Bel Ami

One evening, towards the end of June, as he was smoking a cigarette at the window, the fineness of the evening inspired him with a wish for a drive, and he said, "Made, shall we go as far as the Bois de Boulogne?"

"Certainly."

They took an open carriage and drove up the Champs Elysées, and then along the main avenue of the Bois de Boulogne. It was a breezeless night, one of those stifling nights when the overheated air of Paris fills the chest like the breath of a furnace. A host of carriages bore along beneath the trees a whole population of lovers. They came one behind the other in an unbroken line. George and Madeleine amused themselves with watching all these couples, the woman in summer toilet and the man darkly outlined beside her. It was a huge flood of lovers towards the Bois, beneath the starry and heated sky. No sound was heard save the dull rumble of wheels. They kept passing by, two by two in each vehicle, leaning back on the seat, silent, clasped one against the other, lost in dreams of desire, quivering with the anticipation of coming caresses. The warm shadow seemed full of kisses. A sense of spreading lust rendered the air heavier and more suffocating. All the couples, intoxicated with the same idea, the same ardor, shed a fever about them.

George and Madeleine felt the contagion. They clasped hands without a word, oppressed by the heaviness of the atmosphere and the emotion that assailed them. As they reached the turning which follows the line of the fortification, they kissed one another, and she stammered somewhat confusedly, "We are as great babies as on the way to Rouen."

The great flood of vehicles divided at the entrance of the wood. On the road to the lake, which the young couple were following, they were now thinner, but the dark shadow of the trees, the air freshened by the leaves and by the dampness arising from the streamlets that could be heard flowing beneath them, and the coolness of the vast nocturnal vault bedecked with stars, gave to the kisses of the perambulating pairs a more penetrating charm.

George murmured, "Dear little Made," as he pressed her to him.

"Do you remember the forest close to your home, how gloomy it was?" said she. "It seemed to me that it was full of horrible creatures, and that there was no end to it, while here it is delightful. One feels caresses in the breeze, and I know that Sevres lies on the other side of the wood."

He replied, "Oh! in the forest at home there was nothing but deer, foxes, and wild boars, and here and there the hut of a forester."

This word, akin to the dead man's name, issuing from his mouth, surprised him just as if some one had shouted it out to him from the depths of a thicket, and he became suddenly silent, assailed anew by the strange and persistent uneasiness, and gnawing, invincible, jealous irritation that had been spoiling his existence for some time past. After a minute or so, he asked: "Did you ever come here like this of an evening with Charles?"

"Yes, often," she answered.

And all of a sudden he was seized with a wish to return home, a nervous desire that gripped him at the heart. But the image of Forestier had returned to his mind and possessed and laid hold of him. He could no longer speak or think of anything else and said in a spiteful tone, "I say, Made?"

"Yes, dear."

"Did you ever cuckold poor Charles?"

She murmured disdainfully, "How stupid you are with your stock joke."

But he would not abandon the idea.

"Come, Made, dear, be frank and acknowledge it. You cuckolded him, eh? Come, admit that you cuckolded him?"

She was silent, shocked as all women are by this expression.

He went on obstinately, "Hang it all, if ever anyone had the head for a cuckold it was he. Oh! yes. It would please me to know that he was one. What a fine head for horns." He felt that she was smiling at some recollection, perhaps, and persisted, saying, "Come out with it. What does it matter? It would be very comical to admit that you had deceived him, to me."

He was indeed quivering with hope and desire that Charles, the hateful Charles, the detested dead, had borne this shameful ridicule. And yet – yet – another emotion, less definite. "My dear little Made, tell me, I beg of you. He deserved it. You would have been wrong not to have given him a pair of horns. Come, Made, confess."

She now, no doubt, found this persistence amusing, for she was laughing a series of short, jerky laughs.

He had put his lips close to his wife's ear and whispered: "Come, come, confess."

She jerked herself away, and said, abruptly: "You are crazy. As if one answered such questions."

She said this in so singular a tone that a cold shiver ran through her husband's veins, and he remained dumbfounded, scared, almost breathless, as though from some mental shock.

The carriage was now passing along the lake, on which the sky seemed to have scattered its stars. Two swans, vaguely outlined, were swimming slowly, scarcely visible in the shadow. George called out to the driver: "Turn back!" and the carriage returned, meeting the others going at a walk, with their lanterns gleaming like eyes in the night.

What a strange manner in which she had said it. Was it a confession? Du Roy kept asking himself. And the almost certainty that she had deceived her first husband now drove him wild with rage. He longed to beat her, to strangle her, to tear her hair out. Oh, if she had only replied: "But darling, if I had deceived him, it would have been with yourself," how he would have kissed, clasped, worshiped her.

He sat still, his arms crossed, his eyes turned skyward, his mind too agitated to think as yet. He only felt within him the rancor fermenting and the anger swelling which lurk at the heart of all mankind in presence of the caprices of feminine desire. He felt for the first time that vague anguish of the husband who suspects. He was jealous at last, jealous on behalf of the dead, jealous on Forestier's account, jealous in a strange and poignant fashion, into which there suddenly entered a hatred of Madeleine. Since she had deceived the other, how could he have confidence in her himself? Then by degrees his mind became calmer, and bearing up against his pain, he thought: "All women are prostitutes. We must make use of them, and not give them anything of ourselves." The bitterness in his heart rose to his lips in words of contempt and disgust. He repeated to himself: "The victory in this world is to the strong. One must be strong. One must be above all prejudices."

The carriage was going faster. It repassed the fortifications. Du Roy saw before him a reddish light in the sky like the glow of an immense forge, and heard a vast, confused, continuous rumor, made up of countless different sounds, the breath of Paris panting this summer night like an exhausted giant.

George reflected: "I should be very stupid to fret about it. Everyone for himself. Fortune favors the bold. Egotism is everything. Egotism as regards ambition and fortune is better than egotism as regards woman and love."

The Arc de Triomphe appeared at the entrance to the city on its two tall supports like a species of shapeless giant ready to start off and march down the broad avenue open before him. George and Madeleine found themselves once more in the stream of carriages bearing homeward and bedwards the same silent and interlaced couples. It seemed that the whole of humanity was passing by intoxicated with joy, pleasure, and happiness. The young wife, who had divined something of what was passing through her husband's mind, said, in her soft voice: "What are you thinking of, dear? You have not said a word for the last half hour."

He answered, sneeringly: "I was thinking of all these fools cuddling one another, and saying to myself that there is something else to do in life."

She murmured: "Yes, but it is nice sometimes."

"It is nice – when one has nothing better to do."

George's thoughts were still hard at it, stripping life of its poesy in a kind of spiteful anger. "I should be very foolish to trouble myself, to deprive myself of anything whatever, to worry as I have done for some time past." Forestier's image crossed his mind without causing any irritation. It seemed to him that they had just been reconciled, that they had become friends again. He wanted to cry out: "Good evening, old fellow."

Madeleine, to whom this silence was irksome, said: "Suppose we have an ice at Tortoni's before we go in."

He glanced at her sideways. Her fine profile was lit up by the bright light from the row of gas jets of a café. He thought, "She is pretty. Well, so much the better. Jack is as good as his master, my dear. But if ever they catch me worrying again about you, it will be hot at the North Pole." Then he replied aloud: "Certainly, my dear," and in order that she should not guess anything, he kissed her.

It seemed to the young wife that her husband's lips were frozen. He smiled, however, with his wonted smile, as he gave her his hand to alight in front of the café.

XI

On reaching the office next day, Du Roy sought out Boisrenard.

"My dear fellow," said he, "I have a service to ask of you. It has been thought funny for some time past to call me Forestier. I begin to find it very stupid. Will you have the kindness to quietly let our friends know that I will smack the face of the first that starts the joke again? It will be for them to reflect whether it is worth risking a sword thrust for. I address myself to you because you are a calm-minded fellow, who can hinder matters from coming to painful extremities, and also because you were my second."

Boisrenard undertook the commission. Du Roy went out on business, and returned an hour later. No one called him Forestier.

When he reached home he heard ladies' voices in the drawing-room, and asked, "Who is there?"

"Madame Walter and Madame de Marelle," replied the servant.

His heart beat fast for a moment, and then he said to himself, "Well, let's see," and opened the door.

Clotilde was beside the fireplace, full in a ray of light from the window. It seemed to George that she grew slightly paler on perceiving him. Having first bowed to Madame Walter and her two daughters, seated like two sentinels on each side of their mother, he turned towards his late mistress. She held out her hand, and he took it and pressed it meaningly, as though to say, "I still love you." She responded to this pressure.

He inquired: "How have you been during the century that has elapsed since our last meeting?"

She replied with perfect ease: "Quite well; and you, Pretty-boy?" and turning to Madeleine, added: "You will allow me to call him Pretty-boy still?"

"Certainly, dear; I will allow whatever you please."

A shade of irony seemed hidden in these words.

Madame Walter spoke of an entertainment that was going to be given by Jacques Rival at his residence, a grand assault-at-arms, at which ladies of fashion were to be present, saying: "It will be very interesting. But I am so vexed we have no one to take us there, my husband being obliged to be away at that time."

Du Roy at once offered his services. She accepted, saying: "My daughters and I will be very much obliged to you."

He looked at the younger daughter, and thought: "She is not at all bad looking, this little Susan; not at all." She resembled a fair, fragile doll, too short but slender, with a small waist and fairly developed hips and bust, a face like a miniature, grayish-blue, enamel-like eyes, which seemed shaded by a careful yet fanciful painter, a polished, colorless skin, too white and too smooth, and fluffy, curly hair, in a charming aureola, like, indeed the hair of the pretty and expensive dolls we see in the arms of children much smaller than their plaything.

The elder sister, Rose, was ugly, dull-looking, and insignificant; one of those girls whom you do not notice, do not speak to, and do not talk about.

The mother rose, and, turning to George, said:

"Then I may reckon upon you for next Thursday, two o'clock?"

"You may reckon upon me, madame," he replied.

As soon as she had taken her departure, Madame de Marelle rose in turn, saying: "Good afternoon, Pretty-boy."

It was she who then clasped his hand firmly and for some time, and he felt moved by this silent avowal, struck again with a sudden caprice for this good-natured little, respectable Bohemian of a woman, who really loved him, perhaps.

As soon as he was alone with his wife, Madeleine broke out into a laugh, a frank, gay laugh, and, looking him fair in the face, said, "You know that Madame Walter is smitten with you."

"Nonsense," he answered, incredulously.

"It is so, I tell you; she spoke to me about you with wild enthusiasm. It is strange on her part. She would like to find two husbands such as you for her daughters. Fortunately, as regards her such things are of no moment."

He did not understand what she meant, and inquired, "How of no moment?"

She replied with the conviction of a woman certain of the soundness of her judgment, "Oh! Madame Walter is one of those who have never even had a whisper about them, never, you know, never. She is unassailable in every respect. Her husband you know as well as I do. But with her it is quite another thing. She has suffered enough through marrying a Jew, but she has remained faithful to him. She is an honest woman."

Du Roy was surprised. "I thought her a Jewess, too," said he.

"She, not at all. She is a lady patroness of all the good works of the Church of Madeleine. Her marriage, even, was celebrated religiously. I do not know whether there was a dummy baptism as regards the governor, or whether the Church winked at it."

George murmured: "Ah! so she fancied me."

"Positively and thoroughly. If you were not bespoken, I should advise you to ask for the hand of – Susan, eh? rather than that of Rose."

He replied, twisting his moustache: "Hum; their mother is not yet out of date."

Madeleine, somewhat out of patience, answered:

"Their mother! I wish you may get her, dear. But I am not alarmed on that score. It is not at her age that a woman is guilty of a first fault. One must set about it earlier."

George was reflecting: "If it were true, though, that I could have married Susan." Then he shrugged his shoulders. "Bah! it is absurd. As if her father would have ever have accepted me as a suitor."

He promised himself, though, to keep a more careful watch in the future over Madame Walter's bearing towards him, without asking whether he might ever derive any advantage from this. All the evening he was haunted by the recollection of his love passages with Clotilde, recollections at once tender and sensual. He recalled her drolleries, her pretty ways, and their adventures together. He repeated to himself, "She is really very charming. Yes, I will go and see her to-morrow."

As soon as he had lunched the next morning he indeed set out for the Rue de Verneuil. The same servant opened the door, and with the familiarity of servants of the middle-class, asked: "Are you quite well, sir?"

"Yes, thanks, my girl," he replied, and entered the drawing-room, in which an unskilled hand could be heard practicing scales on the piano. It was Laurine. He thought that she would throw her arms round his neck. But she rose gravely, bowed ceremoniously like a grown-up person, and withdrew with dignity. She had so much the bearing of an insulted woman that he remained in surprise. Her mother came in, and he took and kissed her hands.

"How I have thought of you," said he.

"And I," she replied.

They sat down and smiled at one another, looking into each other's eyes with a longing to kiss.

"My dear little Clo, I do love you."

"I love you, too."

"Then – then – you have not been so very angry with me?"

"Yes, and no. It hurt me a great deal, but I understood your reasons, and said to myself, 'He will come back to me some fine day or other.'"

"I dared not come back. I asked myself how I should be received. I did not dare, but I dearly wanted to. By the way, tell me what is the matter with Laurine. She scarcely said good-morning to me, and went out looking furious."

"I do not know. But we cannot speak of you to her since your marriage. I really believe she is jealous."

"Nonsense."

"It is so, dear. She no longer calls you Pretty-boy, but Monsieur Forestier."

Du Roy reddened, and then drawing close to her said:

"Kiss me."

She did so.

"Where can we meet again?" said he.

"Rue de Constantinople."

"Ah! the rooms are not let, then?"

"No, I kept them on."

"You kept them on?"

"Yes, I thought you would come back again."

A gush of joyful pride swelled his bosom. She loved him then, this woman, with a real, deep, constant love.

He murmured, "I love you," and then inquired, "Is your husband quite well?"

"Yes, very well. He has been spending a month at home, and was off again the day before yesterday."

Du Roy could not help laughing. "How lucky," said he.

She replied simply: "Yes, it is very lucky. But, all the same, he is not troublesome when he is here. You know that."

"That is true. Besides, he is a very nice fellow."

"And you," she asked, "how do you like your new life?"

"Not much one way or the other. My wife is a companion, a partner."

"Nothing more?"

"Nothing more. As to the heart – "

"I understand. She is pretty, though."

"Yes, but I do not put myself out about her."

He drew closer to Clotilde, and whispered. "When shall we see one another again?"

"To-morrow, if you like."

"Yes, to-morrow at two o'clock."

"Two o'clock."

He rose to take leave, and then stammered, with some embarrassment: "You know I shall take on the rooms in the Rue de Constantinople myself. I mean it. A nice thing for the rent to be paid by you."

It was she who kissed his hands adoringly, murmuring: "Do as you like. It is enough for me to have kept them for us to meet again there."

Du Roy went away, his soul filled with satisfaction. As he passed by a photographer's, the portrait of a tall woman with large eyes reminded him of Madame Walter. "All the same," he said to himself, "she must be still worth looking at. How is it that I never noticed it? I want to see how she will receive me on Thursday?"

He rubbed his hands as he walked along with secret pleasure, the pleasure of success in every shape, the egotistical joy of the clever man who is successful, the subtle pleasure made up of flattered vanity and satisfied sensuality conferred by woman's affection.

On the Thursday he said to Madeleine: "Are you not coming to the assault-at-arms at Rival's?"

"No. It would not interest me. I shall go to the Chamber of Deputies."

He went to call for Madame Walter in an open landau, for the weather was delightful. He experienced a surprise on seeing her, so handsome and young-looking did he find her. She wore a light-colored dress, the somewhat open bodice of which allowed the fullness of her bosom to be divined beneath the blonde lace. She had never seemed to him so well-looking. He thought her really desirable. She wore her calm and ladylike manner, a certain matronly bearing that caused her to pass almost unnoticed before the eyes of gallants. She scarcely spoke besides, save on well-known, suitable, and respectable topics, her ideas being proper, methodical, well ordered, and void of all extravagance.

Her daughter, Susan, in pink, looked like a newly-varnished Watteau, while her elder sister seemed the governess entrusted with the care of this pretty doll of a girl.

Before Rival's door a line of carriages were drawn up. Du Roy offered Madame Walter his arm, and they went in.

The assault-at-arms was given under the patronage of the wives of all the senators and deputies connected with the Vie Francaise, for the benefit of the orphans of the Sixth Arrondissement of Paris. Madame Walter had promised to come with her daughters, while refusing the position of lady patroness, for she only aided with her name works undertaken by the clergy. Not that she was very devout, but her marriage with a Jew obliged her, in her own opinion, to observe a certain religious attitude, and the gathering organized by the journalist had a species of Republican import that might be construed as anti-clerical.

In papers of every shade of opinion, during the past three weeks, paragraphs had appeared such as: "Our eminent colleague, Jacques Rival, has conceived the idea, as ingenious as it is generous, of organizing for the benefit of the orphans of the Sixth Arrondissement of Paris a grand assault-at-arms in the pretty fencing-room attached to his apartments. The invitations will be sent out by Mesdames Laloigue, Remontel, and Rissolin, wives of the senators bearing these names, and by Mesdames Laroche-Mathieu, Percerol, and Firmin, wives of the well-known deputies. A collection will take place during the interval, and the amount will at once be placed in the hands of the mayor of the Sixth Arrondissement, or of his representative."

It was a gigantic advertisement that the clever journalist had devised to his own advantage.

Jacques Rival received all-comers in the hall of his dwelling, where a refreshment buffet had been fitted up, the cost of which was to be deducted from the receipts. He indicated with an amiable gesture the little staircase leading to the cellar, saying: "Downstairs, ladies, downstairs; the assault will take place in the basement."

He darted forward to meet the wife of the manager, and then shaking Du Roy by the hand, said: "How are you, Pretty-boy?"

His friend was surprised, and exclaimed: "Who told you that – "

Rival interrupted him with: "Madame Walter, here, who thinks the nickname a very nice one."

Madame Walter blushed, saying: "Yes, I will admit that, if I knew you better, I would do like little Laurine and call you Pretty-boy, too. The name suits you very well."

Du Roy laughed, as he replied: "But I beg of you, madame, to do so."

She had lowered her eyes, and remarked: "No. We are not sufficiently intimate."

He murmured: "Will you allow me the hope that we shall be more so?"

"Well, we will see then," said she.

He drew on one side to let her precede him at the beginning of the narrow stairs lit by a gas jet. The abrupt transition from daylight to this yellow gleam had something depressing about it. A cellar-like odor rose up this winding staircase, a smell of damp heat and of moldy walls wiped down for the occasion, and also whiffs of incense recalling sacred offices and feminine emanations of vervain, orris root, and violets. A loud murmur of voices and the quivering thrill of an agitated crowd could also be heard down this hole.

The entire cellar was lit up by wreaths of gas jets and Chinese lanterns hidden in the foliage, masking the walls of stone. Nothing could be seen but green boughs. The ceiling was ornamented with ferns, the ground hidden by flowers and leaves. This was thought charming, and a delightful triumph of imagination. In the small cellar, at the end, was a platform for the fencers, between two rows of chairs for the judges. In the remaining space the front seats, ranged by tens to the right and to the left, would accommodate about two hundred people. Four hundred had been invited.

In front of the platform young fellows in fencing costume, with long limbs, erect figures, and moustaches curled up at the ends, were already showing themselves off to the spectators. People were pointing them out as notabilities of the art, professionals, and amateurs. Around them were chatting old and young gentlemen in frock coats, who bore a family resemblance to the fencers in fighting array. They were also seeking to be seen, recognized, and spoken of, being masters of the sword out of uniform, experts on foil play. Almost all the seats were occupied by ladies, who kept up a loud rustling of garments and a continuous murmur of voices. They were fanning themselves as though at a theater, for it was already as hot as an oven in this leafy grotto. A joker kept crying from time to time: "Orgeat, lemonade, beer."

Madame Walter and her daughters reached the seats reserved for them in the front row. Du Roy, having installed them there, was about to quit them, saying: "I am obliged to leave you; we men must not collar the seats."

But Madame Walter remarked, in a hesitating tone: "I should very much like to have you with us all the same. You can tell me the names of the fencers. Come, if you stand close to the end of the seat you will not be in anyone's way." She looked at him with her large mild eyes, and persisted, saying: "Come, stay with us, Monsieur – Pretty-boy. We have need of you."