"Before, I was waiting for you."
"And he did not attend the races at Dinard?"
She did not think he had, and it was very certain she did not attend them herself. Horses and horsey men bored her.
"Jacques, fear no one, since you are not comparable to any one."
He knew, on the contrary, how insignificant he was and how insignificant every one is in this world where beings, agitated like grains in a van, are mixed and separated by a shake of the rustic or of the G.o.d. This idea of the agricultural or mystical van represented measure and order too well to be exactly applied to life. It seemed to him that men were grains in a coffee-mill. He had had a vivid sensation of this the day before, when he saw Madame Fusellier grinding coffee in her mill.
Therese said to him:
"Why are you not conceited?"
She added few words, but she spoke with her eyes, her arms, the breath that made her bosom rise.
In the happy surprise of seeing and hearing her, he permitted himself to be convinced.
She asked who had said so odious a thing.
He had no reason to conceal his name from her. It was Daniel Salomon.
She was not surprised. Daniel Salomon, who pa.s.sed for not having been the lover of any woman, wished at least to be in the confidence of all and know their secrets. She guessed the reason why he had talked.
"Jacques, do not be cross at what I say to you. You are not skilful in concealing your sentiments. He suspected you were in love with me, and he wished to be sure of it. I am persuaded that now he has no doubt of our relations. But that is indifferent to me. On the contrary, if you knew better how to dissimulate, I should be less happy. I should think you did not love me enough."
For fear of disquieting him, she turned to other thoughts:
"I have not told you how much I like your sketch. It is Florence on the Arno. Then it is we?"
"Yes, I have placed in that figure the emotion of my love. It is sad, and I wish it were beautiful. You see, Therese, beauty is painful. That is why, since life is beautiful, I suffer."
He took out of his flannel coat his cigarette-holder, but she told him to dress. She would take him to breakfast with her. They would not quit each other that day. It would be delightful.
She looked at him with childish joy. Then she became sad, thinking she would have to return to Dinard at the end of the week, later go to Joinville, and that during that time they would be separated.
At Joinville, at her father"s, she would cause him to be invited for a few days. But they would not be free and alone there, as they were in Paris.
"It is true," he said, "that Paris is good to us in its confused immensity."
And he added:
"Even in your absence I can not quit Paris. It would be terrible for me to live in countries that do not know you. A sky, mountains, trees, fountains, statues which do not know how to talk of you would have nothing to say to me."
While he was dressing she turned the leaves of a book which she had found on the table. It was The Arabian Nights. Romantic engravings displayed here and there in the text grand viziers, sultanas, black tunics, bazaars, and caravans.
She asked:
"The Arabian Nights-does that amuse you?"
"A great deal," he replied, tying his cravat. "I believe as much as I wish in these Arabian princes whose legs become black marble, and in these women of the harem who wander at night in cemeteries. These tales give me pleasant dreams which make me forget life. Last night I went to bed in sadness and read the history of the Three Calendars."
She said, with a little bitterness:
"You are trying to forget. I would not consent for anything in the world to lose the memory of a pain which came to me from you."
They went down together to the street. She was to take a carriage a little farther on and precede him at her house by a few minutes.
"My husband expects you to breakfast."
They talked, on the way, of insignificant things, which their love made great and charming. They arranged their afternoon in advance in order to put into it the infinity of profound joy and of ingenious pleasure. She consulted him about her gowns. She could not decide to leave him, happy to walk with him in the streets, which the sun and the gayety of noon filled. When they reached the Avenue des Ternes they saw before them, on the avenue, shops displaying side by side a magnificent abundance of food. There were chains of chickens at the caterer"s, and at the fruiterer"s boxes of apricots and peaches, baskets of grapes, piles of pears. Wagons filled with fruits and flowers bordered the sidewalk.
Under the awning of a restaurant men and women were taking breakfast.
Therese recognized among them, alone, at a small table against a laurel-tree in a box, Choulette lighting his pipe.
Having seen her, he threw superbly a five-franc piece on the table, rose, and bowed. He was grave; his long frock-coat gave him an air of decency and austerity.
He said he should have liked to call on Madame Martin at Dinard, but he had been detained in the Vendee by the Marquise de Rieu. However, he had issued a new edition of the Jardin Clos, augmented by the Verger de Sainte-Claire. He had moved souls which were thought to be insensible, and had made springs come out of rocks.
"So," he said, "I was, in a fashion, a Moses."
He fumbled in his pocket and drew from a book a letter, worn and spotted.
"This is what Madame Raymond, the Academician"s wife, writes me. I publish what she says, because it is creditable to her."
And, unfolding the thin leaves, he read:
"I have made your book known to my husband, who exclaimed: "It is pure spiritualism. Here is a closed garden, which on the side of the lilies and white roses has, I imagine, a small gate opening on the road to the Academie.""
Choulette relished these phrases, mingled in his mouth with the perfume of whiskey, and replaced carefully the letter in its book.
Madame Martin congratulated the poet on being Madame Raymond"s candidate.
"You should be mine, Monsieur Choulette, if I were interested in Academic elections. But does the Inst.i.tute excite your envy?"
He kept for a few moments a solemn silence, then:
"I am going now, Madame, to confer with divers notable persons of the political and religious worlds who reside at Neuilly. The Marquise de Rieu wishes me to be a candidate, in her country, for a senatorial seat which has become vacant by the death of an old man, who was, they say, a general during his illusory life. I shall consult with priests, women and children--oh, eternal wisdom!--of the Bineau Boulevard. The const.i.tuency whose suffrages I shall attempt to obtain inhabits an undulated and wooded land wherein willows frame the fields. And it is not a rare thing to find in the hollow of one of these old willows the skeleton of a Chouan pressing his gun against his breast and holding his beads in his fleshless fingers. I shall have my programme posted on the bark of oaks. I shall say "Peace to presbyteries! Let the day come when bishops, holding in their hands the wooden crook, shall make themselves similar to the poorest servant of the poorest parish! It was the bishops who crucified Jesus Christ. Their names were Anne and Caiph. And they still retain these names before the Son of G.o.d. While they were nailing Him to the cross, I was the good thief hanged by His side.""
He lifted his stick and pointed toward Neuilly:
"Dechartre, my friend, do you not think the Bineau Boulevard is the dusty one over there, at the right?"
"Farewell, Monsieur Choulette," said Therese. "Remember me when you are a senator."
"Madame, I do not forget you in any of my prayers, morning and evening.
And I say to G.o.d: "Since, in your anger, you gave to her riches and beauty, regard her, Lord, with kindness, and treat her in accordance with your sovereign mercy."
And he went erect, and dragging his leg, along the populous avenue.