CHAPTER XX

THE ABBÉ TACONET

Two days after this terrible scene Claude Larcher was standing on the balcony of Colette's rooms, which overlooked the Tuileries gardens. It was about two in the afternoon, and there had been a return of glorious spring weather, bringing a bright blue sky and warm May breezes. Claude had spent several days with Colette. The two lovers had been seized with one of those revivals of passion which are all the more ardent and vehement on account of the memories of past quarrels and the certainty of others to come. Larcher was reflecting upon this curious law of love as he watched the smoke of his cigar curling up in thin blue wreaths in the sunshine. Then he looked down upon the line of carriages in the street and the crowd of promenaders under the scanty foliage of the gardens.

He was astonished at the state of perfect felicity into which these few days of indulgence had plunged him. His painful jealousy, his legitimate anger, his feelings of degradation--all had passed away since Colette had acted in accordance with his wishes and closed her door to Salvaney. This would not last, he knew full well, but the presence of this woman was to him such complete happiness that it allayed his fears for the future as it effaced his rancour for the past. He smoked his cigar slowly and peacefully, turning round every now and then to look at Colette through the open window as she sat in a cane rocking-chair, dressed in a Chinese gown of pink satin embroidered with gold--a duplicate of the one in her dressing-room at the theatre. Swinging herself to and fro, she slipped her dainty feet in and out of her embroidered morocco leather slippers, displaying, as she did so, a pair of pink silk stockings to match her dress.

The room in which she sat was filled with flowers. The walls were covered with souvenirs of an artist's life--water-colour drawings of scenes in the green-room, tambourines won in cotillons, photographs, and wreaths. A small white Angora kitten, with one eye blue and the other black, was lying on its back playing with a ball whilst Colette continued rocking herself--now smiling at Claude between the puffs at her Russian cigarette, now reading a newspaper she held in her hand, and all the time humming a charming ballad of Richepin's recently set to music by a foreign composer named Cabaner.

'One month flies by, another comes, And time runs like a hare----'

'_Mon Dieu!_' murmured the writer as he listened to the couplets of the only poet of our time who has been able to compete successfully with the divine _Chansons populaires_--'these lines are very fine, the sky is very blue, my mistress is very pretty. To the deuce with analysis!'

The actress interrupted this placid soliloquy of her contented lover with a cry of alarm. She had risen from her chair and was holding the paper with a trembling hand. After having, according to her wont, looked over the contents of the third page, where the theatrical news are chronicled, she had turned to the second and then to the first. It was there she had just read what had so upset her, for she stammered, as she handed Claude the paper--

'It is horrible!'

Claude, terrified by her sudden and intense agitation, took the paper and read the following lines under the heading, 'Echos de Paris:'

'As we go to press we hear of an event that will cause much grief and consternation in the literary world. M. René Vincy, the successful author of the "Sigisbée," has made an attempt to commit suicide in his rooms in the Rue Coëtlogon by discharging a revolver in the region of his heart. In order to remove the fears of M. Vincy's numerous admirers, we hasten to add that the attempt will have no fatal results. Our sympathetic _confrère_ is indeed grievously wounded, but the ball has been extracted, and the latest news are most reassuring. Much speculation is indulged in concerning the motive of this desperate act.'

'Colette!' cried Claude, 'it is you who killed him!'

'No, no!' moaned the actress wildly; 'it can't be. He won't die. You see, the paper says he is better. Don't say that! I should never forgive myself. How was I to know? I was so mad with you--you had behaved so cruelly that I would have done anything to be revenged. But you must go to him--run! Here is your hat, your gloves, your stick. Poor little René! I will send him some flowers; he was so fond of them. And do you think it is on account of that woman?'

As she spoke--her incoherent sentences betraying both her customary puerility and the real good feeling she possessed in spite of all--she had dressed Larcher and pushed him towards the door.

'And where shall I find you?' he asked.

'Fetch me here at six o'clock to go and dine in the Bois. _Mon Dieu!_' she added, 'if I hadn't these two appointments with the milliner and the dressmaker, I would go with you. But I must see them.'

'Do you still want to go and dine in the Bois?' said Claude.

'Don't be unkind,' she replied, giving him a kiss; 'it is such fine weather, and I do so want to dine out in the open.' With these words closed a scene which described the actress to a nicety, with her sudden transitions from sincerest grief to a most passionate love of pleasure.

Larcher kissed her in return, though despising himself in a vague kind of way for being so indulgent to her least whims even now after hearing of a catastrophe that touched him so closely. Rushing out of the room, he flew down the stairs four at a time, jumped into a cab, and at the end of fifteen minutes found himself before the gate in the Rue Coëtlogon through which he had passed but a few months since.

All that had struck him so forcibly then suddenly came back to him now--the frowning sky, the pale moon sailing amid the swift-scudding clouds, and the strange presentiment that had chilled his heart. Now the bright May sunshine filled the heavens with light, and the narrow strip of garden in front of the house was decked with green. The air of spring that hung over the peaceful abode was an excellent presentment of what René's life had long been, and what it would have remained if he had never met Suzanne. Who had been the indirect author of that meeting? In vain did Claude try to shake off his remorse by saying, 'Could I foresee this catastrophe?' He had foreseen it. Nothing but evil could result from the poet's sudden transplantation to a world of luxury in which both his vanity and sensuality had been drawn to the surface. The worst had come to pass--by a terrible run of ill luck, it is true. But who had provoked that ill luck? The answer to that question was a cruel one for a true friend, and it was with a heavy heart that Claude walked up to the house in which formerly there had dwelt naught but simplicity, honest labour, and a pure and noble love.

How many deadly stings had entered it since then, and what an infinity of grief! This came home to him once more on seeing the maid's agitated face and on hearing the sobs which burst from her as she opened the door and recognised the visitor. Wiping her eyes with the corner of her blue apron, she let loose a flow of words thickly sprinkled with her own _patois._

'_Ah! l'la faut-i! Mon bon monsieur!_ To try and kill himself like that--a child I've known as tender and as gentle as a girl! _Jésus, Marie, Joseph!_ Come in, Monsieur Claude, you will find Madame Fresneau and Mademoiselle Rosalie in the _salle-à-manger._ Monsieur l'Abbé Taconet is with _him!_

Emilie and Rosalie were together in the room in which Claude had so often been welcomed by a charming family picture. The doctor had evidently just gone, for there was a strong smell of carbolic acid, like that left by rebandaging. A bottle bearing a red label was standing on the table with a saucer beside it, and close by lay a small heap of square pieces of cotton. A packet of linen bandages, some strips of plaster, a pot of ointment labelled red like the bottle and covered with tinfoil, some nursery pins, and a stamped prescription gave the room the appearance of a hospital ward. Emilie's pallor revealed more than words what she had gone through during the past forty-eight hours. The sight of Claude produced the same effect upon her as upon Françoise. His mere presence recalled to her the old days when she had been so proud of her René.

She burst into tears, and, giving him her hand, said: 'You were right!'

Rosalie had darted a look at the visitor charging him as plainly as possible with René's attempted suicide. Her eyes expressed such deep hatred and their meaning was so fully in keeping with Claude's secret remorse that he turned his own eyes away, and asked, after a moment's silence, 'Can I see him?'

'Not to-day,' replied Emilie, 'he is so weak. The doctor fears the least excitement.' She added, 'My uncle will tell you how he is now.'

'When did this happen? I only heard of it from the papers.'

'Has it got into the papers?' said Emilie. 'I tried so hard that it should not.'

'A few lines of no importance,' replied Claude, guessing the truth from Rosalie's sudden change of colour. Old Offarel had a young man under him in the War Office who was connected with the Press, and whom Larcher knew. The _sous-chef_ had no doubt been gossiping, and his daughter had already got to hear of it. Larcher made an attempt to gain fresh favour in Rosalie's eyes by allaying Madame Fresneau's suspicions. 'The reporters ferret out everything,' he said; 'no one who is the least bit known can escape them. But,' he continued, 'what are the details?'

'He came home the day before yesterday about four o'clock, and I saw at once by his face that there was something wrong with him. I had, however, been so accustomed to see him look sad of late that it did not strike me very much. He had told me that he was going to Italy on a long tour. I said to him: "Do you still intend going to-morrow?" "No," he replied, and, taking me in his arms, held me there for some time, whilst he sobbed like a child. I asked him what was the matter. "Nothing," he said; "where is Constant?" His question surprised me. He knew that the boy never comes home from school before six o'clock. "And Fresneau?" he added. Then he drew a deep sigh and went into his room. I stood there for five minutes debating with myself--I thought that perhaps I ought not to leave him alone. At last I began to get frightened--he is so easily led away in his fits of despair. And then I heard the report--I shall hear it all my life!'

She stopped, too agitated to go on, and, after another storm of tears had spent itself, Claude asked, 'What does the doctor say?'

'That he is out of danger, unless some unforeseen complication sets in,' replied Emilie; 'he has explained to us that the trigger of the revolver--it was I who gave it him!--was somewhat hard to pull. The pressure that he brought to bear upon it must have altered the direction of the ball; it passed through the lung without touching the heart, and came out on the other side. At twenty-five! _Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!_ What a terrible thing! No--he does not love us; he has never loved us!'

Whilst she was thus lamenting and laying bare a heart suffering from those pangs of unrequited affection that mothers know so well the Abbé Taconet appeared on the threshold of the sick-room. He shook hands with Claude, whom he had long since forgiven for having run away from the Ecole Saint-André, and replied to the inquiring looks of his niece and Rosalie:

'He is going to sleep, and I must get back to my school.'

'Will you allow me to walk with you?' said Claude.

'I was going to ask you to do so,' replied the priest.

For some minutes the two men walked side by side in silence. The Abbé Taconet had always inspired Larcher with respect. His was one of those spotless natures which form such a contrast to the ordinary low standard of morality that their mere existence is a standing reproach to a man of the period like the writer, given up to vice though craving for the ideal. Even now, as the Abbé walked beside him with his somewhat heavy tread, Claude looked at him and thought of the moral gulf that separated them. The director of the Ecole Saint-André was a tall, strong-looking man of about fifty. At first sight there was nothing in his robust corpulence to betray the asceticism of his life. His rounded cheeks and ruddy complexion might even have lent him an air of joviality had not the serious lines of his mouth and the usually serene look in his eyes corrected this impression. The sort of imagination found in true artists, and which, elaborated by heredity, had produced the morbid melancholy of René's mother, the poet's own talent, his delight in all things brilliant, and even Emilie's inordinate affection for her brother--that imagination which will not allow the mind to be satisfied with the present and the positive, but which paints all objects in too bright or too dark a colour--this dangerous yet all-powerful faculty had also its reflex in the eyes of the priest. But Catholic discipline had corrected its excesses as deep faith had sanctified its use. The serenity of his piercing glance was that of a man who has lain down at night and risen each morning for years together with but one idea, and that--of self-sacrifice.

Claude was well acquainted with the precise terms in which this idea was couched, and to which the Abbé Taconet always reverted in his conversation--the salvation of France by the aid of Christianity. Such was, according to this robust worker in moral spheres, the task laid down in our day for all Frenchmen who were willing to undertake it. Claude was also aware of the hopes this truly eminent priest had cherished concerning his nephew. How often had he heard him say 'France has need of Christian talent'! He therefore looked at him with particular curiosity, discovering in his usually calm face a trace of anxiety--he would almost have called it an expression of doubt. They were walking along the Rue d'Assas, and were just about to cross the Rue de Rennes, when the Abbé stopped and turned to his companion.

'My niece tells me you know the woman who has driven my nephew to this desperate act. God has not permitted the poor boy to disappear in this fashion. The body will be healed, but the soul must not be allowed to relapse. What is she?'

'What all women are,' replied the writer, unable to resist the pleasure of displaying before the priest his pretended knowledge of the human heart.

'If you had ever sat in the confessional you would not say all women,' remarked the Abbé. 'You do not know what a Christian woman is, and of what sacrifices she is capable.'

'What almost all women are,' repeated Claude, with a touch of irony, and began to relate what he knew of René's story, drawing a fairly exact portrait of Suzanne with the aid of many psychological expressions, and speaking of the multiplicity of her person--of a first and a second condition of her 'I.' 'There is in her,' he said, 'a woman who is fond of luxury, and she therefore keeps a lover who can give it her; then there is a woman who is fond of love, and so she takes a young lover; a woman who is fond of respect, and so she lives with a husband whom she treats with consideration. And I will wager that she loves all three--the paying lover, the loving lover, and the protecting husband--but in a different way. Certain natures are so constructed, like the Chinese boxes which contain six or seven others. She is a very complicated animal!'

'Complicated?' said the Abbé, throwing back his head. 'I know you use these words to avoid uttering more simple ones. She is merely an unhappy woman who allows herself to be governed by her senses. All this is filth.'

There was a look of profound disgust on his noble face as he uttered these words of brutal simplicity. It was plain that the thought of matters concerning the flesh provoked in him that peculiar repugnance found in priests who have had to struggle hard against a natural inclination for love. His disgust soon made way for a deep melancholy, and he continued his remarks.

'It is not this woman who causes me alarm in René's case. According to what you tell me, she would have left him when once her whim was gratified. In his present state she will not give him a thought. It is the moral condition of the poor lad, as shown by this affair, which troubles me. Here is a young man of twenty-five, brought up as he has been, knowing how indispensable he is to the best of sisters, possessing that divine and incomparable gift called talent--a gift which, if properly directed, can produce such great things--and possessing it, too, at a tragic moment in the history of our country; here is one, I say, who knows that to-morrow his country may be lost for ever in another hurricane, that its safety is entrusted to every one of us--to you and me and each of these passers-by--and yet all this does not outweight the grief of being deceived by a wretched woman! But,' he continued, as if his remarks applied to Claude as much as to the wounded man he had just quitted, 'what is it you hope to find in that troubled sea of sensuality into which you plunge on a pretext of love, except sin with its endless misery? You speak of complication. Human life is very simple. It is all comprised in God's Ten Commandments. Find me a case, a single one, which is not provided for there. Has a blindness fallen upon the men of this generation that a lad, whom I knew to be pure, has sunk so low in so short a time, and only through breathing the vapours of the age? Ah, sir,' he added in the accents of a father deceived in his son, 'I was so proud of him! I expected so much of him!'

'You talk as if he were dead,' said Claude, feeling both moved and irritated by the Abbé's words. On the one hand, he pitied him for his evident distress; but, on the other hand, he could not bear to hear the priest enunciate such ideas, although they were also his own in his fits of remorse. Like many modern sceptics, he was incessantly sighing for a simpler faith, and yet his taste for intellectual or sentimental complexities was incessantly leading him to look upon any and every faith he examined as a mutilation. There suddenly came over him an irresistible desire to contradict the Abbé Taconet and to defend the very youth whose fate he had himself so bewailed on reaching the Rue Coëtlogon that afternoon.

'Do you think,' he said, 'that René will not be all the stronger for this trial--more able to exercise and to develop that talent in which you at least believe, Monsieur l'Abbé? If we writers could evolve our ideas as easily as a mathematician solves his problems on the black-board, and enunciate them, coolly and calmly, in well-chosen and precise terms--why, every one would set up as an author instead of turning engineer or lawyer. They would only require patience, method, and leisure. But writing is a different thing altogether.' He was getting more excited as he went on. 'To begin with, one must live, and, to know life, in every one of its peculiar phases, become acquainted with every possible sensation. We must experiment upon ourselves. What Claude Bernard used to do with his dogs, what Pasteur does with his rabbits, we must do with our heart, inoculating it with every form of virus that attacks humanity. We must have felt, if only for an hour, each of the thousand emotions of which our fellow-man is capable, and all in order that some obscure reader in ten, a hundred, or two hundred years' time may stop at some phrase in one of our books and, recognising the disease from which he is suffering, say, 'This is true.' It is indeed a terrible game, and we run a terrible risk in playing it. Greater even than that incurred by doctors, for they run no risk of cutting themselves with the dissecting knife nor of being struck down when visiting a cholera hospital. It was nearly all over with poor René, but when he next writes of love, jealousy, or woman's treachery, his words will be tinged with blood--the red blood that has coursed through his veins--and not with ink borrowed from another's pen. And it will make a fine page, too, one that will swell the literary treasures of that France you accuse us of forgetting. We serve our country in our own fashion. That fashion may not be yours, but it has its greatness. Do you know what a martyrdom of suffering has to be endured before an _Adolphe_ or a _Manon_ can be dragged from the soul?'

'_Beati pauperes spirtu_,' replied the priest. 'I remember having heard something of the kind in the Ecole Normale thirty years ago as I walked in the courtyard with some of my comrades who have since distinguished themselves. They possessed fewer metaphors, but greater powers of abstraction than you have, and they called it the antinomy of art and morality. Words are but words, and facts remain facts. Since you talk of science, what would you think of a physician who, under pretence of studying an infectious disease, gave it to himself and so to all the town? Do you ever think of the terrible responsibility that rests upon those great writers whom you envy for having been able to give the world their own wretched experiences? I have not read the two novels you mention, but I well remember Goethe's "Werther" and de Musset's "Rolla." Don't you think that the pistol-shot René fired at himself was somewhat influenced by these two apologies of suicide? Do you know that it is awful to think that both Goethe and de Musset are dead, but that their work can still place a weapon in the hand of a heart-broken lad? The sufferings of the soul should be laid bare only to be relieved, and a cold, pitiless interest in human woe inspires me with horror whenever I meet with it. Believe me,' he added, pointing to the crucifix that adorned the gateway of the Couvent des Carmes, 'no one can say more than He has said about sufferings and passions, and you will find a remedy nowhere else.'

Irritated by the priest's air of conviction, Claude replied, 'You brought René up in His name, and you yourself admit that your hopes have been deceived.'

'The ways of God are inscrutable,' replied the Abbé, with a look of mute reproach that made Claude blush. In attacking René's uncle in a painful spot, simply because the argument was going against him, he had yielded to an evil impulse of which he was now ashamed. The two men passed the corner of the Rue de Vaugirard and the Rue Cassette in silence, and reached the door of the Ecole Saint-André just as a class of boys was entering. There were about forty of them--lads of about fifteen or sixteen years old, all looking very well and happy. As they passed the _Directeur_ they saluted him so deferentially and with such evident heartiness that this act alone would have shown what rare influence their excellent instructor possessed. Claude, however, also knew from experience how conscientiously the Abbé discharged his duty; he knew that each of these boys was followed daily, almost hourly, by the serene but vigilant eyes of the worthy priest.

A sudden rush of feeling prompted him to seize the latter by the hand and to exclaim, 'You are an upright man, Monsieur l'Abbé, and that is the best and finest talent one can have!'

'He will save René,' he said, as he saw the good Christian's robe disappear across the threshold that he had himself so often crossed in less happy days. His thoughts became singularly serious and sad, and as his steps wandered almost mechanically towards his rooms in the Rue de Varenne, where he had not put in an appearance for several days, he allowed his mind to dwell upon the ideas awakened by the conversation and the life of the priest. The feeling of physical beatitude experienced two hours ago on Colette's balcony had fled. All the wretchedness of the undignified life he had been leading for the past two years came home to him, and looked still more wretched when compared with the hidden glory of the perfect life of duty he had been privileged to behold.

His disgust grew stronger when he found himself in his own rooms, recalling, as they did, the memories of so many hours of shame and pain. A score of visions rose up before him illustrating the drama in which he had played a part--René reading the manuscript of the 'Sigisbée,' the first performance at the Comédie Française, the _soirée_ at Madame Komof's, Suzanne's appearance in her red gown, and Colette in his rooms on the day after the _soirée_; then René telling him of his visit to Madame Moraines, his own departure for Venice, his return, the scenes to which it had led, and the two parallel passions that had sprung up in his heart and René's, ending with the attempted suicide of the one and the abasement of the other. 'The Abbé is right,' he thought; 'all this is filth.' He went on with his soliloquy. 'Yes, the Abbé will save René; he will compel him to go for a tour of six months or a year as soon as he is better, and he will come back rid of this horrible nightmare. He is young--a heart of twenty-five is such a vigorous and hardy plant. Who knows? He may perhaps be moved by Rosalie's love and marry her. Anyhow, he will triumph. He has suffered, but he has not debased himself. But I?'

In a few moments he had drawn up a statement of his actual position--well over thirty-five years of age, not a single reason for remaining alive, disorder within and disorder without, in his health and in his thoughts, in his money matters and in his love affairs, an absolute conviction of the emptiness of literature and the degrading power of passion, coupled with sheer inability to turn aside from the profession of letters or to give up his libertine life.

'Is it really too late?' he asked himself, as he paced up and down his room. He could see, like a port in the distance, the country home of his old aunt, his father's sister, to whom he wrote two or three times a year, and nearly always to ask for money. He saw before him the little room that awaited his coming, its window looking out upon a meadow. The meadow, through which ran a stream bordered with willows, was closed in by some rising ground. Why not take refuge there and try to commence over again? Why not make one more attempt to escape the misery of an existence in which there was not a single illusion left? Why not go at once, without again beholding the woman who had exercised a more baneful influence upon him than Suzanne had had upon René?

The agitation brought on by this sudden prospect of a still possible salvation drove him from his rooms, but not before he had told Ferdinand to pack his trunk. He went out and wandered aimlessly as far as the entrance to the Champs-Elysées. On this bright May evening the roadway was crowded with an interminable line of carriages. The contrast between the moving panorama of Paris at its gayest, once his delight, and the quiet scene he had evoked for his complete reform, charmed his artistic soul. He sat down upon a chair and watched the string of vehicles, recognising a face here and there, and recalling the rumours, true or false, he had heard about each. Suddenly a carriage came in view that attracted his particular attention--no, he was not mistaken! It was an elegant victoria, in which sat Madame Moraines with Desforges by her side, and Paul Moraines facing them. Suzanne was smiling at the Baron, who was evidently taking his mistress and her husband to the Bois--probably to dine there. She did not see René's friend, who gazed after her shapely blonde head, half turned to her protector, until it was lost to view.

He laughed.

'What a comedy life is, and how silly we are to turn it into a drama!'

He took out his watch and rose hurriedly.

'Half-past six--I shall be late for Colette.' And he hailed a passing cab in order to get to the Rue de Rivoli--five minutes sooner!

THE END.