CHAPTER XI

DECLARATIONS

An appointment had been made for eleven o'clock on the following Tuesday, in the Salon Carré of the Louvre. Whilst Suzanne was being driven to the old palace in a cab she was counting up for the tenth time the dangers of her matutinal escapade. 'No, it's not a very wise thing to do,' she thought; 'and suppose Desforges discovers I've been out? Well, there's the dentist. And what if I meet some one I know? It's very improbable, but in that case I would tell them just as much of the truth as was absolutely necessary.'

That was one of her great maxims--to tell as few lies as possible, to maintain a discreet silence about most things, and never to deny established facts. She was therefore ready to say to her husband, and to the Baron as well, if necessary, 'I went into the Louvre this morning as I passed. I was lucky enough to find Madame Komof's little poet there, and he showed me through a few of the rooms. Yes,' she said to herself, 'that will do for once. But it would be madness to try it on often.'

Her mind then became occupied with other thoughts of less positive purport. The uncertainty of what would take place in this interview with René caused her greater agitation than she cared for. She had played the part of a Madonna before him, and the time had now come to get down from the altar upon which she had been so piously adored. Her feminine tact had hit upon a bold plan--lead the poet to a declaration, reply by a confession of her own feelings, then flee from him as if in remorse, and so leave the way open for any step she might afterwards care to take. Whilst playing havoc with René's heart, this plan would suspend his judgment of her acts and absolve her of any follies she might commit. It was bold but clever, and, above all, simple. There were, nevertheless, a few real dangers connected with it. Let the poet entertain distrust but for one moment and all was lost. Suzanne's heart beat faster at the thought. How many women there are who have been similarly situated, and who, after having reared a most elaborate fabric of falsehoods, have been compelled to continue their _rôle_ in order to obtain satisfaction for the true feelings that originally actuated them! When the men on whose account such women as these have played their hypocritical _rôles_ discover the lie palmed off upon them, their indignation and contempt abundantly prove how important a factor vanity is in all affection.

'Come, come,' exclaimed Suzanne, 'here am I trembling like a school-girl!' She smiled indulgently as she uttered the words, because they proved once more the sincerity of her feelings, and again she smiled when, on alighting from her cab and crossing the courtyard, she saw that she was there to the minute. 'Still a school-girl!' she repeated to herself. A momentary fear came over her at the thought that if René happened to arrive just after her he would see her obliged to ask one of the attendants for the entrance to the galleries--she who had boasted of having been there so often. She had not been in the place three times in her life, though to-day her little feet trotted across the spacious courtyard in their dainty laced boots as confidently as though they performed the journey daily. 'What a child I am!' said the inner voice once more--the voice of the Baron's pupil, who had acquired as deep a knowledge of life as any hoary diplomat. 'He has been waiting for me upstairs for the last half-hour!' Still she could not refrain from looking anxiously about her as she asked her way of one of the attendants. But her worldly knowledge had not deceived her, for no sooner had she reached the doorway between the Galerie d'Apollon and the Salon Carré than she saw René; he was leaning against the iron railing, just underneath the noble work by Veronese, representing Mary Magdalene washing our Saviour's feet, and opposite the famous Noces de Cana.

In his boyish timidity the poor fellow had considered it his duty to put on his very best clothes in coming to meet one who, besides being a Madonna in his eyes, was a 'Society woman'--that vague and fanciful entity which exists in the brain of so many young _bourgeois_, and is a curious medley of their most erroneous impressions. He was attired in a smart-fitting frock coat, and, although the morning was a cold one, he wore nothing over it. He possessed only one overcoat, and that, having been made at the beginning of the winter, did not come from the tailor to whom he had been introduced by his friend Larcher. With his brand-new chimney-pot hat, his new gloves, and his new boots, he almost looked as though he had stepped out of a fashion plate, though his dress contrasted strangely with his artistic face. If he had made himself appear still more ridiculous, Suzanne would have found still more reasons for growing fonder of him. Such is the way of women in love.

She understood at once that he had been afraid he would not look nice enough to please her, and she stood in the doorway for a few seconds in order to enjoy the anxiety that was depicted on the poet's face. When he saw her there was a sudden rush of blood to his cheeks, though the blush soon died away beneath the gold of his fair silken beard. What a flash, too, lit up those dark blue eyes, dispelling the look of anguish they contained! 'It is lucky there is no one here to see our meeting,' she thought, for the pale light that came through the glass roof fell only upon a few painters setting up their easels and upon a few tourists wandering about, guide-book in hand.

Suzanne, who had taken all this in at a glance, could therefore abandon herself to the pleasure which René's agitation afforded her; as he came towards her he said, in a voice trembling with emotion, 'I hardly dared to hope that you would come.'

'Why not?' she replied, with an air of candid astonishment. 'Do you really think I cannot get up early? Why, when I go and visit my poor I am up and dressed at eight.' And in what a tone of voice it was that she said this! A pleasant, modest tone--like that in which a hero would tell of something extraordinary he had done without seeing anything in it himself--the tone in which an officer would say, 'As we were charging the enemy!' The joke of it was that she had never ventured even to set her foot in a poor man's dwelling. She had as great a horror of poverty as of sickness or of old age, and to her selfish nature charity was a thing almost unknown. But at that moment René would have looked upon anyone who dared charge her with selfishness as guilty of the most infamous blasphemy. After having uttered her well-chosen words this novel Sister of Mercy stopped for a moment in order to enjoy their effect. In René's eyes shone that look of blind faith which these pretty hypocrites are so accustomed to regard as their due that they charge all who refuse it them with heartlessness. Then, as if to evade an admiration that embarrassed her modesty, she went on, 'You forget that you are my guide to-day. I will pretend I know nothing of any of these pictures; I shall then be able to see whether we have the same tastes.'

'_Mon Dieu!_' thought René, 'I must take care not to show her anything that might give her a bad opinion of me!' The most commonplace women can, when they choose, inspire a man who is vastly superior to them with this sensation of utter inferiority.

They had now commenced their tour, he leading her to those masterpieces which he thought would please her. How well acquainted he was with all the galleries of his dear Louvre! There was not one of these pictures that did not recall the memory of some dream of his youth--a youth entirely spent in adorning with beautiful images the shrine we all carry within us before our twentieth year, but from which our passions soon expel all but the image of Venus! These pale and noble frescoes of Luini that hang in the narrow room to the right of the Salon Carré--how often had he not come to gaze upon their pious scenes when he wished to lend his poetry the soft charm, the broad and tender touch, of the old Lombard master! He had feasted his eyes for whole hours upon the mighty Crucifixion by Mantegna--a fragment of the magnificent painting in the church of San Zeno at Verona--as well as upon that most glorious of Raphaels, Saint George--an ideal hero dealing the dragon a furious stroke of his sword whilst spurring his white charger in pink trappings across the fresh greensward, symbolic of youth and hope. But it was more especially the portraits which had been the objects of his most fervent pilgrimages--from those of Holbein, Philippe de Champaigne, and Titian, to that of the elegant and mysterious lady simply attributed in the catalogue to the Venetian school, and bearing a cipher in her hair. He loved to think, in company with a clever critic, that this cipher meant Barbarelli and Cecilia--the name of the Giorgione and that of the mistress for whom tradition says that this great master died. During a visit he had once paid to the Louvre with Rosalie he had told her the romantic and tragic story on this very spot and before this very portrait. He now found himself repeating it to Suzanne, and in almost the same words.

'The painter loved her, and she betrayed him for one of his friends. At Vienna there is a picture painted by himself in which you see his sweet, sad eyes resting upon his treacherous friend, who approaches him with a gleaming dagger concealed behind his back.'

Yes--the same words! When Rosalie heard the story she had turned her eyes upon him, and he had distinctly read the thoughts that filled her. 'How can any woman betray the man who loves her?' With her the question, had remained a dumb one, but Suzanne, after having stared curiously at the mysterious woman with the thin lips, gave expression to her thoughts with a sigh and a shake of her fair head. 'And yet she looks so good. It is terrible to think that a woman with a face like that could lie!'

As she spoke she too turned her eyes upon René; and, gazing into the clear depths that presented such a contrast to Rosalie's dark orbs, he felt a strange remorse. By one of those ironies of the inner life which a comparison of consciences would often reveal, Suzanne, unspeakably happy in strolling amidst these pictures, which she pretended to admire, was keenly enjoying the impression that her beauty was making on her companion, whilst the latter, a simple child, reproached himself with the double treachery of leading this ideal creature through places that he had once visited with another. The fatal comparison which, since his first meeting with Madame Moraines, was effacing poor little Rosalie from his mind was becoming more obtrusive than ever.

A vision of his betrothed floated before him, humble as she herself, but beside him walked Suzanne, a living sister of the aristocratic beauties the old masters had portrayed on their canvases. Her golden hair shone brightly under her little bonnet; the short astracan jacket fitted her like a glove, and her grey check skirt hung in graceful folds. In her hand was a small muff, from which peeped out the corner of an embroidered handkerchief; the muff matched her jacket, and every now and then she would hold it up just above her eyes in order to get the right light to see the pictures well. How could the present fail to conquer the absent--an elegant woman fail to oust a simple, modest girl, especially since in Suzanne all the refinement of an æsthetic soul seemed allied to the most exquisite charm of external appearance and attitude?

She who in her crass ignorance would have been unable to distinguish a Rembrandt from a Perugino, or a Ribera from a Watteau, had a clever way of listening to what René said, and of supporting the opinions he expressed with an ingenuity that would have deceived men with more experience of feminine duplicity than this young poet of twenty-five. This meeting was to him a source of happiness so complete, such perfect realisation of his most secret dreams, that he felt sad at the thought of having attained his highest ambition. The time slipped by, and an indescribable sensation invaded him; it was made up of the nervous excitement that the sight of masterpieces always produces in an artist, of the remorse he felt for his treachery in profaning the past by the present and the present by the past, and finally of the knowledge of Time's unrelenting flight. Yes, that delightful hour was slipping by, to be followed by so many cold and empty ones--for never, no, never would he dare to ask his adorable companion for another such meeting.

She, the sensual Epicurean, was only eager to prolong the delight of mental possession. Voluptuously, carefully, and secretly did she watch the poet from the corner of her blue eye that looked so modest beneath its golden lashes. She was unable to take exact account of all the changes of feeling he underwent, for although she was already well acquainted with his inner nature, she was so entirely ignorant of all the facts of his life that sometimes she would ask herself with a thrill whether he had ever loved before. It was impossible to follow his thoughts in detail, but it was not difficult to see that he was now looking at her much more than at the pictures, and that his distress was increasing every minute. She attributed this distress to a fit of shyness--a shyness that delighted her, for it proved the presence of a passionate longing tempered by respect. How pleased she was to be the object of a desire that expressed itself with such modesty! It enabled her to measure more correctly the gulf that separated her little René--as she already called him in her thoughts--from the bold and dangerous men with whom she usually mixed. His looks were full of love, though devoid of insolence, and contained an amount of suffering that finally decided her to lead him on to the declaration which she had promised herself to provoke.

'_Mon Dieu!_' she suddenly cried, catching hold of the iron bar that runs round the walls, and turning to René with a smile that was meant to hide some sharp pain. 'It's nothing,' she added, in reply to the poet's look of anxiety. 'I twisted my foot a little on this slippery floor.' Then, standing on one leg, she put out the foot that she said was hurt, and moved it about in the soft boot with a graceful effort. 'Ten minutes' rest and it will be all right, but you must be my crutch.'

As her pretty lips uttered this ugly word she took hold of René's arm, the poet little thinking, as he almost piously helped her along, that this imaginary accident was but one episode more in the comedy of love in which he was playing so innocent a part. Taking care to throw her whole weight upon him, she managed to redouble his passionate ardour and to completely intoxicate him by the rhythmic and communicated movement of her lithe and supple limbs. The trick succeeded only too well. He could scarcely speak, overwhelmed as he was by the proximity of this woman and penetrated by the subtle perfume she exhaled. It was as much as he dared do to look at her, and then he found beside him a face both proud and playful, a cheek of ideal colouring, and a pair of mobile cherry lips upon which from time to time there hovered a sweet little smile that meant mischief, though when their eyes met this smile would change into an expression of such frank sympathy that it dispelled René's timidity. This she knew by the greater assurance with which he now supported her.

She had been careful to choose one of the most isolated rooms--the _salle_ Lesueur--for acting the episode of her twisted foot. Arm-in-arm they passed through a small passage, and, crossing one of the galleries of the French school, entered a dark, deserted chamber in which were then exhibited Lebrun's pictures representing the victories of Alexander the Great. The Ingres and Delacroix gallery, by which this room is now reached, was not yet opened, and in the centre of the floor stood a large round ottoman covered in green velvet. Though in the very heart of Paris, this spot was more secluded than a room in any provincial museum, and there was no likelihood of being disturbed except by the attendant, who was himself deep in conversation with his colleague in the next apartment.

Suzanne took in the place at a glance, and, pointing to the ottoman, said to René, 'Shall we sit down there for a few minutes? My foot is much better already.'

A fresh silence fell upon them. Everything seemed to emphasise their seclusion--from the noises in the Cour du Carrousel that came to them in a dull murmur through the two high windows to the dim light in the room itself. But this seclusion, instead of encouraging the poet to declare his passion, only increased his distress. He said to himself, 'How pretty she is, and how sweet! She will go, and I shall never see her again. How stupid she must think me!--I feel quite paralysed near her and incapable of speech.' 'I shall never have a better opportunity,' thought Suzanne.

'You are very sad,' she said aloud, bestowing upon him a look of affectionate and almost sisterly sympathy. 'I noticed it as soon as I arrived,' she continued, 'but you do not trust me sufficiently to tell me your troubles.'

'No,' replied René, 'I am not sad. Why should I be? I have everything that can make me happy.'

She looked at him again with an expression of surprise and mute interrogation that seemed to say, 'Tell me what you have to make you happy?' René thought he saw that question in her eyes, but dared not understand it so. He sincerely believed himself to be so inferior to this woman that he had not the courage to disclose to her the depths of his devotion. All Suzanne's delightful confidence, in which he could not possibly detect any cold calculation, would be destroyed the moment he spoke, and he therefore went on as if his words referred to the general circumstances of life.

'Claude Larcher often tells me that I shall never be happier at any period of my literary career. He maintains that there are four stages in a writer's life--when he is unknown, when he is applauded by those who wish to spite his elders, when he is maligned because he is successful, and when he is forgiven because he is forgotten. I am so sorry you don't know him better--I am sure you would like him. Literature is his religion!'

'He is rather too artless, after all,' thought Suzanne, but she was too interested in the result of this interview to give way to her impatience. She seized upon the words René had just uttered and interrupted his uncalled-for praises of Claude by saying, 'His religion! It is true, that is just like you writers. I have a friend who is undergoing the ordeal, and she is always telling me that a woman ought to be careful not to bestow her affections upon an artist. He will never love her as much as he loves his art.'

She repeated these supposititious words of her imaginary friend with a look of pain upon her face; her cherry lips were parted by a half-stifled sigh that hinted at heartrending confidences and a presentiment of similar experiences in store for herself.

'Why, it is you who are sad,' observed René, struck by the sudden change in her pretty face.

'Now for it!' she thought, and then replied, 'That doesn't matter. What difference can it make to you whether I am sad or not?'

'Do you think that I take no interest in you?' rejoined René.

'A little, perhaps,' she replied, shrugging her shoulders; 'but when you have left me will you think of me otherwise than as of some sympathetic woman whom you have casually met and speedily forgotten?'

She had never looked so lovely in René's eyes as when she uttered these words, which went as far as she dared go without jeopardising her game. Her gloved hand rested on the green velvet sofa quite close to the poet, and he was bold enough to take it. She did not draw it back. Her eyes seemed fixed upon some vision far away, and it was doubtful whether she had even noticed René's daring action. There are women who have a delightful way of paying no heed to the familiarities which some people _will_ take with them. René pressed her dainty hand, and, as she did not resent it, he began to speak in a voice trembling with emotion:

'I have no right to be surprised at your thinking that of me. Why should you think that my feelings towards you differ from those of other men you meet? And yet if I told you that since the day when I first spoke to you at Madame Komof's my life has changed for ever--ah! do not smile--yes, for ever! If I told you that since then I have had but one desire--to see you again; that I came to your house with a beating heart; that every hour since then has increased my madness; that I came here in a dream of rapture, and that I shall leave you in despair! I see you do not believe me! People are willing to admit the existence of these sudden and lifelong passions in novels, but do such things ever happen in real life?'

He stopped, amazed at the boldness of his own words. As he finished speaking there came over him that strange sensation that seizes us when in our dreams we hear ourselves revealing some secret to the very person from whom we ought most to hide it. She had listened to him with her eyes still fixed on vacancy, and still wearing her look of abstraction. But her eyelids quivered, her breath came short and quick, and her little hand trembled as it lay in his. This was such a startling and delightful surprise that it gave René courage to go on.

'Forgive me for talking to you like this! If you only knew--it may be childish and silly--but when I saw you for the first time I seemed to recognise you--you are so like the woman I have always dreamt of meeting ever since I have had a heart. Before meeting you I only thought I lived, I only thought I felt. What a fool I was! And what a fool I am! I have gone and undone myself in your eyes. But at least I have told you that I love you--you know it now. You can do with me as you will. My God! how I love you, how I love you!'

As he gazed at her in rapt admiration and repeated the words that seemed to relieve the feelings that raged within him he saw two great tears fall from Suzanne's eyes and slowly make their way down her pink cheeks. He did not know that most women can cry like that at will, especially if they are at all nervous. These two wretched tears drove his delirium up to its highest pitch.

'You are crying! he exclaimed; 'you----'

'Don't finish your sentence,' cried Suzanne, putting her hand on his lips and then moving a little further off. Her eyes remained fixed upon his face, and in them might be read both passion and a kind of startled surprise. 'Yes, you have reached my heart. You have awakened feelings of whose existence I had not the faintest suspicion. I am afraid--afraid of you, afraid of myself, afraid of being here. We must never see each other again. I am not free. I ought not even to have listened to your words.' She stopped; then, taking his hand in hers this time, she went on: 'Why should I deceive you? All that you feel perhaps I feel too, but I swear to you that I did not know it until a moment ago. The feeling of sympathy to which I yielded, and which made me come and join you here this morning--my God!--I understand it now, I understand! Fool that I was not to have known how easily the heart is ensnared!'

Fresh tears started from her eyes, and René was so agitated by all that he had said and heard that he could only murmur, 'Tell me that you forgive me!'

'Yes, I forgive you,' she replied, squeezing his hand so hard that she hurt him. 'I feel that I love you too,' and then, as though suddenly awakening from a dream, she added, 'Good-bye--I forbid you to follow me. This is the last time we shall meet.'

She rose. Her face wore a threatening look, and it was clear that her feelings of honour were now thoroughly roused. There was no longer any thought of fatigue or of a sprained foot. She walked straight out, and with such an angry mien that the poet, utterly crushed by what he had undergone, saw her depart without doing anything to stop her. She had been gone some minutes before he rushed off in the direction she had taken. But he did not find her. Whilst he was trying first one staircase and then another she had crossed the courtyard and jumped into a cab, which rapidly bore her, exulting and in ecstasy, to the Rue Murillo.

Whilst René was employed in seeking means to get her to reconsider her hasty decision he would have no time to reflect upon the rapidity with which his Madonna had led him to make, and had herself made, a declaration of love. So much for her exultation. The recollection of the poet's words, of his face beaming with love, and his eyes eloquent with passion, enchanted her as with a promise of most perfect happiness. So much for her ecstasy. She was already drawing up her plans for the future. He would write to her, of course--but to his first two letters he would get no answer. On receipt of his third or fourth letter she would pretend to believe in his threats of suicide and drop upon him at home--to save him! Just as her thoughts had carried her as far as this, chance, which is sometimes as sarcastic as an ill-tempered friend, made her eyes fall upon Baron Desforges walking along the Boulevard Haussmann. He was probably going to her house to ask her to lunch out with him. She looked at the pretty little gold watch that hung from her bracelet and saw that it was only twenty minutes past twelve. She would be home in good time, and, thoroughly pleased with her morning's outing, she took a keen delight in pulling down the little window-curtain as she passed quite close to the Baron without being seen.