Paul Bourget A LOVE CRIME

These words, which were uttered in the deep voice of a woman probing to

the inmost chamber of her heart, appeared to astonish the young man even

more than they moved him. He wrapped Helen in his strange gaze. If the

poor woman had had strength enough to observe him she would not have

encountered in those keen eyes the divine emotion which atones for the

guilt of the mistress by the happiness of the lover. It was just the

same gaze, at once contemptuous and inquisitive, with which he had

lately contemplated the group formed by Alfred and Helen. But the latter

was too much confused by what she had just said to keep cool enough for

observing anything.

Then, as she had come back and was crouching on Armand's knees, and

pressing against his breast, a fresh expression, that, namely, of almost

intoxicated desire, was depicted on the young man's face. He felt close

to him the beauty of this yielding body, he held in his arms those

charming shoulders of which he had knowledge from having seen them in

the ball-room, he drank in that indefinable aroma which lingers about

every woman, and he pressed his lips upon those eyelids, which he could

feel quivering beneath his kiss.

"You will at least be happy?" she asked him in a sort of anguish between

two caresses.

"What a question! Why, you have never looked at yourself," he said, and

he began to extol to her all the exquisiteness of her face. "You have

never looked at your eyes"--and he again drew his lips across

them--"your pink cheek"--and he stroked it with his hand--"your soft

hair"--and he inhaled it like a flower--"your sweet mouth"--and he laid

his own upon it.

What answer could she have given to this worship of her beauty? She lent

herself to it with a half-frightened smile, surrendering to these

endearments and to these words as to music. They caused something so

deep and withal so vague to vibrate throughout her being that she came

forth half crushed from these embraces, like one dead. It was not for

the first time that she was thus abandoning herself to Armand's kisses.

But no matter how sweet, how intoxicating these kisses, which she found

it impossible to resist, she had on each occasion been strong enough to

escape from bolder caresses.

No, never, never would she have consented, even had there existed no

danger of a surprise, to yield thus in the little drawing-room, where

the portraits of her mother, her husband, and her son reminded her of

what she was nevertheless ready to sacrifice. Ah! not like that! And

again at this moment, when she saw on Armand's face a certain expression

of which she had so deep a dread, she found courage to escape, seated

herself once more in another easy chair, and opening and shutting a fan

which she had taken up in her quivering hands, replied:

"I will be yours to-morrow, if you wish."

Armand seemed to rouse himself from the sweep of passion in which he had

just been tossing. He looked at her, and she again experienced the

sensation which had already caused her so much pain, and which was that

of a veil drawn suddenly between herself and him. Yet, what could she

have said to displease him? She thought that he was wounded by the fact

of her shrinking from him, for was not the uttering of the words that

she had just uttered equivalent to giving herself to him beforehand, and

how could he be vexed with her for desiring that their happiness might

have another setting than that of her every-day life? But he had already

answered her by the following question:

"Where would you like me to meet you? At my own house? I can send away

my servant for the whole of the afternoon."

"Oh, no!" she replied hastily, "not at your own home."

The vision had just come to her that other women had visited Armand,

those other women whom a new mistress always finds between herself and

the man she loves, like the menace of a fatal comparison, like an

anticipated discrediting of her own caresses, since love is always

similar to itself; in its outward forms.

"At least," she thought to herself, "let it not be amid the same

furniture."

"Would you like me to request one of my friends to lend me his rooms?"

Armand asked.

She shook her head as she had done just before. She could hear by

anticipation the conversation of the two men. She was a woman, and

hitherto had been a virtuous one. She was only too well aware that the

manner in which she regarded her own love would have little resemblance

to that of the unknown friend to whom Armand would apply. In her own

eyes passion sanctified everything, even the worst errors; spiritualised

everything, even the most vehement voluptuousness. But he, this

stranger, what would he see in the affair but an intrigue to afford

matter for jesting. A shudder shook her, and she looked again at Armand.

Ah! how her lover's thoughts would have horrified her had she been able

to read them. It was very far from being De Querne's first affair of the

sort, nor did he believe that it was a first act of weakness on her

part. She had, indeed, told him that he was her first lover, and it was

true.

But what proof could be given of the truth of such vows? The young man

had himself deceived and been deceived too often for distrust not to be

the most natural of his feelings. He had provoked this odious discussion

concerning their place of meeting only for the purpose of studying in

Helen's replies the traces left by the amorous experiences through which

she had passed, and mere curiosity led him to dwell upon a subject which

at that moment was stifling the young woman with shame. The scruples

that she displayed about not yielding to him in her own house seemed to

him a calculation due to voluptuousness; those about not yielding to him

at his house, a calculation due to prudence. When she refused to go to

the rooms of a friend: "She is afraid of my confiding in some one," he

said to himself, "but what does she want?"

"Suppose I furnished a little suite of rooms?" he said.

She shook her head, though this had been her secret dream, but she was

afraid that he would see in her acceptance nothing but a desire to gain

time, and then--the necessity, if their meetings occurred always in the

same place, of enduring the notice of the people of the house, the

thought of being the veiled lady whose arrival is watched! Nevertheless,

although such a contrivance also involved a question of outlay which

horrified her, she would have consented to it had she not had another

feeling, the only one which, shaking her head with its rising fever, she

uttered aloud.

"Do not misjudge me, Armand; rather understand me. I should like to be

yours in a place of which nothing would remain afterwards. What would

become of the rooms you furnished for me if ever you ceased to love me?

Why, I cannot endure the thought of it, even now. Do not wrong me, dear;

only understand me."

Thus did she speak, laying bare the profoundly romantic side of her

nature, as also her heart's secret wound. Although she did not account

fully to herself for Armand's character--a character frightful in

aridity beneath loving externals, for in this man there was an absolute

divorce between imagination and heart--she perceived only too clearly

that he was inclined to misinterpret the slightest indications. She saw

that distrust was springing up in him with an almost unhealthy

suddenness. She had been quite aware that he suspected her, but she had

believed that this doubt proceeded solely from her refusals to belong to

him.

It was on this account that she was consenting to give him this last

proof. "He will doubt no longer," she thought to herself, and the mere

idea of this warmed her whole heart. If only he did not give a guilty

construction to her replies? She rose to go to him, and leaning over the

back of his arm-chair, encircled his forehead with her hands.

"Ah!" she said with a sigh, "if I could know what is going on in here.

It is such a little space, and it is in this little space that all my

happiness and my misfortune are contained."

"If you were able to read in it," the young man replied, "you would see

only your own image."

"I shall read in it to-morrow," she said subtly.

"To-morrow," he returned with a smile; "but what about the place of our

meeting? There is nothing left but furnished rooms or a hotel."

Furnished rooms! A hotel! These words made Helen shudder. All the shames

of adultery appeared to her to be comprised in their syllables. There

was the hiring of a cab, with the driver's cunning smile; there was the

entry into one of those houses, whose thresholds have seen the passage

of so many furtive, quivering women; and, as a setting for her divine

passion, there was the furniture that had, perhaps, been utilised for

similar scenes. Yes, but there was also an element of anonymity, of

impersonality, of never-ending strangeness. And since all was pollution,

the former of the two alternatives carried with it the least. She was

too certain of Armand's refinement to think that he might take her to a

place which he had visited with others. She would have to endure

personal loathing, but nothing that would touch the very essence of her

feeling. It was accordingly with courageous resolution that she replied

to her lover.

"Will you have time enough to find them in one morning?"

"Yes," he said, after a moment's reflection. "I have in my mind a very

convenient house, where one of my English friends always used to stay.

See," he went on, "between eleven and twelve o'clock I will send you

some books and a note. I will give you the address of the house and the

number of the room, just as though you had asked me for the address for

one of your country friends. Don't let that prevent you, however, from

burning the note immediately. You will come at whatever hour you can; I

will spend the whole afternoon waiting for you, and, if you do not come,

I shall not be put out; I shall think that you have not been able."

She listened to him with a mingling of pain and enchantment--pain,

because it would cost her so dear to keep her promise; and enchantment,

because all the trouble that he took to point out these details to her,

instead of enlightening her concerning the man's heart, appeared to her

a sign of his love, and their talk proceeded in the quiet drawing-room,

in front of the expiring fire, until the stopping of a carriage at the

door announced Alfred's return.

"Good-bye, my love," said Helen, taking Armand's hand and kissing it, as

she sometimes did with sweet coaxing; and she had already begun a piece

of work when Chazel came in, with a cheery "Well!" He looked at once

towards his wife with his loyal, honest gaze.

How well Armand knew that gaze, one which had not altered from the days

of their childhood, when they were both at the Institution Vanaboste,

whence they followed the courses of study in the Lycée Henri IV.! The

establishment stood yonder behind the Panthéon, at the corner of the

Rue du Puits-qui-Parle, now the Rue Amyot. Yet it was not remorse for

deceiving the man whom he had known from quite a child that suddenly

made De Querne feel uncomfortable. It was the thought that Helen was

deceiving this confiding nature. Masculine egotism has such monstrous

ingenuousness. A seducer engaged in enticing a woman, despises the woman

for yielding to him, and forgets to despise himself for seducing her.

Meanwhile Alfred had taken Helen's hands.

"I have bored myself conscientiously this evening; what will you give me

in reward?" he asked.

How his familiarity hurt her! How willingly would she have cried to this

unsuspecting husband:

"Do you not see that I love another? Let me go away. I do not want to

lie to you any more."

But two rooms farther off stood a little bed, beneath the white curtains

of which slept her son, her little Henry. Why was it that the picture of

this curly head was something too weak to arrest her on the fatal high

road to adultery, and yet strong enough to prevent her from seeing her

passion through to the end. She had a glimpse of the child while her

husband was speaking to her. It did not occur to her to scorn Armand for

having gained her love, although she was the wife of his friend. She

scorned herself for not loving him enough, since she did not love the

sufferings of which he was the cause, and, sustained by the thought that

she was doing it for him, it was with something like an impulse of pride

that she held out her forehead to her husband's kiss, and said

gracefully:

"That's just like men; they must be paid, and immediately too, for doing

their duty."

CHAPTER II

It was half-past eleven o'clock when Armand de Querne left the house in

the Rue de La Rochefoucauld. The wind had swept away all the clouds, and

the sky was filled with stars. "What a beautiful night!" said Armand to

himself; "I shall walk home." It was a long way, for he lived in the Rue

Lincoln, in the upper part of the Champs-Élysées. Here, on the second

floor of a wing projecting upon a garden, he had rooms which he had once

amused himself with furnishing in quaint and exquisite fashion with all

kinds of old-fashioned trifles. But how long had he ceased to spend the

evening in this "home?"

He was following the pavement of the Rue St.-Lazare, which, after quite

a narrow and slender beginning, suddenly, like a river swelled by

tributaries, widens after the Place de la Trinité, when it receives,

one after the other, the flood of passengers and vehicles drifting

through the Rue de Chateaudun, the Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin, and the

Rue de Londres. Cabs were plying, omnibuses were changing horses, the

crowd was surging. Sometimes a girl came out from the corner of a

doorway, and with obscene speech accosted the young man, who put her

away gently with his hand.

Was it the contrast between the intimacy of the little drawing-room and

the swarming infamy of the pavement? Armand felt deeply melancholy. He

could not help seeing Alfred's face again in thought, with Helen's close

beside it. Yet, was he jealous? No. Pictures of childhood came back to

him as they had done just before, but with increased precision, showing

him Chazel dressed in the uniform of the "Vanabosteans"--a small jacket

similar to that of the Barbistes. They always went side by side in the

ranks. Poor Chazel! he was not rich. The head of the establishment had

taken him as a foundationer, with a view, to making a show-pupil of

him--a machine for winning prizes in competitions. How many times had

Armand paid for him at the little wicket, when the porter sold to the

pupils sweetmeats, fragments of iced chestnuts, cakes, and Parisian

creams--tablets of chocolate having a thick and oversweet liquid inside!

They had gone through all their classes together from the fourth up, and

had together passed through the evil days of the Commune, when, on

returning both of them from the country, after the siege, they found

themselves blockaded in Paris. Alfred had afterwards entered the École

Polytechnique. And when he came on Wednesdays and Sundays to visit his

old schoolfellow, who had already crossed the Seine and begun to lead

the life of a rich and idle young man, how ludicrous he was in his

military dress, embarrassed by his sword, not knowing how to set his hat

upon his head, and invariably scarred with clumsy razor-cuts!

While Alfred was at the School of Bridges, Armand was travelling. He had

gone round the world in the society of an amateur artist. On his return

he found that his friend was no longer at Paris. The letters passing

between them became rare. Could they have told why? Armand perhaps

might. There was only one point left in common between Alfred's life and

his own. Alfred had married Mademoiselle de Vaivre. They had made a trip

to Paris, and Armand well remembered how he had been deliciously

surprised by Helen's distinguished demeanour, when he had expected to

find her awkward, pretentious, and a fright. But at this period he was

taken up with another woman, little Aline, a mistress of his for whom he

had cherished the only genuine passion of which he was capable--painful

jealousy blended with delirium of the senses.

Later on, some one had spoken to him of Helen Chazel, and told him ugly

stories about her. And who was it that had done so? Another

school-fellow--big Lucien Rieume, who had been educated at the Vanaboste

establishment like Alfred and himself--during one of these

_tête-à-tête_ luncheons when an opening of the heart usually

accompanies that of the oysters between two college companions; and

Lucien--cordial, indiscreet, intolerable--had talked a great deal,

pouring out pell-mell whatever he knew concerning former friends. Armand

could again hear him chuckle, leaning forward somewhat with kindled eye

and humid lip:

"Poor Chazel, he hadn't a head worth a fig! It seems that his wife is

tricking him. I heard the gentleman's name: Marades, Tarades--just wait

a moment--yes, De Varades, an artillery officer. It was the talk of

Bourges. He was never out of the house."

It was an unfortunate trait in Armand's character that he was unable to

withstand the tempting of mistrust. When evil was asserted to him, he

preserved an indelible impression of it. He did not altogether believe

in it, and yet he believed in it sufficiently for a suspicion, and a

busy suspicion, to be planted within him. When the Chazels had come to

settle in Paris, ten months previously, and Armand had begun to interest

himself in Helen, the scruples of an old friendship might perhaps have

been stronger than his freak of curiosity if big Rieume's words had not

risen before his recollection.

"Really," he had said to himself, "it would be too foolish,"--a criminal

phrase which serves men for the justification of many a dastardly

action. Helen had not been slow in displaying towards him a kind of

passion which he had attributed to the natural exaltation of a

provincial. "I am the first Parisian who has paid her attentions," he

had said again to himself, and as she possessed charming gracefulness of

gesture, so sweet an expression of countenance and such an air of

complete refinement and nobility about her entire personality, he had

taken a pleasure in completing her education in elegance, thinking to

himself that she would be a delightful mistress.

But for many days she had refused really to become his mistress, and her

resistance had made him obstinate. He had become bent upon overcoming

her, recollecting the officer and telling himself that the officer had

not been the only one. A few skilful conversations with Alfred had

taught him that at one time Varades had really been a constant guest at

the house; was he not the same year's student at the École

Polytechnique as Alfred himself? Armand had lost his doubts, and in

Helen's refusals to be his, he had seen nothing but coquetry. Now, in

this respect like all men who hold the strange ethics of seducers,

Querne considered coquetry in a women a justification for the worst

behaviour. At last the long siege was about to issue in the coveted

result. Madame Chazel had granted him an appointment for the following

day. Twenty-four hours more and he would have a new mistress, as

desirable and as pretty as those whose memory was the most flattering to

the pride of his recollection. Why then did he, instead of being happy,

feel so deeply melancholy. Was it remorse for the treason to his friend?

His friend? Was Alfred really his friend? Yes, that was understood

between themselves, as well as in the eyes of others. But a friend is a

man who knows you and whom you know, to whom you show your heart and who

shows you his. Would he ever bring the tale of one of his hopes, his

joys, his sadnesses, to the calculating machine that bore the name of

Chazel? Had the latter ever confided a secret to him? So much the

better, too, for the ideas of this worthy schoolboy who seemed to look

upon life as the prolongation of a college task, must be silly enough.

It was their college life that continued to link them together, and the

recollections of their childhood. Their childhood? Turning down the Rue

Royale and arriving at the Champs Élysées, Armand suddenly recalled

the ranks of Vanaboste's school, on Thursdays, as they walked three and

three under the superintendence of a poor wretch of an usher who strove

to hide himself among the groups of people, so as to seem a passer-by

like the rest and not a watch-dog charged with the duty of looking after

a flock of schoolboys.

And what a flock it was! The majority had pale complexions, hollow eyes,

an enervated exhaustion of the whole being that spoke of secret

excesses. How much ignominy and baseness was there in that community,

the eldest in which were nineteen years of age and the youngest eight!

Within the walls of their prison, as within the walls of the great

Lycée to which they repaired twice a day, nothing was thought of but

the infamous amours existing between the elder boys and their juniors.

Of these unnatural loves, some were partly sensual, and had for their

theatre all the deserted corners in the house, from the dormitories to

the infirmary. And of the French youth confined within similar colleges,

how many were participators in this lewdness, while the rest defiled

their imaginations, although they repelled it! Among these college boys

there were also elevated and chaste connexions. The perusal of a certain

eclogue of Virgil's, a dialogue of Plato's, and a few of Shakespeare's

sonnets had excited the more literary of them, and Alfred Chazel, being