i am sitting in a restaurant in the town of ———, at the seaside. it is the height of the bathing season, the carnival of salt and fresh water, and the whole world is forgetting the labour and unpleasantnesses of city life for a few weeks.
i am waiting for my breakfast, seated at a table just outside the house, under an arbour of vines and convolvulus. the sea breeze reaches me, plays with my tablecloth and sports with my hair, uniting itself to the perfume of flowers which peep [pg 225] up, red, white, and violet, happy also in the midst of all the sunshine, greenery, and freshness.
nearly all the tables, scattered about under the arbours or in the shade of the trees, are surrounded by happy people who have just taken their baths, fresh, with disordered hair, hungry and merry. even human life has its good quarters of an hour.
near me i see a teacher to whom two girls of about ten and twelve have been intrusted, and who, faithful to her trust, is giving them a noisy lesson in morality and gallantry, whilst she eats and drinks as if she were starving. i cannot imagine how she does it, but she manages not to interrupt her educational discourse, whilst she never ceases to eat and [pg 226] drink. the pupils do not listen to her, but look at each other, slyly laughing at the inexhaustible conversation of their instructress. a little further off there are three young fellows who, having passed their examinations well, have been rewarded by a visit to the seaside. they are laughing, noisy, and giddy with youth, thoughtless, envying no living soul. one of them has just finished his breakfast, and in order to pay his bill of one franc fifty centimes he brings out a red banknote of a hundred francs, and offers it to the waiter with great pride, and in such a way that everyone can see it. it is the first he has ever had, and already that morning he has offered it at the coffeehouse [pg 227] to pay fifteen centimes, and at the baths to pay for his ticket of fifty centimes. no one would change it, and even the waiter says he has no change; and the young fellow is happy, for he will be able to display it a fourth, a fifth, and even a sixth time.
facing me a whole family of some seven or eight persons are eating merrily, and the children, in a chromatic scale of bright colours and different heights, range from two to fifteen years. each one is giving utterance to its joy, clambering up and down the chairs, playing with a little dog to which they give the tid-bits on their plates. the father is red, stout, and in his shirt sleeves; he looks smilingly at his blond companion, [pg 228] reading in her smile the reflection of all that lisping chatter, laughter, and folly which surround them.
all these people, differing in age, condition, and intellect, unite in the same merriment, which they seem to have drawn from the sea, the father of planetary life, the dispenser of spirit and energy; and all the while the golden rays of the sun shine through the vine leaves, the ivy, and convolvulus, painting with the shade and penumbra of the leaves the tablecloth, the dresses of the women, and the rosy faces of the children, throwing patches, half shades, and glistening spots on the garden sand.
i, too, a solitary observer, enjoyed all the bright sunshine and the happiness of the people, but forgot that i [pg 229] had only looked to the right and straight before me; i turned calmly to the left, sure of finding there another scene of joy and brightness.
on the contrary, the picture was very different.
at a table just as clean and white as the others, played on capriciously by light and shade, two persons were sitting, a man and a woman.
he was about thirty, she forty-five. he was handsome, robust, with manly energy; she lame, fat, and hunch-backed. there ought to have been a neck, but there was none to be seen, for the heavy head appeared to have been put on the chest awry; and all the cruel artifices resorted to for hiding the hump behind seemed [pg 230] made on purpose to produce another in front. even her features were ugly, and the ill-made hands were laden with rings. large earrings were in her ears, and a colossal locket surrounded by diamonds, inclosing the man’s portrait, was hanging in front. husband and wife, no doubt.
she was eating, but could not have known the flavour of the food, for the mouthful went round and round between her teeth, whilst another piece on the fork was waiting in vain for its turn to enter the mouth. that poor deformed being did not cry, that is, no tears fell on her cheeks, but she blew her nose every now and then, and the eyes were moist and sad. she placed the [pg 231] fork automatically from time to time on the plate, with the mouthful still on it, and gazed at the man lovingly, tenderly, waiting, imploring for a look.
but the look never came. with one hand he hastily conveyed the food to his mouth, and with the other held a newspaper, which he was reading with pretended interest, so as not to have the silence interrupted. he did not shed tears nor blow his nose, but he frowned, and he was also suffering one of those intense and hidden agonies to which one does not confess, but which furrow the soul like harrows of steel.
i did not remove my eyes again from that dumb and agonizing scene.
after a long interval she said to [pg 232] him, timidly, hesitatingly, almost as if committing a crime:
“will you take anything else?”
he started as if the voice had struck him like a blow in the face; he turned to her and twisted his mouth like one seized with a sudden and irresistible disgust.
“no, i want nothing more.”
the no was pronounced angrily and with scorn; it was, and must have been, a blow to her to whom it was addressed. he looked at her a long time, a look full of hatred, remorse, and disgust. it seemed as if he were passing in review all his companion’s ugliness, and as if until that moment he had never seen it so clearly: those wrinkles, that gray hair, that hump, the deformed neck, [pg 233] those arms which looked like hams in sacks, and then those rings and jewels which seemed to jeer at the white, flabby flesh with their brightness. the deformity, the grotesque violation of good taste, suddenly struck that handsome and robust man, for he had sold youth and manhood to an unfortunate woman who had believed it possible to still love and be loved.
the two had plunged into the waves of the sea a little before; they had drunk of the sun’s rays too, but neither sea nor sun had been able to give happiness to these unfortunate creatures who had bartered carnal pleasures for gold, who had changed sacred love to a vile prostitution of flesh and banknotes.
[pg 234]
she had already passed the meridian of her second youth; he was still young.
she was undressing. he was already in bed, and followed the progressive unclothing of that body with an anxious curiosity, that body once so active, so handsome and fascinating, now all submerged in the high waters of an invading corpulence.
he wished to hide his head under the counterpane, and did so, but a morbid curiosity made him put out his head again directly, and he looked.
she had read in her glass only too well the ruin of her form, and had always sought to undress alone; but this time she was obliged to do it before his eyes. she ingeniously hid the regions which had most suffered [pg 235] wreck, and with a remnant of coquetry kept uncovered her shoulders, the ultimum moriens in the woman’s body; but diffident of herself, and fearful of those looks which seemed to pierce her through, her last garment fell from her hands to her feet, and the disasters of the wreck suddenly appeared, standing out cruelly, without pity for her or for him.
she uttered a cry and stooped down to cover herself....
he, egotistical, pitiless, forgot all the delights that this body once so fragrant of youth and beauty had given him, and exclaimed, throwing the words in her face:
“at a certain age i think a little more modesty is demanded.”
from that moment, from that evening, [pg 236] the two were enemies, two galley slaves bound by the same chain.
?
she was reclining, rather than seated, on the sofa, with small and large cushions, which allowed her to change the frame of which she was the picture. she was smoking a cigarette, and had a french novel on her knee that could not have interested her very much, for at that moment she yawned. the yawn was cut short, or rather interrupted, by the sudden opening of the sitting-room door; no one ever entered the room in that way but him. this time it was more like him than usual: always a husband, now an angry one.
he entered with his hat on his head, [pg 237] his stick in his hand, as if he were just going out or had just come in. the latter was the case. on returning from his walk a large envelope had been put into his hand in the anteroom. it contained a dressmaker’s bill, the third or fourth he had received in a few months. the total was very high, higher than usual, and he came into the room with the bill in his hand to make a scene.
“come, now, come, now, my lady, when shall we finish with these accounts?”
she made no answer, but continued to smoke, only growing a little red in the face.
“it seems that my lady believes herself to be a millionaire; this is the third bill that i have had to [pg 238] pay in little more than four months. but what game are we playing, my lady?”
and my lady, throwing the end of her cigarette on a japanese tray, stretched out her voluptuous limbs, and showed, as if by chance, a fairy-like foot and a leg for a sculptor. more than once already had the disclosure of such a picture, sacred to love, warded off a heavy storm. now, however, neither foot nor leg could disarm her husband, who had thrown his stick on a chair, but kept on his hat, to increase the violence of his words and to give authority to his threats. in the meantime he rumpled and then folded the innocent paper with alternate convulsive movements.
[pg 239]
“i shall not pay this bill; you must pay it yourself. you have jewels (given by me, of course); put them in pawn. you will then learn not to play the princess with other people’s money.”
the little foot and leg retired under the dress, ashamed of their defeat, and at last the lady opened her mouth too:
“i think you can hardly expect me to cut a sorry figure in society.”
“but what society? society of egypt! many ladies who are more truly ladies than you don’t spend half what you do. i have inquired and know very well.”
“yes, your fifi told you, your fifi, for whom you pay much larger bills than you do for your wife.”
[pg 240]
never had his wife uttered the name of the stage dancer until that moment, and he had believed her to be quite ignorant of his amours. he reddened up to his hair, frowned, and shook himself as if he had been stung by a viper, and the conversation became embittered even to brutality.
“ah! jealous, and impertinent too! it seems to me that when one has not brought a halfpenny of dowry there ought to be a little more modesty and economy.”
“good, very good, sir! i have brought youth and beauty as a dowry, and a dowry besides; yes, you insolent man, a good dowry, a large sum which was lost in the failure of the bank of turin. and [pg 241] is that my fault? and you, what have you brought me? a bald head, false teeth, and a body eaten through with vice—a fine patrimony, truly.”
“ah, you had a dowry, had you? i have never seen it; the only treasure i have seen is the gold with which your teeth are stopped. sell that and pay the dressmaker’s bill with it.”
the bill flew in the air and fell at the woman’s feet.
the husband went out of the room, slamming the door so loudly as to make the little japanese figures and the other bric-a-brac on the table tremble. and the wife, lighting a fresh cigarette, set to, with all the force of her intellect, to invent some revenge worthy of the insult received.
[pg 242]
she was alone in her boudoir, seated before a writing table of ebony inlaid with ivory. she wrote rapidly and smiled to herself, as one smiles when one is writing to one beloved, and saying a saucy thing flavoured with much tenderness.
nothing was heard in the room but the soft and rhythmical scratching of the steel pen on the paper. she was so intent on what she was writing that she had not heard someone raise the portière, enter the room, and stand before her.
that someone was not the person to whom she was writing, for raising her graceful head for a moment as if to seek an adjective more merrily saucy to put with the others, she saw her husband, whom she believed [pg 243] was out, standing before her.
she uttered a startled cry, and unconsciously covered the paper she was writing on with her right hand.
“ah, is it you? how you frightened me!”
“another time i will have myself announced.”
these words were said without anger, and with a serene calmness; but a diabolic irony played round the mouth.
the smile gradually converted itself to a real laugh, to which the nodding head seemed to beat time.
“perhaps you were writing to count b. who can write the better, you or he? his letters are pretty, very pretty! how much passion—no, [pg 244] passion is not a fit word, it is too flattering; let us say sensuality, lasciviousness, debauchery. which of these words do you find most suitable?”
the lady had become white as death. the pen fell from her hand and made a large blot on the elegant paper.
but the husband, continuing to laugh, had approached her, and having drawn a chair to the writing table, stroked her hair lovingly.
“you were afraid; but of what? you think, perhaps, that i am come to make a scene, or perhaps to kill you, and then myself after. no, no; i only like double suicides on the stage or in novels, provided the author of the book or the drama [pg 245] has talent. but here, why stain this beautiful persian carpet with your blood, why scatter mine over the elegant paper you were covering with your words of love? it would really be a pity, a crime, and above all a folly. i am come to make a compact,” and he laid a long kiss on the little fair curls at her neck.
it seemed to the lady as if that kiss burnt her like a red-hot iron.
she withdrew her head and gazed at her husband with glassy eyes, petrified with astonishment.
no, he had not really the look of an assassin. he was calm, cheerful, like a good-tempered fellow who was playing an innocent joke, a very innocent one.
“give me a cigarette. the air [pg 246] is heavy with the odour of your cigarettes! they must be very good ones. probably count b. brought them for you from constantinople?” he did not wait for her to give it to him, but took one himself from a bronze bowl and lighted it. “i told you, then, that i was come to make a compact with you, a compact of purchase and sale, in which we shall both gain something. look!”
and here the husband took out of the pocket of his greatcoat a perfumed packet of letters tied with a golden cord.
“i have a treasure here! the entire and complete collection of all the letters the count has written you. not one is missing! the lady’s maid you dismissed last week made me a present [pg 247] of them, gave them to me for nothing. there are a hundred and thirty, written in three months! how much will you give me for this treasure?”
the lady, being suddenly reassured that her husband’s intentions were not homicidal, looked at him with a gaze full of contempt and cruelty. she no longer felt fear or remorse. she could have wished at that moment that the letters might have been not from one lover only, but from ten, a hundred, and that each one could strike him and spit in his face. she began to laugh too.
“bravo! capital! you are a man of spirit. give me a kiss!”
and the kiss was given, a faithful copy of the one that judas gave christ nearly twenty centuries ago.
[pg 248]
“i will give you a thousand francs!”
“oh! oh! oh!”
and here followed a long and loud laugh.
“a thousand francs! a thousand francs! what are you thinking of? i want ten thousand francs, not a penny more or less. if not, i will give them to your father for nothing, only reserving two or three of the most lascivious to publish in the papers. do you agree?”
“give them to him if you will. i shall say that you wrote them, that they are false. my father esteems me highly.”
“um! your father is not a fool, and the writing of the count is not forged. i want ten thousand francs!”
“i will give you five.”
[pg 249]
“no; it is too little. i must pay nina’s milliner’s bill, and i want to go to paris.”
“i will give you six.”
“no, ten. not a penny more or less.”
“very well; i will give you ten thousand francs. give me the letters. swear that they are all here!”
“look at the dates. they are really all here. they are numbered too by the count, with red ink, perhaps with his blood.”
and here there was a loud laugh.
“when you bring me the ten thousand francs i will give you the letters, not before.”
?
the compact was made, the letters were returned, the sum was paid.
the husband paid nina’s milliner’s [pg 250] bill, and has gone to paris. indeed, he has already returned and is still living in the house of his wife, with whom he hopes soon to be able to negotiate a new ransom.
and she?
she has a new lover to whom she never writes and from whom she will not receive any letters. when he complains of this strange proceeding she throws her arms round his neck and, kissing him, says:
“is it not better, dear, to have a kiss the more and a letter the less?”
and the husband has waited a long time in vain, hoping to discover a new packet of perfumed letters, tied with a golden cord, all marked in progressive numbers, written with red ink, perhaps with blood.
