Ги де Мопассан
Bel Ami
He left her in the cab while he got the order for the box, in order that she might not see it offered him, and then came to fetch her. They went in, and were received with bows by the acting manager. An immense crowd filled the lounge, and they had great difficulty in making their way through the swarm of men and women. At length they reached the box and settled themselves in it, shut in between the motionless orchestra and the eddy of the gallery. But Madame de Marelle rarely glanced at the stage. Wholly taken up with the women promenading behind her back, she constantly turned round to look at them, with a longing to touch them, to feel their bodices, their skirts, their hair, to know what these creatures were made of.
Suddenly she said: "There is a stout, dark girl who keeps watching us all the time. I thought just now that she was going to speak to us. Did you notice her?"
He answered: "No, you must be mistaken." But he had already noticed her for some time back. It was Rachel who was prowling about in their neighborhood, with anger in her eyes and hard words upon her lips.
Duroy had brushed against her in making his way through the crowd, and she had whispered, "Good evening," with a wink which signified, "I understand." But he had not replied to this mark of attention for fear of being seen by his mistress, and he had passed on coldly, with haughty look and disdainful lip. The woman, whom unconscious jealousy already assailed, turned back, brushed against him again, and said in louder tones: "Good evening, George." He had not answered even then. Then she made up her mind to be recognized and bowed to, and she kept continually passing in the rear of the box, awaiting a favorable moment.
As soon as she saw that Madame de Marelle was looking at her she touched Duroy's shoulder, saying: "Good evening, are you quite well?"
He did not turn round, and she went on: "What, have you grown deaf since Thursday?" He did not reply, affecting a contempt which would not allow him to compromise himself even by a word with this slut.
She began to laugh an angry laugh, and said: "So you are dumb, then? Perhaps the lady has bitten your tongue off?"
He made an angry movement, and exclaimed, in an exasperated tone: "What do you mean by speaking to me? Be off, or I will have you locked up."
Then, with fiery eye and swelling bosom, she screeched out: "So that's it, is it? Ah! you lout. When a man sleeps with a woman the least he can do is to nod to her. It is no reason because you are with someone else that you should cut me to-day. If you had only nodded to me when I passed you just now, I should have left you alone. But you wanted to do the grand. I'll pay you out! Ah, so you won't say good evening when you meet me!"
She would have gone on for a long time, but Madame de Marelle had opened the door of the box and fled through the crowd, blindly seeking the way out. Duroy started off in her rear and strove to catch her up, while Rachel, seeing them flee, yelled triumphantly: "Stop her, she has stolen my sweetheart."
People began to laugh. Two gentlemen for fun seized the fugitive by the shoulders and sought to bring her back, trying, too, to kiss her. But Duroy, having caught her up, freed her forcibly and led her away into the street. She jumped into an empty cab standing at the door. He jumped in after her, and when the driver asked, "Where to, sir?" replied, "Wherever you like."
The cab slowly moved off, jolting over the paving stones. Clotilde, seized by a kind of hysterical attack, sat choking and gasping with her hands covering her face, and Duroy neither knew what to do nor what to say. At last, as he heard her sobbing, he stammered out: "Clo, my dear little Clo, just listen, let me explain. It is not my fault. I used to know that woman, some time ago, you know – "
She suddenly took her hands from her face, and overcome by the wrath of a loving and deceitful woman, a furious wrath that enabled her to recover her speech, she pantingly jerked out, in rapid and broken sentences: "Oh! – you wretch – you wretch – what a scoundrel you are – can it be possible? How shameful – O Lord – how shameful!" Then, getting angrier and angrier as her ideas grew clearer and arguments suggested themselves to her, she went on: "It was with my money you paid her, wasn't it? And I was giving him money – for that creature. Oh, the scoundrel!" She seemed for a few minutes to be seeking some stronger expression that would not come, and then all at once she spat out, as it were, the words: "Oh! you swine – you swine – you swine – you paid her with my money – you swine – you swine!" She could not think of anything else, and kept repeating, "You swine, you swine!"
Suddenly she leant out of the window, and catching the driver by the sleeve, cried, "Stop," and opening the door, sprang out.
George wanted to follow, but she cried, "I won't have you get out," in such loud tones that the passers-by began to gather about her, and Duroy did not move for fear of a scandal. She took her purse from her pocket and looked for some change by the light of the cab lantern, then taking two francs fifty centimes she put them in the driver's hand, saying, in ringing tones: "There is your fare – I pay you, now take this blackguard to the Rue Boursault, Batignolles."
Mirth was aroused in the group surrounding her. A gentleman said: "Well done, little woman," and a young rapscallion standing close to the cab thrust his head into the open door and sang out, in shrill tones, "Good-night, lovey!" Then the cab started off again, followed by a burst of laughter.
VI
George Duroy woke up chapfallen the next morning.
He dressed himself slowly, and then sat down at his window and began to reflect. He felt a kind of aching sensation all over, just as though he had received a drubbing over night. At last the necessity of finding some money spurred him up, and he went first to Forestier.
His friend received him in his study with his feet on the fender.
"What has brought you out so early?" said he.
"A very serious matter, a debt of honor."
"At play?"
He hesitated a moment, and then said: "At play."
"Heavy?"
"Five hundred francs."
He only owed two hundred and eighty.
Forestier, skeptical on the point, inquired: "Whom do you owe it to?"
Duroy could not answer right off. "To – to – a Monsieur de Carleville."
"Ah! and where does he live?"
"At – at – "
Forestier began to laugh. "Number ought, Nowhere Street, eh? I know that gentleman, my dear fellow. If you want twenty francs, I have still that much at your service, but no more."
Duroy took the offered louis. Then he went from door to door among the people he knew, and wound up by having collected at about five o'clock the sum of eighty francs. And he still needed two hundred more; he made up his mind, and keeping for himself what he had thus gleaned, murmured: "Bah! I am not going to put myself out for that cat. I will pay her when I can."
For a fortnight he lived regularly, economically, and chastely, his mind filled with energetic resolves. Then he was seized with a strong longing for love. It seemed to him that several years had passed since he last clasped a woman in his arms, and like the sailor who goes wild on seeing land, every passing petticoat made him quiver. So he went one evening to the Folies Bergère in the hope of finding Rachel. He caught sight of her indeed, directly he entered, for she scarcely went elsewhere, and went up to her smiling with outstretched hand. But she merely looked him down from head to foot, saying: "What do you want with me?"
He tried to laugh it off with, "Come, don't be stuck-up."
She turned on her heels, saying: "I don't associate with ponces."
She had picked out the bitterest insult. He felt the blood rush to his face, and went home alone.
Forestier, ill, weak, always coughing, led him a hard life at the paper, and seemed to rack his brain to find him tiresome jobs. One day, even, in a moment of nervous irritation, and after a long fit of coughing, as Duroy had not brought him a piece of information he wanted, he growled out: "Confound it! you are a bigger fool than I thought."
The other almost struck him, but restrained himself, and went away muttering: "I'll manage to pay you out some day." An idea shot through his mind, and he added: "I will make a cuckold of you, old fellow!" And he took himself off, rubbing his hands, delighted at this project.
He resolved to set about it the very next day. He paid Madame Forestier a visit as a reconnaissance. He found her lying at full length on a couch, reading a book. She held out her hand without rising, merely turning her head, and said: "Good-day, Pretty-boy!"
He felt as though he had received a blow. "Why do you call me that?" he said.
She replied, with a smile: "I saw Madame de Marelle the other day, and learned how you had been baptized at her place."
He felt reassured by her amiable air. Besides, what was there for him to be afraid of?
She resumed: "You spoil her. As to me, people come to see me when they think of it – the thirty-second of the month, or something like it."
He sat down near her, and regarded her with a new species of curiosity, the curiosity of the amateur who is bargain-hunting. She was charming, a soft and tender blonde, made for caresses, and he thought: "She is better than the other, certainly." He did not doubt his success, it seemed to him that he had only to stretch out his hand and take her, as one gathers a fruit.
He said, resolutely: "I did not come to see you, because it was better so."
She asked, without understanding: "What? Why?"
"No, not at all."
"Because I am in love with you; oh! only a little, and I do not want to be head over ears."
She seemed neither astonished, nor shocked, nor flattered; she went on smiling the same indifferent smile, and replied with the same tranquillity: "Oh! you can come all the same. No one is in love with me long."
He was surprised, more by the tone than by the words, and asked: "Why not?"
"Because it is useless. I let this be understood at once. If you had told me of your fear before, I should have reassured you, and invited you, on the contrary, to come as often as possible."
He exclaimed, in a pathetic tone: "Can we command our feelings?"
She turned towards him: "My dear friend, for me a man in love is struck off the list of the living. He becomes idiotic, and not only idiotic, but dangerous. I cease all intimate relations with people who are in love with me, or who pretend to be so – because they bore me, in the first place; and, secondly, because they are as much objects of suspicion to me as a mad dog, which may have a fit of biting. I therefore put them into a kind of moral quarantine until their illness is over. Do not forget this. I know very well that in your case love is only a species of appetite, while with me it would be, on the contrary, a kind of – of – of communion of souls, which does not enter into a man's religion. You understand its letter, and its spirit. But look me well in the face." She no longer smiled. Her face was calm and cold, and she continued, emphatically: "I will never, never be your mistress; you understand. It is therefore absolutely useless, it would even be hurtful, for you to persist in this desire. And now that the operation is over, will you agree to be friends – good friends – real friends, I mean, without any mental reservation."
He had understood that any attempt would be useless in face of this irrevocable sentence. He made up his mind at once, frankly, and, delighted at being able to secure this ally in the battle of life, held out both hands, saying: "I am yours, madame, as you will."
She read the sincerity of his intention in his voice, and gave him her hands. He kissed them both, one after the other, and then said simply, as he raised his head: "Ah, if I had found a woman like you, how gladly I would have married her."
She was touched this time – soothed by this phrase, as women are by the compliments which reach their hearts, and she gave him one of those rapid and grateful looks which make us their slaves. Then, as he could find no change of subject to renew the conversation, she said softly, laying her finger on his arm: "And I am going to play my part of a friend at once. You are clumsy." She hesitated a moment, and then asked: "May I speak plainly?"
"Yes."
"Quite plainly?"
"Quite."
"Well, go and see Madame Walter, who greatly appreciates you, and do your best to please her. You will find a place there for your compliments, although she is virtuous, you understand me, perfectly virtuous. Oh! there is no hope of – of poaching there, either. You may find something better, though, by showing yourself. I know that you still hold an inferior position on the paper. But do not be afraid, they receive all their staff with the same kindness. Go there – believe me."
He said, with a smile: "Thanks, you are an angel, a guardian angel."
They spoke of one thing and another. He stayed for some time, wishing to prove that he took pleasure in being with her, and on leaving, remarked: "It is understood, then, that we are friends?"
"It is."
As he had noted the effect of the compliment he had paid her shortly before, he seconded it by adding: "And if ever you become a widow, I enter the lists."
Then he hurried away, so as not to give her time to get angry.
A visit to Madame Walter was rather awkward for Duroy, for he had not been authorized to call, and he did not want to commit a blunder. The governor displayed some good will towards him, appreciated his services, and employed him by preference on difficult jobs, so why should he not profit by this favor to enter the house? One day, then, having risen early, he went to the market while the morning sales were in progress, and for ten francs obtained a score of splendid pears. Having carefully packed them in a hamper to make it appear that they had come from a distance, he left them with the doorkeeper at Madame Walter's with his card, on which he had written: "George Duroy begs Madame Walter to accept a little fruit which he received this morning from Normandy."
He found the next morning, among his letters at the office, an envelope in reply, containing the card of Madame Walter, who "thanked Monsieur George Duroy, and was at home every Saturday."
On the following Saturday he called. Monsieur Walter occupied, on the Boulevard Malesherbes, a double house, which belonged to him, and of which a part was let off, in the economical way of practical people. A single doorkeeper, quartered between the two carriage entrances, opened the door for both landlord and tenant, and imparted to each of the entrances an air of wealth by his get-up like a beadle, his big calves in white stockings, and his coat with gilt buttons and scarlet facings. The reception-rooms were on the first floor, preceded by an ante-room hung with tapestry, and shut in by curtains over the doorways. Two footmen were dozing on benches. One of them took Duroy's overcoat and the other relieved him of his cane, opened the door, advanced a few steps in front of the visitor, and then drawing aside, let him pass, calling out his name, into an empty room.
The young fellow, somewhat embarrassed, looked round on all sides when he perceived in a glass some people sitting down who seemed very far off. He was at sea at first as to the direction in which they were, the mirror having deceived his eyes. Then he passed through two empty drawing-rooms and reached a small boudoir hung with blue silk, where four ladies were chatting round a table bearing cups of tea. Despite the assurance he had acquired in course of his Parisian life, and above all in his career as a reporter, which constantly brought him into contact with important personages, Duroy felt somewhat intimidated by the get-up of the entrance and the passage through the deserted drawing-room. He stammered: "Madame, I have ventured," as his eyes sought the mistress of the house.
She held out her hand, which he took with a bow, and having remarked: "You are very kind sir, to call and see me," she pointed to a chair, in seeking to sit down in which he almost fell, having thought it much higher.
They had become silent. One of the ladies began to talk again. It was a question of the frost, which was becoming sharper, though not enough, however, to check the epidemic of typhoid fever, nor to allow skating. Every one gave her opinion on this advent of frost in Paris, then they expressed their preference for the different seasons with all the trivial reasons that lie about in people's minds like dust in rooms. The faint noise made by a door caused Duroy to turn his head, and he saw in a glass a stout lady approaching. As soon as she made her appearance in the boudoir one of the other visitors rose, shook hands and left, and the young fellow followed her black back glittering with jet through the drawing-rooms with his eyes. When the agitation due to this change had subsided they spoke without transition of the Morocco question and the war in the East and also of the difficulties of England in South Africa. These ladies discussed these matters from memory, as if they had been reciting passages from a fashionable play, frequently rehearsed.
A fresh arrival took place, that of a little curly-headed blonde, which brought about the departure of a tall, thin lady of middle age. They now spoke of the chance Monsieur Linet had of getting into the Academie-Francaise. The new-comer formerly believed that he would be beaten by Monsieur Cabanon-Lebas, the author of the fine dramatic adaption of Don Quixote in verse.
"You know it is to be played at the Odeon next winter?"
"Really, I shall certainly go and see such a very excellent literary effort."
Madame Walter answered gracefully with calm indifference, without ever hesitating as to what she should say, her mind being always made up beforehand. But she saw that night was coming on, and rang for the lamps, while listening to the conversation that trickled on like a stream of honey, and thinking that she had forgotten to call on the stationer about the invitation cards for her next dinner. She was a little too stout, though still beautiful, at the dangerous age when the general break-up is at hand. She preserved herself by dint of care, hygienic precautions, and salves for the skin. She seemed discreet in all matters; moderate and reasonable; one of those women whose mind is correctly laid out like a French garden. One walks through it with surprise, but experiencing a certain charm. She had keen, discreet, and sound sense, that stood her instead of fancy, generosity, and affection, together with a calm kindness for everybody and everything.
She noted that Duroy had not said anything, that he had not been spoken to, and that he seemed slightly ill at ease; and as the ladies had not yet quitted the Academy, that favorite subject always occupying them some time, she said: "And you who should be better informed than any one, Monsieur Duroy, who is your favorite?"
He replied unhesitatingly: "In this matter, madame, I should never consider the merit, always disputable, of the candidates, but their age and their state of health. I should not ask about their credentials, but their disease. I should not seek to learn whether they have made a metrical translation of Lope de Vega, but I should take care to obtain information as to the state of their liver, their heart, their lungs, and their spinal marrow. For me a good hypertrophy, a good aneurism, and above all, a good beginning of locomotor ataxy, would be a hundred times more valuable than forty volumes of disgressions on the idea of patriotism as embodied in barbaric poetry."
An astonished silence followed this opinion, and Madame Walter asked with a smile: "But why?"
He replied: "Because I never seek aught else than the pleasure that any one can give the ladies. But, Madame, the Academy only has any real interest for you when an Academician dies. The more of them die the happier you must be. But in order that they may die quickly they must be elected sick and old." As they still remained somewhat surprised, he continued. "Besides, I am like you, and I like to read of the death of an Academician. I at once ask myself: 'Who will replace him?' And I draw up my list. It is a game, a very pretty little game that is played in all Parisian salons at each decease of one of the Immortals, the game of 'Death and the Forty Fogies.'"
The ladies, still slightly disconcerted, began however, to smile, so true were his remarks. He concluded, as he rose: "It is you who really elect them, ladies, and you only elect them to see them die. Choose them old, therefore, very old; as old as possible, and do not trouble yourselves about anything else."
He then retired very gracefully. As soon as he was gone, one of the ladies said: "He is very funny, that young fellow. Who is he?"
Madame Walter replied: "One of the staff of our paper, who does not do much yet; but I feel sure that he will get on."
Duroy strode gayly down the Boulevard Malesherbes, content with his exit, and murmuring: "A capital start."
He made it up with Rachel that evening.
The following week two things happened to him. He was appointed chief reporter and invited to dinner at Madame Walter's. He saw at once a connection between these things. The Vie Francaise was before everything a financial paper, the head of it being a financier, to whom the press and the position of a deputy served as levers. Making use of every cordiality as a weapon, he had always worked under the smiling mask of a good fellow; but he only employed men whom he had sounded, tried, and proved; whom he knew to be crafty, bold, and supple. Duroy, appointed chief of the reporting staff, seemed to him a valuable fellow.
This duty had been filled up till then by the chief sub-editor, Monsieur Boisrenard, an old journalist, as correct, punctual, and scrupulous as a clerk. In course of thirty years he had been sub-editor of eleven different papers, without in any way modifying his way of thinking or acting. He passed from one office to another as one changes one's restaurant, scarcely noticing that the cookery was not quite the same. Political and religious opinions were foreign to him. He was devoted to his paper, whatever it might be, well up in his work, and valuable from his experience. He worked like a blind man who sees nothing, like a deaf man who hears nothing, and like a dumb man who never speaks of anything. He had, however, a strong instinct of professional loyalty, and would not stoop to aught he did not think honest and right from the special point of view of his business.
Monsieur Walter, who thoroughly appreciated him, had however, often wished for another man to whom to entrust the "Echoes," which he held to be the very marrow of the paper. It is through them that rumors are set afloat and the public and the funds influenced. It is necessary to know how to slip the all-important matter, rather hinted at than said right out, in between the description of two fashionable entertainments, without appearing to intend it. It is necessary to imply a thing by judicious reservations; let what is desired be guessed at; contradict in such a fashion as to confirm, or affirm in such a way that no one shall believe the statement. It is necessary that in the "Echoes" everyone shall find every day at least one line of interest, in order that every one may read them. Every one must be thought of, all classes, all professions, Paris and the provinces, the army and the art world, the clergy and the university, the bar and the world of gallantry. The man who has the conduct of them, and who commands an army of reporters, must be always on the alert and always on his guard; mistrustful, far-seeing, cunning, alert, and supple; armed with every kind of cunning, and gifted with an infallible knack of spotting false news at the first glance, of judging which is good to announce and good to hide, of divining what will catch the public, and of putting it forward in such a way as to double its effect.
Monsieur Boisrenard, who had in his favor the skill acquired by long habit, nevertheless lacked mastery and dash; he lacked, above all, the native cunning needed to put forth day by day the secret ideas of the manager. Duroy could do it to perfection, and was an admirable addition to the staff. The wire-pullers and real editors of the Vie Francaise were half a dozen deputies, interested in all the speculations brought out or backed up by the manager. They were known in the Chamber as "Walter's gang," and envied because they gained money with him and through him. Forestier, the political editor, was only the man of straw of these men of business, the worker-out of ideas suggested by them. They prompted his leaders, which he always wrote at home, so as to do so in quiet, he said. But in order to give the paper a literary and truly Parisian smack, the services of two celebrated writers in different styles had been secured – Jacques Rival, a descriptive writer, and Norbert de Varenne, a poet and story-writer. To these had been added, at a cheap rate, theatrical, musical and art critics, a law reporter, and a sporting reporter, from the mercenary tribe of all-round pressmen. Two ladies, "Pink Domino" and "Lily Fingers," sent in fashion articles, and dealt with questions of dress, etiquette, and society.
Duroy was in all the joy of his appointment as chief of the "Echoes" when he received a printed card on which he read: "Monsieur and Madame Walter request the pleasure of Monsieur Geo. Duroy's company at dinner, on Thursday, January 20." This new mark of favor following on the other filled him with such joy that he kissed the invitation as he would have done a love letter. Then he went in search of the cashier to deal with the important question of money. A chief of the reporting staff on a Paris paper generally has his budget out of which he pays his reporters for the intelligence, important or trifling, brought in by them, as gardeners bring in their fruits to a dealer. Twelve hundred francs a month were allotted at the outset to Duroy, who proposed to himself to retain a considerable share of it. The cashier, on his pressing instances, ended by advancing him four hundred francs. He had at first the intention of sending Madame de Marelle the two hundred and eighty francs he owed her, but he almost immediately reflected that he would only have a hundred and twenty left, a sum utterly insufficient to carry on his new duties in suitable fashion, and so put off this resolution to a future day.
During a couple of days he was engaged in settling down, for he had inherited a special table and a set of pigeon holes in the large room serving for the whole of the staff. He occupied one end of the room, while Boisrenard, whose head, black as a crow's, despite his age, was always bent over a sheet of paper, had the other. The long table in the middle belonged to the staff. Generally it served them to sit on, either with their legs dangling over the edges, or squatted like tailors in the center. Sometimes five or six would be sitting on it in that fashion, perseveringly playing cup and ball. Duroy had ended by having a taste for this amusement, and was beginning to get expert at it, under the guidance, and thanks to the advice of Saint-Potin. Forestier, grown worse, had lent him his fine cup and ball in West Indian wood, the last he had bought, and which he found rather too heavy for him, and Duroy swung with vigorous arm the big black ball at the end of its string, counting quickly to himself: "One – two – three – four – five – six." It happened precisely that for the first time he spiked the ball twenty times running, the very day that he was to dine at Madame Walter's. "A good day," he thought, "I am successful in everything." For skill at cup and ball really conferred a kind of superiority in the office of the Vie Francaise.
He left the office early to have time to dress, and was going up the Rue de Londres when he saw, trotting along in front of him, a little woman whose figure recalled that of Madame de Marelle. He felt his cheeks flush, and his heart began to beat. He crossed the road to get a view of her. She stopped, in order to cross over, too. He had made a mistake, and breathed again. He had often asked how he ought to behave if he met her face to face. Should he bow, or should he seem not to have seen her. "I should not see her," he thought.
It was cold; the gutters were frozen, and the pavement dry and gray in the gas-light. When he got home he thought: "I must change my lodgings; this is no longer good enough for me." He felt nervous and lively, capable of anything; and he said aloud, as he walked from his bed to the window: "It is fortune at last – it is fortune! I must write to father." From time to time he wrote to his father, and the letter always brought happiness to the little Norman inn by the roadside, at the summit of the slope overlooking Rouen and the broad valley of the Seine. From time to time, too, he received a blue envelope, addressed in a large, shaky hand, and read the same unvarying lines at the beginning of the paternal epistle. "My Dear Son: This leaves your mother and myself in good health. There is not much news here. I must tell you, however," etc. In his heart he retained a feeling of interest for the village matters, for the news of the neighbours, and the condition of the crops.
He repeated to himself, as he tied his white tie before his little looking-glass: "I must write to father to-morrow. Wouldn't the old fellow be staggered if he could see me this evening in the house I am going to? By Jove! I am going to have such a dinner as he never tasted." And he suddenly saw the dark kitchen behind the empty café; the copper stewpans casting their yellow reflections on the wall; the cat on the hearth, with her nose to the fire, in sphinx-like attitude; the wooden table, greasy with time and spilt liquids, a soup tureen smoking upon it, and a lighted candle between two plates. He saw them, too – his father and mother, two slow-moving peasants, eating their soup. He knew the smallest wrinkles on their old faces, the slightest movements of their arms and heads. He knew even what they talked about every evening as they sat at supper. He thought, too: "I must really go and see them;" but his toilet being ended, he blew out his light and went downstairs.
