Part 15

Adeline dismissed her maid, feeling a little more tranquil; she was certain at all events that her dishonor was a secret; she went to her little Ermance; she took her in her arms, and sought consolation with her; a voice within told her that she was not to blame; she felt that it was true, and recovered a little courage. Intent alone constitutes the crime, and Adeline felt the most violent hatred for Dufresne; she nourished that sentiment with delight; it seemed to her that the more horror she felt for him, the less guilty she was in her own eyes.

But a crushing thought came to her mind; she remembered Dufresne’s last words: Edouard loved another woman. It was in the arms of a woman that he had passed that wretched night; he had come home and had not thought of seeking her; it was all over; he had forgotten her, he was unfaithful. That certainty filled the cup of poor Adeline’s despair; it took away her last hope of happiness.

Still bewildered by the day and night that he had passed, Edouard had left Madame de Géran’s house to return home; but a sense of shame, a secret feeling of remorse prevented him from going to his wife. In vain does a man make excuses for himself, unless he has long been addicted to all forms of excess, and accustomed to defy public opinion--he does not commit a culpable act without feeling an inward dissatisfaction, without hearing the reproofs of his conscience. Edouard was still too unused to the paths of vice not to feel the remorse which follows a first sin. A night passed away from home, his wife neglected, a large sum of money lost at play in two days! What fruitful subjects for reflections! Edouard did as most men do who have just committed some foolish act; instead of determining to be more prudent and more orderly in the future, he sought to forget himself, and abandoned himself more ardently than ever to his passions; like those poor wretches who drown themselves for fear the world’s end is at hand.

With Dufresne, Edouard was sure of finding distraction. So it was to his lodgings that he betook himself. Dufresne was alone, absorbed in deep thought. For the first time Murville began to use the familiar form of address; he felt more at his ease with him since he had ceased to be happy in his own family. He shared Dufresne’s principles and his way of looking at things to the full, so that all ceremony was naturally banished between two friends so closely united. Edouard threw himself into a chair and looked at Dufresne, who waited for him to speak first.

“Here I am, my dear fellow; I expected to find you at my house.”

“I went there last evening; but as you didn’t return and I was tired of waiting, I came away.”

“Faith! it is quite as well that you did. You would have waited in vain. I passed the night at Madame de Géran’s. You understand me?”

“Yes, perfectly. I congratulate you; you could not be more fortunate. That woman adores you!”

“Oh! she is mad over me!--that’s the word; she didn’t want me to leave her this morning; I had difficulty in tearing myself from her arms.”

“Be careful; Madame de Géran has intense passions, a fiery brain, an exalted imagination! She is capable of dogging your steps all the time.”

“You enchant me! I like such women!”

“But suppose your wife should discover it?”

“Bah! she is such an indolent creature! Her way of loving doesn’t resemble Madame de Géran’s in the least.”

“If I dared give you some advice----”

“Speak; but no more of the formal mode of address between us, my dear Dufresne. Let us banish ceremony.”

“With all my heart.”

“You were saying----”

“If you take my advice, you will send your wife into the country, in order to be more free.”

“Parbleu! that is an excellent idea of yours! In truth, she talks to me every day about the fields and meadows and green grass. I will send her to pasture, and I will remain in Paris.”

“But you don’t mention your game of cards with Chevalier Desfleurets; did you recoup your losses?”

“No; on the contrary, I played in the most extraordinary luck; I lost continually.--By the way, that reminds me that I owe him three thousand francs, and that I promised to give them to him this morning.”

“Gambling debts are sacred; you must pay up.”

“That is what I propose to do. I made an appointment with him at the Palais-Royal, at number 9; does he live there?”

“Ha! ha! ha! how ignorant you are, my dear Murville! Don’t you know that number nine is an _academy_, a roulette establishment?”

“What! the chevalier frequents a roulette establishment?”

“Why not? You will see the most fashionable people there; many nobles who try their hardest to win the money of plebeians, and worthy bourgeois, who are delighted to play with a chevalier or a viscount; but always the utmost decency and good-breeding; no disturbance! I assure you that more than one society gambler might take lessons in deportment at the academy; people lose their money there without whining; they swear only under their breath; in short, everything there is most agreeable.”

“Parbleu! I am curious to see the place; but I thought that a business man ought not to show himself in such places; I have been told that it was very injurious to the reputation.”

“You have been misinformed; and the proof is that you will see many merchants, business agents, brokers, commission merchants there; it is a very respectable assemblage; the rendezvous of soldiers, foreigners, and great noblemen travelling incognito; and the police see to it that none of the riffraff gets in; they leave number 113 to the workmen, the apprentices, and the petty tradesmen, because those good people must enjoy themselves also; but number 9 is almost as respectable as Frascati’s.”

“According to that, I may go there without fear.”

“You cannot fail to find Desfleurets there; he is there from the time it opens till the dinner hour, and indeed he does not always go out for dinner. He sits at the green table, pricking cards. For ten years he has been seeking a _martingale_ certain to make his fortune; and he declares that he will have it before long, and then he will tell it to all his acquaintances. If one could find that, on my word, it would be delightful; one would no longer need to worry about anything; we would enjoy ourselves and lead the gayest lives imaginable.”

“Do you think that it is possible?”

“Why, certainly! More extraordinary things have been seen; examples are plentiful. Look you, between ourselves, I know more than twenty people, who hold an excellent position in society, who spend a great deal of money, follow the fashions, deny themselves nothing, and who live solely by gambling; listen to a favorite author:

“’Tis play brings many lives of ease-- As hosts of cabbies, chairmen; add to these The lombard keen, with faded gems supplied Which every day sees on new fingers tried, And Gascons loud who sup at game-house board, Unribboned knights, and misses all ignored Who, save for lansquenet and gains quite sly, Their virtue weak would market far from high!”

“You surprise me; I would not have believed it, for it is always a matter of chance.”

“Oh! my dear fellow, there is no such thing as chance for the man who chooses to reason coolly, to reckon the chances, the series of numbers and the probabilities. However, what I am saying is not meant to induce you to play; you are not lucky, and you had much better hold on to something solid.”

“By the way, what about business?”

“Absolute stagnation; we must wait.”

“All right. Ah! my dear Dufresne, if you should find a reliable martingale, what sport we would have while my wife is in the country!”

“Nonsense! take my advice and think no more about that! It is mere folly, a delusion.--I must leave you.”

“We shall meet this evening.”

“Where?”

“Parbleu! at Madame de Géran’s.”

Dufresne and Edouard parted; the former perfectly certain of the effect which his remarks had produced upon the feeble brain of Adeline’s husband, and the latter dreaming only of roulette and martingales, and already forming the most extravagant projects.

It was in this frame of mind that Edouard sought the place mentioned by the chevalier; he entered and walked through several rooms, until at last he reached one where a number of gamblers were assembled around a roulette table. He felt the blood mount to his cheeks, and he tried to conceal his embarrassment and to assume the air of an habitué of the game. Chevalier Desfleurets spied him; he rose, and ran toward him, and forgot to prick his card, he was in such haste to receive the three thousand francs. Edouard at once paid his debt; the chevalier was delighted with his debtor’s promptitude, and he invited him to sit down for a moment beside him. Edouard hesitated; he looked uneasily about him, fearing to meet someone whom he knew. He did in fact see several business agents whom he had met with Dufresne, and some other persons who had come to his party. But they all seemed wholly engrossed by the green cloth, and paid no attention to him. The chevalier led him, he allowed himself to be led, and in a moment he was seated at the roulette table.

Desfleurets took up his cards and began to prick again, after having inquired of a tall, lean man in a nut-colored coat, what numbers had come out. The tall man glanced angrily at him, coughed, spat, blew his nose, made a grimace, clenched his fists, and did not reply.

“He is a crank,” said the chevalier to Edouard, in an undertone; “he pricks his card three hours before risking his five-franc piece, and he almost always waits too long. He was watching the red zero, and I will wager that it came out before he bet on it. That man will never know the way to gamble; he is too much of a coward!”

Edouard looked on and listened with astonishment to what was taking place before him for the first time; for before his marriage he had never chosen to enter a gambling house, being prudent enough then to distrust his own weakness. It is only when one is certain not to yield to temptation, when one experiences for games of chance the horror which they should inspire in every sensible man, that one can safely enter a gambling hell. What a vast field for watching and studying the effects of that deplorable passion! The result of one’s reflections is melancholy, but it teaches a useful lesson, and a gambling house is the best place for a young man to correct himself of that fatal taste, if, instead of abandoning himself to the passion that leads him thither, he could examine coolly what is taking place about him.

What vertigo has seized upon those unhappy wretches, who crowd about the table and devour with their eyes the heaps of silver and gold, and the bank notes spread out before the croupiers? They do not see that all that money is there only to allure them, to lead them on; they say to themselves: “This one wins, that one goes away with his pockets full; why should not we be as fortunate as they?”--Ah! even if they should, would the money won in a gambling hell ever serve to enrich a family, to support a wife; to endow a daughter, to help the unfortunate? No, the gambler’s heart is hard and unfeeling, his mind is sordid and debased by the passion which dominates it. If they win to-day, they will play again to-morrow, until they can no longer procure aught to satisfy the insatiable greed which draws them to the fatal table. If they return home with their pockets filled with gold, do not imagine that they will be more generous with their families. Their wives are ill-clad, their children lack everything, creditors besiege their door; but they will give nothing, they will pay nobody, they will laugh at the threats of those whose wages they hold back, and will be indifferent to the voice of nature. Soon they will lose the money that a lucky chance caused them to win, and then woe to the poor creatures that surround them! it is upon them that they vent their rage, which they do not dare to display before strangers. It is in their own homes that they abandon themselves to anger, to brutality, even to the last excesses. They must have money; they seize upon everything that can still produce it; their children’s last garments are sold, the result of a day’s work disappears in a second upon a color or a number. Then they glare darkly about them, despair is depicted upon all their features; they gaze in frenzy at that gold which they cannot possess, and at the croupiers, who observe their despair with the coldest indifference. Then the guiltiest desires and the basest villainy torment their frantic imagination; they covet their neighbors’ money; they put out their hand toward it, and often, impelled by the cruel passion which destroys their wits, they commit the most shameful crimes. Such examples are only too common; gambling has three results, but they are inevitable: it leads either to suicide, to the poor-house or to the stool of repentance.

Edouard did not indulge in these reflections, unfortunately for him. He watched the game, and after he had mastered its principles, he placed a twenty-franc piece on the red; that color came out nine times in succession; and as Edouard had left his stake each time, he won in five minutes ten thousand two hundred and forty francs. Chevalier Desfleurets, leaping up and down on his chair in amazement at the sight of such extraordinary good-fortune, advised Murville in a whisper to stop there for the time, because, according to the probabilities and the prickings on his card, the black could not fail to come out next. The chevalier was very pleased to see the young man win, for he expected to meet him at Madame de Géran’s, and as he played very badly at écarté and paid very promptly, it was very satisfactory to know that he was in funds.

Edouard did not care about probabilities, but he was conscious of a great void in his stomach; for the occupation with which his new conquest had provided him all night made him feel the necessity of renewing his strength. So he rose and left the table, promising the chevalier to play with him that evening.

At that moment the ball stopped in a compartment, and, contrary to Desfleurets’s expectations, it rested on the red. Edouard was terribly vexed that he had left the game so soon, but he promised to make up for it at the first opportunity. The tall man in the nut-colored coat, who had overheard the advice which the chevalier had given Edouard, uttered a vulgar oath when he saw the red come out; whereat Murville was slightly astonished, in view of the fact that Dufresne had emphasized the extreme good breeding which prevailed in that establishment; but he stuffed his gold in his pockets none the less, and left the place, radiant because of his good luck.

He turned his steps homeward; on the way he thought of his wife; she must be very anxious, and very angry with him; she had not seen him since the day before. He felt greatly embarrassed about speaking to her, but he decided to go to her, and, after taking his money to his office, where he found his clerk asleep over the _Moniteur_, Edouard went up to his wife’s apartment.

Despite the indifference which Edouard had felt for his wife for some time past, he was moved when he saw the change which had taken place in her whole person since the day before. Adeline was pale and depressed; her swollen, red eyes were still full of tears; every feature bore the mark of the most intense suffering. Edouard had no doubt that his long absence was the cause of his wife’s grief; so he approached her and tried to find some excuses to palliate his conduct.

“Perhaps you sat up for me last night; no doubt you were anxious; but I was detained against my will at a party where there was card playing; I was winning, and I could not decently leave.”

“You are the master of your actions, monsieur,” replied Adeline, without looking up at her husband; “you would be very foolish to put yourself out for me.”

Edouard did not expect to find such submission; he dreaded reproaches, complaints and tears; but Adeline did not say another word; she seemed resigned, she sighed and held her peace. This behavior produced more effect on her husband’s heart than outcries and remonstrances; he felt touched; he was on the point of falling at his wife’s feet and asking her pardon for his misdeed; but Madame de Géran’s image presented itself to his mind and changed all his sensations; he repelled a sentimentality too vulgar for a man of fashion, and returned to his new plans.

“Madame, you have expressed a wish to return to the country; the summer is advancing and you must take advantage of it. Moreover, I believe that it will be an excellent thing for our child. I advise you to start at once. I cannot go with you now, for some important matters keep me in Paris; but I hope to come to see you often.”

“Very well, monsieur; I will make all necessary preparations for going away and for my stay in the country, where I shall remain until I receive your orders to return.”

“On my honor,” said Edouard to himself, “my wife is charming! such obedience! It is altogether extraordinary.”

He took Adeline’s hand and pressed it lightly; and paying no heed to the trembling of that once cherished hand, he imprinted a very cold kiss upon it, and hurried away with the rapidity of a schoolboy when he hears the bell ring for recess.

“He wants me to go away,” said Adeline to herself when she was alone; “my presence embarrasses him. Well, we will go. What does it matter to me now in what part of the world I live, since I shall find happiness nowhere? I have lost my husband’s love, I have lost honor and repose of mind; I will go away and conceal my melancholy existence; for my daughter’s sake only do I desire to preserve it, and I will devote it entirely to her. Poor child! What would become of you if you should lose me?”

Adeline embraced her daughter; only by reminding herself that she was a mother could she succeed in reviving her vanishing courage. She made preparations for her departure for Villeneuve-Saint-Georges; she would have been glad to induce her mother to accompany her; but Mamma Germeuil cared very little for the country; she had her own habits, her acquaintances in Paris, and old age always grows selfish; she felt that she had but few pleasures left to enjoy, and she did not care to sacrifice any of them.

A week was sufficient for Adeline to prepare all that was necessary for her and her daughter in the country. At the end of that time, during which she caught a glimpse of her husband at rare intervals, she prepared to start. But before taking her leave, she determined to make a last effort, not to recover her husband’s love, for she well knew that that sentiment cannot be commanded, but to show him Dufresne as he really was. Edouard did not listen to her and refused to believe her when she mentioned the villain who was leading him on to his ruin; but Adeline thought of Madame Dolban; she thought that she would not refuse to write Murville another letter, wherein she would describe in detail the wickedness of the man whom he called his friend.

It was for Edouard’s honor and his good name that Adeline took this last step, which could not restore her happiness but would reassure her concerning the future of her husband.

The young wife went at once to Madame Dolban’s house and asked the concierge if she could see her.

“You come too late, madame,” the man replied; “Madame Dolban died three days ago!”

“She is dead! Why, she wrote to me only nine days ago!”

“Oh! mon Dieu! that’s the way things go in this world! A severe attack of fever, and then nervous collapse, and I don’t know what else. It carried her off right away.”

“All is lost,” said Adeline as she turned away; “there is no hope now of convincing Edouard. Dufresne triumphs. He will drag him to his destruction!”

Discouraged by this fresh disappointment, the griefstricken Adeline made haste to leave Paris; she started with her daughter for Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, and as she sat in the carriage, with none but her child to witness her grief, she thought of the difference between that journey and the journey of the preceding year, and she wept over the rapidity with which her happiness had vanished.

XXII

THE SCHEMERS.--THE GAMBLERS.--THE SWINDLERS

Rid of his wife’s presence, the sight of whom was still disturbing to his conscience, Edouard abandoned himself without restraint to Dufresne’s advice, to his love for Madame de Géran, and to his passion for gambling.

Dufresne had kept half of the sum produced by the sale of the consols. He had always intended to appropriate a portion of Edouard’s fortune, upon whose purse he had already been drawing for some time, because, as he said, business was not good. But Dufresne added to all his other vices that of gambling, and the sum that he kept was speedily lost in the gulf in which he had, in a very short time, squandered Madame Dolban’s fortune.

Edouard passed a large part of his days in the academies, and his nights with Madame de Géran, at whose house there was gambling of the wildest sort. People reasonably well dressed, but whose faces denoted the vilest sort of characters, resorted every evening to the house of the general’s widow, where they were certain to find Monsieur Murville and some other dupes, over whom the schemers and kept women disputed.

But Madame de Géran did not lose sight of her lover; she did not propose that her slave should escape her; she was an adept at working all the springs of coquetry; all sorts of stratagems, all methods were employed to bewilder and blind a man who believed himself to be adored, and who made every conceivable sacrifice to gratify the wishes of his mistress.

Madame de Géran led her lovers a rapid pace: cards, theatres, dinners, drives, select parties, dresses, shawls, jewels, suppers, love, caresses!--only with the aid of all these could one rely even upon ostensible fidelity from her. But it must be confessed too, that amid all these diversions, Edouard had not a moment to himself; he did not even find time to be bored; and that is rarely the case when one is surfeited with everything.

But luck had ceased to be favorable to him. After winning at roulette several times in succession, he experienced the inconstancy of fortune and lost considerable sums. Instead of stopping, he persisted obstinately in going on; that is the inevitable result of a first gain, which acts as a bait to people who are beginning to frequent gambling hells; so that the bankers watch with a smile the gambler who goes out with his pockets full of gold, feeling very sure that the next day the unfortunate wretch will lose twice what he has won.

“S’il est quelque joueur qui vive de son gain, On en voit tous les jours mille mourir de faim.”[C]

[C]

If some gamblers there be who live by their gains, We see thousands who but starve for their pains.

After trying trente-et-un, dice and roulette, and after losing twenty thousand francs in an hour, the last remnant of the sum which Dufresne had handed him before his wife’s departure, Edouard returned to his house, gloomy and anxious; he scolded his servants and talked roughly to everybody without reason; but he felt the need of venting a part of his ill-humor upon his people. He entered his office, where he found the clerk asleep on his desk; he shook him roughly.

“What are you doing here? Is this the way you attend to your work?”

The young man yawned, stretched his arms, rubbed his eyes, and gazed at his employer, who was pacing the floor of the office.

“Well! do you hear me, monsieur? Why aren’t you at work?”

“Why, monsieur, you know very well that I haven’t any.”

“Why aren’t you writing circulars for the provinces?”

“Monsieur knows too that we sent several of his circulars to the same people, and they haven’t answered.”