Sentimental Education (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (22 page)

Thereupon, the good lady adopted another plan. In a tender voice broken by sobs she began to dwell on her solitude, her old age, and the sacrifices she had made for him. Now that she was more unhappy than ever, he was abandoning her. Then, alluding to the anticipated close of her life:

“A little patience—good heavens! you will soon be free!”

These lamentations were renewed twenty times a day for three months; and at the same time the luxuries of home seduced him. He found it enjoyable to have a softer bed and napkins that were not torn, so that, weary, worn down, overcome by the terrible force of comfort, Frédéric allowed himself to be brought to Maitre Prouharam’s office.

He displayed there neither knowledge nor aptitude. Up to this time, he had been regarded as a young man of great ability who ought to be the shining light of the Department. All were disappointed.

At first, he said to himself:

“It is necessary to inform Madame Arnoux about it;” and for a whole week he kept formulating in his own mind rhapsodic letters and short notes, eloquent and sublime. The fear of avowing his actual position restrained him. Then he thought that it was far better to write to the husband. Arnoux knew life and could understand the true state of the case. At length, after a fortnight’s hesitation:

“Bah! I ought not to see them any more: let them forget me! At any rate, I shall be cherished in her memory without having sunk in her estimation! She will believe that I am dead, and will miss me—perhaps.”

As extravagant resolutions cost him little, he swore in his own mind that he would never return to Paris, and that he would not even make any enquiries about Madame Arnoux.

Nevertheless, he missed the very smell of the gas and the noise of the omnibuses. He mused on the things that she might have said to him, on the tone of her voice, on the light of her eyes—and, regarding himself as a dead man, he no longer did anything at all.

He arose very late, and looked through the window at the passing teams of wagoners. The first six months especially were hateful.

On certain days, however, he was possessed by a feeling of indignation even against her. Then he would go forth and wander through the meadows, half covered in winter time by the flooding of the Seine. They were separated by rows of poplar-trees. Here and there arose a little bridge. He tramped about till evening, crushing the yellow leaves under his feet, inhaling the fog, and jumping over the ditches. As his arteries began to throb more vigorously, he felt himself carried away by a desire to do something wild; he longed to become a trapper in America, to serve a pasha in the East, to set off as a sailor; and he vented his melancholy in long letters to Deslauriers.

The latter was struggling to get on. The slothful conduct of his friend and his eternal jeremiads appeared to him simply stupid. Soon, their correspondence dwindled to almost nothing. Frédéric had given all his furniture to Deslauriers, who stayed on in the same lodgings. From time to time his mother spoke to him. Finally he one day told her about the present he had made, and she was berating him for it, when a letter was placed in his hands.

“What is the matter now?” she said, “you are trembling?”

“There is nothing the matter with me,” replied Frédéric.

Deslauriers informed him that he had taken Sénécal under his protection, and that for the past fortnight they had been living together. So now Sénécal was lounging in the midst of things that had come from the Arnoux’s shop. He might sell them, criticise, make jokes about them. Frédéric felt wounded in the depths of his soul. He went up to his room. He wanted to die.

His mother called him to consult him about a planting in the garden.

This garden was, in the fashion of an English park, cut in the middle by a wooden fence; and half of it belonged to Père Roque, who had another for vegetables on the bank of the river. The two neighbours, having fallen out, abstained from making their appearance there at the same hour. But since Frédéric’s return, the old gentleman used to walk about there more frequently, and was not cheap with his courtesies towards Madame Moreau’s son. He pitied the young man for having to live in a country town. One day he told him that Madame Dambreuse had been anxious to hear from him. On another occasion he expatiated on the custom in Champagne, where noble titles could be passed on through the mother.

“At that time you would have been a lord, since your mother’s name was De Fouvens. People can say what they like—never mind them! there’s something in a name. After all,” he added, with a sly glance at Frédéric, “that depends on the Keeper of the Seals.”

These aristocratic pretensions contrasted strangely with his personal appearance. As he was small, his big chestnut-coloured frock-coat exaggerated the length of his torso. When he took off his hat, he revealed a face almost like that of a woman with an extremely sharp nose; his hair, which was of a yellow colour, resembled a wig. He saluted people with a very low bow, brushing against the wall.

Up to his fiftieth year, he had been content with the services of Catherine, a native of Lorraine, of the same age as himself, whose face was pock-marked. But in the year 1834, he brought back with him from Paris a handsome blonde with a passive sheep-like expression and a “queenly carriage.” Ere long, she was observed strutting about with large earrings; and everything was explained by the birth of a daughter who was introduced to the world under the name of Elisabeth Olympe-Louise Roque.

Catherine, in her jealousy, expected that she would hate this child. On the contrary, she became fond of the little girl, and treated her with the utmost care, consideration, and tenderness, in order to supplant her mother and make the child dislike her—an easy task, inasmuch as Madame Éléonore entirely neglected the little one, preferring to gossip at the tradesmen’s shops. On the day after her marriage, she went to pay a visit at the Sub-prefecture, no longer spoke familiarly to the servants, and took it into her head that, as a matter of good form, she ought to exhibit a certain severity towards the child. She was present while the little one was at her lessons. The teacher, an old clerk who had been employed at the Mayor’s office, did not know how to go about the work of instructing the girl. The pupil rebelled, got her ears boxed, and rushed away to shed tears on the lap of Catherine, who always took her side. After this the two women wrangled, and M. Roque ordered them to hold their tongues. He had married only out of tender regard for his daughter, and did not wish to be annoyed by them.

She often wore a tattered white dress, and pantalettes trimmed with lace; and on great feast days she would leave the house attired like a princess, in order to mortify a little the matrons of the town, who forbade their brats to associate with her on account of her illegitimate birth.

She passed her life nearly always by herself in the garden, went see-sawing on the swing, chased butterflies, then suddenly stopped to watch the beetles swooping down on the rose-trees. It was, no doubt, these habits which gave her face an expression both bold and dreamy. She was, moreover, the same height as Marthe, so that Frédéric said to her, at their second meeting:

“Will you permit me to kiss you, mademoiselle?”

The little girl lifted up her head and replied:

“I will!”

But the fence separated them from one another.

“We must climb over,” said Frédéric.

“No, lift me up!”

He stooped over the fence, and raising her off the ground with his hands, kissed her on both cheeks; then he put her back on her own side; and this performance was repeated on later occasions when they found themselves together.

Without more reserve than a child of four, as soon as she heard her friend coming, she jumped up to meet him, or else, hiding behind a tree, she began barking like a dog to frighten him.

One day, when Madame Moreau had gone out, he brought her up to his own room. She opened all the perfume-bottles, and pomaded her hair plentifully; then, without the slightest embarrassment, she lay down on the bed, where she remained stretched out at full length, wide awake.

“I’m imagining that I’m your wife,” she said to him.

Next day he found her all in tears. She confessed that she had been “weeping for her sins;” and, when he wished to know what they were, she hung down her head, and answered:

“Ask me no more!”

The time for first communion was at hand. She had been brought to confession in the morning. The sacrament scarcely made her wiser. Occasionally, she worked herself into a real tantrum; and Frédéric was sent to calm her.

He often brought her with him on his walks. He day-dreamed as they walked along, while she would gather wild poppies at the edges of the corn-fields; and, when she saw him more melancholy than usual, she tried to console him with her pretty childish prattle. His heart, bereft of love, fell back on this friendship inspired by a little girl. He gave her sketches of funny old men, told her stories, and devoted himself to reading books to her.

He began with the
Annales
Romantiques, a collection of prose and verse celebrated at the time. Then, forgetting her age, so much was he charmed by her intelligence, he read for her in succession,
Atala, Cinq-Mars,
and Les Feuilles
d’Automne.
^w
But one night (she had that very evening heard
Macbeth
in Letourneur’s simple translation) she woke up, exclaiming:

“The spot! the spot!” Her teeth chattered, she shivered, and, fixing terrified glances on her right hand, she kept rubbing it, saying:

“Still a spot!”

At last a doctor was brought, who recommended that she be kept free from violent emotions.

The townsfolk saw in this only an unfavourable prognossis for her morals. It was said that “young Moreau” wished to make an actress of her later.

Soon another event became the subject of discussion—namely, the arrival of uncle Barthélemy. Madame Moreau gave up her bedroom for him, and was so gracious as to serve meat to him on fast-days.

The old man was not very agreeable. He was perpetually making comparisons between Le Havre and Nogent, the air of which he considered heavy, the bread bad, the streets ill-paved, the food mediocre, and the inhabitants very lazy. “How poor business is here!” He blamed his deceased brother for his extravagance, pointing out by way of contrast that he had himself accumulated an income of twenty-seven thousand francs a year. At last, he left at the end of the week, and on the footboard of the carriage he spoke these by no means reassuring words:

“I am very glad to know that you are comfortably off.”

“You will get nothing,” said Madame Moreau as they re-entered the dining-room.

He had come only at her urgent request, and for eight days she had been seeking, on her part, for an opening—only too clearly perhaps. She repented now of having done so, and remained seated in her armchair with her head bent down and her lips tightly pressed together. Frédéric sat opposite, staring at her; and they were both silent, as they had been five years before on his return home by the Montereau steamboat. This coincidence, which suddenly struck him, made him think of Madame Arnoux.

At that moment the crack of a whip outside the window reached their ears, while a voice was heard calling out to him.

It was Père Roque, who was alone in his tilted cart. He was going to spend the whole day at La Fortelle with M. Dambreuse, and cordially offered to drive Frédéric there.

“You have no need of an invitation as long as you are with me. Don’t be afraid!”

Frédéric felt inclined to accept this offer. But how would he explain his extended sojourn at Nogent? He had not a proper summer suit. Finally, what would his mother say? He accordingly decided not to go.

From that time, their neighbour was less friendly. Louise was growing tall; Madame Éléonore fell dangerously ill; and the intimacy broke off, to the great delight of Madame Moreau, who feared lest her son’s prospects of being settled in life might be affected by association with such people.

She was thinking of purchasing for him the clerkship of the Court of Justice. Frédéric raised no particular objection to this scheme. He now accompanied her to mass; in the evening he took a hand in a game of cards. He became accustomed to provincial habits of life, and allowed himself to slide into them; and even his love had assumed a character of mournful sweetness, a kind of soporific charm. Having poured out his grief in his letters, confused it with everything he read, vented it during his walks through the country, he had almost exhausted it, so that Madame Arnoux was for him, like a dead woman whose tomb he was surprised he did not know, so tranquil and resigned had his affection for her now become.

One day, the 12th of December, 1845, about nine o’clock in the morning, the cook brought up a letter to his room. The address, which was in big letters, was written in a hand he was not acquainted with; and Frédéric, feeling sleepy, was in no great hurry to break the seal. Finally, when he did so, he read:

He was the heir! As if a fire had suddenly broken out on the other side of the wall, he jumped out of bed in his shirt, with his feet bare. He passed his hand over his face, doubting the evidence of his own eyes, believing that he was still dreaming, and in order to make his mind more clearly conscious of the reality of the event, he flung the window wide open.

There had been a snow fall; the roofs were white, and he even recognised in the yard outside a washtub which had caused him to stumble after dark the evening before.

He read the letter over three times in succession. Could there be anything more certain? His uncle’s entire fortune! A yearly income of twenty-seven thousand francs! And he was overwhelmed with joy at the idea of seeing Madame Arnoux once more. With the vividness of a hallucination he saw himself beside her, at her house, bringing her a present in silver paper, while at the door stood a tilbury—no, a brougham rather!—a black brougham, with a servant in brown livery. He could hear his horse pawing the ground and the noise of the curb-chain mingling with the murmur of their kisses. And every day this was renewed indefinitely. He would receive them in his own house: the dining-room would be furnished in red leather; the boudoir in yellow silk; sofas everywhere! and such a variety of whatnots, china vases, and carpets! These images came in so tumultuous a fashion into his mind that he felt his head spinning. Then he thought of his mother; and he descended the stairs with the letter in his hand.