Sentimental Education (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (73 page)

The latter, on reaching Rosanette’s house, flung down this paper on the table spread wide open.

“Read that!”

“Well, what?” said she with a face so calm that he was revolted.

“Ah! keep up that air of innocence!”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“ ’Tis you who are selling out Madame Arnoux yourself!”

She read over the announcement again.

“Where is her name?”

“Oh! ’tis her furniture. You know that as well as I do.”

“What does that matter to me?” said Rosanette, shrugging her shoulders.

“What does it matter to you? But you are taking your revenge, that’s all. This is the consequence of your persecutions. Haven’t you outraged her so far as to call at her house?—you, a worthless creature! and this to the most saintly, the most charming, the best woman that ever lived! Why do you set your heart on ruining her?”

“I assure you, you are mistaken!”

“Come now! As if you had not put Sénécal forward to do this!”

“What nonsense!”

Then he was carried away with rage.

“You lie! you lie! you bitch! You are jealous of her! You have obtained judgment against her husband! Sénécal is already mixed up in your affairs. He detests Arnoux; and your two hatreds have joined together. I saw how delighted he was when you won that action of yours about the kaolin shares. Are you going to deny this?”

“I give you my word—”

“Oh, I know what that’s worth—your word!”

And Frédéric reminded her of her lovers, giving their names and circumstantial details. Rosanette drew back, all the colour fading from her face.

“You are astonished at this. You thought I was blind because I shut my eyes. Now I have had enough of it. We do not die through the treacheries of a woman of your sort. When they become too monstrous we get out of the way. To inflict punishment on account of them would be only to degrade oneself.”

She wrung her hands.

“My God, who can it be that has changed him?”

“Nobody but yourself.”

“And all this for Madame Arnoux!” exclaimed Rosanette, weeping.

He replied coldly:

“I have never loved any woman but her!”

At this insult her tears ceased to flow.

“That shows your good taste! A woman of mature years, with a complexion like liquorice, a thick waist, big eyes like the ventholes of a cellar, and just as empty! As you like her so much, go and join her!”

“This is just what I expected. Thank you!”

Rosanette remained motionless, stupefied by this extraordinary behaviour.

She even allowed the door to be shut; then, with a bound, she pulled him back into the hall, and flinging her arms around him:

“Why, you are mad! you are mad! this is absurd! I love you!” She implored him:

“Good heavens! for the sake of our dead infant!”

“Confess that you were behind this affair!” said Frédéric.

She still protested that she was innocent.

“You will not acknowledge it?”

“No!”

“Well, then, farewell!—forever!”

“Listen to me!”

Frédéric turned round:

“If you understood me better, you would know that my decision is irrevocable!”

“Oh! oh! you will come back to me again!”

“Never as long as I live!”

And he slammed the door behind him violently.

Rosanette wrote to Deslauriers saying that she wanted to see him at once.

He called one evening, about five days later; and, when she told him about the quarrel:

“That’s all! What’s the fuss?”

She thought at first that he would have been able to bring back Frédéric; but now all was lost. She ascertained through the concierge that he was about to be married to Madame Dambreuse.

Deslauriers gave her a lecture, and was curiously happy and high-spirited and, as it was very late, asked permission to spend the night in an armchair.

Then, next morning, he set out again for Nogent, informing her that he was unable to say when they would meet again. In a little while, there would perhaps be a great change in his life.

Two hours after his return, the town was in a state of revolution. The news went round that M. Frédéric was going to marry Madame Dambreuse.

Finally the three Mesdemoiselles Auger, unable to stand it any longer, made their way to the house of Madame Moreau, who with an air of pride confirmed this piece of intelligence. Père Roque became quite ill when he heard it. Louise locked herself up; it was even rumoured that she had gone mad.

Meanwhile, Frédéric was unable to hide his dejection. Madame Dambreuse, in order to divert his mind, no doubt, was more attentive than ever. Every afternoon they went out for a drive in her carriage; and, on one occasion, as they were passing along the Place de la Bourse, she had the idea of paying a visit to the public auction-rooms for a bit of amusement.

It was the 1st of December, the very day on which the sale of Madame Arnoux’s furniture was to take place. He remembered the date, and expressed his repugnance, declaring that this place was intolerable on account of the crush and the noise. She only wanted to get a peep at it. The brougham drew up. He had no alternative but to accompany her.

In the open space could be seen washhand-stands without basins, the wooden portions of armchairs, old hampers, pieces of porcelain, empty bottles, mattresses; and men in smocks or in dirty frock-coats, all grey with dust, and mean-looking faces, some with canvas sacks over their shoulders, were chatting in separate groups or greeting each other in a disorderly fashion.

Frédéric pointed out the drawbacks to going on any further.

“Nonsense!”

And they ascended the stairs. In the first room, at the right, gentlemen, with catalogues in their hands, were examining pictures; in another, a collection of Chinese weapons were being sold. Madame Dambreuse wanted to go downstairs again. She looked at the numbers over the doors, and she led him to the end of the corridor towards a room which was crowded with people.

He immediately recognised the two whatnots belonging to the office of
L’Art Industriel,
her worktable, all her furniture. Heaped up at the end of the room according to their respective heights, they formed a long slope from the floor to the windows, and at the other sides of the room, the carpets and the curtains hung down straight along the walls. There were underneath steps occupied by old men who had fallen asleep. At the left rose a sort of counter at which the auctioneer, in a white cravat, was lightly swinging a little hammer. By his side a young man was writing, and below him stood a sturdy fellow, looking like a cross between a commercial traveller and a ticket vendor crying out: “Furniture for sale.” Three attendants placed the articles on a table, at the sides of which sat in a row second-hand and old-clothes dealers. The general public at the auction kept walking in a circle behind them.

When Frédéric came in, the petticoats, the handkerchiefs, and even the chemises were being passed on from hand to hand, and then given back. Sometimes they were flung some distance, and suddenly strips of whiteness went flying through the air. After that her gowns were sold, and then one of her hats, the broken feather of which was hanging down, then her furs, and then three pairs of boots; and the disposal by sale of these relics, wherein he could trace in a confused sort of way the very outlines of her form, appeared to him an atrocity, as if he had seen crows mangling her corpse. The atmosphere of the room, heavy with human breath, made him feel sick. Madame Dambreuse offered him her smelling-bottle. She said that she found all this highly amusing.

The bedroom furniture was now exhibited. Maître Berthelmot named a price. The crier immediately repeated it in a louder voice, and the three auctioneer’s assistants quietly waited for the stroke of the hammer, and then carried off the article sold to an adjoining room. In this way disappeared, one after the other, the large blue carpet spangled with camellias, which her dainty feet used to touch so lightly as she advanced to meet him, the little upholstered easy-chair, in which he used to sit facing her when they were alone together, the two screens belonging to the mantelpiece, the ivory of which had been rendered smoother by the touch of her hands, and a velvet pincushion, which was still bristling with pins. It was as if portions of his heart had been carried away with these things; and the monotony of the same voices and the same gestures numbed him with fatigue, and caused within him a mournful torpor, a sensation like that of death itself.

There was a rustle of silk close to his ear. Rosanette touched him.

It was through Frédéric himself that she had learned about this auction. When her first feelings of vexation were over, the idea of deriving profit from it occurred to her. She had come to see it in a white satin vest with pearl buttons, a flounced gown, tight-fitting gloves on her hands, and a look of triumph on her face.

He grew pale with anger. She stared at the woman who was by his side.

Madame Dambreuse had recognised her, and for a minute they examined each other from head to foot with scrupulous attention, in order to discover same defect, or blemish—one perhaps envying the other’s youth, and the other filled with spite at the extreme good taste, the aristocratic simplicity of her rival.

At last Madame Dambreuse turned her head round with a smile of unspeakable insolence.

The crier had opened a piano—her piano! While he remained standing before it he ran the fingers of his right hand over the keys, and put up the instrument at twelve hundred francs; then he brought down the figures to one thousand, then to eight hundred, and finally to seven hundred.

Madame Dambreuse, in a playful tone, laughed at the old tin can.

The next thing placed before the second-hand dealers was a little chest with medallions and silver corners and clasps, the same one which he had seen at the first dinner in the Rue de Choiseul, which had subsequently been in Rosanette’s house, and again transferred back to Madame Arnoux’s residence. Often during their conversations his eyes wandered towards it. He was bound to it by the dearest memories, and his soul was melting with tender emotions about it, when suddenly Madame Dambreuse said:

“Look here! I am going to buy that!”

“But it is not a very rare article,” he returned.

She considered it, on the contrary, very pretty, and the appraiser commended its delicacy.

“A gem of the Renaissance! Eight hundred francs, messieurs! Almost entirely of silver! With a little polish it can be made to shine brilliantly.”

And, as she was pushing forward through the crush of people:

“What an odd ideal!” said Frédéric.

“You are annoyed at this!”

“No! But what can be done with a fancy article of that sort?”

“Who knows? Love-letters might be kept in it, perhaps!”

She gave him a look which made the allusion very clear.

“There’s another reason for not robbing the dead of their secrets.”

“I did not think she was as dead as all that.” And then in a loud voice she went on to bid:

“Eight hundred and eighty francs!”

“What you’re doing is not right,” murmured Frédéric.

She began to laugh.

“But this is the first favour, dear, that I am asking from you.”

“Come, now! doesn’t it strike you that at this rate you won’t be a very considerate husband?”

Some one had just at that moment made a higher bid.

“Nine hundred francs!”

“Nine hundred francs!” repeated Maitre Berthelmot.

“Nine hundred and ten—fifteen—twenty—thirty!” squeaked the auctioneer’s crier, with jerky shakes of his head as he cast a sweeping glance at those assembled around him.

“Show me that I am going to have a wife who is open to reason,” said Frédéric.

And he gently drew her towards the door.

The auctioneer proceeded:

“Come, come, messieurs; nine hundred and thirty. Is there any bidder at nine hundred and thirty?”

Madame Dambreuse, just as she had reached the door, stopped, and raising her voice to a high pitch: “One thousand francs!”

There was a thrill of astonishment, and then a dead silence.

“A thousand francs, messieurs, a thousand francs! Anyone else? Very well, then—one thousand francs! going!—gone!”

And down came the ivory hammer. She passed in her card, and the little chest was handed over to her. She thrust it into her muff

Frédéric felt a great chill penetrating his heart.

Madame Dambreuse had not let go her hold of his arm; and she had not the courage to look up at his face in the street, where her carriage was awaiting her.

She flung herself into it, like a thief flying away after a robbery, and then turned towards Frédéric. He had his hat in his hand.

“Are you not going to come in?”

“No, Madame!”

And, bowing to her frigidly, he shut the carriage-door, and then made a sign to the coachman to drive away.

The first feeling that he experienced was one of joy at having regained his independence. He was filled with pride at the thought that he had avenged Madame Arnoux by sacrificing a fortune to her; then, he was amazed at his own act, and he felt overwhelmed with extreme physical exhaustion.

Next morning his man-servant brought him the news.

The city had been declared to be in a state of siege; the Assembly had been dissolved; and a number of the representatives of the people had been imprisoned at Mazas.
^dc
Public affairs had become utterly unimportant to him, so deeply preoccupied was he by his private troubles.

He wrote to several tradesmen cancelling various orders which he had given for the purchase of articles in connection with his projected marriage, which now appeared to him a rather shabby speculation; and he cursed Madame Dambreuse, because, due to her, he had been very near dishonoring himself He had forgotten the Maréchale, and did not even worry about Madame Arnoux—he thought only of himself, himself alone—lost amid the wreck of his dreams, sick at heart, full of grief and disappointment, and in his hatred of the artificial atmosphere wherein he had suffered so much, he longed for the freshness of green fields, the repose of provincial life, a sleepy life spent beneath the roof of the house where he was born, in the midst of innocent hearts. At last, when Wednesday evening arrived, he went out.