in hand. How little did this embrace resemble the cold kiss of the morning, which had sealed Reine's con- sent to her marriage with young Faucherot, when the father came very near believing in his daughter's most woful vanity, and the daughter in the father's most woful blindness, if not his most selfish abandonment ! At this moment, clasped in each other's arms, they enjoyed that absolute communion of two souls in 266 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY happy affection the absolute fusion that love with its jealousies and its disturbance of the senses so rarely knows, and even friendship so rarely which is the divine poetry of family life, the compensation for its wearisome, everyday duties, its depressing monotony, its limitations, and its mediocrity. An arrival that might easily have been foreseen but how could Eeine and her father have thought of it? was about to drag them roughly from the ineffa- ble sweetness of this perfect mutual comprehension, and awaken, in the father, an energy and presence of mind which he had never before had, and would never have again, for any interests of his own: Mine. Le Prieux just then entered the room. Hector knew too well all the phases of expression on this haughty, beautiful face that he had so much loved, that he still loved so much, to be deceived for a moment, especially knowing that Mathilde had just received a visit from Cruce. She arrived, angry and indignant. That he should have dared what he had, that he should have intercepted her letter, upon which they had already agreed, and sub- stituted for it another written by himself and in terms exactly contrary, was an act so unprecedented that she could hardly believe it had taken place. The out- break of her indignation was, so to speak, restrained by her stupefaction; and she did not attribute the responsibility to Hector. The glance which she cast at her daughter made it evident that, in her mind, OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 267 Heine was the true culprit. But her imperious lips had not even time to question her two victims, hereto- fore so silent, so docile under the dictatorship of her egoism. She had not taken two steps in the room before Le Prieux had started up, with an enthusiasm she had never before seen in his usually placid face, saying to her, in a tone at once affectionate and imperative, in which she felt, with still greater surprise, an authority that admitted of no dispute, " I was coming to look for you, Mathilde, to bring you here to talk to this great girl of ours, who had no confidence in us, who woiild not understand that we only desired her happiness, and only spoke to her about young Faucherot because we believed her heart was free. And she has just confessed to me that it is not, that she loves her cousin Charles and is loved by him. And this other big child, Charles, who did not dare to come and speak to us and say to us, ' I love Reine ! ' could one think children would be so foolish! If I had not seen Charles to-day and com- pelled this confession, first from him and then from her, we never should have known it. Do you under- stand, she would have done this thing to you and me, to you, her mother, and to me, her father, marry- ing against her inclinations ? Go, Heine, kiss your mother and beg her to forgive you; beg pardon of us both, for having doubted us, when we implored you ourselves, this very morning, to take more time to 268 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY reflect and answer us. You knew that we wished to leave you free, that you were the absolute mistress of your choice. That is so, Mathilde, is it not?" "Reine has always been free," replied the mother, literally suffocated by what she heard, "and if she loves her cousin, I do not understand why " " If she loves him ! " interrupted Le Prieux ; and he added with noticeable firmness, looking his wife steadily in the eyes, "Oh, yes! she does love him, and she will marry him." Then, seeing that Mathilde was about to interrupt him, he continued, "Fortu- nately, we had not replied to our cousin Huguenin. Reine does not know that she wrote to sound us. The poor dear lady lives in the country. She felt obliged to be so careful that we should not know her son had asked her to write ; and was she not, Mathilde ? We supposed it to be altogether her own idea. But you were quite right to insist that Reine ought to be told about it, and I was wrong to keep you from telling her. But it is all made right now ! " At this mention of the letter from Charles's mother, Mme. Le Prieux was so disconcerted that she had not the strength to make any reply. Hector then knew of the arrival of this letter and her concealment of it. How could he know? And he forgave her dissimulation. He did more. He was endeavouring to prevent their daughter from suspecting it. And in her amazement and her increasing confusion Mme. OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 269 Le Prieux had not the strength to resist her hus- band's hand, drawing her toward Heine's bed ; and he continued, "Do you know why this wicked girl concealed her feelings from us ? It was because she thought it her duty to be rich, that she might save me from over- work. That was your fault, mon amie. Yes, that was your fault. You set her the example. Why did you fear to tell me yourself what you told her, that we were a little in arrears ? You also were afraid I should be writing a few more articles confess it ! But what is that if I do, compared with the grief of seeing our daughter unhappy ? I should never have forgiven myself." Did he really believe what he said, the poor literary day-labourer, or was this a second falsehood even more generous than the first, to complete the saving of the mother's prestige in the eyes of the daughter, and at the same time destroy the strongest objection that Mathilde had been able to bring forward against the marriage with Charles ? Love is sometimes as blind as that. But, also, love is sometimes extremely delicate, even though clear-sighted; and indulgent, even when the wrong-doing is past all doubt. Whatever may have been the motive which Hector obeyed, his words indicated an extreme of generosity which would have touched to tears any other person than Mathilde. But this woman's pride was rendered still 270 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY more implacable by the strange depravity of con- science which made her believe that she had always, in all circumstances, laboured for her husband's and her daughter's best interest. What she suddenly be- came aware of, in her husband's words, was that Keine had broken a promise given her. How could this wife, accustomed to see in the journalist the most credulous and easy-going of husbands, have guessed at the labour of induction and diplomacy which had brought him to a discovery of the truth? Her maternal indignation against what she believed to be her daughter's treachery had that ingenuousness in its violence which is the sole excuse of these predatory natures. The excess of their personality would be too inhuman, were it not to a certain degree simple- minded and irresponsible. And then the "beautiful Mme. Le Prieux" was horribly humiliated to find her- self caught in flagrante delictu of imposture by a man whom she had always known hypnotized with idol- atry before her. There was a solace to this painful feeling in the attitude of indignant hauteur that she had the right to take, toward another person, but in his presence. Her instinct of savage egoism in- stantly seized upon this revenge. Scarcely had Hec- tor ceased speaking before she had freed her hand from his, and, turning away from her daughter's bed- side, she said, " And I will never forgive Keine for having betrayed OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 271 to you what I desired to conceal. Well, yes, it is true"," she continued; "it was my wish to conceal from you certain embarrassments in our situation. I had the right to do it more than that, it was a duty. It is true that I saw, that I still see," and she laid stress upon this affirmation, "in this marriage with Edgard Faucherot a most reasonable alliance, one most suited to his position and to ours. Still, if she had spoken to me as she has to you," and the secret jealousy she had always felt at Keine's preference for her father be- trayed itself in these words, " I should have allowed her to decide in accordance with what she believes to be her feelings. There was no need of this duplicity for that." " Mamma ! " Heine implored, clasping her hands. " She has not deserved to have you speak to her thus," the father said in his turn. " She told me nothing. I divined it myself." " She made her plans so that you could divine it," re- plied the mother, " and that is worse. I repeat to you, that I shall never forgive her. As to the other matter," she concluded, with concentrated bitterness, " you are her father and the head of the family. It is your wish that she marry her cousin. She will marry him. She will go to live in the country, far from Paris, in a small way, an exile from society. Then, she will be truly unhappy ; and the one thing I require of you and of her is, that no complaints of this misfortune shall ever be made to me. I have done all that I could to prevent it." 272 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY She went toward the door, flinging at her daughter and at Hector this malediction, pronounced in the name of that " struggle for high life " which had become to her a kind of dogma, a religion. She did not even turn her head to reply to a second appeal from Eeine, who again implored her, " Mamma, do not go away like that. Let me explain to you " And when Mine. Le Prieux had closed the door, the young girl threw herself into her father's arms, moaning, "Ah! mamma does not love me! She does not love me ! " " Never say that, my child ! " cried Le Prieux, in a tone of real distress ; " never say it, never think it ! It is because your mother loves you so much, on the con- trary, that she has been so disturbed about your mar- riage. She will get over it. I will talk with her about the matter. She will understand. Or if she does not entirely, you must feel that it is your fault. You are like me, my poor Reine, you cannot show your true self. All that your mother has done in this case, as in every other, she has done for what she believes to be our good, yours and mine. She has had the same ambition for us that she would have wished others to have for her. You can expect anything from others, you know, except that they should change their way of regarding life. She was born a great lady ; and you and I are, at heart, at the very bottom of our souls, peasants. We do not belong to Paris. She cannot know this. And, OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 273 especially, do not blame her for anything on my account, as I have sometimes seen you tempted to do, my child. I said the truth to you just now. A few articles more or less to be written what does that matter to me ? I understand. You always dream of my writing books poems, or a novel. It is too late, too late. If I were at liberty, and had all my time for myself, I could not do it now. I have let you feel far too long that this made me sad. It is true, I often have been sad, these last years. I have seemed like a man who has made a failure of his life. You have believed me when I complained, my sweet Heine, and you should not have done it. And you have been tempted to blame your mother. Do not say no. Now look at me," and taking the girl's hands in his he made her look at him full in the eyes ; and all the pride of a generous soul, in which rises the consciousness of what it has wished, suddenly lighted the face of this great lover. " You can read me to the bottom of my heart, my child," he said. "I am sincere with you as I should be in the presence of death. No ; I have not made a failure of my life. When I was twenty years old and wished to be a poet, what did I understand by that? To have beautiful dreams, and to realize them. Very well ! I have had the most beautiful of dreams, and I have realized it, for I married the woman I loved, I made her happy, and I have you, my daughter. Your mother's happiness that is my work!" Then, as if somewhat afraid of his own emotion and of the things 274 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY he had begun to say about himself, he shook his head, and with the glimmer of a smile he added, in a familiar tone of professional sarcasm, "Not the whole of my work. It is only the first volume. There is a second your happiness. Aid me in getting it ready for pub- lication. And tell me, do you know, in all literature, many books that are worth as much as these two ? " IX EPILOGUE NEARLY three years have passed since the second volume of Hector Le Prieux's " Complete Works " to continue his own harmless professional joke was published, under the form of the marriage bans of Mile. Reine-Marie-Therese Le Prieux and M. Charles-Photius Huguenin; and it is almost two years since the birth of a granddaughter, baptized under the invocation of Sainte Mathilde, offered an opportunity to Eeine's mother to become reconciled with this charm- ing pair of married lovers at home there, on the shore of a sapphire sea, under the clear southern sky, among the olive trees and the Aleppo pines, with old Fanny, now promoted to the rank of nursery-governess, on the one hand, and the Huguenin parents on the other, in the ancestral mas, defended from the mistral by a black screen of cypress trees against which roses are in OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 275 bloom. But one must believe and this is the excuse to be made for the " beautiful Mme. Le Prieux " that this lack of comprehension of others' feelings, from which her husband and child suffered so much, is really, in certain natures, an infirmity which no experience can correct. One is compelled also to believe and this is the condemnation of the brilliant and factitious envi- ronment of which this woman is the living incarnation that this existence, with its intensely stimulated van- ity and its besetting envy of one's neighbour's luxury, is not merely fruitful in follies. It ends by being a deterioration of the heart, which withers and fades, as does the most brilliant complexion, under a daily regime of dinners and -balls. What proves this is that Heine's mother kept her word. By one of those anoma- lies of conscience which we observe but cannot explain, she will not pardon in her daughter a happiness which she persists in regarding as the most abominable in- gratitude. In this social campaign, entered upon for the purpose of winning and maintaining what she calls " a position in the world," she thinks of her daughter with sentiments akin to those which Napoleon must have felt when he saw the Saxons go over to the enemy on the battle-field of Leipsic. But no more than the emperor was is she one of those wills that yield; and you will see her, if you yourself are a slave to the deadly tasks of All-Paris, continuing alone to meet its least requirements, to perform its least rites, aimless, 276 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY now that the establishment of her daughter is no longer her object, and hopeless for honour's sake ! Her name figures this morning in the " Society Notes " of the various journals of snobbism, among those who have sent presents on the occasion of a fashionable marriage, such as she hoped Eeine would make: "M. and Mine. Le Prieux, a crystal and gold box." It figured yesterday under the same heading and in the same column of the same journals, among the list of guests at a " very elegant dinner given by Mme. de Bonnivet at her handsome residence in the rue d'Artois. The stair- case of carved wood (a marvel of art), the salon, and the dining room (also a marvel) were adorned with flowers and potted plants, the powdered footmen in livery ct la franqaise." You also saw it, this same name, day before yesterday, always in the same place in the same newspapers, in the account of a concert given for a charitable object, in which the excellent Duchess de Contay is interested, under the consecrated head- ing, "Among those present we noticed, etc." And, on a recent evening, if you were at the Theatre-Frangais, on the occasion of the first performance of Kene Vincy's poetic drama, "Hannibal," so hotly discussed, you saw Mme. Le Prieux enthroned in the baignoire at the right which has been for many years allotted to the celebrated dramatic critic. She sat in front with the young Countess de Bee-Crispin, and she was more bejewelled, more tightly laced, more elaborately OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 277 costumed in short, more the "beautiful Mme. Le Prieux " than ever. And if, by any chance, you could have listened to the remarks made in the baignoire oppo- site, by the Molans and the Fauriels, who were also there for the purpose of keeping their rank among "Parisian personalities," you would have heard this world of all artifices and all displays judge, by the mouth of two very pretty women and the two crafty artists, their husbands, the heroic labours of this vet- rane of this sacred battalion. " She is marvellous, Mme. Le Prieux," Laurence Fauriel said. " I never saw her more beautiful than she is this evening. Mme. de Bee-Crispin actually looks older than she does. Certainly there are lucky hus- bands! Look at that Le Prieux, common as a man can be, and a bore, and no talent, he marries the Venus of Milo, and she is a good woman, who has never been talked about " "And will get him into the Academy some day," said Marie Molan. " Don't you think so, Jacques ? " " Why, certainly," replied the playwright-novelist. " He sounded me only the other day as to my intentions, in a way that showed he was thinking of it himself. That is the reason why he has just published that poor stuff that he calls his ' Souvenirs.' There must be at least one book, to give that energetic wife of his the shadow of a shade of pretext. She is capable of recruiting fifteen votes for him and he such a bore! 278 OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY What a nice woman she is, though ; and what a pity she should be handicapped like that!" "She is fichtrement belle, all the same," observed Fauriel, whose aspect of a gentleman having a London tailor has never been able to cure him of studio slang unless, indeed, that is his way of making himself pleas- ing to the fashionable ladies whose portraits he paints. And, with his artistic eye, he analyzed Mme. Le Prieux through his opera-glass. " Such a beautiful outline of head ! And how it is set on the neck ! What a curve of the frontal arch ! How that woman is built ! At sixty at seventy, if she doesn't grow fat, she will still be superb. It is in the blood ! Her daughter was so pretty ; what became of her ? " " She is living in the south ; she married that young cousin we used to see sometimes at their house," re- joined Laurence Fauriel; "it was an absurd marriage and a great grief to the mother a rash act, that the silly girl must be sorry enough for by this time. She was in Paris a few days last autumn. I met her. She is as pretty as ever ; but it is quite plain that Mme. Le Prieux no longer sees to her gowns." " Heine in Paris for some days, and you did not tell me!" exclaimed Mme. Molan. "And she did not come to see me ! That was not nice of her." "Nor me either," rejoined Mme. Fauriel; "she has none too much heart. I am not sure that she even loves her mother. If she had loved her, why did she OTHER PEOPLE'S LUXURY 279 not marry here, among her mother's circle of acquaint- ances ? And such an excellent mother, too ! " " The girl was probably envious of her," said Jacques Molan, by way of concluding the subject. This writer, always an imitator, this finished type of the arriviste and prqftteur, whom we have known in his novels and plays as successively naturalistic, psychological, con- cerned with fashionable life, then with eroticism, then with social questions, appears to have adopted definitively that tone of the superior scoffer who tranquilly observes the infamy of human nature. He made no account of his remark, as if this were in the current order, and then, with another glance at the baignoire of the Le Prieux, he added, "Besides, the girl might take after her father. Ladies," he continued, " let us follow the play ; it is probably very good just now, for that old hack of a Le Prieux pretends to be absent and pay no attention." And absent he was, in truth, the husband of the "beautiful Mme. Le Prieux," so justly named an "old hack " by one of the masters of the realistic school, him- self so magnanimous, so considerate, so indulgent to other men's talent ! Hector was, indeed, hundreds of miles away from the baignoire where his wife enjoyed her triumph, and from the one where these remarks were interchanged between these two poor mercantis of art and their wives leagues and leagues distant from the scene where soulless actors were delivering before 280 OTHEK PEOPLE'S LUXURY this blase" public the skilfully fabricated lines of the most famous of the poetic carpenters of to-day. The dramatic critic in thought was sitting in the little salon of the mas, watching Eeine's smile, which came to him from far away so sweet, so tender, somewhat sad because of their separation, but so grateful ! This vision was enough to send inexpressible happiness through the old journalist's veins and all the more because he observed, when they entered the theatre this evening, that his wife's beauty again received the homage of admiration which is still so precious to her. With half- closed eyes, he sits unmindful of all the articles that he must write to complete the payment of their debts and there are still over three thousand dollars to be paid! He forgets the shower of hostile notices that greeted his modest volume of " Souvenirs." He forgets the arm-chair under the dome, and the computation of the academic votes with which Mathilde again occupied herself on the way to the theatre. He forgets his weariness over the worthless page and his incurable regret over abandoned art. He forgets all in the intense pleasure of feeling that the two he loves are happy, each in her own way, and that it is he who has made them happy. No, his life has not been a failure ! He was right in saying to his daughter, that he has realized his Ideal. He came to Paris, as he said, to be a poet. And who is a poet, if he is not ? 1899 - FEBRUARY 1900 Ill CHILDREN'S HEARTS Ill CHILDREN'S HEARTS I THE TALISMAN THE story I am about to relate was told me by one of the most celebrated artists of our time, one also most hostile to all efforts for notoriety, all self-advertisement, all confidential disclosure. I shall not give his name, not wishing to ask the permission, which he would doubtless refuse me, to repeat this anecdote, although it concerns his very early youth. I shall observe the same reticence as to the character of his talent whether he is sculptor or painter, musician or architect, poet or dramatist. My absolute silence upon this point seems to me to authorize a narrative which carries with it a very human lesson, for it deals with the psychology of childhood, and hence with educational psychology. I remember that this was my motive in writing down, as I did at once, this confi- dence at some points puerile, at others somewhat too minute in detail of a man who, as a rule, very seldom enters the confessional. I saw in it a proof, and a strik- 283 284 CHILDREN'S HEARTS ing one, of these two truths : one, that the evil passions of the man already exist, in their germ and ready to awaken, in the innocence of the child ; the other, that the surest remedy against these precocious vices lies in the high-mindedness of the mature educator. I will add, to give this narration its exact setting, that the artist who related it to us had just obtained one of his most brilliant successes. On this occasion a comrade of his early days had basely slandered him in a newspaper. He had been the first to mention this article to us. When the conversation extended itself to the subject of envy, that odious passion which is the professional vice of those who aspire to fame, we all began denying, more or less sincerely, that we had ever experienced it, when, to our great surprise, our comrade, whom we knew to be so generous in his renown, so enthusiastic as to his rivals' talent, so remote from the meanness of petty rivalries, interrupted us by saying, "Well, as for me, I was born envious, I may as well confess it. And it is just that fact which makes me indulgent toward such fellows as " naming his defamer. "When I read a thing like that and am on the point of being angry, I remind myself of a shameful act I once committed my- self, through envy ; and if I had not then met, to make me ashamed of it, one of those right-minded persons whom you never can forget, who can tell to what a height this vile instinct of hatred at sight of another's happiness would have grown within me! I will not CHILDREN'S HEARTS 285 make myself out any better than I am. I find this instinct still in the depths of my soul at wicked minutes. And I go home, and I look at a talisman that this man left me. Here it is," he added, pointing to a bronze statuette on his writing-table, which served at the time as a paper-weight. "It is a Hermes, as you see, the Psychopomp, Leader of Souls. His gesture and his cadu- ceus indicate this. You shall see that, for me, he is well named. It is probably a Roman reproduction of a rather fine Greek original. For thirty-nine years I have always had this bibelot with me, and I am now fifty years old, which shows that the base act of which I am thus forever reminded dates back to my eleventh year." We were amazed at this date, which contrasted too violently with the severity of the language our comrade had used. He replied by a confession that I give in his own words, un- changed except by the omission of two or three details which would designate too clearly the scene and the hero of this childish tragedy; and may he pardon this indiscretion of his friend and listener! As I have just said to you, the souvenirs evoked for me by this little bronze are connected with my early childhood, that is to say, with the years immedi- ately following the establishment of the Empire. I was living at that time in a little city of central 286 CHILDREN'S HEARTS France, -which had distinguished itself by its Republi- can fervour in 1848. It distinguished itself by its Bonapartist fervour in 1855, to the extreme indigna- tion of a few persons, of which number was the uncle who had charge of my education. This maternal uncle taught mathematics in the Faculte of the little city. He was unmarried, and my parents, living in the country, had intrusted me to him under the avowed pretext that he should superintend my studies ; but really with the secret hope that later he would make me his heir. This excellent man who, as the saying is, would not have hurt a fly, was an ardent Jacobin, in whom the Revolution of February had ex- cited a real frenzy of hope; and the coup d'etat of the second of December that healthful sewerage scheme which we all dream of had struck him like a personal misfortune. I smile when I remember the amazing conversations to which I listened, baby that I was, between this dear uncle and his friends, worthy professors like himself for the most part, who, being burdened with families or else merely enamoured of their profession, had been obliged to take oath under the new regime and swear fealty to the tyrant! They avenged themselves for this harm- less formality by calling, in classic wise, a Tiberius and a Nero, the easy-going Caesar who at that time dreamed at the Tuileries. They extolled as prophets all the dangerous or grotesque Utopians, of revolution- CHILDREN'S HEARTS 287 ary socialism: the Fouriers, the Saint Simons, the Proudhons, the Louis Blancs. These pedagogues, these functionaries, these townsfolk, lamented that the Feb- ruary government had been deficient in Terrorist en- ergy meanwhile placidly correcting exercises, if they taught in the lycee, or superintending baccalaureate ex- aminations, if in the Faculte. At the time, my childish imagination, nourished upon the De Viris, made me regard these words as sublime, and these characters as grand. Their pathetic comedy amuses me at this distance, as I recall them one after another the associate professor of history, M. Andre, known as the Barbarian, on account of the thesis on Theo- dora which he was preparing; his namesake, M. Andre, the physicist, called Andre phi, to distinguish him from the other ; M. Martin, the Hellenist, disre- spectfully called "the Idler." I see especially my old uncle's alter ego, Dr. Leon Pacotte, professor of obstetrics in the medical Faculte the man from whom I received this talisman against envy, this little Hermes, "Leader of Souls." This old doctor, an old man then, he was seventy at that time, remains in my memory a whimsical fig- ure so long and lean he was, with a hatchet face, which an endless nose bestridden by round-eyed spec- tacles would have rendered a very caricature had it not been for the look in his eyes, which were black, in a pale, almost bloodless face. Such power of will 288 CHILDREN'S HEARTS emanated from them, such intellect also, and such goodness, that merely to meet those brilliant eyes froze the mocking, boyish laugh upon my lips. His pallid skin, his narrow, bony shoulders, the emacia- tion of his body and limbs, betrayed in the old man a feeble temperament, kept alive by a miracle of regime. He lived to boast of both. How often I have heard him say, "Dupuytren, my teacher, gave me up as phthisic when he took me as interne in my twenty-first year. I buried him in 1835. Broussais, the great Broussais, agreed in this diagnosis. I buried him in 1838. Orpila said the same. I buried him in 1853." And he would laugh quietly, with the sarcastic laugh of the old practitioner vaunting the superiorities of his own method. How did this excellent man rec- oncile such strange, grave-digger's joy at his own survival, with his tenderness of heart, his ardent devo- tion in friendship ? Let him solve this problem who can. As for me, I feel to this day the little shiver that ran through me when he would lay his big doctor's hand upon my shorn schoolboy head, his bony fingers exhaling that surgical odour that no amount of soap ever entirely dissipates, that musty hospital smell ' compounded of iodine and aromatic wine and phenol and chloroform all combined, and his old experience would begin to indoctrinate my youth- ful thoughtlessness. CHILDREN'S HEARTS 289 "You are like your grandfather," he would say; " I knew him well. He was cut out to live a century. He never would listen to me. I used to say to him : the stomach is the arsenal of the body ; eat at regular hours ; never read after eating ; take exercise. He laughed at me. I buried him in 1847. Take warning. Look at me ; I have only one lung ; I have been given up as incurable, and I was incurable. I am alive now because I was determined to live, and I took pains. I measured the capacity of my thorax, and now these fifty-five years, listen to me, I take at each meal just the correct weight of food that the digestive muscles may not have to work to excess. And so in other things." And it was true that this astonishing regularity of habits made him a figure of the most picturesque origi- nality. I can see now the sunny dining room where my uncle and I would pay him an unexpected visit now and then, after his breakfast or his dinner. On the sideboard were seven little vials in a row, corked with especial care, into which he poured every Monday just the quantity of old Bordeaux which he should use for the week. I see him, crossing his interminable legs, and under his turned-up trousers the thick leather of the heavy boots which he constantly wore, for fear of the dampness. In winter he wore, outside of the boots, clogs, whose wooden soles clacked on the stone steps of our staircase, when he came to visit us. I can still hear, 290 CHILDREN'S HEARTS after all these years, the old doctor's automatic step. I see his long, brown coat with its velvet collar, the form and colour unvaried throughout my childhood, his eter- nal white cravat, rolled twice around his long neck, above which appeared the two round corners of his shirt- collar, his tall hat, lustreless and broad-brimmed, and the knitted mittens that he wore over his leather gloves. And, especially, I see the salon, where, on Sunday afternoon, there met a real club of free-thinkers and Jacobins, consisting of my uncle, the professors hostile to the Empire, and a few lawyers, landowners, and gen- tlemen of means, who shared the radicalism of the mas- ter of the house. Again, how mysterious that this ju- dicious hygienist, all observation and all realism, should profess in politics doctrines the most contrary to experi- ence ! I have observed this phenomenon so many times in the case of other doctors that I ought not to be sur- prised at it any longer, and yet I always am surprised. This anomaly was the -more remarkable in the case of Dr. Pacotte, because this irreconcilable hater of kings and priests, this frantic admirer of the fanatics of the convention, who spoke of Danton, Saint Just, and Robes- pierre, that triumvirate of sanguinary brigands, with idolatry, was, at the same time, an ardent lover of old France, an amateur and enthusiastic collector of all precious debris of ancient times scattered through our province. His salon was crowded with treasures that he bequeathed to the municipality, making the museum CHILDREN'S HEARTS 291 of this little provincial city one of the richest in our country. It was there that my boyish eyes were first caressed by the warm, brilliant colours of Limoges enamels. The doctor had fifteen plaques, representing scenes of the Passion, all of the best period, that of the high altar of Grandmont, with those beautiful grounds the colour of lapis lazuli, those draperies of a soft water- green, that red-brown of hair and beard framing the soft flesh tint of the faces. Where did he discover this treasure ? No one knows. Where, those magnificent episcopal chairs carved by some fine Burgundian artist of the fifteenth century ? Where, those panels of painted wood that the piety of some noble in the reign of Charles VIII must have brought back from Italy ? Where, that tapestry which perhaps had adorned the tent of one of the followers of Charles the Bold? He was reticent about his purchases, as a true lover about his lady's favours. Moreover, researches in one of Caesar's camps, in our neighbourhood, had given him an interest in Roman things, and a glass case contained a quantity of small objects in bronze, turned green by the passage of time, gold jewels friable and, as it were, bleached out by use, discoloured pottery, rings with combats engraved on the stone, heads of terra-cotta statuettes, in short, a mass of bibelots, some extremely rare, among which once figured this Hermes you shall hear in what circumstances, and also why it did not remain in the collection. 292 CHILDREN'S HEARTS ii It was in this familiar salon, and in the afternoon of a fine October Sunday, that I met for the first time the being who was destined to inspire me with this passion of envy in all its unjust wrath a passion that seems even more than commonly hateful in a child. It is explained, it is almost excused in some unhappy creature who, in old age, takes revenge for fate's humiliations by insulting the happiness of others. But a child ? Well, I believe from my own experience that a child can be envious of another child as a grown man is envious of another man, with the same savage irrita- tion in the presence of advantages which he does not possess. You will judge as to this. I have still before my eye the autumnal colouring of that radiant October Sunday, when I first was seized by this evil feeling. The vision of it is all blue and tawny the in- tense azure of the sky, and, relieved against it, in warm brown masses, the foliage, already withered but still intact, of the chestnut trees of the promenade. My uncle had taken me with him, as usual, to Dr. Pacotte's house. I knew that an event was to occur there that afternoon which these gentlemen considered important : the presentation to them of a personage whose name even to-day is probably not quite unknown a M. Montescot, author of two or three carefully studied articles upon public instruction under the old regime. At that period CHILDREN'S HEARTS 293 this man enjoyed a species of fame in the little univer- sity world in which I lived. He had, at the time of the coup d'etat, given in his resignation with all possible publicity, and quitted the chair of philosophy which he held, though a very young man, in the lycee Louis-le- Grand in Paris, after an address of protest delivered to his pupils. This tirade would have consigned him to prison, if the imperial government had been the tyranny that my uncle and his friends stigmatized weekly among the radical doctor's bibelots. Instead of this, his dis- missal sufficed. Montescot was a native of our town. He had distant cousins there, of the same name with himself. It was quite natural that he should return thither. But for maniacs of persecution, like the habitues of the Pacotte salon, this arrival of the dis- missed philosopher became at once some dark machina- tion of the nation's oppressors. " They prevent him from earning his bread in Paris," solemnly remarked M. Andre, the Barbarian ; " ah ! the brigands ! " then added in a tone of mystery, " Fortu- nately Tacitus already lives in the Empire." This quotation, which frequently recurred in the worthy man's talk, signified that the Professor of History was preparing an essay on the Twelve Caesars, full of the severest allusions to the present regime. " They feared his eloquence," replied Andre phi, a comrade of Montescot at the iScole Normale. This brotherhood with the martyr gave him importance. 294 CHILDREN'S HEARTS "If you had heard him speak! At the school, we were not suspected, we scientific students, of a partiality for the students of literature, and especially for the philosophers. We used to call them chatterers. But he ! Ah, he ! " and seeking a term of comparison, the physicist, who in all history knew only the Revolution, added, thinking to decree a wreath to his friend, "He is a Vergniaud!" " They will be punished," interrupted my uncle, whose Republican convictions, exalted spiritual nature, and constant astronomical studies had fused themselves into a marvellously imaginative conception of the migration of souls to the stars. Each would inhabit an inferior or a superior star, according to his virtues ; and the gentle savant conscientiously peopled with virtuous Jacobins the plains of Jupiter, where reigns an eternal springtime, and with infamous reactionaries the regions, torrid or glacial, of Venus, which has no temperate zone. "Yes," he continued, "they will be punished, on this planet or another, and Montescot will be rewarded. The Absolute cannot but be right." "Meanwhile," concluded Dr. Pacotte, who, while a good Republican, was even a better materialist, "since we are neither in Jupiter nor in Saturn, and since the Absolute would not concern itself with keeping Montescot in food, I propose, to-morrow, to seek pupils for him among my patients. Is your friend married ? " And on the negative reply of M. Andre phi, "Then we CHILDREN'S HEARTS 295 will make life very easy for him, in spite of prefect, rector, and police. You will bring him to me as soon as he arrives, will you not, Andre ? If they thought they should bring him down by persecution, they will find they were mistaken ! " After talk like this, do I need to explain what a place, in my childish dreams, was at once taken by this modern Cato, this contemporary Thrasea, this Seneca of Louis- le-Grand, pursued by those mysterious torturers, whom I imagined as presided over by the executioner-in-chief, poor Napoleon III, whose benign face, seen on coins, bewildered me a little, certainly child though I was. But I had, for my uncle and his friends, a foolishly credulous respect that outweighed evidence. And then, strange as this aberration may appear, these worthy men were perfectly sincere in believing themselves crushed by a regime that left them thus free of opinion and of speech. As the sincerity of grown persons acts in the most contagious manner upon the young, when the arrival of the proscribed Montescot was announced for the coming Sunday, I passed the week in a real fever of imaginative expectation. It must be that this was a very strong habit in my character; for I have felt almost the same feverish impatience and ardour every time in my life when I have been expect- ing to meet a person whose talent I admired, and almost every time I have felt the same sudden dis- appointment which was inflicted upon me at the house 296 CHILDREN'S HEARTS of Dr. Pacotte, when the man entered around whose brow I had distinctly seen the martyr's halo. M. Montescot was a man of thirty -five, who looked forty-five, with a pensive, pitiful face which showed the suffering caused by enfeebled health. He was short, with bent shoulders, and he was already bald. An invincible timidity gave awkwardness to his every movement, still further augmented by very marked myopia, and the eye-glasses which he wore were always insecure upon his very short nose. I have since heard that there was a little Russian blood in his veins, and he had in fact that half-Asiatic type of face, broad and somewhat flat, which is so often found among the Slavs. But the physicist who was his introducer, after having been his herald, had told the truth : this pitiable face became transfigured when the man spoke. Nature, so capricious in the distribution of her powers, had given him the organ of a great orator, one of those enchanting voices which are a music to the ear, and irresistibly persuasive in their fascination. There lay the absolute superiority of this incomplete man. This also must have been the reason of his inefficiency. The long years of his exile, which might have been fruitful, were to be passed in the country, talking instead of writing, overflowing in interminable talk, at my uncle's house, at the house of Dr. Pacotte, wherever his audience vibrated in sympathy, instead of preparing himself by strenuous study for the almost certain return CHILDREN'S HEARTS 297 to power of his party. But it was only later that the personality of Montescot was thus outlined in ray thoughts ; at the moment I had only a confused impression of disappointment, immediately dominated and driven out by another, of astonishment, interest, and curiosity. The newcomer led by the hand a boy, evidently of just my age, whose existence had never been mentioned in the conversations that had gone on around me in the last few days. "I take the liberty to bring with me my ward," he said simply to Dr. Pacotte, " not to leave him alone at home." " And you did right," the doctor replied ; " he will have a little comrade. What is his name ? " "My name is Octave," said the boy himself. " Very well, Octave," replied our host, laying the boy's hand upon my arm. "Here is a little fellow with whom you will make a pair of friends. Go play in the garden." in What family tie united the charming boy, who at once went down with me into the doctor's great garden, to the expelled professor who presented him to us as his ward ? Certain details occur to me now which lead me to believe that this self-announced guardianship concealed the fact of paternity. Though Octave was 298 CHILDEEN'S HEARTS as graceful and distinguished as M. Montescot was awkward and clumsy, there were marked resemblances between them: the colour of the eyes, which was the same in both, a very light blue, almost gray; that of the hair, a reddish blond; the slightly flattened form of the face ; and the voice especially, with very similar, almost identical intonation. And still, if the boy was, as I think, the son of the philosopher, he was illegiti- mate, and once again passion had wrought this miracle of a transfigured heredity. All the mother's grace must have passed into the child. What mother? How could this man, of high intellectual qualities, but so very unattractive, have found a mistress who could have given him a son of such beauty? What had become of her? Why had not this disciple of Kant made her his wife ? To these enigmas no answer was ever given. It is probable that this woman's death had been coincident with Montescot's return into the country, obligingly attributed to imperial tyranny by my uncle and his friends. I must do justice to these good people, in whom political fanaticism was a form of simple-mindedness if they suspected that M. Mon- tescot was not speaking the truth in introducing his ward as an orphan, a distant relative of his own, they never allowed themselves to speak of it, even to each other. Yes, they were good people ; and as I think of them, I see what a strong and substantial France this old provincial bourgeoisie would yet give us, had not the CHILDREN'S HEARTS 299 revolutionary error, within the last century, misdirected the action of so many virtues ! But I return to this October afternoon in the doctor's garden. It was a kind of park, half uncultivated, and enclosed by walls. It, as well as the house, had once belonged to a Capuchin monastery, suppressed near the end of the last century. The old doctor re- tained this ground from the same hygienic motives which actuated all his conduct on account of its exposure to the sun and its fine tall trees, whose faded foliage, on that Sunday afternoon, made a fairy scene of crimson and gold. Just as we reached the flight of steps, I felt a little impulse of vanity leading me to say to Octave, "Do you want to see how many steps I can jump ? " And with that I ran down two or three and leaped the rest. I looked back toward my new companion, who was standing at the top; I expected some expression of surprise from him, for I had been rather afraid to take the leap, and considered myself very brave for having ventured it. Octave, however, did not express admiration by any word or gesture ; but with amazement I beheld him, his feet close to- gether, his arms stretched forward in the classic atti- tude recommended to us by our teacher of gymnastics, prepare for his spring, bend his legs twice, and, at the third time, leap the whole flight. He had not, as I had done, reduced the distance by running down the first three or four steps. Having accomplished this feat, 300 CHILDREN'S HEARTS which was really a feat for a child of his size and age, his pride manifested itself only by a look, to which I replied with the uncontrollable cry of all wounded van- ity, " I can do it, too ! " and ran up the steps. Ah ! how long they looked to me ! But I met my companion's gaze, and I jumped in my turn. Was it awkwardness produced by fear of failure ? Or was the distance really too great for me ? My feet struck on the lower steps, and instead of landing upright, I rolled down upon the gravel of the walk, bruised and bleeding, my trousers torn, in short, having had a fall which might have broken both legs, but from which children, like drunken men, rise whole, though with many bruises. Octave was at my side pale with alarm. His voice trembled as he said, " You haven't hurt yourself ? " " Not at all," said I, picking myself up ; and to prove the truth of this heroic lie I began running about in the garden, though it hurt me badly to move. But the humiliation had been too great, and a feeling of real hatred throbbed in my heart against my young com- panion, whose sweet nature showed itself, however, in the silence that he maintained as to the character of my fall, when we went indoors after having played in the garden awhile, and I said, to account for my bruises and the state of my clothes, that I had slipped on the steps. " How do you like your new companion ? " my uncle asked when we were alone Dr. Pacotte, my uncle, and I after the departure of all the others. This was also CHILDREN'S HEARTS 301 one of the Sunday customs. These two old bachelors, the mathematician and the doctor, dined, or, as they say in the country, supped, together at half -past five, and they placed me at table between them like some little domes- tic animal whose presence scarcely caused them a thought. What conversations have I thus heard between these two men who lived for ideas only men so admirable when they did not talk politics ! I was not old enough to understand their superiority. I felt it, I breathed it in like an atmosphere, and it was the best, the most effect- ual instruction. When one of my two elderly friends spoke to me, I usually replied with entire confidence with that openness of heart so natural to a well-treated child. It must have been that the evil germ of antipa- thy deposited in my schoolboy heart by this first mis- adventure with the ward of M. Montescot was already germinating, and also that I was vaguely conscious of it, for I experienced for the first time in my life an instinc- tive embarrassment in saying what I thought. I mum- bled a few evasive words, in which I criticised Octave, while my cheeks grew hot, and it seemed to me was it an illusion? that the doctor's look, that singular look of the diagnostician, so acute, so reflective, rested on me with a penetration that confused me. It was but a flash ; and at once, to my uncle's further question, " You will be kind to him in school, will you promise me ? " I replied, " Oh, yes ! " with sudden and sincere eagerness. How complex and how contradictory are these childish 302 CHILDREN'S HEARTS feelings that a prejudiced person believes so simple ! I felt an almost physical need to have that look, which I could not have defined, disappear from the eyes of Dr. Pacotte ; it was as if he had distinctly read in me some- thing shameful, of which I had not myself been aware. IV I have dwelt upon this first episode in my acquaint- ance with Octave because it contains the complete type of his character and mine at that period of our existence. The little drama enacted between us on those garden steps was as the image, altogether puerile our joint ages amounted to twenty-four years of the relations of rivalry which at once established them- selves between us. Is it true that a proud boy, feeling himself in an exceptional situation, develops exceptional energy also? I have often thought this, in observing the efforts of which very poor lads are capable. In no case have I ever seen stronger or more constant efforts toward superiority than in Octave's. He was a boy of only ordinary mental ability and physical vigour; but he had, young as he was, a power of applying his will to the present action and a kind of cool persistency which placed him above all rivalry, in the matter of studies as well as in the matter of sports. He was even at that time a mature person, whereas our other comrades and myself were still only rough sketches of our future CHILDREN'S HEARTS 303 selves. I do not know what he would have become had he lived ; and, indeed, this supposition is not open to consideration. He could not live ; maturity is in all cre- ation the end, and Octave from his eleventh year was a matured soul. We perceived this as soon as he entered our class, and in the first answers that he gave to the master. His actual knowledge in Latin and Greek was no greater than ours, but it had in his mind and in his words a clearness, precision, and, so to speak, certainty, which placed him at once in an exceptional rank. It was the same in his written work. We had been given for translation into French a page of Livy of consider- able difficulty for the class. The preceding year, I had obtained the prize for translation from Latin, and I felt that the first place in this game was mine by right. I remember it well. When we came out of school, one Tuesday morning, after the work was done, I asked Oc- tave to let me compare his translation with mine. He handed me his exercise-book, containing the first draft of his work, and its mere appearance revealed the precocious manliness of the boy. The handwriting was so strong, so legible, so finished! The absence of erasures attested his capacity for doing his work mentally, while the rest of us did ours with corrections written in. I felt, merely at sight of the page, that he must have succeeded better than I. I read what he had written, and if he had not been there I should have wept with vexation to find that in truth his translation was far superior to 304 CHILDREN'S HEARTS mine. This vexation rankled in my heart all the week until Saturday, the day when the head-master went through the classes announcing the result. I usually awaited the coming of this formidable authority with much anxiety. This anxiety was actually painful on that Saturday, and when he unfolded the list and began to read it, I would have been glad to escape from the great room where we stood to hear, Octave his victory, for he was first, I my defeat, for I was only third; and a manifest proof that it was indeed Octave who excited my jealousy, he personally I felt not the slightest bitterness toward the other schoolmate who, ranking second, had also defeated me. How did I feel when on the day following that fatal occasion, Sunday, I found myself with my fortunate rival in Dr. Pacotte's salon ? I still can hear my uncle's voice, complimenting M. Montescot on his ward's brilliant delnit, as he said, " My nephew has a strong opponent to encounter, it appears." "That is well," rejoined M. Andre, the physicist; " the schools in Paris are what they are because of this competition of good scholars." " They will be Nisus and Euryalus," remarked M. An- dre", the Barbarian, who did not scorn quotations from Latin. " His amor unus erat, pariterque in bella ruebant." I knew enough Latin to translate this line on the friendship of the two young Vergilian heroes, and their CHILDREN'S HEARTS 305 fraternal sympathy in their strife. But the feelings in- spired in me by the schoolboy Euryalus whose Nisus I was, according to the simple-minded professor, were of a very different character. Hardly could I endure the chorus of praises of which he was the object, and again I had to encounter Dr. Pacotte's eyes, fixed upon me with that same surgical acuteness, going to the very bottom of my conscience, and again causing me shame. Then, as if he had really possessed the gift of reading my youthful sensitiveness like an open book, he said to me, " You must go and show my butterflies to your young friend. I am sure he has not learned to know aboiit them in Paris." And when Octave said that he had not, " Explain them to him," the good doctor continued, turn- ing to me, "you can do it, for you know them as well as I do myself." He was aware that I needed, at that moment, some proof of my superiority to save me from being overpowered with envious rage; and he gave me the opportunity for it. Alas ! the trifling gratification afforded to my suffer- ing egoism by the old doctor's intelligent kindness was but brief, and bad luck would have it that my uncle, being a mathematician, united to admirable vir- tues of heart a complete lack of comprehension of human 306 CHILDREN'S HEARTS realities. When I recur in thought to that winter of 1855-1856, when this evil passion of envy developed so strangely in me its fatal vegetation, I am always con- scious that my poor uncle's awkwardness was, unknown to himself, its most powerful auxiliary. His familiarity with the abstract sciences had given him in education the same fault as in politics : he reasoned, instead of observing. He never suspected that he began immedi- ately to torture me, with his daily eulogy of Octave's perfections as contrasted with my faults. He believed that he could thus improve me, and he did not perceive that, in proposing to me as a model the very boy whose resolute and orderly nature was most opposed to my own, he plunged me deeper into my own faults. I was never more disorderly, more irregular, less painstaking than during this period, by an instinctive reaction against these remarks, incessantly repeated, "Look at Octave. Why don't you keep your exercise-books like his ? Why are you not as punctual as he is ? See how neat he keeps his clothes." And my uncle in- creased still further the disastrous effect of this con- stant comparison by testifying for my little comrade an affection which exasperated my jealousy. He had formed a very strong friendship for M. Montescot. A philosopher and a geometer are naturally made to go astray together, and the two visionaries soon could not do without each other. Both were at work in the morn- ing and walked after the noonday meal. My uncle had CHILDREN'S HEARTS 307 been accustomed to take me with him, and these walks had been a delight to me when we were alone with each other. They became a task, and a very sad one, when, every day, M. Montescot and his ward accompanied us. We usually went to call for them, because they were nearer than we to the Botanic Garden where we walked before the afternoon class. The dismissed professor had chosen for his abode a little apartment, furnished dismally with the few poor things that he had brought from Paris. The chairs were few in the four rooms, which had on their floors some old felt carpeting much worn and pieced. And yet, the order and neatness of this little place contrasted with the wilfully careless dress of the metaphysician. My uncle called my atten- tion to this neatness, and imparted to me the secret of it. He had it from our maid-servant, who was friendly with the housekeeper at the Montescots. "That little Octave," he had said to me, "is really a remarkably good child. You have noticed now neat his guardian's rooms are ? Every day, when their woman comes, the boy helps her in putting them in order before he goes to the lycee. He finds time pre- viously for his exercises and his lessons. Does it not make you feel ashamed you, who are so reluctant to get up in the morning, and never put even your own table in order?" We were just entering this little apartment, which I detested. This very order of the furniture was a 308 CHILDREN'S HEAETS mute reproach, to my disorder, and the affectionate gesture with which my uncle smoothed the soft dark curls of his "little friend," as he used to say, was all the more intolerable to me by its contrast with the absolute coldness of M. Montescot toward my- self. All the philosopher's affection was concentrated upon his so-called ward. It was only too natural that, for him, I should not exist. A conversation began between the two men, into which the philosopher did not fail to introduce some words in praise of Octave, which my uncle echoed; I saw an ingenuous grati- tude light up my comrade's face, and I envied him both the praise and the apartment. Yet everything in it spoke of poverty. M. Montescot had found al- most no pupils, notwithstanding Dr. Pacotte's efforts. He made shift to live on a small income, six or seven hundred francs, and his ill-paid labour on some of the vast publishing enterprises which abounded at that time. With these means, there were two to be fed and clothed, and the cost of schooling for the boy. The only luxury in this abode was a small glazed bookcase on whose shelves were a few rare books and five or six objects that the master of the place had brought home from a mission to Italy, at the time when he was in favour with the government. There were two marble heads, a Juno and a Bacchus ; a very fine Etruscan vase with black figures on a red ground, representing the Sphinx between two Thebans; and CHILDREN'S HEARTS 309 this bronze, this Hermes Psychopompos, at which I arrive, as you see, by a long way round. These an- tique bibelots were the only adornment of this abode, and their owner's great joy. M. Montescot was very proud of them, and he would now and then say, in his interminable conversations with my uncle on the principles of aesthetics, "If you have observed my Sphinx " or, " You can see that in my Juno " or, " You have the proof of that in my Bacchus " or, " It is so in my Hermes." And he would smile almost as proudly when, on Sundays, at Dr. Pacotte's, he would be asked, " Well ! Octave still leads ? " "Yes." "And how many times in succession is it?" And the guardian, radiant with delight, would reply with a number that increased each week, until the Easter vacation came and with it the announce- ment of what were called the prizes of excellence. In the four years that I had been at school I had always received the first prize. This year I could only expect the second, and how inferior, after Octave's continuous successes ! He had failed but once in obtaining the first place. Although this result, which was only an addition of points, was mathematical, and I expected it with as much certainty as my uncle expected an eclipse of the moon announced by the Observatory, I could not become accustomed to it or patiently accept 310 CHILDREN'S HEARTS this constant defeat. This evil feeling of revolt was so strong in me that I feigned illness to escape being present on the Saturday when the head-master would read the list of prize winners. I felt that I could not bear it. I passed the whole morning in my bed, com- plaining of headache, which was cured as if by magic when my uncle spoke of sending for Dr. Pacotte. I dreaded the penetrating glance of this old man, who now, as my odious passion grew stronger, nearly always looked at me with severity. The scene is present to me as if it were of yesterday, for it was then that happened the evil deed of which I spoke to you an act which, in the simple region of childish feelings, was absolutely villanous. I can see myself, as soon as my uncle had mentioned the doctor's name, declaring that it was not worth while and that I already felt better. The rather obtuse mathematician had not the time to marvel at this sudden cure, for just at the moment that I sat up in bed, with the intention of rising, the bell rang, quickly and joyfully. "Who can that be?" my uncle said. "It is half- past ten. I am sure it is Octave coming to inquire after you as soon as school was out. He is such an affectionate boy, and he is so fond of you! Yes, here he comes, and he has brought your prize. Nobody could be kinder." Octave came in at that moment, a book in his hand, the meagre volume which represented my second prize, CHILDREN'S HEARTS 311 and of which he had taken charge. He had only gone home for a moment to announce his success to M. Montescot, and he had under his arm the two big gilt-edged books which represented his first prize, from which his quite excusable pride would not allow him to part. But it was not the contrast between his prize and mine which maddened my envy to a real paroxysm. It was when I saw him unfasten from his waistcoat a chain which I had never seen before and take from his pocket an object which, also, I had never before seen, and this was at the end of the chain, and of gold, like the chain a watch, with his monogram on the back. He handed it to me, and said, "See the present that my guardian has given me, for my prize ! " I held the precious object in my hand. That you may fully understand the feelings agitating me at that mo- ment, I must tell you that the only watch I had was a very ancient silver turnip. To have a watch like this one, whose yellow metal glittered before my eyes, was one of my passionate desires, you know, one of those secret fancies in which the imagination of an eleven-year-old boy envelops infinite felicities. My uncle, when I had spoken to him of this wish, had said to me, "You shall have a gold watch the day you graduate from the lycee. I did not have one till after the Ecole Normale. It is a great luxury, and you must deserve it." The modest professor had in his 312 CHILDREN'S HEARTS moral make-up that substratum of Jansenism, so com- mon at that time among our middle-class country people. When he had used this word luxury, I knew that his decision was irrevocable. And this treasure, promised for my eighteenth year, as the reward of an examina- tion which appeared to me a very formidable affair, my lucky companion possessed at this present moment ! I could not thank him for the book which he had kindly brought me ; I could not even congratulate him on his success. I returned him the watch with such a sad face that this amiable boy lost sight, for the moment, of his own happiness. He did not take time to put the watch into his pocket again, but laying it on the bedside table so that he might the sooner grasp my hand, he exclaimed, " You are in pain ? What is the matter ? " in a tone that ought to have melted my vile and shameful rancour into affection. Alas ! I have often since observed, in others, that an enemy's gen- erosity almost always has the effect of increasing the hatred that he has inspired. I could see it in my own case, in this crisis, at once tragic and puerile. Octave's evident affection for me was insupportable, and, sinking back upon my pillows, I said, " I thought I was better. But I believe I am not. I am very tired " " Would you try to sleep ? " my uncle asked, and as I made a sign in the affirmative, the worthy man and Octave said good-by to me. They went away with CHILDREN'S HEARTS 313 soft footsteps, after closing the shutters and lowering the curtains, in the hope that darkness would help me to fall asleep. I was now alone, in this artificial night broken only by one ray of sunlight appearing where these curtains failed to meet, and I was ill, ah ! how ill I was ! The poisoned bite of envy tortured my soul, and all the incidents in which my rival had unconsciously humili- ated me, returned to me at once. I saw him all at one single glance of my impotent anger seated in school at the honorary desk where the first scholars had their seats, never again to leave it ; running in the school field always more rapidly than I ; saluting my uncle with a grace of manner that contrasted with my awkwardness ; spinning his top with a skill that I could never equal ; and, finally, drawing from his pocket this gold watch which completed the exasperation of my jealous fury. And now, in the silence of the darkened room, a sound, at first almost imperceptible so much was it confused with another sound, made me lift my head. I listened. It came from the marble of the bedside table, where I was accustomed to place my old silver turnip. I recognized its tic-tac, rather loud, but doubled as it were by another- tic-tac, more musical, clear, and sharp. It was as if two insects of metal were running, unseen, past my pillow, each with its own step. I lighted a match and looked: Octave's gold watch lay there with its chain. In his distress at seeing me 314 CHILDREN'S HEARTS suffer the affectionate boy, though so orderly in general, had left it there, forgetting it. Yes, the watch was there. Instinctively I seized it with my hand. I felt it palpitating in iny fingers like a living creature ; a sudden fury possessed me, as if it really were alive and in its existence were embodied all the superiorities of him to whom it belonged. Brutally, instinctively, insanely, with a strange feeling of glutting my hatred, I threw the watch with all my strength upon the marble of the little table, and listened. From the floor, where it had fallen, the same tic-tac came up to me, sarcastic now, and like a challenge. The shock had not broken its mainspring. I rose, and opened the curtains that I might see. I picked up the poor watch, whose crystal had been broken by the fall. I placed it on the hearth, and taking the fire-shovel, I began beating the fragile object with frenzied blows. I saw, successively, the hands broken off, the enamel of the face split, the case dented and finally crushed. I kept on with this savage vandalism until only a shapeless fragment remained at the end of the chain. Then, hastily, feverishly, like a malefactor with discovery close on his heels, I rolled the fragments and the chain together in a piece of paper. I listened again. I trem- bled lest I should hear the footsteps of my uncle or of the maid. But there was nothing. In haste I put on my trousers and waistcoat. My window opened upon a little terrace, at whose farther end was the mouth CHILDREN'S HEARTS 315 of an immense zinc conduit which collected the rain- water, and delivered it into a cistern built, after the manner usual in this country which has no rivers, under the very foundations of the house. I slipped out as far as this orifice, and dropped into it the little pack- age which might have denounced me. After all these days, I still hear the splash into the cistern of the broken watch and its chain. I returned in haste to my room. I still had presence of mind to pick up the fragments of glass that were on the floor near the bed. Those I merely threw out upon the terrace. I then closed the windows, the inside shutters, the curtains, and I slipped into bed. I was saved. VI There is certainly in evil a kind of strength which sustains our whole inner nature and breathes into us a hitherto unsuspected energy. Every bad act makes us capable of a worse one. Almost all crimes are explained by this sinister law of progression in wrong-doing, in which Christians see the work of an evil spirit, and the mechanist-psychologists of the present day are pleased to find a resemblance to the acceleration in the fall of heavy bodies. For my part, I do not understand its principle, but I have always felt it in the course of my deviations from the right path as a man and, for the first time, in a striking way, in this moral obliquity as a child. 316 CHILDREN'S HEARTS I was, by nature, a boy who spoke the truth. My slightest fibs came to light at once by my awkward- ness in telling them. Well ! no great actor could have better played the part of innocence and surprise than I did, perhaps twenty minutes after envy had caused me to commit the act of barbarism that I have related to you. The anxiety as to my illness which had pre- vented Octave from remembering to put the watch back into its fob, had also prevented him from noticing its absence when he was taking leave of my uncle and going downstairs. By chance he met at the door M. Andre, the Barbarian, and walked a few steps with him. When they separated, Octave began to fear that he should be late in reaching home, and it occurred to him to look at his watch. Then, for the first time, he perceived that the watch-pocket was empty. This dis- covery filled him with terror. He retraced his steps, carefully looking on the pavement as he did so, till he reached our door, when suddenly he remembered that he had given me the watch to look at. He ran up our staircase, four steps at a time, with the hope, almost the certainty, of immediately recovering his treasure. Remorse began to spring up in me, at sight of his charming face full of anxiety and distress, when, my uncle and he having entered my room, I pretended to awaken from sleep, and when, the window being opened, nothing was to be seen on my bedside table but the silver turnip, my own. I spoke to you just now of the CHILDHEN'S HEARTS 317 strength of evil. Would you believe that I was hypo- critical enough to rise, to look in my bed and under it, to shake the bedclothes and the pillow, and finally to say, after all this search, " It seems to me as if you put the watch back into your pocket. In that case, you must have hooked the chain carelessly. At any rate, it is not here." " Yes, that is it," Octave replied ; " I must have been careless about hooking the chain ; " then with a tone that very nearly wrung from me the confession of my base act, he continued, "and what shall I say to my guar- dian who took so much pleasure in giving me the watch this morning ? No, I never shall dare to see him again ; I had had the watch only two hours, and I have lost it ! Mon Dieu ! mon Dieu ! " He began to cry, and his big tears seemed to fall upon my heart and burn as they fell. I have been sufficiently explicit as to my bad feelings to have the right to tell you that I did not experience, in the presence of this grief, the hateful satisfaction of triumphant envy in seeing its victim suffer. In glutting my anger, I had exhausted it, and now I was horrified at my own work. Still, shame was again stronger than penitence, and I had made no confession when Octave went away, accompanied by my uncle. " We must go to the police at once," my good uncle had said, " and report the loss. Then I will go home with you to M. Montescot, and I promise you you shall not be 318 CHILDREN'S HEARTS scolded. You are the chief sufferer from your careless- ness. But it is incredible. The street is paved. If your watch fell to the ground, it must have made a noise. Besides, you know exactly where you lost it, for you had it when you were at our house. Somewhere between our house and M. Andre's. Unless some one has stolen it ? But who?" " Some one stole it from him, no doubt," said Dr. Pa- cotte the next day, when the incident quite an event for the little group of M. Montescot's friends was dis- cussed at his house. It was the usual Sunday session, but the philosopher and his ward were absent. They had been expecting to be absent for a week at Easter, visiting friends in the mountains. They had carried out their plan, notwithstanding the loss of the watch, com- mitting to my uncle the care of keeping them informed as to the efforts made for its recovery. This absence had been a great relief to me. I could not have endured to meet my comrade in the presence of the doctor. I knew the latter to be so clear-sighted that I always was afraid of his glance, even when innocent. How, then, could I bear it when guilty ? While he repeated these words, " Some one has stolen it," I was sure that those pene- trating eyes were fixed upon me, although, apparently absorbed in a book of engravings, I had turned away my head. " To rob these poor people was doubly abomi- nable. To give the boy a gold watch, M. Montescot must have deprived himself of so much ! And we know how CHILDREN'S HEARTS 319 little of the superfluous there is in his life. The person who has stolen this watch can have only one excuse, that he did not know this. If he knew it at all, he would be a monster ! " No ! It was not possible that the old doctor could be thinking of me when he said these things. Yet why did his words seek out, in the depths of my consciousness, the wounded spot, and redouble the remorse that grew and grew in my soul ? Why did his face express, when I met his eyes, a severity more displeased than ever ? Was it enough for that observer to see me come in, that Sun- day, to divine that I had the weight of a secret upon my heart ? Had he watched me, by stealth, while my uncle related the loss of the watch, and had he noticed that, as the story went on, I turned the pages .of the book more and more nervously ? And this narration of the facts, mentioning that Octave had taken off the watch to let me examine it, did it suggest at once to this judicious thinker the true explanation ? Certain it is that from the mere tone of the old man's voice I felt sure that he already had the idea that I was the culprit. I can still hear him argiiing the matter. " Besides, this rascal is not only a monster, he is a fool, like all rascals. Doubtless he does not know that every watch has its number on the case, and so, whenever he should try to sell it, he would be caught." My uncle's best friend believed me a thief, then ! Explain who can the strange subterfuges of human 320 CHILDREN'S HEARTS pride, always similar, even in a boy eleven years old ! Doubtless it was a very criminal act to have, from envy, destroyed, as I had done, a valuable watch which had cost the ex-professor all his poor savings of a year. But I had not been so vile as he thought. I had not stolen the watch to sell it, and that the doctor believed me capable of an act so infamous made me raise my head indignantly and look him in the face. An outcry of protest was upon my lips, but did not escape them. All the usual Sunday guests were present, and how could I have endured to speak before them? But no, I must have been mistaken, for Dr. Pacotte had already changed the subject of conversation, and neither during the rest of the after- noon nor at supper, when I sat near him, did he make allusion again to the disappearance of Octave's watch. He was, on the contrary, particularly affection- ate toward me, as if he had really calumniated me and owed me a kind of reparation. Explain this, also: his severity for some months had been very painful to me; the unjust suspicion detected in his words had made me indignant; and now his petting was almost more than I could endure. I felt too strongly that I did not merit it. When I went away, I was literally smothered with shame. How long would this condition have lasted, with alternative desires to confess and to keep silent? Should I ever have come to the point of revealing to CHILDREN'S HEARTS 321 my uncle my misconduct ? or should I have borne this burden upon my soul indefinitely until I should next go to confession, which would be when ? My good uncle being a free-thinker, I fulfilled only the minimum of my religious duties. Who knows ? I might even have lied in this confession, being hardened by my silence, and perhaps by a recrudescence of my envious passion. Fortunately I had near me, in those days of youthful susceptibility, in the person of the old doctor, one of those great connoisseurs in emotional suffering, who seek to do good to those around them less through charity than from an intellectual relish for law, and from a love of health in themselves and those around them. This fanatic of hygiene had for his patients somewhat the feeling that the classic poet attributes to the goddess of wisdom: "I love them as the gardener loves his plants." He was about to treat me as he would a tree in his garden, and use the pruning-knife just where it was needed, that the moral nature, an instant led astray, should again become normal and be healed. But why make any commentary upon this fine, intelligent benevolence ? Kather let me show it to you as it was. It was Wednesday afternoon, that is to say, more than four times twenty-four hours had passed since I had committed my misdeed, and, as I had been doing incessantly ever since that moment, I was thinking about it, with that insanity of conjecture that haunts 322 CHILDREN'S HEARTS a criminal. What if, in sweeping the terrace, any- one should pick up some bit of glass which had escaped my notice, and should recognize it as part of a watch- crystal ? What if it became necessary to clean out the cistern, and the watch itself should be found? If how could I have imagined, among so many possibili- ties, the one which was to be realized, and to efface all traces of my detestable villany ? It rained slightly, and my uncle and I were indoors, he at work before a blackboard on some problem in mathematics, I read- ing, or trying to write. The door-bell announced a visitor. The maid being out, my uncle bade me go to the door. I opened the door with beating heart. It was one of my terrors that the doctor might go to the police to communicate his suspicions. It was the doctor himself, but alone, and with a smile on his lips, kindly but mischievous. He took off his clogs, his muffler, his mittens, carefully and slowly, as his custom was. He wiped his spectacles, clouded by the rain, saying, " Bad weather for rheumatic people ! Andre phi sent for me this morning. He is caught by the leg. I said to him, 'You have no disease, you have a wine cellar. No more wine, no more alcohol, no more pain ! ' But it was just so with poor Darian, the head- master. A colossus ! He could have killed me with one blow of his fist. We were born the same day. I buried him in 1845. Without his good wine, he would CHILDREN'S HEARTS 323 not have had the gout ; and without the gout, he would be alive now." Then, after a quiet laugh, and when my uncle had invited him to take a seat by the fire, he drew, with his long fingers, from the pocket of his everlasting chestnut-colored coat, an object wrapped in paper and began to undo it, saying, "What do you think this is ? It is the Hermes Psychopompos of our friend Montescot. And where do you think I found it ? You must have wondered how the poor man obtained money to buy that gold watch which was stolen from his ward. I did, too. But I inquired into it. I went to two or three watchmakers Is there anything the matter with you ? " he asked me, suddenly breaking off his remarks ; and, in truth, these opening words had made my heart literally stand still. On my reply in the negative, he went on, "At last I laid my hand on old Courault, the jeweller in the rue des Notaires. He did not wait for me to speak. ' Ah ! monsieur le docteur,' he said, just as soon as he saw me, 'I have something for you an antique bronze ; and there ! it is a masterpiece.' With that, he pulls out of his drawer this ! " And the old collector held out to us the bronze statuette, this Hermes, which I at once recognized. "I compelled old Courault to confess," he continued, "and at last I found out how Mon- tescot had been able to give his ward an object of such value. You know what store he sets by those 324 CHILDKEN'S HEARTS things in his glass case, his Apollo, his Juno, his Greek vase, this Hermes ? You know, also, how he loves Octave, and how good that boy is ; how his con- duct has been ever admirable since they have lived here ! It seems as if he understood that he ought to make amends to his protector for all that that martyr has suffered for the sake of his faith. Montescot wished to reward so much industry, earnestness, perfection. Probably the boy, who never asks for anything, in passing by Courault's shop may have said, looking at the showcase in the window, 'How I should like to have one of those watches ! ' And this worthy Mon- tescot, instead of coming to me, who would have given a suitable price for this Hermes, simply bartered it for the watch, to give Octave a present which would cause him real pleasure. Well, it was that destitute boy's pleasure, it was that poor, unfortunate man's happiness, that the thief stole with the watch. But what ails you ? " "Yes," repeated my uncle, turning to me; "what ails you ? " Convulsive sobs shook me, through which I cried out, " No, doctor, I did not steal it ! I did not steal it!" " You did not steal it ? " said the doctor, with a gesture to my uncle to be silent. "Then what did you do? Come, tell us the whole truth." "At his age! A thing like that! Is it possible? CHILDREN'S HEARTS 325 Is it possible ? " my uncle groaned, while I confessed, through my sobs, all my madness all that I knew about it, at least: my jealousy of Octave, and how I had been unwilling to go that day to hear the prize announced, my emotion when I saw the watch, and all that followed. "Do not scold him," the doctor said gently, when I had finished this recital of my shame and my remorse. "He has been punished enough. And besides, he has had courage to confess. It was very well done, very well done ! Besides, all is made good. Yes," he con- tinued, drawing a little package from another pocket, " I have found the watch myself, and to-morrow it shall be sent to its lawful owner, who will never know who took it from him or who returns it." And he showed us a watch, in every respect identical with the other, which he had bought at the watchmaker's. "Old Courault will keep our secret. So let us say no more about it. But I require from you a promise," he con- tinued, laying his big hand on my head and speaking very gravely. " You are to take this little bronze and swear to me that you will keep it with you always. Keep it hidden in your drawer, that Octave may not see it; but whenever, in your life, you are tempted to envy the good fortune or the .success of another, look at this Hermes, and I have no fear that you will ever again fall." And indeed I have kept the Hermes with me al- 326 CHILDREN'S HEARTS ways. In my hard artist-life it has been to me an infallible talisman against the most hateful of all hate- ful passions. The old man had cured me, as I believe one can always cure a child, by making me feel all the villany of my act, and forgiving me for it. APRIL 1898 II PRECOCIOUS FEELINGS I HAVE found the following pages among papers left me by my dead friend, Claude Larcher. These leaf- lets were doubtless part of notes to be used in the great work on Love, upon which Claude was occupied when he died, for he had them arranged with many others in a case, inscribed: "Precocious Feelings." I have kept this title, and have only changed the names of persons, having ascertained on inquiring that the story was strictly true. Had he lived, Claude him- self would have made this correction, and several others doubtless. I have not felt myself at liberty to make other changes. Pardon the faults, therefore, of these pages which deal with the inner life. Among my recollections of childhood, this one re- mains the most disturbing of all. My experience of life lights it up now with a pathetic gleam, and the CHILDREN'S HEARTS 327 drama of the affections which I then witnessed without fully comprehending it, wears for me, across the years, a poetry of mystery, poignant and tragic. My imagi- nation was awake, however, in those remote days, for it allowed me to feel at the time that there was a mystery. But how could my innocent school- boy revery, at the age of thirteen, compass the verity of certain emotions ? I am surprised myself that I divined, notwithstanding that innocence, what I did. And then, thinking of the singular child that I was, I say to myself sometimes that nature gives to those whom she destines to be painters of the passions something like a premature power of intuition, an instinctive comprehension of grief, in advance of their age and their own individual thoughts. I was thirteen years old at the time, and I was liv- ing with my grandfather, who had been a lawyer, and my grandmother, in a little city of central France. They had taken charge of me, an orphan. I can see it still, this little city, as if I were still the boy with close-cropped hair who, four times a day, his cartable on his back, walked with his grandfather from house to school and from school to house. It lay on a little hillside, the last spur of a range of high hills, and all its streets were on a slope. They were paved with pointed pebbles, on which the wooden soles of my sabots had hard work not to slip, in the wintry months. These streets were narrow and winding, 328 CHILDREN'S HEARTS a useful precaution against the north wind, which came straight from snow-covered mountains and cut your face as with a knife. With the same intention, the tall houses of black stone were crowded close, heaped up one against another. Oh! the dismal, cold city ! And yet, it is my city, the only place in which I am not a stranger, a mere transient visitor who may never return. My city is part of myself, as I am part of her. There is not a bend in one of those gloomy lanes where some phantom cannot evoke man or woman more or less involved, often most unconsciously, in the history of my soul. I think, as I write these lines, of the masculine figure who, at the period of my thirteenth year, played the first rdle in my imaginative thoughts, and certainly had no idea that he was doing this. He was a man about thirty years of age, who had come from Paris the year before to fill among us a position not very romantic, it would seem, or likely to fire the dreams of a boy: M. de Norry, for that was his name, was counsellor art the prefecture. It is true that, at this time, near the beginning of the Second Empire, the administrative body was admirably recruited. The government saw its advantage here, and attracted to it distinguished young men of the best families. I can now see that my ingenuous admiration for the elegant counsellor was, in reality, a divination. I have said that he came from Paris, and it was through him that I received, unconsciously, my first impression CHILDREN'S HEARTS 329 of Paris. He was rather tall, slender, with fine black eyes, very soft and velvety, and a complexion somewhat too pale. Was it this pallor which struck me, on his first visit to my grandfather's house, and the contrast between this fatigued colouring of the man of pleasure and the solid ruddiness of the provincial faces which surrounded me ? Was it other very simple peculiarities ? But there is nothing simple to the complicated observa- tion of some children. From the first time I saw him I had remarked, for example, that M. de Norry wore on the little finger of the left hand a ring of a kind I had never before seen, composed of two little snakes entwined, with two sapphires for heads. I had observed the fineness of his shoes and the freshness of his linen. I still inhale, across the quarter of a century, the faint, fresh perfume of his handkerchief, and I hear my grand- father's voice saying to my grandmother, with a sneer, when the counsellor of the imperial prefecture had gone out, " Those brigands have sent us their fleur des pois. But this fine fellow will waste his time here. It must be one of R.'s ideas. Our ladies will not let them- selves be caught." I was quite incapable of translating into its true bru- tality the remark of the old Orleanist lawyer, and I still doubt whether the Minister of the Interior, in 1859, had the na'ive Machiavellic design of sending a professional charmer into our department to gain over the feminine 330 CHILDREN'S HEAKTS opinion to the new regime. A liberal distribution of licenses to sell tobacco and of red ribbons was quite enough ! But my grandfather's enigmatic comment emphasized too strongly the exceptional character per- vading the whole personality of M. de Norry for me not to form at once a passionate curiosity as to this new- comer in our city. Even the unusual term, fleur des pois, stimulated this curiosity. What connection could there be between the flower which I knew so well from having so often seen it whiten the green rows in our vegetable garden, and this young man, with his handsome hands and his fascinating smile ? Who were the " brigands," of whom my grandfather spoke with so evident bitterness, who had sent M. de Norry to us ? And why ? How was R. concerned in it all, a former lawyer here, once a partisan of the July monarchy, like my uncle, now on bad terms with him, and a minister ? If I had not " crystallized " around these first sensations with all the imaginative strength of my thirteen years, it is probable that the little tragedy to which I am coming would have passed unnoticed by me; and if I had been a more tranquil boy, less apt to be lured by fancy into paths dangerous at my age, it is very probable also as a man that my life would have been happier and less battered. But it was written that, thus early in life and in this peaceful nook in the country, the poetry of guilty affections should be revealed to me before its time. We shall see in what manner. CHILDREN'S HEARTS 331 ii We lived in the old city, on the third floor of an ancient house, built I could not say when, without much architectural character. The rooms were very lofty, and behind the house lay a very beautiful large garden, of which we shared the use with the proprietor, on the floor below us. He was a M. Franqois Real, one of the three or four great landowners of the country, concerning whom the petty proprietors of our acquaintance were wont to use, with respect, the word millionnaire, and he himself had that breadth of shoulder, that manner of walking, saluting, laughing, talking, which marks the man of importance. When I remember him at this distance, with his big face and its broad features framed in short, reddish whiskers, with the shining yellow of his sly and joking eye, with the insolent pout of his lip, I am conscious that in him I beheld a finished type of the country boor, who has but three strong tastes, for the chase, for the table, and for his money. How did this odious brute happen to marry a creature as high-bred as he was vulgar, as pretty and refined as he was coarse? It was the everyday incident of the marriage of a moneyed man, the son and grandson of usurers, takers of the public loans, with a young lady noble and poor. Mme. Keal was, on the father's side, a Visignier one of those Visigniers whose ruined chateau remains 332 CHILDREN'S HEARTS a place of interest in the region. Prom this union, which this coarse Real had evidently desired through brutal plebeian pride, was born one daughter, older than I by four years, an adorable child, exactly like her mother, and naturally my playmate all through my early childhood. But for some years I had scarcely seen her. She was finishing her education in a con- vent, reputed aristocratic, which occasioned from my grandfather who had in a degree the Voltairean prejudices of a middle-class admirer of Louis Philippe, this other remark, still more emphatic to me than that concerning the Jleur des pois: "If this upstart of a Real wanted his wife to turn out badly, he could not do anything different. He was lucky to have that daughter. It was the mother's salva- tion. And he sends her to the Sacre-Cceur, through van- ity ! You will see what will happen. Alone, not happy there will be confrerie. It is inevitable ! And that charming creature ! What a pity ! " How many times these inexplicable words recurred to my mind while, instead of being at my lessons, I watched, hidden behind a curtain, through the window-panes, the pretty Mme. Real, Marguerite by name, walking, a book in hand, along the sanded alleys. I saw her figure, so young and so graceful, with her thirty-five years. Her delicate profile was relieved against the background of verdure and flowers, if it was summer ; and if it was au- tumn, against the russet masses of withered foliage. CHILDREN'S HEARTS 333 The silky gold of her hair shone under her garden hat. Her hands, very white through the lace of her black mit- tens, opened or closed her book. Her little feet escaped from under the edge of her dress, with the rhythm of her walk, and she lifted her eyes from her book to let them wander over the horizon of mountains which notched the sky above the walls of the garden, clothed with ivy through which the wind sent a shiver. I repeated to my- self my grandfather's observation without understanding it at all, except that some danger threatened this sweet, ideal creature, and the inexplicable words, some comic and low, others pathetic, made me dream indefinitely. " Turn out badly ? " I had heard it said of one of my cousins that he had turned out badly. He had enlisted in the cavalry as a common trooper ! " confrerie ? " I knew of one confrerie, that of the Scapulary, to which my grandmother belonged, who was as pious as my grand- father was the reverse. " What a pity ! " This touched a pity in me which extended by a feeling which I could not understand from the mother to my little friend, the pretty Isabelle, with whom I had so often raced over the sand of these same alleys, before paternal vanity, blamed by the old free-thinking lawyer, had imprisoned her in a convent ; and when I sat down to my studies again, dis- tress at the mysterious danger suspended over these two beings seized me sometimes so strongly that I could have wept. 334 CHILDREN'S HEARTS in What was the precise moment when my childish mind began to associate the image of the man who had produced so strong an impression upon me, at the time of his first visit, with that of the unhappily married mother of my absent playmate ? This I cannot tell ; it was only natural that M. de Norry, as an official at the prefecture, should have become acquainted with the principal citizens; and his presence, more or less frequent, in a house where two of them lived, my grandfather Maitre Gaspard Larcher and M. Francois Real, would not, certainly, have excited my notice, if again this worthy grandfather, who decidedly did not sufficiently take into account my mental precocity, had not made another imprudent remark in my hearing. We were returning from a walk, about four o'clock in the afternoon. There had been no school that day, therefore it must have been either a Sunday or a Thurs- day, in the autumn of 1859. Before the door of our house a carriage was standing. It was a two-wheeled " buggy," the only one in the place, and it belonged to the man whom I so much admired. There was har- nessed to it a very stout pony of a build also unique in our land of mountain nags that were shaped like goats. The counsellor's animal had enormous withers, a broad chest, and the back and crupper of a cob. He was very shaggy, with short black legs under his dappled-gray CHILDREN'S HEARTS 335 body. His mane was cropped close, and in his polished leather harness, with a count's coronet in the proper places, the pony was as much of a marvel to me as his master was. Or rather my two raptures of admiration were blended into one, when the young man passed in this light carriage, at the long trot of this agile pony. I gazed at him as I should have gazed at the Phaeton of Ovid's Metamorphoses (which I was translating at the time), had that personage driven the chariot of the Sun over the pointed pavement of our city streets. No sooner had I espied this equipage in the distance than I exclaimed, "Why, that is M. de Norry's car- riage ! " "Where is it?" asked my grandfather, whose sight was somewhat enfeebled. "Why, in front of our house!" " Oh ! " said my grandfather ; " then he has come to see her again to-day ! " He added not a word to this exclamation, which he had flung out as if speaking to himself, in a tone so peculiar that I was quite struck by it. I had no need to ask him who the person was, whom the possessor of this wonderful horse had come to see "again to-day." I had met M. de Norry the preceding day, at the same hour, as I was returning from school, but this time he was on foot, and on his way to our house. I had seen him enter; and it must have been Mme. Eeal since it was not my grandmother to whom he paid his 336 CHILDREN'S HEARTS visit. Why did these two visits, so near together, cause my grandfather so much concern ? His voice had changed, his face had suddenly clouded over, and his gesture was almost rough, to prevent me from stopping fascinated before the pony, who must have been stand- ing there a long time already, for he had, with his impatient hoof, dug a large hole in the ground, and the groom, standing by him, himself was kicking at the ground, like a man chilled by long waiting. This picture, in the melancholy light of a November afternoon, is present to my gaze at this moment, from the little rosettes at the horse's ears which vibrated at every snort from his big head, to the tall figure of my grandfather, disappearing under the tall porte-cochere and dragging me with him ; and I find no less present to my memory my feeling that between Mine. Real and M. de Norry something was going on, or was to go on, which prodigiously displeased him. IV Something? But what? In seeking to reconstruct, with my mature intelligence, the shadowy images of my childish consciousness, I find it hard to reconcile two facts, absolutely certain and contradictory : on the one hand, my entire ignorance of the realities of life ; and, on the other, the real trouble caused me by this suspi- cious remark of my grandfather, which must have had a CHILDKEN'S HEARTS 337 kind of meaning for me. My grandfather had not said that M. de Norry was attentive to Mme. Real, or that he was in love with her. Still, that is what I had under- stood. How had I understood it ? With what pres- tige, for my imagination, was already invested this sen- timent of love, which represented to me only the most visionary and undefined of enthusiasms ? Of this I have no idea. But what I am quite sure of is that never had I experienced anything like this disturbance awakened in me, this fever of devouring curiosity with which I was suddenly attacked, this anxiety to know what M. de Norry and Mme. Real felt for each other a trouble, fever, and anxiety whose most manifest result was (I being but a child) to make me obtain at school a quantity of bad marks ; for, instead of working indus- triously, as heretofore, at my tasks, my principal occu- pation consisted, for many weeks, in practising the most infantine, and also the most ineffectual, espionage. Sometimes it was a pretext that I devised, in the midst of translating a page of Latin, for going below; and I would rush down the great stone staircase, four steps at a time, to see if the buggy, with the gray black-legged pony, was standing before our door ; sometimes I glued my forehead indefatigably to the window glass to follow with my eyes Mme. Real as she paced the garden alleys ; and her walks were more and more frequent and of longer duration, although the lateness of the season must have rendered them less and less agreeable. The 338 CHILDREN'S HEARTS young woman no longer carried a book. Her delicate shoulders draped in a cachemire shawl, she walked bare- headed with folded arms, treading underfoot the dead leaves that the wind sometimes blew around her, and it would happen, in sunny hours, that one of these yellow leaves, falling from a tree, whirled and whirled in the sunlight and rested at last upon her hair, more golden yellow than the leaf. This she never even noticed, plunged in thoughts that I was hungry to know. To- day how clear to me is the enigma of those prolonged walks ! This woman of the country, to whom the brill- iant Parisian was paying court, had come to the period of inner struggles, secret revolts, wishes by turns cher- ished and repressed. My poor little thirteen years had not yet known that grievous invasion of the heart by a criminal desire. How did I divine the silent tragedy of which the romantic dreamer in that autumnal garden was the victim? And I did divine it. Yes. I di- vined that, alone in reality in her walk, in thought she was not alone. I divined whose image accom- panied her in those long hours of meditation, summoned and repulsed by turns, and the proof of it is in my absence of surprise when, one afternoon, having placed myself as usual at my post of observation, I saw that this time, in her visit to the quiet garden, M. de Norry himself was with her. How distinctly present is that scene to me now ! It must be that this mystery bit deep into my imagination CHILDREN'S HEARTS 339 to have made every detail of so simple an episode per- manent in my memory. Again I see my native sky, veiled, padded, with a soft mist; and the box edging of the alleys; and the oaks, with their rusty foliage; and the plane trees, with their big, copper-coloured leaves; and the two walking under the trees; and the pane of glass clouded at moments by my breath; and once more I feel the shock of terror, as of a thief caught in the act. My grandfather's hand is upon my shoulder, and I hear his voice, which says to me, " What are you doing there ? Since you won't work, go play in the garden. Go play ! " he repeated. Why, in giving me this order, so contrary to all discipline, had he this imperative manner? Why, suddenly enfranchised from my tasks, instead of running down- stairs with the delight which would have been natural, did I tremble from head to foot? Why had I this terrified timidity at the idea of mingling my childish sports with this walk of M. de ISTorry and Mme. Eeal ? And now I was in the garden, sure that behind the glass where I just now had been concealed my formi- dable relative was standing watching me. For the sake of doing something, I began to run down one alley and then, aimlessly, down another. And so I came to the end of the garden, to a kind of pavilion a rustic arbour, rather where we used sometimes to sit in summer, and I saw before the entrance the two, in pursuit of whom my grandfather so evidently had sent 340 CHILDREN'S HEAIITS me. Their attitude betrayed too well even to eyes innocent as mine the conflict between them at the moment: he, holding the young woman's hand and drawing her toward the arbour; she, endeavouring to withdraw her hand and refusing to follow him. They perceived me. M. de Norry grew very pale and dropped Mine. Real's hand. I shall see, while I live, the young woman's agitated smile, her beautiful eyes, into which came a gleam of terror and of relief; and I shall hear her voice, smothered and imploring, as she called me to her : " Claude ! Claude ! I am so glad you came ! Don't go away ! Come, walk with us ; we are going to get some holly." And she repeated, "My little Claude ! I am so glad you came ! " At this point my recollections lose distinctness, prob- ably because Mme. Real and M. de Norry both consid- ered me, though for different reasons, as a dangerous witness. Perhaps this scene merely made them more prudent. Possibly, too, thoughts better suited to my age may have absorbed my attention. Christmas and New Year's Day were approaching, and curiosity as to my future presents probably got the better of all other feelings. What I remember very clearly in addition to the other scenes which I have to describe is that my grandfather questioned me closely, when I came in CHILDREN'S HEARTS 341 from my walk with M. de Norry and Mme. Heal, as to the way I had spent my time in the garden. I related to him, 110 less minutely, our gathering the holly from the garden wall, and made no mention at all of the arbour. An invincible bashfulness I can find no other word kept me silent. I remember, also, that my aforesaid grandfather was absent from home, about this time, for four or five days. He made a journey to Paris, whose motive is now rendered plain to me by the name of the minister of whom I have already spoken. M. Larcher had too often stigmatized the treachery of the infamous R , who had gone over to Bona- partism, for me not to be much astonished on hearing him, on his return, say to his wife, after mentioning this man's name, " Well ! I saw him ; and it will be done the next time any charges are made. We wept, like two old donkeys, when we met. After all, he is an old friend. And then it was the only way ! But is there still time? You know, I could not bear it " The worthy man had gone to beg his old friend to send another counsellor to the prefecture. That step no romantic interest helped me to divine. I could per- ceive, indeed, by the tone of the two old people that there must be something about M. de Norry on foot; but I perceived it so vaguely that I have no recollection of any thoughts which this journey to Paris must have suggested to me; on the other hand, all the darkness 342 CHILDREN'S HEARTS of the past is scattered, and I am conscious, almost painfully, so intense is this consciousness, of the feel- ings that I had toward this same M. de Norry about two weeks after my grandfather's return. It was the evening of the 6th of January. I am able to fix the date with certainty because we were all at a Twelfth-Night dinner at Mme. Eeal's. The country dining room was all filled with the tumult of a long repast just ending. The immense table was lighted by an old carcel-lamp hanging from a chan- delier with twenty candles surrounding it. I still see the square hole through which the key was intro- duced to wind up the lamp. M. Francois Eeal pre- sided, high-coloured, excited by wine, having at his right my grandmother, very dignified, with her long white curls. My grandfather was at Mme. Real's right, and at her left, M. de Norry. The young woman's face, showing traces of the struggle she had maintained with herself so many months, was sad to see that evening. Her large blue eyes shone with a kind of feverish brilliancy, and the pallor of her face was like the tint of porcelain. A kind of sad- ness emanated from her whole person, contrasting most remarkably with the singular joy in the eyes and in the face of the man who sat beside her. The counsellor of the prefecture never appeared to me before so radiant in manly beauty and distinction. A certainty of triumph seemed to pervade his whole CHILDREN'S HEARTS 343 being; and his slightest movements, his gestures, his looks, his smiles, were stamped with that vic- torious grace which man has, as well as woman, at some moments. I was not the only person who ob- served this. My grandfather's manifest discomfort attested that he found the removal promised by his friend the renegade far too slow in taking effect; and more than his uneasiness, more than Mme. Real's excitement, what struck me during dinner, what cut me to the heart, so that for the first time I felt a hatred for this beauty of M. de Norry, this elegance, this superiority, all that separated him from the country group gathered there, was the fact that another person was hypnotized by him, and that this person was my own neighbour at table, the charming Isabelle Real, at home from her convent for the holidays. I had found her prettier than ever, more like her mother in the aristocratic elegance of her face and manners; but grown so tall, so changed, so lost to me ! The four years between our ages might have been six might have been ten. I was still a little boy. She was already a young lady. Her fair hair no longer fell in waves over her shoulders as before. It was gath- ered up in a close knot. Her long dress made her seem taller. Her movements, formerly a little brusque and boyish, were now more gentle, more refined. In speaking to me when we first met, she had treated me with a familiarity at once affectionate and distant, all 344 CHILDREN'S HEARTS the more painful to me because I was conscious of being strangely intimidated in her presence; and now, at the dinner table, this feeling that an abyss had suddenly opened between us did but make itself more distinct ; and at the same time another grief sprang up within me, a jealousy sudden, animal, irresistible, in respect to the young man at Mme. Seal's side, toward whom went all the glances, interests, impres- sions, and thoughts of my neighbour. Innocent as she was, and transparent of heart as of look, Isabelle never dreamed of concealing her frank admiration for the young man. " M. de Norry is very handsome, don't you think so ? " she had said to me, as we sat down at table, and I had replied to her, by an instinct of contradiction that proves how completely the man already exists in the boy, " Why, no ! I don't think so ; he is too pale, for one thing." " Oh ! " she had rejoined, " that is so distinguished looking ! " At the moment while she was making this very child- ish remark to me, I had caught a glimpse of myself, in one of the mirrors which adorned the wall, with my ruddy, sunburnt face of a boy always in the open air. I had made no reply, but my suffering had begun, and immediately a thought had seized upon me. "They will have a Twelfth-Night cake. I hope CHILDREN'S HEARTS 345 Isabelle will not get the bean. I am sure she wo\ild choose him" No sooner had the idea entered my mind than it became an established certainty. I felt a choking sensation ; an insupportable anguish of expectation weighed upon my heart, growing every moment heavier, through the endless courses of a rich country feast, until the moment when the enormous iced cake was set before Mme. Real, already cut into as many pieces as there were guests at table. The servants go about, bringing a piece to each person. The knives and forks gayly reduce to tiny bits the pas- try, which exhales its pleasant odour of fresh butter and spices. A little cry of joy comes from my neighbour ; my presentiment was fulfilled Isabelle had the bean ! " Oh ! I am the Queen ! " she said, and for an instant the child that she was but yesterday reappeared under the young lady of to-day. She clapped her hands, repeat- ing, " I am the Queen ! " And immediately a voice replied to her which made her blush and grow sober her father's voice it was, calling out, "You are the Queen. You must choose yourself a King." She looked around the table, as if hesitating, and every man's face was turned toward her some mischievously, some inquisitively. M. de Norry also looked at her, with that condescending look he would naturally give to a little girl. She was to him what I was to her a creature of no account. And I with the rest perceived this amused indifference, which exasperated me still more. 346 CHILDREN'S HEARTS Isabelle seemed still to hesitate. For an instant her blue eyes rested upon me. I had a momentary hope that she was going to choose me. The clear eyes turned toward him whom I had foreseen as her choice, and, blushing yet more, she stammered, rather than said, " I choose M. de Norry for my King." " Then," her father again called out to her, " fill your glass with champagne, and go and drink with your King ! " Isabelle took the slender glass, into which the servant had poured the sparkling wine crowned with its light foam, and she went around the table to the place where M. de Norry was sitting. Then, as she held out her glass, with a timid smile, to touch his, the young man, on his part, with a little petting gesture which proved how entirely he regarded her as a child, took her hand and, drawing her toward him, touched her forehead with his lips. Scarcely had I time to feel the sting of jealousy at this innocent kiss, for sud- denly I heard my grandfather's voice saying, " Why, Madame Beal, what is it ? What is the mat- ter ? She is ill ! Quick, give her air ! " "It was nothing," replied Isabelle's mother. "It is the heat of the room, I think. Gentlemen, I beg your pardon." She made an effort to smile and to rise from her seat, then fell back, fainting. CHILDREN'S HEARTS 347 VI "Well," said my grandfather to his wife, holding out to her the newspaper, a week after the Twelfth- Night dinner that had been so strangely interrupted, " R has kept his word. Our bird takes flight. He is sent to Marseilles. It is a step in advance." " Does Madame Beal know it ? " my grandmother asked. "I suppose Keal has told her," rejoined my grand- father. " She has not left her bed since her fainting fit. There is a fellow, that Eeal, who owes me a big candle," he added, after a minute's silence, "but he will never know it ! And, besides, I did not do it for him. However, she is saved." M. de Norry did, in fact, leave the city to go to his new post without having again seen Mme. Real who was long in recovering from what the doctors called a ner- vous fever. And saved she was though whether by the fever or by my grandfather, who can tell ? The worthy lawyer died in the belief that this salvage was due to him. Now that the boy who listened, crouching in the corner, to the words of the two old people, with- out their noticing his presence, has become a man, he does not fully accept his grandfather's view, nor does he have any more faith in the reality of the fever. He remembers the mother looking at her tall daughter, agitated, almost in love, stooping to the kiss of the 348 CHILDREN'S HEARTS man she herself was about to accept as her lover. And he believes that it was that sight that hindered Mme. Rdal from going further in the path of danger. JANUAKT 1900 III RESURRECTION SLOWLY, sadly, Elizabeth de Fresne had climbed the slope of the hill, wooded and walled in, which made a park for her villa. She had seated herself on the rock, upon the terrace which had been laid out there in happier days, and from which her eyes could see one of the most extensive views of sea and mountains in all Provence so beautiful that it has given to this part of the neighbourhood of Hyeres the name of Cos- tebelle. At her feet the irregular crests of the Aleppo pines were green and waving in little shivers in the breeze from the bay, which was blue in the distance, enclosed on one side by the two long, narrow roads of the peninsula of Giens, and on the other by the fortified point of Breganqon. The island of Porque- rolles and its notched rocks, that of Port Cros and its lookout, that of the Levant and its barren moors, barred the horizon in the distance. At the young woman's left stretched the sombre chain of the Maures, beneath which lay in rows, one below another, on the hill slope, CHILDREN'S HEARTS 349 the white houses of Hyeres. And the radiant sun enwrapped with its splendour this forest, these waves, these islands, these hills, these remote facades a divine late March sun which, nearer, caressed the pink villa and the alleys of the garden adjacent to the park, with their mimosas in bloom, their beds of pur- ple iris, of red and white carnations, their clumps of pale roses and of large anemones. In the little pine grove, heather, growing tall as trees, waved in the sea wind its clusters of a very soft white, and the laurel its bouquets of a very clear white. The breeze brought, with its smell of the sea, the mingled fragrance of these resins and these corollas, that, also, of wild rose- mary and cysts. Here and there, forms of exotic vege- tation were confusedly visible : the broad leaves of date palms, the twisted poniards of the agave, the pointed feathers of the yucca. And this adorable vision of an almost Oriental spring was completed, was enchanted, was ennobled with a still purer charm, by the devout tinkle of a chapel bell. This voice of the little church which dominates all this region, and bears the beautiful name of Our Lady of Consolation, shed itself abroad in this luminous, warm, balsamic air in frail, silvery vibrations. It announced that this glorious morning in spring was also Easter morning; and this festival of the Resurrection harmonized so well with the universal joy in life spread everywhere, that this wonderful nature seemed also, in its sunshine, its sea, its flowers, 350 CHILDREN'S HEARTS to proclaim the victory of Love triumphant over Death. ii Alas ! it was just this very festival of Life, in nature and in the church, in the visible and the invisible heaven, that overwhelmed the young woman with the cruellest melancholy, on this wonderful Easter morning. The sombre crape that she wore, which adorned with pathetic grace her delicate blonde beauty, told of a grief borne hopelessly in her heart. Her soft blue eyes, almost dulled from tears, seemed hurt by the radiant splendour of the perfect day. Her pale brow was clouded with a sadder thought at each ring- ing of the bell. She had lost a son an only son four months before, and in the mother's heart the open wound bled the more, at sight of this fairy world of the new springtime which her Andre would not see, at sound of this appeal to a God to whom she prayed no longer, to whom she could no longer pray, since He had taken her child. Seated on the warm terrace, she looked about her with the mechanical and careless look of despair. From all points of the splendid horizon, images arose, as she looked, and trains of ideas followed these images, which rendered more definite, more unendurable, all the lesser details of her misfortune. This sudden death of a boy six years old, carried off by meningitis after but a few days' illness, was in itself a very severe trial. CHILDREN'S HEARTS 351 Personal circumstances had aggravated its weight, and the young woman realized them anew, one by one, in the presence of this scene, filled for her with so much of the past. That shining water of the quiet bay was the sea, the impassable sea, across which Ludovic de Fresne, her husband, had been obliged to go, to the far East, ten months before. She had accompanied him, a lieutenant in the navy, to Toulon, a wife, so afflicted, a mother, so happy ! And now, that she had such need of him to endure the horrible thing, thousands of miles separated them from each other. When would he return, to speak the words that would give her cour- age to live for her duty ? What duty ? The sound of the bell announcing the service, which her inward revolt prevented her from attending, repeated it to her all too clearly. If Mme. de Fresne had stood up, she might have seen, upon the ribbon of road which, from the door of the villa, winds through the woods to the chapel, a carriage drawn by a pony, and in the carriage two children in mourning like herself a boy of nine, a lit- tle girl of eight. These two, Guy and Alice, were her husband's children by a former marriage. She remem- bered, when she had married the naval officer, who was also her cousin, how sincere had been her pity for the motherless boy and girl. How faithful had been her efforts to fill the place of the dead, so that now, at their present ages of eight and nine, they had no idea that she was not their own mother ! When she herself had 352 CHILDREN'S HEARTS had a son, how scrupulously had she avoided showing a preference for him ! And she had even been able to do this without effort. While the three fair children were running, laughing, playing around her, her heart had naturally been shared by the three. Why was this no longer so? Why ? The young woman had but to turn toward the left, toward a point that she knew too well, to have an answer to this question. There, beyond the last houses of the city, a depression marked the hollow of a valley it was the cemetery. From the day when she had herself seen her courage had carried her to that point the little coffin of her poor Andre slip down the ropes into the newly dug grave, a frightful feeling had seized upon her against which she had struggled and struggled still, in vain ; and on that Easter morning she had felt it stronger than ever in her heart. She could not forgive the two children for being merry and young, for walking and talking and breathing in short, for being alive, while the third, the little one, her boy, lay motion- less in his grave. She had not only ceased to love them : at times it seemed to her and all her being shuddered at the thought that she hated them, as if they had stolen from the absent one his share of joy and health and sun- light. To hear them call her " mamma," gave her an un- natural, cruel desire to cry out to them, " Be silent, I am not your mother ! " so that these two syllables might never more be addressed to her by any one, since the dear CHILDREN'S HEARTS 353 little mouth, which alone had the right truly to speak them, must never again say them to her. This Easter morning, that passionate bitterness against her step-chil- dren had been more intense than usual. It had been her wish to give them herself their Easter eggs, as she had done hitherto. She could indeed do herself this justice : the more this unjust hatred grew in her heart, the more care she took not to betray it by any act. The children had come to her room. She had seen their eyes shine with expectation, their eager hands open the great eggs of coloured wood, their faces become radiant with delight over the objects she had selected for them: a pretty pin for the boy, a chain with a cross for the girl. Ah ! the innocent but cruel torturers, how they had plunged the knife again into her heart, with their frank joy, their pleasure of being alive and in the world, which made even their black garments cheerful ! The other had come to her in thought, with a reproach for being forgotten, in his lifeless eyes. A sob had come into her throat ; she had had the strength to suppress it, however ; and it was to beguile a little this sharp surprise of her grief that she had come alone, while Guy and Alice were gone to church, to sit here on this deserted terrace. Might she not have known, however, that the grief at her heart would become more keen instead of being lulled, in the midst of Nature's infinite felicity? 354 CHILDREN'S HEARTS in The water was still blue and lustrous, the islands lifted their purple cliffs against a cloudless horizon, the mountains rose in soft curving outlines, the flowers exhaled their fragrance, the sunlight filtered through the Aleppo pines, an impalpable dust of gold, the exotic shrubs throbbed under the sky, as if reminded of the far-away climates which were the home of their strong essences. Only the bell had ceased ring- ing, in the carved turret of the chapel. And in the silence of the happy country, the voices of regret and despair moaned, more and more intensely, in the mother's heart a voice of revolt, too, and of hatred. Again the insupportably painful impressions inflicted by the contrast between this festival of life blooming around her, and her irreparable grief, gathered them- selves into that strange feeling of irresistible antipa- thy toward the happiness of her step-children. There was in the very depths of her nature an upheaval of envy and hatred, shameful yet invincible. Yes, she envied this half-brother and half-sister of her Andre all this springtime that her own little dead child could no longer enjoy, all that boundless future that their youth could look forward to. She wondered, her- self, at the frenzy of aversion with which she grudged it to them; and without any motive for it, but merely at thought of their faces, she felt herself the cruel CHILDREN'S HEARTS 355 step-mother of tradition, with an instinctive furious horror at these children of a first marriage, of which she had not believed herself capable. Without doubt, it was most unjust. But is there justice in the world? No, the two children did not deserve that their father's second wife, she to whom the absent father had intrusted them, should feel toward them this wicked resentment. But she herself, had she de- served that her darling should be snatched from her, in this sudden and terrible way ? This woman, who had been gentle and religious, indulgent and devoted, who was so still, in her acts, from the acquired strength of her former virtues, underwent this evil change, by reason of a grief too constantly acute and too intense : a very demon of wickedness, almost of ferocity, stirred within her, which plucked from her suddenly, in the presence of this landscape, all harmony and peace and beauty, the dreadful words which she cried aloud to whom ? to nature ? to God ? to the spring- time ? " Oh ! if only one of them were dead, too ! " She heard herself say these words, in which the frenzy of her grief found utterance, with a sort of stupor, which led her to rise from her seat on the rock. She passed her hands over her eyes, as if to exorcise the temptation of this dreadful wish, and began walking through the wood again, this time with rapid step, as if seeking to flee from the too luminous landscape, to flee 356 CHILDREN'S HEARTS from the sight of the road by which her two step- children would return, to flee from her own thoughts, to flee from her very self. She went on, choosing, in the immense, half-wild park, the narrow, almost impractica- ble paths where the dry branches caught her dress and the pine cones cracked and slipped under her feet and her hands were constantly putting aside some thorny shrub, some overgrown branch of heather. And while she thus walked on in a sort of delirium, hurting her feet against the rough path and her fingers against the thorny branches, her thoughts were very active also. The violent outbreak of hatred that she had once more experienced against Guy and Alice was appeased. But there remained in her heart an extreme lassitude and this substratum of invincible repulsion, which she now avowed to herself and judged almost legitimate, as the reprisals permitted to her misfortune. She walked on, and a resolution took definite shape in her mind which had haunted her often, but never with this hyp- notizing distinctness. Why continue toward these two beings, whose mere presence was a torture to her, this burdensome duty this farce, rather, of a false mother- hood ? Why not rid herself of them both, treating them as, after all, so many true parents treat their true chil- dren? Instead of keeping them at home, as she was doing, why not send them away the boy to school, the girl to a convent that she might be left alone with her dead boy, and no longer hear about her these voices, this CHILDKEN'S HEARTS 357 laughter, these games, all this gay life which insulted her suffering ? They would not be happy Guy, whom she knew to be so sensitive, Alice, whom she knew so fastidious in the promiscuousness of school life. How many other little boys and little girls of their age were enduring, at this moment, exile from home and were growing up, all the same? Besides, if they were not happy, that would be but just. Elizabeth knew, also, that their mother, on her death-bed, had implored their father to renounce his career, that he might not be separated from the children, and to love them for both, since henceforth they would have but him. With what compassion had the young step-mother accepted this last wish, and taken upon herself its fulfilment : " Since he continues in the service, it is I who will never leave them, and will be to them what she would have been ! " To send them away these children from the paternal hearth, was this obeying the sacred wish of the dead, of the woman whose place she had taken, vowing to herself that she would fill it faithfully ? Elizabeth's conscience said to her, no. But the awakened " step-mother " is not easily lulled to sleep. And the wife who was alive began feeling, for this dead woman whose children lived while her child was no more, that sharp retrospective jealousy which poisons so many second marriages, and makes the best of women sometimes become the most implacable, the most conscienceless of torturers. Pre- cisely because this boarding-school and convent life must 358 CHILDREN'S HEARTS have been one of the haunting terrors of her predecessor's death-bed, the second wife enjoyed in it a vague charm of revenge. And she felt, also, that it would be only a beginning, a first step upon a road of cruelty which she should follow to the end. The father would return. What would she say to him ? The temptation was still more guilty here. She was herself the only witness whom the children had with the absent sailor. It would be so easy to write to him that she had not been able to keep them with her on account of this or that fault. And here she might speak truly : the boy was naturally high-tempered, the girl impertinent. Up to this time, Elizabeth had always stood between the children's faults and the severity of the officer, as their mother would have done. Let her act otherwise had she not the right ? and sending them to the boarding-school and the convent would appear so simple, so useful, so needful ! She would have impaired the father's affection for his children! how little that was like what she had promised herself to do! But no matter, if it were a relief to herself. IV Every soul has its own spiritual atmosphere, outside of which it cannot long breathe. A noble nature may indeed suffer itself to be drawn away into unworthy resolutions and, in some excess of error, begin to put them into effect. It cannot do this contentedly. When CHILDREN'S HEARTS 359 the young wife said, " I am determined ; within a week they shall be sent away," she attempted to put aside all thought both of the children to whom she was going to be so hard, and of the wicked rdle she proposed to play toward their father. Instinctively she strove to lull the scruples which already arose in the pure depths of her conscience, by absorbing herself in the memory of her child. She evoked the little phantom, with an ardour of regret which brought him once more before her just as if she had not seen him lying rigid on his little cot, his poor lips parted and breathless, his eyes closed, his waxen hands crossed upon the crucifix as if the coffin lid had not been screwed down over that frail, motionless thing that yester- day was a merry child! Again he was at her side, with the sunlight on his golden hair. The vision was so distinct, so besetting, that the mother felt an irresistible desire to give some real food to her affec- tion, a need of doing something in which this idolized son would be concerned, a passionate desire to serve him. She began gathering the finest bits among the tufts of white heather, to carry them to him, to adorn his room. From the day when the child's body had been removed from the house to the grave, the mother had not per- mitted a single article of furniture in that room to be changed. She had already obtained from her husband the promise that on his return he would buy the house, hired at first on account of its being near Toulon, where 360 CHILDREN'S HEARTS the lieutenant was then on duty. How many women mothers, wives, or daughters have sought to prolong the existence of some one very dear to them, by keeping for him all the objects to which he had been habitu- ated! And then, the priestess of this domestic cult herself disappears ; and the relics which were her treasure are now the worn and worthless stuff for an auction room. Who can blame a faithful heart for guarding a little while against inevitable destruction, these precious, humble things so personal that they almost are persons ? For these four months the mother had never failed to go night and morning into the little bedroom where her boy had drawn his last breath. She would open the shutters, and dust the furniture, and unfold the little garments which kept the outlines of the little form. It was this use- less, passionate act of broken-hearted devotion that she now went to perform. Her sheaf of white heather had become too large for her hands to carry. She held it now in her arms and, a pleased yet most unhappy reaper with her useless spoils, she went down the hill toward the villa, which appeared through the Aleppo pines, the palm trees and the yuccas, the Villa Rose, so called, a sad mockery! and all pink it was, the colour of joy and hope ! And it was a tragic and poignant sight this fair-haired young woman, all in black, with her fragrant sheaf of white heather, on her way to the gay-tinted house, under this clear CHILDREN'S HEARTS 361 blue sky, through this luxuriant garden as one goes toward a grave, to carry flowers to it and to weep there. The mother had entered the villa by the rear door, so lost in her thoughts that she had not noticed the coachman in front of the stable, washing the wheels of the English cart, which signified that her sad walk had considerably outlasted the service at the chapel. Guy and Alice had been at home some time. And so, as Elizabeth entered the passageway which led to the little room of her dead boy, it was a shock, almost like the sight of a ghost, to see the door ajar and to hear voices, those of the two children, the thought of whom had haunted her all the morning in a way so hateful and unjust. What were they doing, in this room to which she had strictly forbidden entrance, and in which per- fect darkness would have prevailed had not one ray of sunshine, from the crack of the shutters to the partly opened door, cut it with a bar of light ? Her armful of heather clasped tight to her heart, which was beating fast, she stood still to hear what these two visitors were saying, whose movements she could not clearly distinguish, and with an emotion of which she could not have told whether it were a delight or an anguish, she became aware that this half-brother and this half-sister of poor Andre had preceded her in 362 CHILDREN'S HEARTS the loving pilgrimage on which she had come. On that radiant morning the two affectionate children had remembered the little playmate who was no longer with them. They had gathered flowers in the garden, as she had done in the park, and with pathetic childish- ness they had sought to associate the absent one with the special holiday by bringing him an Easter gift eggs that they had bought at the chapel door. " You must put those flowers here ! " said the voice of Alice. "Do you remember the butterflies that we used to catch for him on the roses ? " " And here, the eggs," Guy said, " as we did last year. He was so pleased ! How I wish I could see him and kiss him now ! " "That is impossible, because he is dead. But we shall see him again in heaven," replied the little girl. "Perhaps he might rise from the dead," the boy answered. "Lazarus did, and our Lord I beg God to let him, every night and every morning. I think mamma does, too. It would be a miracle, that is all! And why should not God do it for us? For there are miracles ! " The innocent believer, aged nine, who said these words, had no idea that, in truth, a miracle took place, at his voice, close beside him, a resurrection, also, a resurrection of justice and pity, of affection and of duty, of generous and lofty virtues, in the heart of her who had been so near becoming, toward himself CHILDREN'S HEARTS 363 and his sister, the most implacable of cruel step- mothers. Thus to come unawares upon the innocent proof of these motherless children's affection for their dead brother, had moved her past all power of expression, and at first with a fear of being scolded, changed at once into so sweet a sympathy Guy and Alice saw the door open wide and the mother enter, their mother, who held out her flowers to them, say- ing, "Give him these, also, with your own;" then took them in her arms, both at once, clasping them close to her breast, fondly, passionately, as she would have clasped the other. Was she not recovering them, after having lost them? And her tears, of no less grief, were made more gentle by affection, as if the spirit of her lost darling had whispered low to her, " Love them because they love me so much ! " The wicked rancour, the evil resolves, the cruel envy, all the ferments of the baser passions, were dissolved, melted, destroyed, in these kisses. Once more the great mystery of restored life, celebrated by the church, and visible in this spring landscape, took place in a human heart: Life had expelled Death, Love had conquered Hate. APRIL 1897 Other Books by Paul Bourget Outre-Mer IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA Translated from the French. 12010, $1.75 CHAPTER HEADINGS I. AT SEA II. THE FIRST WEEK III. SOCIETY A Summer City IV. SOCIETY Women and Young Girls V. BUSINESS MEN AND BUSI- NESS SCENES VI. THE LOWER ORDERS VII. EDUCATION VIII. AMERICAN PLEASURES IX. DOWN SOUTH In Georgia X. DOWN SOUTH In Florida XI. HOMEWARD OPINIONS OF THE PRESS " It is, in truth, a book of no ordinary weight and usefulness which M. Bourget has given us, a book that may be perused with profit by the statesman and reformer on both sides of the Atlan- tic, and at the same time, for the reason that the writer is an artist, a book certain to give delight to those who read for amuse- ment only." Neiv York Sun. "M. Bourgefs new book on America is as interesting as a novel. The historian of ' Cosmopolis,' the painter of 'Pastels, 1 visited America in the hope of gathering < a rich harvest of ideas and memories'; and the reader will certainly incline to assert that he returns bringing his sheaves with him. When a novelist turns traveller, one looks for something more readable than mere statistical inquiries, and in this case at least one is not disap- pointed." The Academy. Other Books by Paul Bourget (Outre-Mer) " The mirror that he holds up to us is an unclouded one, wherein we may see what manner of men and women we are in the eyes of a cultured Frenchman who is a student of manners and a master of expression. M. Bourget did not come to our shores fettered with a ready-made theory of us, into which the facts gathered must be made to fit. Facts first, conclusions afterwards, has been his rule." The Dial. " A singularly interesting work in that it comes from a trained and practiced observer, who sees and notes things which most of us merely glance at and straightway forget." The Nation. Antigone AND OTHER PORTRAITS OF WOMEN [" Voyageuses "] Translated from the French by William Marchant. xamo, $1.50 CONTENTS ANTIGONE Two MARRIED COUPLES NEPTUNE VALE A WOMAN'S CHARITY ODILE LA PIA OPINIONS OF THE PRESS "In none of his translated romances does M. Paul Bourget make such an agreeable impression on the English reader as in 'Antigone, and Other Portraits of Women.' These women, known but slightly through the chance of travel, attracted him by a hint of some rare nobility or grace of nature and touched his imagination to weave about them romance of delicate texture, glowing with sentiment, yet not sentimental ; pathetic, even tragic, yet with no forced unhealthy note. The scenes which the presence of these women made an imperishable memory are described with a genuine feeling for natural beauty and for artis- Other Books by Paul Bourget (Antigone) tic harmony between picture and frame. Incident and place are so closely related that to think of one is to remember all." The Nation. " Among the highest and best specimens of M. Bourgefs work. They are full of charm, a simplicity which is consistent with per- fect grace. In their core they are essentially as sweet as Wash- ington Irving's tales, yet elaborated in detail with the pictorial skill of the finished modern artist. 1 ' Boston Transcript. " We are impelled to say that the delicate charm of M. Bourget's style, and the penetrative sympathy with which he has studied human life, appeal to us more strongly from this book than from any other he has written." The Dial. A Tragic Idyl Translated from the French, zamo, $1.50 OPINIONS OF THE PRESS "In this narrative there is both strength and power. The author has a fine literary method and a subtle comprehension of Viuman character. His analyses are keen and incisive, his delineations so vivid his people live before us." Detroit Free Press. "M. Bourget changes his style with his skies, and his new romance reflects the voluptuous charm and evanescent color of that southern shore where his drama wears out to a sad end. . . . He polishes and refines his art of description and analysis to a point of exquisite detail." Philadelphia Public Ledger. Charles Scribner's Sons, Publishers 153-157 Fifth Avenue : : : : New York UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY A 000130743 8 I OCT02