CHAPTER VIII

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE PICTURE

'It's Madame Komof's little poet,' said Suzanne, as soon as the door had closed upon René. The tone in which she replied to the Baron's mute interrogation indicated the familiar footing upon which Desforges stood in this house. Then with that girlish smile she could so well assume--one of those smiles in which the most distrustful men will always believe, because they have seen their sisters smile like that--she went on, 'Oh! I forgot--you wouldn't go last night. I looked so nice--you would have been proud of me. I had my hair done just as you like it. I expected to see you come in later on. This young man, who is the author of the play, was introduced to me, and the poor fellow just called to leave his card. He didn't know my hours, and came straight up. You have done him a great service in giving him an opportunity to escape. He had stayed so long that he was afraid to go.'

'You see that I was right in setting my face against last night's affair,' remarked the Baron. 'Here we have another man of letters brought out. He has been here, and will call on others. He'll call again, no doubt, and then he'll be invited here and there. People will talk before him as they do before you and me, without thinking that on leaving your house he will, out of sheer vanity, go and retail the stories he has heard here in some _café_ or newspaper office. And then the Society dames will be astonished to find themselves figuring in the columns of some scurrilous sheet or in an up-to-date novel. To invite writers into the drawing-room is one of the latest and maddest freaks of so-called Society. We wrong them by robbing them of their time, and they return the injury by libelling us. I was told the other day that the daughter of one of this gentleman's colleagues, who helps her papa in his books, was heard to say: "We never go anywhere without bringing home at least two pages of useful notes." I myself cannot understand this mania for talking into phonographs--and such silly, lying phonographs, too, as they are!'

'Ah!' exclaimed Suzanne, taking the Baron's hand in hers, and looking up at him with an admiration that was too marked not to be sincere, 'how fortunate I am in having you to guide me through life! What correct and clear judgment you have!'

'Oh! merely a little gumption, that's all,' replied Desforges, with a shake of the head; 'that will prevent one from committing nine-tenths of the bad actions that are really only follies. All my wisdom of life is to try and get what I can out of what is left me--and what is left me is precious little. Do you know that I shall be fifty-six this week, Suzanne?'

She shook her pretty head, and came closer to him as he stopped in his march up and down the room. With a look of ingenuousness that might have been worn either by an accomplished wanton or a big girl asking her father for a kiss she brought first her cheek with its pretty dimple, and then the corner of her sweet mouth, under the Baron's lips.

'Come,' she said, 'don't you want any tea? It's a bad sign when you begin to talk about your age; you must have upset yourself either in the _Chambre_ or at some Board meeting.'

As she spoke she moved towards the little table, and her eyes fell upon the cups and plates she and René had used. Did she remember the Madonna-like _rôle_ she had played in this very spot only a quarter of an hour ago, and the handsome young man for whose benefit she had assumed her most bewitching attitudes? And if such a thought really entered that pretty head, set in its coils of pale gold, did she feel any shame, any regret, that the poet had gone, or only a kind of secret joy, such as these bold actresses feel in their moments of greatest hypocrisy? She made the tea with as much care as she had bestowed on the process a few minutes before. Desforges had naturally slipped into the arm-chair just vacated by René, and Suzanne occupied her former seat as she sat listening to the Baron's talk. This estimable man had an unfortunate habit of dogmatising at times. He knew the world--that was his great boast, and he was justified in making it. Only, he attached a little too much importance to this knowledge.

'It was rather trying in the Chambre to-day, it is true,' he said. 'I went to hear de Suave hurl his thunderbolts at the Government. He still believes in Parliamentary speeches and in oratorical triumphs. As for me, I have, of course, become a sceptic, a grumbler, and a pessimist since the day when I refused office. They are glad to have me in the House because my grandfather was a Prefect under one emperor and I a Councillor of State under another. The name looks well at the bottom of a poster; but as for hearing me, that's another matter. And they have such respect for me, too! When I drop in at the club in the afternoon I find half-a-dozen of my friends, both young and old, engaged in restoring the monarchy whilst watching the girls pass, if it is summer, or between two deals at bézique in winter. When I come in you should see how quickly they change their faces and their conversation, as if I were discretion itself. I should like to have told them a few home-truths to-day, just to relieve my feelings, but I went to the Rue de la Paix instead to get your earrings.'

With these words he took from his pocket a small leather case; it was quite plain, without the jewellers address, and as he held it out the fire flashed from the two splendid diamonds it contained, making Suzanne's eyes sparkle with delight. The case passed from the Baron's hands into hers, and after gazing at its contents for a moment, she closed the little box and placed it among some other things on a small shelf beside her. The manner in which she accepted it would alone have sufficed to prove how accustomed she was to receiving similar presents. Then, turning to Desforges, her sweet face all aglow with pleasure, she exclaimed, 'How good you are to me!'

'Don't thank me. It's pure selfishness,' said the Baron, though evidently pleased by the impression the earrings had made. 'It is I who ought to thank you for being good enough to wear these poor stones--I do so love to see you look nice. Ah!' he added, 'I had forgotten to tell you--the famous port has arrived; I shall send you half the consignment, and, by a stroke of good luck, I have managed to get the Watteau you admired so much for a mere song.'

'I shall have a chance of thanking you to-morrow, I hope, in the Rue du Mont-Thabor,' she replied, darting a look at him; 'at four o'clock, isn't it?' she added, dropping her eyes with a blush. If, endowed with the power of second sight, poor René, who had just returned home in a fit of idolatry, could have perceived her at that moment without hearing the conversation he would certainly have seen in her noble face an expression of most divine modesty. But those downcast lids and the look she had given him had probably brought other thoughts to the Baron's mind, for his eyes grew bright, and the blood rushed to his cheeks--those cheeks which bore such evident traces of good living, a dangerous vice whose consequences Desforges was always trying to elude. 'I hold the balance,' he used to say, 'between gout and apoplexy.'

Giving his moustache a twirl, he changed the subject, and in a thick voice, by which his mistress could once more gauge the hold she had upon the senses of this hoary sinner, asked, 'Who will be in your box to-night?'

'Only Madame Ethorel.'

'What men?'

'Ethorel cannot come. There will be my husband--and, of course, Crucé.'

'He must make a pretty little thing out of her, only in commission!' exclaimed Desforges. 'He has just put her on to a picture for which she has paid twenty thousand francs--I'll wager he got ten thousand out of it!'

'What a wretch!' cried Suzanne.

'She is such a fool,' remarked the Baron, 'and Crucé is known to be a _connaisseur._ Besides, if poor Ethorel didn't have him to consult, his money would go just the same in absolute rubbish. All is for the best in this best of possible worlds. Well, go on.'

'Little de Brèves and you. Hark!' she exclaimed, stopping to listen. 'Some one is coming up--I have such an ear.' And then, looking at the Baron in precisely the same way she had looked, at René, she added, with a pretty look of annoyance, '_Mon Dieu!_ What a bother! Oh! it's no one,' breaking into a silvery laugh as the servant opened the door; 'it's only my husband. Good afternoon, Paul.'

'That sounds very complimentary,' said the man who had just entered, a tall, well-built fellow with frank, fearless eyes, and one of those pale but healthy complexions that reveal great energy. His features had that stamp of regularity which is only to be met with in Paris in very young men, for a face of that kind in a man of more than thirty-five indicates a perfectly clear conscience. The depth of his love was easily measured by the way in which Moraines looked at his wife, and his sincerity by the manner in which he shook hands with the Baron.

After a hearty laugh at Suzanne's exclamation, he added, with mock gravity, 'Am I intruding, madame?'

'Do you want any tea?' asked Suzanne, quietly; 'I must tell you that it's cold. "Yes, please," or "No, thank you?"'

'No, thank you,' replied Moraines, dropping into an arm-chair, and preparing his words as if to produce an effect, like some visitor. 'Some husbands are real idiots, and I blush for the community. Have you heard about Hacqueville? The story was told me at the club just now. Haven't heard it, eh? Well, this morning he happens to open a letter addressed to his wife which leaves no doubt as to the lady's virtue.'

'Poor Mainterne,' cried Suzanne, 'he was so fond of Lucie!'

'That's the beauty of it,' shouted Moraines, in the triumphal accents of one who is about to astonish his hearers; 'the letter didn't come from Mainterne, but Laverdin! Lucie had more than two strings to her bow. And guess to whom Hacqueville takes the letter and looks for advice?'

'To Mainterne,' replied the Baron.

'You've heard the story?'

'No,' rejoined Desforges, 'but it seems so simple. And what did Mainterne say?'

'You may guess how indignant he was. Lucie has gone to her mother's, and a duel is announced between Hacqueville and Laverdin, in which the former insists upon Mainterne being his second. Well, of all the fools I've seen, I think he is about the biggest. And he hasn't a single friend to open his eyes.'

'He'll find one,' said the Baron, rising to go. 'The moral of your story is, never write.'

'Won't you stay and dine with us, Frédéric?' asked Moraines.

'I have an engagement,' replied Desforges, 'but will meet you later at the Opera. Madame Moraines has been good enough to save me a seat.'

'In your box,' rejoined Paul, with more truth than he thought. The Baron, who had been a widower for the past ten years, had kept his box at the Opera, and sublet it for alternate weeks to his excellent friends the Moraines. The rent, however, was never paid. The husband was as little aware of his wife's accommodating ways as he was of the impossibility of living as they did on their income of fifty thousand francs. The remnant of the wretched fortune left by the late Minister, Madame Moraines' father, who in fifteen years of office had saved almost nothing, formed the half of this annual budget. The other half was the salary which Moraines got as secretary to an insurance company, a place procured for him by Desforges. In spite of Suzanne's protests, Paul had not lost the deplorable habit of expatiating upon his wife's clever husbanding of their united income, which was very small for the world in which the Moraines lived. Thanks to his simple-minded confidence, he was the kind of man who, when his friends complained of the increasing severity of the struggle for life, would say, 'You ought to have a wife like mine--_she_ knows where to get bargains. She has a maid who is a perfect treasure, and who can turn out a dress as well as the best tailor!' 'You make me look ridiculous!' Suzanne would often say; but he loved her too well to give up praising her, and now, just after Desforges had left, his first act was to take her hands in his and say, 'How nice it is to have you all to myself for a moment! Kiss me, Suzanne.'

She gave him her cheek and the corner of her mouth, just as she had done to Desforges.

'When I am told such terrible stories as that,' he continued, 'it gives me quite a shock; but I soon recover when I think that I have been lucky enough to get a little woman like yourself. Ah! Suzanne, how I love you!'

'And yet I am sure you will scold me,' she replied, escaping from his embrace. 'The woman you think so clever, and of whom you are so proud, has been very foolish. Those diamonds,' she went on, holding up the box brought by Desforges, 'that I told you about--well, I couldn't resist them, and so I bought them.'

'But it's out of your own savings,' remarked Paul. 'What fine stones! Do you want me not to scold you? Then let me put them in.'

'You'll never be able to manage it,' she replied, holding up one of her dainty ears adorned with a plain pink pearl, which Paul slipped out deftly. Then came the turn of the other ear and the other pearl. He showed the same dexterity in putting in the diamonds, touching his beloved as gently with his strong man's hands as any girl could have done. To look at herself, Suzanne took up a small mirror set in a frame of antique silver, another present of the Baron's, and smiled. She looked so pretty at that moment that Paul drew her towards him, and, holding her in his arms, tried to obtain a kiss from her lips. As a rule, she never refused him this. Possibly, from some complication in her nature, she had managed to preserve, in spite of all, a kind of physical liking for this honest, manly fellow, whom she deceived in such a cruel fashion. What, then, had suddenly come over her, and made the usual kiss unbearable? She pushed her husband away almost roughly, saying, 'Oh! let me alone'--then, as if to mitigate the harshness of her tone, she added, 'It's ridiculous in an old married couple. Good-bye, I have hardly time to dress.'

With these words she passed into her bedroom, and so into her dressing-room. Of all the apartments in her home, this was the one in which the profound materialism that formed the basis of this woman's nature was most revealed. Her maid, Céline, a tall, dark girl with impenetrable eyes, commenced to undress her in this shrine of beauty, as gorgeously upholstered as that of any royal courtesan, and anyone who had seen Suzanne at that moment would have understood that she was ready to do anything for the luxury of living in this atmosphere of supreme refinement.

This woman, so delicately fashioned that she seemed almost fragile, was one of those creatures who combine full hips with a slender waist, neat ankles with a well-turned leg, dainty wrists with rounded arms, small features with a full figure, and whose dresses, by hiding all such material charms, clothe them, as it were, with spirituality. She cast a glance at the long mirror set in the centre of her wardrobe, where, packed away in sweet-smelling sachets, lay piles of embroidered linen; seeing how well she looked she smiled as there once more flashed across her brain the same idea that but a few moments ago had dragged her from her husband's arms. This idea was evidently not one of those which it pleased her to entertain, for she shook her head, and a few minutes later, having thrown over her bare neck and shoulders a dressing-jacket of pale blue _foulard_ silk and put her naked feet into a pair of soft swans-down slippers, she gave herself up to the hands of her maid, who began to dress the long, shining hair. The cool water in which she had bathed her face had completely restored her self-possession, and in the mirror before her she saw all the details of this apartment that she had turned into the chapel of her one religion--her beauty.

All was reflected there--the soft-toned carpet, the bath of English porcelain, the wide marble washhand-stand with its silver fittings and its host of small toilet necessaries. Did the sight of all these things remind her of the divers conditions that secured her this happy existence? In any case, it was of her husband she was thinking when she exclaimed, 'The dear, good fellow!' The sparkling diamonds that she had kept in her ears recalled thoughts of Desforges, and following close upon the other came the mental exclamation, 'Dear, kind friend!' These two contradictory impressions became as easily reconciled in the head adorned with those long silken tresses as the two facts were reconciled in life. Women excel in these moral mosaics, which appear less monstrous when the process of their construction has been carefully watched. This fair Parisian of thirty was certainly as thoroughly corrupted as it is possible to be; but, to do her justice, it must be said at once that she was unaware of it, so passive had she been with regard to the circumstances that had gradually reduced her to this state of unconscious immorality.

When Suzanne had allowed herself to be married to Paul Moraines two years before the war of 1870 she had felt neither repugnance nor enthusiasm. The matter had been arranged by the two families; old Moraines, a senator ever since the establishment of the Second Empire, belonged to the same set as old Bois-Dauffin, and Paul, who was then an officer of the Council of State, a good dancer and a charming ladies' man, seemed made for her, as she did for him. For the first two years they formed what is called in women's parlance 'a sweet couple;' it was one round of balls, suppers, and theatre parties, with rural festivities in summer and hunting parties in autumn, all of which both of them enjoyed to the full. Paul himself well defined the kind of relations that bound him to his wife amidst these continual pleasures. 'You are as bewitching as a mistress,' he would say to her as he kissed her in the brougham that took them home at one in the morning.

The revolution of the Fourth of September put an end to this fairy-like existence. The families on both sides had lived on large salaries that were suddenly stopped, but this stoppage had no immediate effect upon the gratification of their expensive tastes. Until his death, which occurred in 1873, Bois-Dauffin was convinced of the speedy restoration of a _régime_ that had been so strong, so well supported, and so popular. The ex-senator, who survived his friend only a few months, shared his sanguine dreams. Paul had, of course, lost his place at the Council of State. He possessed, to an even greater extent than his father and his father-in-law, that blind faith in the success of the cause which will always remain an original trait of the Imperialist party. Suzanne, who had no faith of any kind, commenced to be troubled in 1873 by a very clear vision of the ruin towards which she and her husband were steering by living, as they did, on their capital. This was precisely the moment when Frédéric Desforges commenced to pay her court.

This man, who was then not yet fifty, had remained the most brilliant representative of the generation that had come in with the Second Empire, and which had for its chief the clear-sighted and seductive Duc de Morny. In Suzanne's eyes the Baron's highest recommendation lay in the romantic tales of gallantry that were told of him in the drawing-room, and soon this prestige was supplemented by his indisputable superiority in the knowledge and management of Parisian Society. Having been left a childless widower after a brief union, with almost nothing to do, for his parliamentary duties did not trouble him much, and with an income of four hundred thousand francs a year, exclusive of his mansion in the Cours-la-Reine, his estate in Anjou and his _chalet_ at Deauville, the former favourite of the famous Duke had the rare courage to allow himself to grow old--just as his leader had had the courage to die. He wished to form one last attachment that would bear cultivating until his sixtieth year, and procure him not only an agreeable and accommodating mistress, but a pleasant circle in which to spend his evenings. He had taken in the position of Madame Moraines at a glance, and decided that this was exactly the kind of woman he wanted--extremely pretty and graceful, guaranteed against all probability of maternity by six years of childless married life, and possessing a presentable husband, who would never become a blackmailer. The crafty Baron summed up all these advantages, and by gradually worming his way into Suzanne's confidence, by proving his devotion in getting Moraines his secretaryship, by making her accept presents upon presents, and by showing that exquisite tact of a man who only asks to be tolerated, he at last got her to consent to his wishes. All this, too, was done so slowly and so imperceptibly, and the _liaison_, when once established, became so simple and so closely bound up with her daily life, that the criminality of her relations with Desforges scarcely ever seemed to strike Suzanne.

What wrong was she doing Moraines, after all? Was she not his wife, and really attached to him? As for the Baron, it is true that he provided a very fair share of the luxuries in which she indulged. But what of that? May not a woman receive presents? If he paid a bill here, and a bill there, did that hurt anyone? She was his mistress, but their relationship was clothed in an air of respectability that made it seem almost like a legitimate union. She had become so accustomed to this compromise with her conscience that she considered herself, if not quite an honest woman, at least vastly superior in virtue to a number of her friends with whose various intrigues she was acquainted. If her conscience reproached her at all, it was for having deceived Desforges, two years after the beginning of their intimacy, with a swell clubman, whom she had carried off from one of her friends during the racing season at Deauville. This individual had, however, almost compromised her so fatally, and she had been so quick to detect in him the self-conceit of a mere flirt, that she had been only too glad to sever the connection at once. Thereupon she had sworn to restrict herself to the peaceful delights of her three-cornered arrangement--to Paul's gentlemanly ways and the Baron's Epicurean gallantry. And so carefully had she kept her resolve, and with such attention to outward appearance, that her good name was as safe as it could be in the enviable position to which her beauty raised her. She had rivals who were too well accustomed to drawing up accounts not to know that the Moraines were living at the rate of eighty thousand francs a year; 'and we knew them when they were almost beggars,' added these kind people. 'Scandal!' cried all the Baron's friends in chorus, and he had a way of making friends everywhere. 'Scandal!' cried the simple-minded people who are shocked by the tales of infamy that go the round of the drawing-rooms every night. 'Scandal!' added the wiseacres, who know that the best thing to do in Paris is to pretend to believe nothing, and to take people at their own value.

Recollections of the innumerable services that Desforges had rendered her were no doubt running through Suzanne's mind as, seated before her toilet table, she exclaimed, 'The dear, kind friend!' Why, then, did the Baron's face, intelligent but worn, suddenly make way for another and a younger face, adorned with an ideal beard and lit up by a pair of dark blue eyes that reflected all the ardour of a virgin and enthusiastic soul? Why, whilst Céline's nimble fingers were busy with laces and hooks, would an inner voice continually murmur the sweet music of these four syllables--René Vincy? What secret temptation was she resisting when she whispered again and again the word, 'Impossible!'

She had seen the poet twice. That she, the mistress, almost the pupil, of the elegant Desforges; she, the very pattern of the Society belle, who had sold herself for all this fine perfumed linen in which she wrapped her beauty--for these soft, silken skirts which her maid was now fastening about her waist and for the countless luxuries that a licentious woman of fashion delights in, that she could so forget herself as to be captivated by the eyes and words of a chance poetaster, seen to-day and forgotten to-morrow, was well nigh impossible. She had said 'Impossible!' and yet here she was thinking of him again. How strange it was that ever since meeting René she had been unable to rid herself of the alluring hope of winning him! If anyone had used that old-fashioned phrase, 'Love at first sight,' in her hearing, she would have shrugged those pretty shoulders whose graceful contours were now revealed by her low-necked Opera gown and whose whiteness was enhanced by the single string of pearls she wore; and yet, what other words could describe the sudden and ardent feelings that her meeting with the poet had inspired--feelings that were hourly growing more intense?

The fact of the matter was that for some months past Suzanne had been somewhat bored between her husband--'the dear, good fellow'--and her 'dear, kind friend,' the Baron. The life of pleasure and of luxury for which she had made so many sacrifices seemed to her empty and dull. This she called 'being too happy.' 'I ought to have a little trouble,' she would say, with a laugh. Incessant indulgence had destroyed her appetite for enjoyment and made her a prey to the moral and physical weariness that frequently causes _demi-mondaines_ to suddenly throw up a position which it has cost them much labour to attain. They require fresh sensations, and, above all, that of love. They will commit any folly when once they have met the man who is able to make them feel something beyond their former empty delights--one whom their less elegant sisters would expressively term 'their sort.'

For Madame Moraines, who had just attained her thirtieth year, and who, satiated as she was with every kind of luxury, with no ambition to realise, and without the least respect for the men she met in her set, the apparition of a new being like René, so entirely different to the usual drawing-room 'swell,' might and did become an event in its way. It was curiosity that led her to take a seat next to him at Madame Komof's supper-table, and her feminine tact had at once told her in what _rôle_ she would be most seductive in his eyes. His conversation had delighted her, but on her return home she had gone to sleep after uttering the 'Impossible!' which is used as a charm against all complaints of this kind by Society belles, a class more bound down in their narrow paths of pleasure than any busy housewife by her daily duties. Then René had called, and the impression he had already made on her was intensified a hundred-fold. She was pleased with all she saw or imagined in the young man--his good looks, his true-heartedness, his awkwardness, and his timidity. It was in vain that she kept repeating 'Impossible!' as she put the finishing touch to her dress by fastening one or two diamond pins in her bodice--in spite of that word she was already capitulating. She turned the idea over again and again, and all kinds of plans for bringing the adventure to a successful issue passed through her practical mind. 'Desforges is very sharp,' she reflected, adding, as she remembered the Baron's tirade against literary men, 'and he has already smelt a rat.' This tirade had at first afforded her amusement, but now it annoyed her, and made her feel a desire to act in a manner entirely opposed to her excellent friend's wishes. She was so completely absorbed in thought that it attracted her maid's attention, and caused that young person to say to the footman, 'There's something wrong with Madame. Can Monsieur have found out anything?'

This unreasonable and irresistible abstraction lasted all through dinner, then on the way to the theatre, and even during the performance, until Madame Ethorel suddenly remarked, 'Isn't that Monsieur Vincy looking at us over there--in the stalls near the door on the right?'

'Madame Komof's poet?' asked Suzanne indifferently. During René's visit she had mentioned that she was going to the Opera that night. She remembered it now as she put up her own glasses, mounted in chased silver--another present from the Baron. She saw René, and as he timidly turned away his glance a sudden thrill ran through her. Had Desforges, from his place at the back of the box, overheard Madame Ethorel's remark? No, she thought not; he was in deep conversation with Crucé.

'He is talking shop,' she said to herself as she listened, 'and has heard nothing. What is going on in me?'

It was the first time for many a day that the music touched some chord of feeling within her. She spent the evening between the happiness that René's presence caused her and the mortal dread that he might visit her in her box. The shame of having been remarked no doubt paralysed the poet, for he dared not even look towards the place where Suzanne sat, and when she went down to her carriage his face was not to be seen in the double row of men who lined the staircase. There was therefore nothing to prevent her from giving herself up to the idea that had obtained such a hold upon her, and as she laid her fair head upon the lace-covered pillow she had got so far as to say: 'Provided he doesn't ask his friend Larcher for information about me!'