Dark clouds were drifting across the face of the moon. He gazed at it, musing on the vastness of s.p.a.ce, the wretchedness of life, the nothingness of everything. The day dawned; his teeth began to chatter, and, half-asleep, wet with the morning mist, and bathed in tears, he asked himself, Why should I not make an end of it? All that was necessary was a single movement. The weight of his forehead dragged him along--he beheld his own dead body floating in the water. Frederick stooped down. The parapet was rather wide, and it was through pure weariness that he did not make the attempt to leap over it.
Then a feeling of dismay swept over him. He reached the boulevards once more, and sank down upon a seat. He was aroused by some police-officers, who were convinced that he had been indulging a little too freely.
He resumed his walk. But, as he was exceedingly hungry, and as all the restaurants were closed, he went to get a "snack" at a tavern by the fish-markets; after which, thinking it too soon to go in yet, he kept sauntering about the Hotel de Ville till a quarter past eight.
Deslauriers had long since got rid of his wench; and he was writing at the table in the middle of his room. About four o"clock, M. de Cisy came in.
Thanks to Dussardier, he had enjoyed the society of a lady the night before; and he had even accompanied her home in the carriage with her husband to the very threshold of their house, where she had given him an a.s.signation. He parted with her without even knowing her name.
"And what do you propose that I should do in that way?" said Frederick.
Thereupon the young gentleman began to cudgel his brains to think of a suitable woman; he mentioned Mademoiselle Vatnaz, the Andalusian, and all the rest. At length, with much circ.u.mlocution, he stated the object of his visit. Relying on the discretion of his friend, he came to aid him in taking an important step, after which he might definitely regard himself as a man; and Frederick showed no reluctance. He told the story to Deslauriers without relating the facts with reference to himself personally.
The clerk was of opinion that he was now going on very well. This respect for his advice increased his good humour. He owed to that quality his success, on the very first night he met her, with Mademoiselle Clemence Daviou, embroideress in gold for military outfits, the sweetest creature that ever lived, as slender as a reed, with large blue eyes, perpetually staring with wonder. The clerk had taken advantage of her credulity to such an extent as to make her believe that he had been decorated. At their private conversations he had his frock-coat adorned with a red ribbon, but divested himself of it in public in order, as he put it, not to humiliate his master. However, he kept her at a distance, allowed himself to be fawned upon, like a pasha, and, in a laughing sort of way, called her "daughter of the people."
Every time they met, she brought him little bunches of violets.
Frederick would not have cared for a love affair of this sort.
Meanwhile, whenever they set forth arm-in-arm to visit Pinson"s or Barillot"s circulating library, he experienced a feeling of singular depression. Frederick did not realise how much pain he had made Deslauriers endure for the past year, while brushing his nails before going out to dine in the Rue de Choiseul!
One evening, when from the commanding position in which his balcony stood, he had just been watching them as they went out together, he saw Hussonnet, some distance off, on the Pont d"Arcole. The Bohemian began calling him by making signals towards him, and, when Frederick had descended the five flights of stairs:
"Here is the thing--it is next Sat.u.r.day, the 24th, Madame Arnoux"s feast-day."
"How is that, when her name is Marie?"
"And Angele also--no matter! They will entertain their guests at their country-house at Saint-Cloud. I was told to give you due notice about it. You"ll find a vehicle at the magazine-office at three o"clock. So that makes matters all right! Excuse me for having disturbed you! But I have such a number of calls to make!"
Frederick had scarcely turned round when his door-keeper placed a letter in his hand:
"Monsieur and Madame Dambreuse beg of Monsieur F. Moreau to do them the honour to come and dine with them on Sat.u.r.day the 24th inst.--R.S.V.P."
"Too late!" he said to himself. Nevertheless, he showed the letter to Deslauriers, who exclaimed:
"Ha! at last! But you don"t look as if you were satisfied. Why?"
After some little hesitation, Frederick said that he had another invitation for the same day.
"Be kind enough to let me run across to the Rue de Choiseul. I"m not joking! I"ll answer this for you if it puts you about."
And the clerk wrote an acceptance of the invitation in the third person.
Having seen nothing of the world save through the fever of his desires, he pictured it to himself as an artificial creation discharging its functions by virtue of mathematical laws. A dinner in the city, an accidental meeting with a man in office, a smile from a pretty woman, might, by a series of actions deducing themselves from one another, have gigantic results. Certain Parisian drawing-rooms were like those machines which take a material in the rough and render it a hundred times more valuable. He believed in courtesans advising diplomatists, in wealthy marriages brought about by intrigues, in the cleverness of convicts, in the capacity of strong men for getting the better of fortune. In short, he considered it so useful to visit the Dambreuses, and talked about it so plausibly, that Frederick was at a loss to know what was the best course to take.
The least he ought to do, as it was Madame Arnoux"s feast-day, was to make her a present. He naturally thought of a parasol, in order to make reparation for his awkwardness. Now he came across a shot-silk parasol with a little carved ivory handle, which had come all the way from China. But the price of it was a hundred and seventy-five francs, and he had not a sou, having in fact to live on the credit of his next quarter"s allowance. However, he wished to get it; he was determined to have it; and, in spite of his repugnance to doing so, he had recourse to Deslauriers.
Deslauriers answered Frederick"s first question by saying that he had no money.
"I want some," said Frederick--"I want some very badly!"
As the other made the same excuse over again, he flew into a pa.s.sion.
"You might find it to your advantage some time----"
"What do you mean by that?"
"Oh! nothing."
The clerk understood. He took the sum required out of his reserve-fund, and when he had counted out the money, coin by coin:
"I am not asking you for a receipt, as I see you have a lot of expense!"
Frederick threw himself on his friend"s neck with a thousand affectionate protestations. Deslauriers received this display of emotion frigidly. Then, next morning, noticing the parasol on the top of the piano:
"Ah! it was for that!"
"I will send it, perhaps," said Frederick, with an air of carelessness.
Good fortune was on his side, for that evening he got a note with a black border from Madame Dambreuse announcing to him that she had lost an uncle, and excusing herself for having to defer till a later period the pleasure of making his acquaintance. At two o"clock, he reached the office of the art journal. Instead of waiting for him in order to drive him in his carriage, Arnoux had left the city the night before, unable to resist his desire to get some fresh air.
Every year it was his custom, as soon as the leaves were budding forth, to start early in the morning and to remain away several days, making long journeys across the fields, drinking milk at the farm-houses, romping with the village girls, asking questions about the harvest, and carrying back home with him stalks of salad in his pocket-handkerchief.
At length, in order to realise a long-cherished dream of his, he had bought a country-house.
While Frederick was talking to the picture-dealer"s clerk, Mademoiselle Vatnaz suddenly made her appearance, and was disappointed at not seeing Arnoux. He would, perhaps, be remaining away two days longer. The clerk advised her "to go there"--she could not go there; to write a letter--she was afraid that the letter might get lost. Frederick offered to be the bearer of it himself. She rapidly scribbled off a letter, and implored of him to let n.o.body see him delivering it.
Forty minutes afterwards, he found himself at Saint-Cloud. The house, which was about a hundred paces farther away than the bridge, stood half-way up the hill. The garden-walls were hidden by two rows of linden-trees, and a wide lawn descended to the bank of the river. The railed entrance before the door was open, and Frederick went in.
Arnoux, stretched on the gra.s.s, was playing with a litter of kittens.
This amus.e.m.e.nt appeared to absorb him completely. Mademoiselle Vatnaz"s letter drew him out of his sleepy idleness.
"The deuce! the deuce!--this is a bore! She is right, though; I must go."
Then, having stuck the missive into his pocket, he showed the young man through the grounds with manifest delight. He pointed out everything--the stable, the cart-house, the kitchen. The drawing-room was at the right, on the side facing Paris, and looked out on a floored arbour, covered over with clematis. But presently a few harmonious notes burst forth above their heads: Madame Arnoux, fancying that there was n.o.body near, was singing to amuse herself. She executed quavers, trills, arpeggios. There were long notes which seemed to remain suspended in the air; others fell in a rushing shower like the spray of a waterfall; and her voice pa.s.sing out through the Venetian blind, cut its way through the deep silence and rose towards the blue sky. She ceased all at once, when M. and Madame Oudry, two neighbours, presented themselves.
Then she appeared herself at the top of the steps in front of the house; and, as she descended, he caught a glimpse of her foot. She wore little open shoes of reddish-brown leather, with three straps crossing each other so as to draw just above her stockings a wirework of gold.
Those who had been invited arrived. With the exception of Maitre Lefaucheur, an advocate, they were the same guests who came to the Thursday dinners. Each of them had brought some present--Dittmer a Syrian scarf, Rosenwald a sc.r.a.p-book of ballads, Burieu a water-colour painting, Sombary one of his own caricatures, and Pellerin a charcoal-drawing, representing a kind of dance of death, a hideous fantasy, the execution of which was rather poor. Hussonnet dispensed with the formality of a present.
Frederick was waiting to offer his, after the others.
She thanked him very much for it. Thereupon, he said:
"Why, "tis almost a debt. I have been so much annoyed----"
"At what, pray?" she returned. "I don"t understand."
"Come! dinner is waiting!" said Arnoux, catching hold of his arm; then in a whisper: "You are not very knowing, certainly!"
Nothing could well be prettier than the dining-room, painted in water-green. At one end, a nymph of stone was dipping her toe in a basin formed like a sh.e.l.l. Through the open windows the entire garden could be seen with the long lawn flanked by an old Scotch fir, three-quarters stripped bare; groups of flowers swelled it out in unequal plots; and at the other side of the river extended in a wide semi-circle the Bois de Boulogne, Neuilly, Sevres, and Meudon. Before the railed gate in front a canoe with sail outspread was tacking about.