Sentimental Education (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (47 page)

“The vicar maintains that this is improper for a young lady! How stupid these proprieties are! Long ago they allowed me to do whatever I pleased; now, they won’t let me do anything!”

“Your father, however, is fond of you!”

“Yes; but—”

She heaved a sigh, which meant: “That is not enough to make me happy.”

Then there was silence. They heard only the noise made by their boots in the sand, together with the murmur of falling water; for the Seine, above Nogent, splits into two branches. That which turns the mills discharges in this location the superabundance of its waves in order to unite further down with the natural course of the stream; and a person coming from the bridge could see at the right, on the other bank of the river, a grassy slope on which a white house looks down. At the left, in the meadow, a row of poplar-trees extended, and the horizon opposite was bounded by a curve of the river. The water was smooth as glass. Large insects hovered over the noiseless water. Tufts of reeds and rushes bordered it unevenly; all kinds of plants which happened to spring up there bloomed out in butter-cups, trailed yellow clusters, pointed spindly purple flowers, and randomly sprung green spiky leaves. In an inlet of the river white water-lilies displayed themselves; and a row of ancient willows, in which wolf-traps were hidden, formed, on that side of the island, the sole protection of the garden.

In the interior, on this side, four walls with a slate coping enclosed the kitchen-garden, in which the square patches, recently dug up, looked like brown plates. The bell-glasses over the melons shone in a row on their narrow bed. The artichokes, the kidney-beans, the spinach, the carrots and the tomatoes succeeded each other till one reached a background where asparagus grew in such a fashion that it resembled a little forest of feathers.

Under the Directory, this piece of land had been what is called “a folly.” The trees had, since then, grown enormously. Clematis obstructed the hornbeams, the walks were covered with moss, brambles abounded on every side. The plaster of statues left crumbled fragments in the grass. Walking through the place one caught one’s feet in iron-wire work. There now remained of the pavilion only two rooms on the ground floor, with some blue wall paper hanging in shreds. Before the façade extended an arbour in the Italian style, in which a vine-tree was supported on columns of brick by wooden trellis-work.

Soon they arrived at this spot; and, as the light fell through the irregular gaps on the green hedges, Frédéric, turning his head to speak to Louise, noticed the shadow of the leaves on her face.

She had in her red hair, stuck in her chignon, a needle, terminated by a glass ball in imitation of emerald, and, in spite of her mourning, she wore (so unsophisticated and bad was her taste) straw slippers trimmed with pink satin—a vulgar curiosity probably bought at some fair.

He remarked this, and ironically congratulated her.

“Don’t be laughing at me!” she replied.

Then surveying him altogether, from his grey felt hat to his silk stockings:

“How stylish you are!”

After this, she asked him to recommend some books she could read. He gave her the names of several; and she said:

“Oh! how learned you are!”

While yet very small, she had been smitten with one of those childish passions which have, at the same time, the purity of a religion and the violence of a desire. He had been her comrade, her brother, her master, had diverted her mind, made her heart beat more quickly, and, without any desire for such a result, had poured out into the very depths of her being a latent and continuous intoxication. Then he had parted with her at the moment of a tragic crisis in her existence, when her mother had only just died, and these two separations had been mingled together. Absence had idealised him in her memory. He had come back with a sort of halo round his head; and she gave herself up ingenuously to the feelings of bliss she experienced at seeing him once more.

For the first time in his life Frédéric felt himself beloved; and this new pleasure, which did not transcend the ordinary run of agreeable sensations, made him swell with so much emotion that he spread out his two arms and flung back his head.

A large cloud passed across the sky.

“It is going towards Paris,” said Louise. “You’d like to follow it—wouldn’t you?”

“I! Why?”

“Who knows?”

And surveying him with a sharp look:

“Perhaps you have there” (she searched her mind for the appropriate phrase) “something to engage your affections.”

“Oh! I have nothing to engage my affections there.”

“Are you perfectly certain?”

“Why, yes, Mademoiselle, perfectly certain!”

In less than a year there had taken place in the young girl an extraordinary transformation, which astonished Frédéric. After a minute’s silence he added:

“We ought to address each other less formally, as we used to do long ago—shall we?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because—”

He persisted. She answered, with downcast face:

“I dare not!”

 

They had reached the end of the garden, the Livon beach. Frédéric, in a spirit of boyish fun, began to send pebbles skimming over the water. She bade him sit down. He obeyed; then, looking at the waterfall:

“ ’Tis like Niagara!” He began talking about distant countries and long voyages. The idea of making some herself appealed to her. She would not have been afraid either of storms or of lions.

Seated close beside each other, they collected in front of them handfuls of sand, then, while they were chatting, they let it slip through their fingers, and the hot wind, which rose from the plains, carried to them in waves the scent of lavender, together with the smell of tar from a boat behind the lock. The sun’s rays fell on the waterfall. The greenish blocks of stone in the little wall over which the water flowed looked as if they were covered with an endless ribbon of silver gauze. Down below a long strip of foam gushed forth with a harmonious murmur. Then it bubbled up, forming whirlpools and a thousand opposing currents, which ended by intermingling in a single limpid stream of water.

Louise said in a musing tone that she envied the life of fishes:

“It must be so delightful to tumble about down there at your ease, and to feel yourself caressed on every side.”

She shivered with sensuously enticing movements; but a voice exclaimed:

“Where are you?”

“Your maid is calling you,” said Frédéric.

“All right! all right!” Louise did not move.

“She will be angry,” he suggested.

“It is all the same to me! and besides—” Mademoiselle Roque gave him to understand by a gesture that the girl was entirely subject to her will.

She arose, however, and then complained of a headache. And, as they were passing in front of a large cart-shed containing some wood:

“Suppose we sat down there,
under shelter
?
”

He pretended not to understand this dialectic expression, and even teased her about her accent. Gradually the corners of her mouth turned down, she bit her lips; she stepped aside in order to sulk.

Frédéric came over to her, swore he did not mean to annoy her, and that he was very fond of her.

“Is that true?” she exclaimed, looking at him with a smile which lighted up her entire face, sprinkled with patches of freckles.

He could not resist the sentiment of gallantry which was aroused in him by her fresh youthfulness, and he replied:

“Why should I tell you a lie? Have you any doubt about it, eh?” and, as he spoke, he put his arm around her waist.

A cry, soft as the cooing of a dove, leaped up from her throat. Her head fell back, she was going to faint, when he held her up. And his virtuous scruples were futile. At the sight of this maiden offering herself to him he was seized with fear. He assisted her to take a few steps slowly. He had ceased to address her in soothing words, and no longer caring to talk of anything save the most trifling subjects, he spoke to her about some of the principal figures in the society of Nogent.

Suddenly she pushed him away, and in a bitter tone:

“You would not have the courage to run away with me!”

He remained motionless, with a look of utter amazement in his face. She burst into sobs, and hiding her face in his chest:

“How can I live without you?”

He tried to calm her. She laid her two hands on his shoulders in order to get a better view of his face, and fixing her green eyes on his with an almost fierce tearfulness:

“Will you be my husband?”

“But,” Frédéric began, casting about in his inner consciousness for a reply. “Of course, I ask for nothing better.”

At that moment M. Roque’s cap appeared behind a lilac-tree.

He brought his young friend on a trip through the district for a couple of days in order to show off his property; and when Frédéric returned, he found three letters awaiting him at his mother’s house.

The first was a note from M. Dambreuse, containing an invitation to dinner for the previous Tuesday. What was the occasion of this politeness? So, then, they had forgiven his tirade.

The second was from Rosanette. She thanked him for having risked his life on her behalf. Frédéric did not at first understand what she meant; finally, after a considerable amount of digression, while appealing to his friendship, relying on his delicacy, as she put it, and going on her knees to him on account of the pressing necessity of the case, as she needed to eat, she asked him for a loan of five hundred francs. He at once made up his mind to supply her with the amount.

The third letter, which was from Deslauriers, spoke of the power of attorney, and was long and obscure. The lawyer had not yet taken any definite action. He urged his friend to stay where he was:

“ ’Tis useless for you to come back!” even laying curious stress on this point.

Frédéric got lost in conjectures of every sort; and he felt anxious to return to Paris. This assumption of a right to control his conduct inspired in him a feeling of revolt.

Moreover, he began to experience that nostalgia for the boulevards, and then, his mother was pressing him so much, M. Roque kept revolving about him so constantly, and Mademoiselle Louise was so much in love with him, that it was no longer possible for him to avoid declaring his intentions.

He wanted to think, and he would be better able to judge matters at a distance.

In order to assign a motive for his journey, Frédéric invented a story; and he left home, telling everyone, and believing it himself; that he would soon return.

His return to Paris gave him no pleasure. It was an evening at the close of August. The boulevards seemed empty. The passers-by went past one by one with scowling faces. Here and there a cauldron of tar was smoking; several houses had their blinds entirely drawn. He made his way to his own residence in the city. He found the hangings covered with dust; and, while dining all alone, Frédéric was seized with a strange feeling of forlornness; then his thoughts reverted to Mademoiselle Roque. The idea of being married no longer appeared to him preposterous. They might travel; they might go to Italy, to the East. And he saw her standing on a hillock, or gazing at a landscape, or else leaning on his arm in a Florentine gallery while she looked at the paintings. What a pleasure it would be to him merely to watch this good little creature blossoming under the splendours of Art and Nature! When she had gotten free of the commonplace atmosphere in which she had lived, she would, in a little while, become a charming companion. M. Roque’s wealth, moreover, tempted him. And yet he shrank from taking this step, regarding it as a weakness, a degradation.

But he was firmly resolved (whatever he might do) on changing his mode of life—that is to say, to lose his heart no more in fruitless passions; and he even hesitated about carrying out Louise’s request. This was to buy for her at Jacques Arnoux’s establishment two large-sized statues of many colours representing negroes, like those which were at the Prefecture at Troyes. She knew the manufacturer’s number, and would not have any other. Frédéric was afraid that, if he went back to their house, he might once again fall victim to his old passion.

These reflections occupied his mind during the entire evening; and he was just about to go to bed when a woman came in.

“ ’Tis I,” said Mademoiselle Vatnaz, with a laugh. “I have come on behalf of Rosanette.”

So, then, they were reconciled?

“Good heavens, yes! I am not ill-natured, as you are well aware. And besides, the poor girl—it would take too long to tell you all about it.”

In short, the Maréchale wanted to see him; she was waiting for an answer, her letter having travelled from Paris to Nogent. Mademoiselle Vatnaz did not know what was in it.

Then Frédéric asked her how the Maréchale was.

He was informed that she was now
with
a very rich man, a Russian, Prince Tzernoukoff, who had seen her at the races in the Champ de Mars last summer.

“He has three carriages, a saddle-horse, livery servants, a groom dressed in the English fashion, a country-house, a box at the Italian opera, and a heap of other things. There you are, my dear friend!”

And Vatnaz, as if she had profited by this change of fortune, appeared livelier and happier. She took off her gloves and examined the furniture and the objects of interest in the room. She mentioned their exact prices like a second-hand dealer. He ought to have consulted her in order to get them cheaper. Then she congratulated him on his good taste:

“Oh! this is pretty, exceedingly charming! Nobody has ideas like you!”

The next moment, as her eyes fell on a door close to the bed in the alcove:

“That’s the way you let your little ladies out, eh?”