Sentimental Education (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (10 page)

A third time he returned to it, and at last saw Arnoux carrying on an argument with five or six people around him. He scarcely responded to the young man’s bow; and Frédéric was wounded by this reception. None the less he still sought the best means of finding his way to her side.

His first idea was to come frequently to the shop on the pretext of getting paintings at low prices. Then he conceived the notion of slipping into the letter-box of the journal a few “very strong” articles, which might lead to friendly relations. Perhaps it would be better to get straight to the point at once, and declare his love? Acting on this impulse, he wrote a 12-page letter, full of lyrical phrases and exclamations but he tore it up, and did nothing, attempted nothing—immoralized by a fear of failure.

Above Arnoux’s shop, there were, on the first floor, three windows which were lighted up every evening. Shadows might be seen moving about behind them, especially one; this was hers; and he went very far out of his way in order to gaze at these windows and to contemplate this shadow.

A negress who crossed his path one day in the Tuileries, holding a little girl by the hand, reminded him of Madame Arnoux’s negress. She was sure to come there, like the others; every time he passed through the Tuileries, his heart began to beat with the anticipation of meeting her. On sunny days he continued his walk as far as the end of the Champs-Élysées.

Women seated with careless ease in open carriages, and with their veils floating in the wind, filed past close to him, their horses advancing at a steady walking pace, and with a barely see-saw detectable motion that made the varnished leather of the harness crackle. The vehicles became more numerous, and, slowing after they had passed the circle where the roads met, they took up the entire lane. The horses’ manes came close to each other and the carriage lamps near to other lamps. The steel stirrups, the silver curb-chains and the brass rings, cast shining spots here and there, in the midst of the short breeches, the white gloves, and the furs, falling over the emblems of the carriage doors. He felt as if he were lost in some far-off world. His eyes wandered along the rows of female heads, and certain vague resemblances brought back Madame Arnoux to his mind. He pictured her, in the midst of the others, in one of those little broughams like that of Madame Dambreuse. The sun was setting, and the cold wind raised whirling clouds of dust. The coachmen let their chins sink into their neckcloths; the wheels began to revolve more quickly; the gravel crackled; and all the horse-drawn carriages descended the long sloping avenue at a quick trot, touching, sweeping past one another, getting out of one another’s way; then, at the Place de la Concorde, they went off in different directions. Behind the Tuileries, there was a patch of slate-coloured sky. The trees of the garden formed two enormous masses violet-hued at their highest branches. The gas-lamps were lighted; and the Seine, green all over, was torn into strips of silver moire, near the pillars of the bridges.

He got his dinner for forty-three sous in a restaurant in the Rue de la Harpe.

He glanced disdainfully at the old mahogany counter, the soiled napkins, the dingy silver-plate, and the hats hanging up on the wall. Those around him were students like himself. They talked about their professors, and about their mistresses. He couldn’t care less about professors! Had he a mistress?! To avoid their high spirits, he came as late as possible. The tables were all strewn with remnants of food. The two waiters, worn out with serving customers, lay asleep, each in a corner of his own; and a smell of cooking, of an oil lamp, and of tobacco, filled the deserted dining-room.

Then he slowly set out on the streets again. The gas lamps vibrated, casting on the mud long yellowish shafts of flickering light. Shadowy forms under umbrellas glided along the sidewalks. The pavement was slippery: the fog grew thicker, and it seemed to him that the moist gloom, wrapping around him, descended into the depths of his heart.

He was overwhelmed with remorse. He returned to his lectures. But as he was entirely ignorant of the subjects being taught, the simplest things puzzled him.

He set about writing a novel entitled
Sylvio, the Fisherman’s Son.
The setting for the story was Venice. He was the hero, and Madame Arnoux was the heroine. She was called Antonia; and, in order to have her, he assassinated a number of noblemen, and burned a portion of the city; after which he sang a serenade under her balcony, where the red damask curtains of the Boulevard Montmartre fluttered in the breeze.

The reminiscences, far too numerous, on which he dwelt disheartened him; he went no further with the work, and his lack of motivation intensified.

After this, he begged Deslauriers to come and share his apartment. They might make arrangements to live together with the aid of his allowance of two thousand francs; anything would be better than this intolerable existence. Deslauriers could not yet leave Troyes. He urged his friend to find some means of distracting himself, and, to that end, suggested that he call on Sénécal.

Sénécal was a mathematical tutor, a hard-headed man with republican convictions, a future Saint-Just, according to the clerk. Frédéric ascended the five flights, up which he lived, three times in succession, without getting a visit from him in return. He did not go back to the place.

He now went in for amusing himself. He attended the masquerade balls at the Opera House. These exhibitions of riotous gaiety froze him the moment he had passed the door. Besides, he was restrained by the fear of being insulted on the subject of money, his notion being that a supper with a woman dressed up as a domino, entailing considerable expense, was too much of an adventure.

It seemed to him, however, that he must be loved. Sometimes he used to wake up with his heart full of hope, dressed himself carefully as if he had a
rendez-vous,
and started on interminable excursions all over Paris. Whenever a woman was walking in front of him, or coming in his direction, he would say: “Here she is!” Every time it was only a fresh disappointment. The idea of Madame Arnoux strengthened these desires. Perhaps he might find her on his way; and he conjured up dangerous circumstances, extraordinary perils from which he would save her, in order to get near her.

So the days slipped by with the same tiresome repetition, and enslavement to his usual habits. He leafed through pamphlets under the arcades of the Odéon, went to read the
Revue des Deux Mondes
at the café,
^g
entered the hall of the College de France, and for an hour stopped to listen to a lecture on Chinese or political economy. Every week he wrote long letters to Deslauriers, dined from time to time with Martinon, and occasionally saw M. de Cisy.

He rented a piano and composed German waltzes.

One evening at the theatre of the Palais-Royal,
^h
he noticed, in one of the loge-boxes, Arnoux with a woman by his side. Was it she? The screen of green taffeta, pulled over the side of the box, hid her face. Finally, the curtain rose, and the screen was drawn aside. She was a tall woman of about thirty, rather washed out, and, when she laughed, her full lips revealed a row of magnificent teeth. She chatted familiarly with Arnoux, giving him, from time to time, taps, with her fan, on the fingers. Then a fair-haired young girl with eyelids a little red, as if she had just been weeping, seated herself between them. Arnoux after that remained stooped over her shoulder, pouring forth a stream of talk to which she listened without replying. Frédéric tried to figure out the social position of these women, modestly attired in gowns of sober hue with flat, turned-up collars.

At the close of the play, he made a dash for the exit. The crowd of people going out filled up the passageway. Arnoux, just in front of him, was descending the staircase step by step, with a woman on each arm.

Suddenly a gas-lamp shed its light on him. He wore a crape hat-band. She was dead, perhaps? This idea tormented Frédéric’s mind so much, that he hurried, next day, to the office of
L
Art Industriel,
and paying, without a moment’s delay, for one of the engravings shown in the window for sale, he asked the shop-assistant how was Monsieur Arnoux.

The shop-assistant replied:

“Why, quite well!”

Frédéric, growing pale, added:

“And Madame?”

“Madame, also.”

Frédéric forgot to take his engraving with him.

The winter drew to an end. He was less melancholy in the spring time, and began to prepare for his examination. Having passed it with mediocre results, he departed immediately afterwards for Nogent.

He refrained from going to Troyes to see his friend, in order to escape his mother’s comments. Then, on his return to Paris at the end of the vacation, he left his lodgings, and took two rooms on the Quai Napoleon which he furnished. He had given up all hope of getting an invitation from the Dambreuses. His great passion for Madame Arnoux was beginning to die out.

O
ne morning, in the month of December, while going to attend a law lecture, he thought he observed more than the usual animation in the Rue Saint-Jacques. The students were rushing precipitately out of the cafés, where, through the open windows, they were calling out to one another from one house to the other. The shop keepers in the middle of the sidewalk were looking about them anxiously; the window-shutters were fastened; and when he reached the Rue Soufflot, he perceived a large gathering around the Panthéon.
¹⁰

Young men in groups numbering from five to a dozen walked along, arm in arm, and accosted the larger groups, which had stationed themselves here and there. At the lower end of the square, against the iron railings, men in smocks were holding forth, while policemen, with their three-cornered hats drawn over their ears, and their hands behind their backs, were strolling up and down beside the walls making the cobblestones echo under the tread of their heavy boots. All wore a mysterious, puzzled look; they were evidently expecting something to happen. Each held back a question which was on the tip of his tongue.

Frédéric found himself close to a fair-haired young man with a pleasant face and a moustache and a tuft of beard on his chin, like a dandy of Louis XIII’s time. He asked the stranger the cause of the disorder.

 

“I haven’t the least idea,” replied the other, “nor have they, for that matter! It’s a phase at the moment. What a good joke!”

And he burst out laughing.

The petitions for Reform, which had been signed at the quarters of the National Guard, together with the census implemented by the finance minister, Humann and some other events,
¹¹
had, for the past six months, led to inexplicable gatherings of riotous crowds in Paris, and so frequently had they broken out, that the newspapers had ceased to refer to them.

“This lacks shape and colour,” continued Frédéric’s neighbour. “I am convinced, sire, that we have degenerated. In the good epoch of Louis XI, and even, in that of Benjamin Constant, there were more mutinies amongst the students. I find them as docile as sheep, as dumb as doornails, and only fit to be grocers. Yikes! And these are what we call the youth of the schools!”

He spread his arms wide apart like Frédéric Lemaitre in
Robert Macaire.
¹²

“Youth of the schools, I give you my blessing!”

After this, addressing a rag picker, who was moving a heap of oyster-shells up against the wall of a wine-merchant’s house:

“Do you belong to them—the youth of the schools?”

The old man lifted up his hideous face in which one could trace, in the midst of a grey beard, a red nose and two dull eyes, bloodshot from drink.

“No, you appear to me rather one of those men with sinister faces whom we see, in various groups, liberally scattering gold. Oh, scatter it, my patriarch, scatter it! Corrupt me with the treasures of Albion!
ⁱ
Are you English? I do not reject the presents of Artaxerxes!
^j
Let us have a little chat about the customs union!”

Frédéric felt a hand laid on his shoulder. It was Martinon, looking exceedingly pale.

“Well!” said he with a big sigh, “another riot!”

He was afraid of having his reputation compromised, and couldn’t help but lament. Men dressed in smocks especially made him feel uneasy, suggesting a connection with secret societies.

“You mean to say there are secret societies,” said the young man with the moustache. “That is a worn-out ploy of the Government to frighten the middle-class folk!”
^k

Martinon urged him to speak in a lower voice, for fear of the police.

“You believe still in the police, do you? As a matter of fact, how do you know, Monsieur, that I am not myself a police spy?”

And he looked at him in such a way, that Martinon, in his upset, was, at first, unable to see the joke. The people pushed them on, and they were all three compelled to stand on the little staircase which led, by one of the passages, to the new amphitheatre.