Sentimental Education (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (40 page)

The spectators in the stands had clambered on top of their seats. The others, standing up in the vehicles, followed with opera-glasses in their hands the movements of the jockeys. They could be seen starting out like red, yellow, white, or blue spots across the entire space occupied by the crowd that had gathered around the ring of the hippodrome. At a distance, their speed did not appear to be very great; at the opposite side of the Champ de Mars, they seemed even to be slackening their pace, and to be merely slipping along in such a way that the horses’ bellies touched the ground without their outstretched legs bending at all. But, coming back at a more rapid stride, they looked bigger; they cut the air in their wild gallop. The sun’s rays quivered; pebbles went flying about under their hoofs. The wind, blowing out the jockeys’ jackets, made them flutter like veils. Each of them lashed the animal he rode with great blows of his whip in order to reach the winning-post-that was the goal they aimed at. The numbers were taken down, another was hoisted up, and, in the midst of a burst of applause, the victorious horse dragged his feet to the paddock, all covered with sweat, his knees stiffened, his neck and shoulders bent down, while his rider, looking as if he were expiring in his saddle, clung to the animal’s flanks.

The final start was delayed by a dispute which had arisen. The crowd, getting tired, began to scatter. Groups of men were chatting at the foot of the stands. The talk was free-and-easy. Some fashionable ladies left, scandalised by seeing fast women in their immediate vicinity.

There were also some ladies who appeared at the dance-halls, some light-comedy actresses of the boulevards, and it was not the best-looking portion of them that got the most appreciation. The elderly Georgine Aubert, she whom a writer of vaudevilles called the Louis XI of prostitution, horribly made-up, and every now and then letting out a laugh resembling a grunt, remained reclining at full length in her big calash, covered with a sable fur-tippet, as if it were midwinter. Madame de Remoussat, who had become fashionable by means of her notorious trial, sat enthroned on the seat of a brake in company with some Americans; and Thérèse Bachelu, with her look of a Gothic virgin, filled with her dozen flounces the interior of a carriage which had, in place of an apron, a flower-stand filled with roses. The Maréchale was jealous of these magnificent displays. In order to attract attention, she began to make grand gestures and to speak in a very loud voice.

Gentlemen recognised her, and bowed to her. She returned their salutations while telling Frédéric their names. They were all counts, viscounts, dukes, and marquises, and he carried his head high, for in all eyes he could read a certain respect for his good fortune.

Cisy looked equally happy in the midst of the circle of mature men that surrounded him. Their faces wore cynical smiles above their cravats, as if they were laughing at him. Finally he shook hands with the oldest of them, and made his way towards the Maréchale.

She was eating, with an affectation of gluttony, a slice of
pâté de foie gras.
Frédéric, in order to make himself agreeable to her, followed her example, with a bottle of wine on his knees.

The four-wheeled cabriolet reappeared. It was Madame Arnoux! Her face was startlingly pale.

“Give me some champagne,” said Rosanette.

And, lifting up her glass, full to the brim, as high as possible, she exclaimed:

“Look over there! Good health to virtuous women and to my protector’s wife!”

There was a great burst of laughter all round her; and the cabriolet disappeared from view. Frédéric tugged impatiently at her dress, and was on the point of losing his temper. But Cisy there, in the same position as before, and, with increased confidence, invited Rosanette to dine with him that very evening.

“Impossible!” she replied; “we’re going together to the Café Anglais.”
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Frédéric, as if he had heard nothing, remained silent; and Cisy left the Maréchale with a look of disappointment on his face.

While he had been talking to her at the righthand door of the carriage, Hussonnet presented himself at the opposite side, and, catching the words “Café Anglais”:

“It’s a nice establishment; suppose we had a bite there, eh?”

“Just as you like,” said Frédéric, who, sunk down in the corner of the berlin, was gazing at the horizon as the four-wheeled cabriolet vanished from his sight, feeling that an irreparable thing had happened, and that he had lost his great love. And the other woman was there beside him, the joyful and easy love! But, worn out, full of conflicting desires, and no longer even knowing what he wanted, he was possessed by a feeling of infinite sadness, a longing to die.

A great noise of footsteps and of voices made him raise his head. The little ragamuffins assembled round the track sprang over the ropes and came to stare at the stands. Thereupon their occupants rose to go. A few drops of rain began to fall. The crush of vehicles increased, and Hussonnet got lost in it.

“Well! so much the better!” said Frédéric.

“We like to be alone better—don’t we?” said the Maréchale, as she placed her hand in his.

Then there swept past them with a glimmer of copper and steel a magnificent landau drawn by four horses driven in the Daumont style by two jockeys in velvet vests with gold fringe. Madame Dambreuse was by her husband’s side, and Martinon was on the other seat facing them. All three of them gazed at Frédéric in astonishment.

“They have recognised me!” he said to himself:

Rosanette wished to stop in order to get a better view of the people driving away from the course. But Madame Arnoux might reappear! He called out to the postilion:

“Go on! go on! forward!” And the berlin dashed towards the Champs- Élysées in the midst of the other vehicles—calashes, britzkas, wurths, tandems, tilburies, dog-carts, tilted carts with leather curtains, in which workmen in a jovial mood were singing, or one-horse chaises driven by fathers of families. In victorias crammed with people some young fellows seated on the others’ feet let their legs hang down over the side. Large broughams, which had their seats lined with cloth, carried dowagers fast asleep, or else a splendid machine passed with a seat as simple and coquettish as a dandy’s black coat.

The shower grew heavier. Umbrellas, parasols, and mackintoshes were brought out. People cried out at some distance away: “Good-day!” “Are you quite well?” “Yes!” “No!” “Bye-bye!”—and face after face went by with the rapidity of a magic lantern.

Frédéric and Rosanette did not say a word to each other, feeling a sort of dizziness at seeing all these wheels continually revolving close to them.

At times, the rows of carriages, too closely pressed together, stopped all at the same time in several lines. Then they remained side by side, and their occupants scanned one another. Over door panels adorned with coats-of-arms indifferent glances were cast on the crowd. Eyes full of envy gleamed from the interiors of hackney-coaches. Sneering smiles responded to the haughty manner in which some people carried their heads. Mouths gaping wide expressed idiotic admiration; and, here and there, some pedestrian, in the middle of the road, jumped back with a bound, in order to avoid a rider who had been galloping through the middle of the vehicles, and had succeeded in getting away from them. Then, every thing set itself in motion once more; the coachmen let go of the reins, and lowered their long whips; the horses, excited, shook their bits, and flung foam around them; and the cruppers and the harness getting moist, were smoking with the watery evaporation, through which struggled the rays of the sinking sun. Passing under the Arc de Triomphe, there stretched out head-high, a reddish light, which shed a glittering lustre on the wheel hubs, the handles of the carriage-doors, the ends of the shafts, and the saddle-rings; and on the two sides of the great avenue—like a river in which manes, garments, and human heads were undulating—the trees, all glittering with rain, rose up like two green walls. The blue of the sky overhead, reappearing in certain places, had the soft hue of satin.

Then, Frédéric recalled the days, already far away, when he yearned for the inexpressible happiness of finding himself in one of these carriages by the side of one of these women. He had attained this bliss, and yet he was not thereby one bit happier.

The rain had ceased falling. The pedestrians, who had sought shelter between the columns of the Public Storerooms, made their departure. People who had been walking along the Rue Royale, went up again towards the boulevard. In front of the residence of the Minister of Foreign Affairs a group of onlookers loitered on the steps.

When they had gotten up as far as the Chinese Baths, because of holes in the pavement, the berlin slackened its pace. A man in a hazel-coloured overcoat was walking on the edge of the sidewalk. A splash of mud spurted out from under the springs, and splattered across his back. The man turned round in a rage. Frédéric grew pale; he had recognised Deslauriers.

At the door of the Café Anglais he sent away the carriage. Rosanette had gone in before him while he was paying the postilion.

He found her subsequently on the stairs chatting with a gentleman. Frédéric took her arm; but in the lobby a second gentleman stopped her.

“Go on,” said she; “just a minute and I am all yours.”

And he entered the private room alone. Through the two open windows people could be seen in the window of the houses opposite. Large puddles quivered on the pavement as it began to dry, and a magnolia, placed on the side of a balcony, shed a perfume through the room. This fragrance and freshness had a relaxing effect on his nerves. He sank down on the red divan underneath the mirror.

The Maréchale entered the room, and, kissing him on the forehead:

“Poor pet! there’s something annoying you!”

“Perhaps so,” was his reply.

“You are not alone; take heart!”—which was as much as to say: “Let us each forget our own concerns in a bliss which we shall enjoy together.”

Then she placed the petal of a flower between her lips and extended it towards him so that he might peck at it. This movement, full of grace and of almost voluptuous gentleness, had a softening influence on Frédéric.

“Why do you cause me pain?” said he, thinking of Madame Arnoux.

“I cause you pain?”

And, standing before him, she looked at him with her eyes half closed and her two hands resting on his shoulders.

All his virtue, all his resentment sank into a bottomless cowardice.

He continued:

“Because you won’t love me,” and he pulled her on to his knees.

She gave way to him. He pressed his two hands round her waist. The crackling sound of her silk dress inflamed him.

“Where are they?” said Hussonnet’s voice in the lobby outside. The Maréchale arose abruptly, and went across to the other side of the room, where she sat down with her back to the door.

She ordered oysters, and they seated themselves at the table.

Hussonnet was not at all amusing. Writing every day as he did on all sorts of subjects, reading many newspapers, listening to a great number of discussions, and uttering paradoxes for the purpose of dazzling people, he had in the end lost the exact idea of things, blinding himself with his own feeble fireworks. The difficulties of a life which had formerly been frivolous, kept him in a state of perpetual agitation; and his literary impotence, which he did not wish to admit, rendered him grumpy and sarcastic. Referring to a new ballet entitled
Ozaï,
he made a violent attack on the dancing, and then, when the opera was in question, he put down the Italians, now replaced by a company of Spanish actors, “as if people had not quite enough of Castilles already!” Frédéric was shocked at this, because of his romantic attachment to Spain, and, with a view to diverting the conversation, he enquired about the College of France, from which Edgar Quinet and Mickiewicz had been barred.
²¹
But Hussonnet, an admirer of M. de Maistre,
^at
declared himself on the side of Authority and Spiritualism. Nevertheless, he had doubts about the most well-established facts, contradicted history, and disputed things whose certainty could not be questioned; so that at the mention of the word “geometry,” he exclaimed: “What a joke this geometry is!” All this he intermingled with imitations of actors. Sainville was specially his model.

Frédéric was quite bored by these quibbles. In an outburst of impatience he caught one of the little dogs with his boot under the table.

Thereupon both animals began barking horribly.

“You ought to have them sent home!” said he, abruptly.

Rosanette did not know anyone to whom she could intrust them.

Then, he turned round to the Bohemian:

“Look here, Hussonnet; be a good fellow!”

“Oh! yes, my dear! That would be very sweet of you!”

Hussonnet set off, without further appeals.

In what way could they repay him for his kindness? Frédéric did not give it a thought. He was even beginning to rejoice at finding himself alone with her, when a waiter entered.

“Madame, somebody is asking for you!”

“What! again?”

“I’ll have to see who it is,” said Rosanette. He was thirsting for her; he wanted her. This disappearance seemed to him an act of disloyalty, bordering on rudeness. What, then, did she mean? Was it not enough to have insulted Madame Arnoux? So much for the latter, all the same! Now he hated all women; and he felt the tears choking him, for his love had been misunderstood and his desire eluded.

The Maréchale returned, and presented Cisy to him.

“I have invited Monsieur. I have done right, have I not?”

“How is that! Oh! certainly.”

Frédéric, with the smile of a criminal about to be executed, beckoned to the gentleman to take a seat.

The Maréchale began to run her eye over the menu, stopping at every fantastic name.