ajornell UnitiBrattg Sihrarg Dtliaca. IStta Qnrb FROM THE BENNO LOEWY LIBRARY COLLECTED BY BENNO LOEWY 1854-1919 BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNIVERSITY .^«^'B DATE DUE Cornell University Library PQ 2507.M3 1888 Madeleine Ferat, 3 1924 027 383 037 e507 MADELEINE FEEAT. ZOLi^S POWERFUL REALISTIC NOVELS. Illustrated with Page EngraYings from Designs by French Artists. THE SOIL. (LaTeeeb.) EMTLG zniiA.'B LATEST NOVEL. • FAT AND THIN. (Lb Ventre de Paeis.) FBOM THE 24TH VRBSOB EDITIOK. MADELEINE F:6eAT. FROM THE LATEST FBEHCH EDITIOH. A SOLDIER'S HONOUR : And othee Stoeibs. FROU THE LATEST FBEKCH EDITION. A LOVE EPISODE. FROM THE S2HI> FBENCH EDITION. THE CONQUEST OP PLASSANS. FROM THE 23BD FRENCH EDITION. HIS EXCELLENCY EUGENE ROUGON. FROM THE 22ND FBENCH EDITION. HOW JOLLY LIFE IS ! FROM THE 44TH FBENCH EDITION. THE FORTUNE OF THE ROUGONS. FROM THE 24TH FBENCH EDITION. ABB:^ MOURErS TRANSGRESSION. FROM THE 34TH FBENCH EDITION. HIS MASTERPIECE ? (L'(edvee.) With a Portrait of the Author, etched by Bocoort. THE LADIES' PARADISE. (Sequel to "Piping Hot !") FBOM THE SOTH FRENCH EDITION. TH13RESE RAQUIN. PROM THE L4.TEST FRENCH BDITIOX. THE RUSH FOR THE SPOIL. (La Cuk^e.) FROM THE 35th FRENCH EDITION. PIPING HOT! (Pot BouiLLE.) FROM THE 63BD FBENCH EDITION. GERMINAL ; oe, MASTER AND MAN. FROM THE 47TH FBENCH EDITION. NANA. FBOM THE 127TH FRENCH EDITIOH. THE " ASSOMMOIR." (The Prelude to "NAifA."-> FROM THE 97TU FBEKCH EDITION. The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027383037 WILLIAM FEEAT DANCING liVliE MADELEINE'; DEAD BOLY. p. 33!!. MADELEINE FERAT A REALISTIC MOVEL. BY EMILE ZOLA. TBANSLATEU f BOM THE LATEST fSKNOH EOITI0:r. OHitIt a Jfroiifepicce gmgnxb bg ^. C^iag. LONDON : VjzEiELLY dr- Co., 42 Catherine Street, Strand. iS83. -/A?^ - Z. UlOf -yy, \\s(,U=.^ TO EDOUARD MANET. The day when, with an indignant voice, I undertook the de- fence of your talent, I did not know you. There were fools who then dared to say that we were two friends in search of scandal. Since these fools placed our hands one in the other, may our hands remain for ever united. The crowd willed that you should have my friendship ; this friendship is now complete and durable, and as a public proof of it, I dedicate to you this book. i^MiLE Zola. MADELEINE FERAT. CHAPTER I. William and Madeleine got off at Fontenay station. It was a Monday, and the train was almost empty. Five or six fellow-passengers, inhabitants of the district, who were re- turning home, presented themselves at the platform-exit with the two young people, and dispersed each in his own direction, without bestowing a glance on the surroundings, like folks in a hurry to get home. When they were outside the station, the yoimg man offered his arm to the young woman, as though they had not left the streets of Paris. They turned to the left, and went at a leisurely pace up the magnificent avenue of trees which extends from Sceaux to Fontenay. As they ascended, they watched the train at the bottom of the slope start again on its journey with laboured and deep-drawn puffs. When it was lost to sight among the trees, William turned towards his companion and said to her with a smile : "I told you I am not acquainted with the neighbourhood, and I hardly know for certain where we are going to." " Let us take this path,'' answered Madeleine, simply, " and then we shall not have to go through the streets of Sceaux." They took the lane to Champs-Girard. Here, there is a sudden gap in the line of trees bordering the wide avenue which enables one to get a view of the rising ground of fontenay ; down in the bottom, there are gardens and square S MADELEINE F]5;rAT. meadows where huge clumps of poplars rise up straight and full of vigour ; then, up the slope, there are cultivated fields, dividing the surface of the country into brown and green tracts, and, right at the top, on the very edge of the horizon, you can catch a glimpse through the trees of the low white houses of the village. Towards the end of September, the sun, as it dips down between four and five o'clock, makes this bit of nature lovely. The young couple, who were alone in the path, stopped instinctively before this nook of landscape, whose dark green — almost black — verdure was hardly yet tinged with the first golden hues of autumn. They were still arm in arm. There was between them that indefinable constraint — the result of a newly-formed intimacy — which has made too rapid progress. When they came to think that they had only known each other for eight days at the most, they experienced a sort of uneasy feeling at finding themselves thus alone in presence of each other, in the open fields, like happy lovers. Feeling them- selves still strangers and compelled to treat one another as comrades, they hardly dared to look at one another ; they conversed only in hesitating sentences, as if from fear of giving mutual offence unwittingly. Each was for the other the unknown — the unknown which terrifies and yet attracts. In the lagging walk like that of lovers, in their pleasant and light words, even in the smiles which they exchanged the moment their eyes met, one could read the imeasiness and embarrassment of two beings whom hazard has unceremoni- ously brought together. Never had William thought he would sufi'er so much from his first adventure, and he waited its end with real anguish. They had begun to walk on again, casting glances on the hill-side, their fits of silence only broken by intermittent conversation, in which they gave vent to none of their real thoughts, but simply to pass remarks about the trees, the sky, or the landscape which was spread out before them. MADELEINE FfiRAT. 9 Madeleine was approaching her twentieth year. She had on a very simple dress of grey material set off with a trim- ming of blue ribbons ; and on her head of gorgeous bright red hair, which seemed to emit a golden gleam and was twisted and done up behind in an enormous chignon, she wore a little round straw hat. She was a tall, handsome girl, and her strong, supple limbs gave promise of rare energy. Her face was characteristic. The upper part was firm, almost masculine in its sternness ; there were no soft lines in the forehead : the temples, the nose, and cheek- bones were angular, and gave to the face the cold, hard appearance of marble ; in this severe setting were large eyes, of a dull grey green colour, yet at times a smile would impart to them an intelligent brightness. The lower part of the face, on the contrary, was of exquisite delicacy ; there was a voluptuous softness in the cheeks, and in the corners of the mouth, where nestled two light dimples ; the chin was double, the upper one small and nervous, the lower one soft and round ; the features were here no longer hard and stiff, they were plump, lively, and covered with a silky down ; they had an infinite variety of expression and a charming delicacy where the down was wanting : in the centre the lips bright and rosy, though somewhat thick, seemed too red for this fair face, at once stem and childish. This strange physiognomy was in fact a combination of sternness and childishness. When the upper part was at rest, when the lips were contracted in moments of thought or anger, one could see nothing but the harsh forehead, the nervous outline of the nose, the dull eyes, the firm, strong features. Then, the moment a smile relaxed the mouth, the upper part seemed to soften, leaving nothing visible, but the soft lines of the cheeks and the chin. It might be called the smile of a little girl on the face of a grown woman. The complexion was of soft, transparent whiteness, vith just 10 MADELEINE F^RAT. a touch or two of red about the angles of the temples, while the veins gave a soft blue tinge to this satin-like skin. Often would Madeleine's ordinary expression, an expres- sion of stem pride, melt suddenly into a look of unspeakable tenderness, the tenderness of a weak and conquered woman. One phase of her being had never developed beyond child- hood. As she followed the narrow path leaning on William's arm, she had serious moods which made the young fellow feel peculiarly dejected, while at times she would be subject to sudden fits of unconstraint and involuntary submissive- ness which restored him to hope. By her firm and some- what measured tread one saw at once that she had ceased to be a young girl. William was five years older than Madeleine. He was tall and thin and of aristocratic bearing. His long face, with its sharp features, would have been ugly, but for the purity of his complexion and the loftiness of his brow. His whole aspect betokened the intelligent and yet enfeebled descendant of a strong race. At times, he would be seized with a sudden nervous shudder and seem as timid as a child. Slightly bent, he spoke with hesitating gestures, scanning Madeleine with his eyes before opening his lips. He was afraid of displeasing her and trembled lest his person, his attitude, or his voice should be disagreeable to her. Always distrustful of himself, -he appeared humble and fawning. Yet, when he thought himself slighted, he would draw himself up in a burst of pride. It was in this pride that his strength lay. He would perhaps have been guilty of acts of cowardice, had there not been in him an innate proudness, a nervous susceptibility which made him resist everything which hurt his finer feelings. He was one of those beings with tender and deep emotions who feel a poignant need of love and tranquillity, who willingly allow themselves to be lulled into an eternal peacefulness j these MADELEINE FliJRAT. 11 beings, with the sensitiveness of a woman, easily forget the world for the retreat of their own heart, in the certitude of their own nobleness, the moment the world entangles them in its shame and misery. If William forgot himself in Madeleine's smiles, if he felt an exquisite delight in surveying her pearly complexion, there would come at times, uncon- sciously, a curl of disdain on his lips, when his young companion oast on him a cold, almost deriding glance. The young couple had turned the bend in the road to Champs-Girard, and were now in a lane which extends with hopeless monotony between two grey walls. They hastened on in order to get out of this narrow passage. Then they continued their walk across fields where the footpath was hardly defined. They passed by the foot of the hill where the enormous Eobinson chestnut-trees grow, and arrived at Aulnay. This quick walk had heated their blood. The genial warmth of the sun dispelled their restraint, in the free air which blew on their faces from the fresh warm wind. The tacit state of warfare in which they alighted from tlie train had gradually given place to the familiarity of comrades. They were forgetting their previous stiffness : the country was filling them with such a feeling of comfort, that they no longer thought of eyeing one another or standing on their guard. At Aulnay they stopped for a moment in the shade of the big trees, under which it is always delightfully cool. They had been warm in the sun; they now felt the delicious coolness of the leaves as they fell on their shoulders. " Hang it, if I know where we are," exclaimed William after they had recovered their breath. " Do people eat, I wonder, in this country 1 " " Yes, no fear," replied Madeleine gaily, " we shall be at table in half-an-hour. Come this way.'' ' She led him quickly towards the lane bordered with palings which leads on to the open country. Here, she withdrew 12 MADELEINE fSRAT. her arm from William's, and began to run like a young dog filled with a sudden feeling of friskiness. All her girlishuess awoke in her, and she again became a little child in the cool shade, in thie chilly silence under the trees. Her smiles lit up her whole face and imparted a luminous transparency to her grey eyes : the girlish graces of her cheeks and lips softened the hard lines of her forehead. _She would run forward, then come back, shouting joyously, holding her skirts in her hand, filling the lane with the rustling of her dress and leaving behind her a vague perfume of violet. William kept looking at her with supreme delight : he had forgotten the cold, proud woman, he felt happy, he indulged his feelings of tenderness for this big child who would run away from him with a wave of the hand to follow her, and then, suddenly turning round, run up and lean half-wearily, half-oaressingly on his shoulder. In one place, the road has been cut through a sand hill, and the surface of the ground is covered with a fine dust in- to which the feet sink. Madeleine took a delight in picking the softest places. She would raise little shrill cries as she felt her boots disappearing. She would try to take long strides, and laugh, when held back by the moving sand, at not being able to get on, just as a twelve-year-old girl would have done. Then the road ascends with sudden turns between wooded knolls. This end of the valley has a lonely and wild aspect which takes one by surprise on emerging from the cool shades of Aiilnay : a few rocks peep out of the ground, the grass on the slopes is browned by the sun, and big briars struggle in the ditches. Madeleine took William's arm in silence : she was tired, and was touched with an indefinable feeling on this stony, deserted road, where there was no house to be seen, and which wound about in a sort of ominous hollow. Still trembling from the effects of her gambols and laughter she put no check on herself. William felt her MADELEIlSrE F^RAT. 13 ■warm arm press against his own. At this moment^ he knew that this woman was his, that there was in her, beneath the implacable energy of her mind, a feeble heart which stood in need of caresses. When she raised her eyes towards him, she looked at him with tender humility, and with tearful smiles. She was becoming docile and coquettish ; she ap- peared to be seeking for the young man's love like a poor shy woman. Fatigue, the deliciousness of the shade, the awakening of the youthful feeling, the wild place she was passing through, all imparted to her being an emotion of love — one of those languors of the senses which make the proudest woman fall into the arms of a man. William and Madeleine were slowly ascending. At times the yonng woman's foot slipped. on a stone and she checked herself by clinging to her companion's arm. This clinging was a caress ; neither of them attempted to disguise it. They had ceased to talk, they were satisfied with exchanging smiles. This language was sufficient to give expression to the only feeling ^which was filling their hearts. Madeleine's face was charming under the sunshade ; it had a tender pale- ness with shadows of silvery grey ; round the mouth played rosy gleams, and af the corner of the lips, on William's side, there was a little network of bluish veins of such delicacy, that he felt one of those wild longings to imprint a kiss on this very spot. He was shy, and hesitated till they were at the top of the steep. Here, as they came suddenly on the plain extended before them, it seemed to the young couple that they were no longer concealed. Although the country was deserted, they were afraid of this broad expanse. They separated, uncomfortable, embarrassed again. The road follows the edge of the high ground. To the left are strawberry-patches, and immense open fields of com planted with a few scattered trees and losing .themselves at the horizon. In the distance the Verriferes wood traces a black line, which seems to border the sky with a mourning band. 14 - MADELEINE F^RAT. To the right are slopes, displaying to view several miles of country ; first come dark and brown tracts of land, and enormous masses of foliage ; then the tints and lines become more indistinct, the landscape is lost to view in a bluish atmosphere, terminated by low hills whose pale violet hue mingles with the soft yellow of the sky. It is an immensity, a veritable sea of hills and valleys, re- lieved here and there by the white reflection of a house and the sombre ray of a cluster of poplars. Madeleine stopped, serious and thoughtful, before this immensity. Warm gusts of air were blowing, a storm was slowly rising from the bottom of the valley. The sun had just disappeared behind a thick mass of vapour, and heavy clouds of coppery grey were gathering from every point of the horizon. She had again assumed her stem, taciturn ex- pression : she seemed to have forgotten her companion, and was looking at the country with curious attention, as though it was an old acquaintance. Then she fixed her eyes on the dark clouds and seemed to indulge in painful recollections. William, who stood a few paces off, watched her uneasily. He felt that a gulf was increasing every moment between them. What could she be thinking of like that 1 he could not bear the idea of not being all-in-all to this woman. He kept saying to himself, with secret terror, that she had lived twenty years without him. These twenty years seemed to him a terrible blank. Certainly, she knew the country, perhaps she had been here before with a lover. William was dying with the wish to question her, but he did not dare to do so openly he dreaded getting an ansvver which might blight his love. He could not, however, resist saying hesitatingly : " You used to come here sometimes then, Madeleine i " " Yes," she replied shortly, " often— Let us hurry on, it might rain." They started again, at a short distance from one another, MADELEINE EJ^RAT. 13 both absorbed in their own thoughts. In this way they came to the open road. Here, on the edge of the wood, is the inn to which Madeleine led her companion. It is an ugly square building, all cracked and blackened by the rain ; at the back, on the side of the wood, a kind of yard planted with stunted trees is enclosed by a quick-set hedge. Against this hedge lean five or six arbours covered with hop-plants. They are the private rooms belonging to the inn : tables and benches of rough wood are placed along them fixed in the ground : the bottoms of the glasses have left red rings on the table tops. The landlady, a big, coarse woman, uttered a cry of sur prise as she saw Madeleine. "Well! really!" she exclaimed, "I thought you were dead : I've not seen you for more than three months — And how are you — " Just then she perceived William and refrained from put- ting another question which she had on her lips. She even seemed taken aback by the presence of this young man whom she did not know. The latter saw her astonishment and said to himself that she was doubtless expecting to see an- other face. " Well, well," she went on, adopting a less familiar tone, " you want some dinner, don't you 'i You shall have a table laid in one of the arbours." Madeleine had received the landlady's marks of friendship very calmly. She took off her shawl and bonnet and went to put them in a room on the ground floor, which was let at night to belated Parisians. She seemed quite at home. William had gone into the yard. He walked up and down, not knowing quite what to do with himself. Nobody paid any attention to him, while the scullery-maid and the dog even were giving a warm welcome to Madeleine. When she came back, she was smiling again. She stopped for a second on the threshold ; her hair, free and uncovered, 16 MADELEINE F^EAT. shone in the last rays of sunlight, giving a marble whiteness to her skin : her chest and shoulders, no longer covered with her shawl, had a powerful breadth and exquisite suppleness. The young man cast a look, full of uneasy admiration, on this lovely creature vibrating with life. Another had doubt- less seen her thus, smiling on the threshold of this door. In the distress which this thought caused him, he felt a violent wish to take Madeleine in his arms, to press her to his bosom that she might forget this houss, this yard, and these arbours, and think only of him. " Let us have dinner, quick ! " she e:.claimed joyously. Now then, Marie, gather a big dish of strawberries — I'm hungry." She ' was forgetting William. She looksd into every arbour, trying to find the one where the cloth was laid. At last she found it. " I declare, I won't sit on that seat," she said, "I remem- ber it is full of big nails which tore my dress. Set the table here, Marie." She placed herself in front of the white cloth, on which the servant had not yet had time to put the plates. Then she bethought herself of William, and saw him standing a few paces off. "Well," said she to him, "are you not coming to sit down 1 You stand there like a taper." Then she burst out laughing. The storm which was coming on made her feel nervously gay. Her gestures were without animation, her words short. The gloomy weather, on the contrary, filled William with dejection; he dropped on to his chair with listless limbs and answered only in monosyllables. The dinner lasted for more than an hour. The young couple were alone in the yard : for, during the week, the country inns are generally empty. Madeleine talked the whole time : she talked about her younger days, about her stay in a Ternes boarding-school, relating with a MADELEINE FffiRAT. 17 thousand details the silly tricks of the governesses and the pranks of the schplars : on this subject she was inexhaustible, continually finding among her recollections some good story which made her laugh before she began. She told all this with childish smiles, and in a young girl's tone of voice. Several times, William tried to bring her to a less remote subject ; lilse those wretches who are suffering and who are always itching to put their hands to their wound, he would have liked to hear her speak of her immediate past, of her grown-up life : he skilfully changed the conversation so as to get her to tell how she had come to tear her dress in one of these arbours. But Madeleine eluded his questions, and rushed off, with a sort of infatuation, into the naive stories of her early days. This seemed to soothe her, to relieve her high-strung feelings, and to make her accept more naturally her tete-a-t6te with a young fellow whom she had scarcely known a week. When William looked at her with a gaze full of longing desire, when he put out his hand to stroke hers, she would take a strange pleasure in keeping her eyes raised and beginning a tale with : " I was five years old then — " Towards the end of dinner, as they were at dessert, big drops of rain wet the cloth. The day had suddenly come to a close. The thunder was rumbling in the distance and coming near with the dull sustained roar of an army on the march. A bright flash of lightning ran across the white table-cloth. " Here comes the storm," said Madeleine. " Oh ! I love the lightning." She got up and went into the middle of the yard to get a better view. William remained seated in the arbour. He was in pain. A storm gave him a strange feeling of dread. His mind remained firm, and he had no fear of being struck by lightning, but his whole body revolted at the noise of thunder, especially at the blinding flashes of the electric B is MADELEINE F^RAT. fluid. When a flash dazzled his eyes he seemed to receive a violent blow in the chest, and felt a pang of pain in his breast which left him trembling and aghast. This was purely a nervous phenomenon. But it was very lilie fear, very like cowardice, and William was grieved at appearing a poltroon in presence of Madeleine. He had shaded his eyes with his hand. At last, unable to fight against the rebellion of all his nerves, he shouted to his young companion ; he asked lier in a voice which he tried to render calm, if it would not be more prudent to go and finish their dessert inside tlie restaurant. " Why it hardly rains at all," replied Madeleine. " We can stay a bit longer." " I should prefer to go in," he answered haltingly, " the sight of the lightning makes me feel bad." She looked at him with an air of astonishment. " Very well," she said simply. " Let us go in, then." A maid carried the dinner things into the public room of the inn, a large bare apartment, with blackened walls and no furniture but chairs and benches. William sat down, with his back to the windows, before a plate of strawberries which he left untouched. Madeleine soon finished hers ; then she got up and went and opened a window which looked out on the yard. Leaning on the sill, she surveyed the sky now all ablaze. The storm was bursting with terrible violence. It had settled over the wood, weighing down the air beneath the blazing canopy of clouds. The rain had ceased, a few sudden gusts of wind were twisting and bending the trees. The flashes of lightning followed each other with such rapidity that it was quite hght outside— a bluish kind of light which made the country look like a scene in a melodrama. The peals of thunder were not repeated in the echoes of the valley : they were as clear and sharp as detonations of artillery. The lightning looked as if it must strike the trees MADELEINE FIilRAT. 19 round the ian. Between each peal, the silence was appalling. William felt extremely uncomfortable at the thought of a window being open behind his back. In spite of himself, a sort of nervous impulse made him turn his head and he saw Madeleine quite pale in the violet light of the flashes. Her golden hair, which had been wetted by the rain iti the yard, feU over her shoulders, and now seemed lit up by every sudden blaze. " Oh ! how fine it is," she exclaimed. " Just come and look, William. There is a tree over there which looks all a-blaze. You might fancy that the flashes of lightning were rushing about in the wood like wild-beasts let loose. And the sky ! — Well ! it's a wonderful display of fireworks." The young fellow could no longer resist the mad desire he felt of going and closing the shutters. He rose. " Come now," he said impatiently, " shut the window. It is quite dangerous for you to stand there like that." He stepped forward and touched Madeleine on the arm. She turned half round. " You are afraid then 1 " she said to him. And she burst into a loud laugh, one of those derisive laughs a woman gives when she wishes to scoff at you. William hung his head. He hesitated for a moment before going to sit down again at the table ; then, overcome by his distress, he murmured : " I implore you." Just then, the clouds burst and toiTents of water came down. A hurricane got up and drove the rain in a stream right into the room. Madeleine was fain to close the window. She came and sat down in front of William. After a short silence she said : " When I was a little girl, my father used to take me in his arms, when there was a thunderstorm, and carry me to the window. I recollect how, for the first few times, I used to hide my face against his shoulder ; afterwards I used to 20 MADELEINE FERAT. be amused at watching the lightning — But you are afraid, are you not ? " William raised his head. " I am not afraid," he replied gently, " I am in pain." There was another period of silence. The storm continued with terrible flashes. For nearly three hours the thunder never ceased to rumble. William sat the whole of this time on his chair, crushed' and motionless, his face pale and weary. Seeing his nervous shudders, Madeleine was convinced at last that he really did suffer ; she watched him with interest and surprise, quite astonished that a man should have more delicate nerves than a woman. These three hours were desperately long for the young couple. They hardly spoke. Their lovers' dinner bad had a strange termination. At last the thunder passed away, and the rain became less heavy. Madeleine went and opened the window. " It is all over," she said. " Come, William, the lightning has stopped." The young man feeling relieved and breathing freely once more, came and leaned on the window sill by the side of her. They stood there a minute. Then she put her hand out. " It hardly rains at all now," she remarked. " We must be off, if we don't want to miss the last train." The landlady came into the room. " You are going to spend the night here, are you not 1 " she asked. " I will go and get your room ready." " No, no," quietly replied Madeleine, "we are not going to sljay here, I don't want to. We only came for dinner, did we not, William ? We will start now." " Why it's impossible ! The roads are quite impassable. You will never get to your destinatfon." The young woman seemed very concerned. She fidgeted uneasily and repeated : MADELEINE FJfiEAT. 21 " No, I want to be off ; we ought not to stay the night." "Just as you like," replied the landlady, "only, if you venture out, you will sleep in the fields, instead of under shelter, that's, all." William said nothing : he simply looked at Madeleine in an imploring way. The latter avoided his glances ; she was walking up and down with an agitated step, a prey to a violent struggle. In spite of 'her firm determination not to look at her companion, she at last bestowed a glance on him ; she saw him so humble, so submissive before her, that her will relented. One mutual look and she gave way. She took a few more steps with stern brow and cold face. Then, in a clear decisive tone, she said to the landlady : " AU right, we will stay here." " Then I will go and get the blue room ready." Madeleine started suddenly. " No, not that, another one,'' she replied in a strange tone. "But aU the others are taken.'' The young woman hesitated again. There was a fresh struggle in her mind. She murmured : "We had better leave." But she met William's beseeching look a second time. She yielded. While the bed was being got ready, the young couple went outside the inn. They walked on and sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree, lying in a meadow at the en- trance to the wood. In the freshness after the rain, the smell of the fields could be felt afar. The air, still warm, was balmy with cool breezes, the verdure and wet soil exhaled a pungent per- fume. Strange sounds proceeded from the wood, sounds of dripping leaves and herbage drinking in the fallen rain. All nature was pervaded with a thrill, that delicious thrill which the fields have when a storm has beaten the dust down. And this thrill, so universal on this gloomy night, robbed the darkness of its mysterious pervading charm. , 22 MADELEINE FEBAT. One half of the sky, exquisitely clear, was studded with stars ; the otiier half was still veiled with a dark curtain of clouds which were slowly moving away. The young couple, sitting side by side on the tree-trunk, could not distinguish each other's face ; they saw each other indistinctly in the thick shadow cast over them by a clump of tall trees. They sat there for a few minutes without speaking. They were listening to their thoughts. There was no need to tell them aloud. " You don't love me, Madeleine," murmured William at last. " You are mistaken, my dear," slowly answered the young woman, " I think I love you. Only I have not had time to ask and answer myself — I should have liked to wait a little longer." There was another spell of silence. The young man's pride was passing through an ordeal : he would have wished to see his loved one fall into his arms of her own accord, not to be induced to do so by a sort of fatality. " What distresses me," he replied in a low tone, " is the thought that it is to chance that I owe your presence here — You would not have consented to stay, would you, if the roads had been passable 1 " " Oh ! you don't know me," exclaimed Madeleine : " if I stay, it is because I want to. I would have gone away when the thunderstorm was at its height, rather than have stayed here against my wish." She began to look thoughtful ; then, in a half-distinct tone, as if she were talking to herself, she added : " I don't know what will happen to me later on. I con- sider myself quite capable of asserting my wishes, but it is so difficult to regulate one's life." She stopped: she was on the point of confessing to William that it was a strange feeling of compassion ouly which had induced her to stay. Women yield oftcner Madeleine f^eat . 2i than is thought, out of pity, out of a need which they feel to be kind. She had seen the young man shudder so dur- ing the thunderstorm, he had looked at her with such tearful eyes, that she had not felt able to refuse to put her- self in his hands. William saw that this surrender of herself was almost like a gift of charity. All his susceptibilities were aroiised, for he felt that an oiFer of love of this kind was a blow to his pride. " You are right," he answered, " we ought to wait a bit longer. Would you like us to start ? Now, it is I who am asking you to go back to Paris." He spoke in a proud tone. Madeleine noticed the change in his voice. "Why, what is the matter with you, my dear?" she asked in surprise. " Let us go," he repeated, "let us go, I implore you." She gave a despondent shrug. " What is the good now ? " she said. " We shall have to come to it sooner or later. Since the day we first met, I have felt myself yours. I had dreamed of burying myself in a convent, I had sworn not to commit a second fault. So long as I only had one lover, I kept my pride. To-day, 1 feel that I am prostrate in shame. Don't be angry with me for speaking so frankly." She pronounced these words with such sadness that the young man's .pride softened. He became meek and cringing. " You don't know who I am," he said. " Trust yourself to me. I am not like other men. I will love you as my wife, and I will make you happy, I swear to you." Madeleine did not answer. She thought she had some experience of life : she said to herself that William woiild leave her some day, and that shame would come. Still she was strong, and she knew that she could resist ; but she 24 MADELEINE EEUAf . felt no inclination for resistance, in spite of the reasonings of her own mind. All her resolutions were giving way in a fatal hour. She was astonished herself at accepting, so easily, what, the day before even, she would have resented with cold energy. William was thinking. For the first time, the young woman had just spoken to him of her past, had confessed to him that she had had a lover; this lover, the remembrance of whom, living and indelible, he could trace in each gesture, in each word that his companion uttered, this lover seemed to him to set himself between them, now that his spirit had been evoked. The two remained silent for a long time, resolved to be united and waiting the hour for retiring to rest with singular mistrust. They felt weighed down with oppressive and un- easy thoughts ; not a word of love, not a term of endearment rose to their lips ; if they had spoken, they would have told one another of their disquietude. William was holding Madeleine's hand; but it lay cold and motionless in his. He could never have thought that his first love-prattle would have been so full of anxiety. Night was encircling him and his loved one with its shade and its mysteiy; they were alone, separated from the world, buried in the weird charm of a night of storm, and nothing touched their heart-strings but the fear and uncertainty of the morrow. And around them, nature, steeped in Yain, was tardily going to rest, trembling still with a last thrill of delight. The cool air was pervading everything ; the pungent odour of wet mould and leaves was wafted along laden with over- powering intoxicating strength, like the vinous smell from a vat. Every cloud had now disappeared from the sky ; the expanse of sombre blue was peopled with a living swarm of stars. Madeleine gave a sudden shudder. " I am cold," she said, " let us go in.'' MAliELElNE JEtlAT. 25 They entered the inn without exchangiijg a word. The landlady showed them up to their room, and left them, leaving on the corner of the table a caudle which cast a flickering light on the walls. It was a small room, hung with a vile paper with big blue flowers, faded in big patches by the damp. A large deal bedstead, painted a dull red, took up nearly the whole floor. A chilly air fell from the ceiling, there was a lurking odour of mustiness in the corners. The young couple shivered as they entered. They felt as if wet sheets were being put on their shoulders. They re- mained silent walking about the room. William wanted to close the shutters and fumbled a long time without suc- ceeding ; there was something in the way somewhere. " There is a catch at the top," said Madeleine in spite of herself. William looked her in the face, with an instinctive move- ment. They both turned quite pale. Both suffered from this involuntary confession ; the young woman knew of the catch, she had slept in this room. Next morning Madeleine woke first. She got quietly out of bed and dressed herself watching William who was still sleeping. There was a touch almost of anger in her gaze. An indefinable expression of regret passed over her hard serious brow, which the smile of her lips was powerless to soften. At times she raised her eyes ; from her lover's face she would pass to the inspection of the walls of the room, of certain stains on the ceiling which she knew again. She felt alone, she did not fear to indulge in her memories of the past. At one moment, as she cast her eyes on the pillow where William's head was reposing, she shuddered as if she had expected to find another head there. When she was dressed, she went and opened the window and leaned with her elbows on the sill, gazing on the fields now yellow in the sun-light. She had mused there nearly 23 MADELEINE FEKAT. half an honr, her brow refreshed, her face relaxed by calmer thoughts, by distant hopes, when a slight uoise made her turn round. The sleeper had just awoke. His eyes still heavy with slumber, with a vague smile of awakening on his lips, that sweet smile of recognition on the morrow of a night of love, he held out his arms to Madeleine as she approached. " .Do you love me 1 " he asked her in a low deep tone. She smiled in her turn, one of her fond loving girlish smiles. The room passed from her vision, she felt pervaded with tenderness at the young fellow's endearing question. She returned William's kiss. 27 CHAPTER II. Madeleine Feeat was the daughter of a machine-maker. Her father, who was born in a little village in the monntains of Auvergne, came bare-footed and with empty pockets, to seek his fortune in Paris. He was one of those thick-set broad-shouldered Auvergnians, with a dogged obstinacy for work. He put himself apprentice to a machine-maker, and there, for nearly ten years, he filed and hammered with all the might his hard hands were capable of. Sou by sou he amassed a few thousand francs. From the first stroke he had made with his hammer, he had said to himself that he.would only stop when he had saved enough money to commence business on his own account. When he thought himself well enough ofT, he rented a sort of shed in the neighbourhood of Moutrouge, and set np as a boiler-maker. It was the first step on the road to fortune ; the first stone in those vast workshops which ho dreamed of being at the head of later on. For ten more years, he lived in his shed, filing and hammering with re- newed ardour, never indulging in a single amusement, never taking a day's holiday. Little by little, he enlarged the shed, one by one he increased the number of his workmen ; at last he was able to buy the ground and build immense workshops, on the very spot where his little wood erection had formerly stood. The goods that he made had increased in size too ; kitchen-boilers had become factory-boilers. The 28 " MADELEINE FERAT. railways with which France was then being covered, fur- nished him with abundance of work, and put enormous profits into his hands. His dream was being realised ; he was rich. Up to this time, he had stuck to his anvil, resolved to make as much money as possible, without ever asking himself what he would do with this money. Forty sous a-day were more than enough for him to live on. His industrious habits, his ignorance of the pleasures, and of even the commodities of life, made a fortune useless to him. He had made himself rich more out of blind obstinacy than from any wish to derive any comfort from his wealth. He had vowed to become a master in his turn, and his whole existence had been spent in making his vow good. When he had amassed nearly a million francs, he asked him- self what he could possibly do with it. He was moreover by no means a miser. First he built, close to his workshops, a little plain house which he decorated and furnished with a certain amount of comfort. But he could not feel at ease on the carpets of . his rooms, he preferred to pass his days with his workmen, iimong his grimy furnaces. He might perhaps have decided to let his house and go back to the apartments he occupied before above his office, had not an important event tran- spired which modified his whole existence and changed his whole being. • Beneath the grufihess of his voice and the austerity of his manners, Ferat was as gentle as a child. He Avould not have crushed a fly. All the tenderness of his nature was lying dormant, stifled by his life of toil, when he met an orphan, a poor girl who was living with an aged relative. Marguerite was so pale, so delicate that she would not have been taken for a girl of more than sixteen ; she had one of those sweet submissive faces which move strong men. F^rat was attracted and touched by this child who smiled MADELEINE F£RAT. 2t) with a timid air, with the humility of a devoted servant. He had always lived among coarse workmen, he knew nothing of the charms of weakness, and immediately fell in love with Marguerite's delicate hands and childish face. He married her almost at once, and carried her off to his house like a little girl, in his arms. Once his wife, he loved her with a devotion bordering on worship. He doted on her paleness, her unhealthy appearance, all her frailties as a Buffering woman whom he did not dare touch with his homy hands. He had never been in love before ; on going over his past life, the only tender feeling that he could remember was one of a sacred nature, which his mother had inspired him with for a white image of the Holy Virgin, who seemed to smile mysteriously under her veil, in one of ' the shrines of his native village. In Marguerite he seemed to find again this Holy Virgin ; there was the same maidenly smile, the same saintly serenity, the same affect- ionate kindness. From the very first, he had made his wife, an idol and a queen ; she was supreme in the house, filling it with a perfume of elegance and comfort ; she transformed the cold home, which the former workman had built, into a fragrant retreat, all warm with love. For nearly a year, Fdrat hardly gave a thought to his work- shops ; he was absorbed in that exquisite and, to him, new delight of hdving a frail being to love. What charmed him and at times moved him to tears, was the gratitude which Marguerite showed him. Each look of hers would thank him for the happiness and wealth he had given her. She remained humble in her sovereignty ; she adored her husband as a master, as a benefactor, like a woman ' who can find no affection deep enough to pay her debt of felicity. She had married Ferat without looking at his swarthy face, without thinking of his forty years, moved simply by an almost filial affection. She had divined that he was kind. "I love you," she would often say to her 30 MADELEINE FfiEAT. husband, " because you are strong and do not disdain my weakuess ; I love you because I was nothing and you have made me your wife." And Ferat, as he heard these words murmured in a meek endearing voice, would press her to his bosom, his heart full of unutterable love. After they had been married a year, Marguerite became enceinte. Her pregnancy was a painful one. A few days before the crisis, the doctor took Ferat aside and told him that he was not without apprehensions. The young wife's constitution seemed to him so delicate, that the sharp pangs of child-birth made him feel afraid for her. F6rat was almost out of his senses for a week ; he would smile on bis wife, as she lay on a long chair, and then go and sob in the street; he would pass whole nights in his deserted work- shops, and come every hour to ask for news ; at times, when his anguish seemed to choke him, he would take a hammer and then strike furiously at the anvils, as if to soothe his anger. The terrible moment came at last, the fears of the doctor were realised. Marguerite died in giving birth to a daughter. Ferat's grief was fearful. His tears were dried up. When the poor woman was bui-ied, he shut himself up in the house, and stayed there in a fit of gloomy dejection. At times, he would be seized with crises of blind frenzy. He invariably spent the night in his dark silent workshops ; till morning came, he would walk up and down among the motionless machinery, the tools, the bits of iron-ore that lay about. Gradually, the sight of these instruments of his fortune would send him into a paroxysm of rage. He liad conquered misery and had not been able to conquer death. For twenty years, his powerful hands had made the bending of iron a plaything, and yet they had been power- loss to save the object of his love. And he would exclaim : " I am a coward then, and as weak as a child; had I been BtroD2 I should not have been robbed." MADELEINE FJiIIlAT. 31 For a month, no one dared to disturb this man's grief. Then, one day, the nurse, who was suckling little Madeleine put the child into his arms. F^rat had forgotten that he had a daughter. The tears came at last as he saw this poor little creature, hot scalding tears which eased both his head and his heart. He looked at Madeleine for a lon<^ time. "She is feeble and delicate like her mother," he muttered, " she will die just as she did." From that time, his despair melted away. He got into the way of thinking that Marguerite was not altogether dead. _ He had loved his wife like a father ; he was able, by loving his daughter, to deceive himself, to persuade himself that his heart had lost nothing. The child was very frail ; she seemed to get her little pale face from her poor dead .mother. F6rat was delighted at first not to find his own strong nature reproduced in Madeleine ; he could thus picture to himself that it was to her solely that she owed her birth. When he danced her on his knees, the strange fancy would come over him that his wife had died in order to become a child again, and that he might love her with fresh aflection. Up to two years of age, Madeleine was a puny child. She was always hovering between life and death. The offspring of a dying mother, she had in her eyes a shadowy vagueness which her smile was seldom able to dispel. Her father loved her the more for her sufferings. It was her very weakness which saved her ; illness could get no hold on this poor little body. The doctors gave her up, and she went on living ; she was like the flame of one of those pale night- lamps which flickers yet never goes out. Then, at two years old, health suddenly burst on her ; in a few months the shadow of death was dispelled from her eyes, the blood mounted to her lips and cheeks. It was a resurrection. Hitherto she had resembled a pale speechless corpse ; she could neither laugh nor play. When her legs became strong 32 MADELEINE EfiEAT. and she could stand, she filled the house with. her prattle and the patter of her toddling limbs. Her father would call her, with his arms stretched out towards her, and then she would rush to him with that, hesitating step which is one of the charms of children. Ferat would play with his daughter for hours ; he would carry her into the workshops among the frightful din of the machinery, saying that he wanted to make her as courageous as a boy. And to make her laugh, he found out little childish tricks that a mother would not have invented. One curious circumstance redoubled the good fellow's worship of his child. As Madeleine grew, she became more and more like him. During her earlier days, when she lay in her cradle, trembling all over with fever, she had had her mother's gentle mournful face. Now, vibrating with life, broad-set and full of vigour, she looked like a boy ; she had Ferat's grey eyes and stern brow, and, like him, she was violent and obstinate. But, as the effect of the drama of her birth, there always remained with her a sort of nervous shudder, an innate weakness which would subdue her in the height of her violent childish anger. Then she would weep bitterly, and become submissive. If the upper part of her features had borrowed the sternness of the old workman's face, she always bore a strong likeness to her mother in the weakness of her mouth and the loving meekness of her smiles. She grew, and Ferat dreamed of a prince for her husband. He had assumed again the superintendence of his workshops, for he knew now what he would do with his millions. He would have liked to heap up treasures at the feet of his dear little idol. He launched out into important speculations, no longer content with the profits of his trade, and risking his fortune in order to double it. All of a sudden came a fall in the price of iron which ruined him. iladeleine was then six years old. F6rat displayed in-, MADELEINE FfiEAT. 35 credible energy. He hardly staggered under the mortal blow which had struck him. With the accurate and rapid perceptipn of men of action, he calculated that his daughter was young and that he had still time to earn her a dowry j but he could not start his giant's task in France : he must have, as his field of operation, a country where fortunes are made rapidly. His resolution was formed in a few hours. He decided on going to America. Madeleine should await his return in a Paris boarding-school. He disputed, sou by sou, the remains of his fortune, and succeeded in saving an income of two thousand irancs, which he placed in Madeleine's name. He thought that the child would then always have bread if any misfortune happened to him. As for himself, he set out with a hun- dred francs in his pocket. The day before he went away, he carried Madeleine to the house of a fellow-countryman of his and asked him to look after her. Lobrichon, who had come to Paris about the same time as himself, had started as a dealer in old clothes and rags; later on, he had become a cloth merchant, and in this trade had made a nice round fortune. Ferat had every confidence in this old comrade. He told Madeleine that he would come back in the even- ing; he nearly fainted as he received the caresses of her little arms, and went out reeling like a drunken man. He bade farewell to Lobrichon in the next room. " If I die out yonder," he said to him in a choking voice, " you will be a father to her." He never reached America. The vessel which carried him, caught in a sudden gale, was driven back and wrecked on the coast of France. Madeleine only heard of the death of her father a long time after. The day after Fdrat had started, Lobrichon took the child to a boarding-school at Les Temes, which an old lady with whom he was acquainted had recommended to him as an excellent establishment. The two thousand frances were 84 MADELEINE FJfcEAT. amply sufficient to pay for her board and tuition, and thp former dealer in second-hand clothes was not sorry to get rid at once of a little brat whose noisy games disturbed the selfish upstart's quiet. The school, surrounded by big gardens, was a very com- fortable retreat. The ladies who kept it, took only a few pupils ; they had put their terms high so as to have none but •rich men's daughters. They taught their scholars excellent manners ; the tuition was more in bows and fashionable simpers than in the catechism and orthography. When a young lady left their school, she was perfectly ig- norant, but she could enter a drawing-room, a perfect mistress of coquetry, equipped with every Parisian grace. The ladies knew their trade, and had succeeded in earning for their establishment a reputation for stylish elegance. They conferred an honour on a family by taking charge of a child and undertaking to turn her out a wonderful charm- ing doll. Madeleine was never at home amongst such surroundings. She was wanting in pliancy, she was noisy and impulsive. During play-hours, she romped like a boy, with joyous transports that disturbed the elegant retreat. Had her father brought her up by his side, she would have become fearless, frank, straightforward, and proudly strong. It was her little school-mates who taught her to be a woman. At first, by her actions and shouts, she displeased these young ten year old dolls who were already learned in the art of not disarranging the folds of their skirts. The pupils played very little : they used to walk up and down the paths like important personages, and there were little brats no higher than one's stick who could already throw a kiss with their gloved fingers. Madeleine learnt from these charming dolls a host of things which she was completely ignorant of. In secluded comers, behind the foliage of some hedge, she came on knots of them who were talking MADELEINE F^RAT. 35 about men : she joined in these conversations, with the eager curiosity of the woman awakening in the child, and thus re- ceived the precocious education of her life. The worst thing was that these little imps, knowing as they thought them- selves to be, chattered aloud ; they openly declared their wishes for a lover : they confided to one another their little fondnesses for the young fellows they had met the last time they walked out ; they read to one another the long love letters they used to WTite during the English class, and never concealed their hope of being carried off some night or other. There was no danger to sly compliant beings in such talk as this. In the case of Madeleine, on the con- trary, it exerted a life-long influence. She inherited from her father his clear head, his rapid and logical workman's decision. Directly the child thought that she was beginning to know something of life, she tried to form a definite idea of the world, from what she saw and heard in the school. She concluded, from the childish chatter of her school-companions, that there was no harm in falling in love with a man, and that she might take the first that came. The word marriage was hardly ever pronounced by these young misses. Madeleine, whose ideas were always simple ideas, ideas of action, imagined that a woman picked up a lover in the street and walked away quietly on his arm. These thoughts never made her uneasy in the slightest, she was of a cold temperament and talked about love with her friends as she would have tallced of her toilet. She used to say to herself only : " If I am ever in love with a man, I will do as Blanche does : I will write long letters to him, and try to make him run away with me.'' And there was, in her reverie, a thought of opposition which filled her with delight : it was the only thing that she looked forward to with pleasure. In later life, when she knew from experience something of the infamy of the world, she would smile sadly as she 36 MADELEINE FfiRAT. lemem'bered ber girlish thoughts. But there always re- mained deep down iu her heart, unknown even to herself, the idea that it is quite logical and straightforward for a woman, when she is in love with a man, to tell him so and to go off with him. Such a character would have been fit to become the seat of the strongest will. Unfortunately, there was nothing to develop its frankness and strength. Madeleine wanted simply to follow a broad smooth road : her desire was for peace, for everything that is powerful and serene. It would have been enough to arm her against her hours of weakness, to cure her of that trembling feeling of servile love which she had inherited from her mother. She received, on the contrary, an education which redoubled this feeling, She had the look of a good-natured noisy boy : her mistresses simply wished to turn her into a little hypocritical girl. If they had not succeeded, it was because her nature refused to school itself in little graceful bows, in languishing drooping looks, in false smiles which the heart and face belied. But, all the same, she grew up surrounded by young coquettes, in an atmosphere laden with the enervating perfumes of the drawing-room. The honeyed words of her governesses, who had instructions to make themselves the servants of their pupils, the chamber-maids of this little colony of heiresses, all this softened her will. Every day she would hear around faer the words : "Don't think, don't look strong: learn to be weak ; it is for that that you are here." She lost, as the re- sult of all these instructions in coquetry, a few of her head- strong ways, without succeeding in marking out for herself a course of conduct, but her character was less complete and further astray from its true path. The notion of what was required of her as a woman almost escaped her : she replaced it by a deep love for frankness and independence. She was to walk straight before her, like a man, with strange moments of weakness, but never false, and strong enough MADELEINE FERAT. 37 to do penance the day she was guilty of infamous con- duct. The sechided life which she led implanted still more deeply in her mind the false notions which she had formed of the world. Lobrichon, under whose guardianship she had been placed, came to see her at rare intervals, and thought he did his duty by giving her a little pat on the cheek and en- joining on her to be very good. A mother would have enlight- ened her on the errors of her mind. She grew up with no companionship but her thoughts, and only listening to the advice of others with a sort of distrust. The most childish ideas assumed for her a serious nature, because she accepted them as the only possible rule of conduct. Her companions when they came back from their Sunday visit to their rela- tions, would tell her each time something of the outer world. During this time, she remained in the school more and more psrsuaded of the correctness of her errors. She even spent her holidays shut up alone with her thoughts. Lobrichon, who was afraid of her noisiness, kept her at a distance. In this way nine years passed. Madeleine was then fifteen, already a woman and destined henceforth to preserve the in- delible traces of the dreams in which she had grown up. She had been taught dancing and music. Siie could paint very nicely in water-colour and do every imaginable kind of embroidery. Yet she would have been incapable of hemming dusters or making her own bed. As for her knowledge, it was composed of a little grammar, a little arithmetic, and a good deal of sacred history. Her hand-writing had been care- fully looked after, and yet, to the despair of her teachers, it had remained thick and cramped. Here her learning stopped. She was charged with bowing too stiffly and spoiling the effect of her smile by the cold expression of her grey eyes. When she was fifteen, Lobrichon, who for some time had been coming to see her nearly every day, asked her if she would like to leave the school. She was in no hurry to enter 38 MADELEINE FEEAT. on the unknown, but as she gi-ew up she began to feel a dis- dain for the honeyed voice of her teachers and the acquired graces of her companions. She answered Lobrichon that she was ready to follow him. Next day, she was sleeping in a little house which her father's friend had just bought at Passy. The former second-hand clothes dealerwas nursinga project. He had retired from trade at the age of sixty. For more than thirty years he had led the life of a miser, eating very little, depriving himself of a wife, entirely absorbed in the one object of increasing his fortune. Like Ferat, he was a tremendous worker, but he worked for future enjoyment. He intended, when he was rich, to indulge his appetites to the full. When the fortune came, he hired a good cook, bought a quiet country house with a garden in front and a yard behind, and resolved to marry the daughter of his old friend. Madeleine did not possess a sou, but she was tall and strong, and had already an amplitude of bosom which answered to Lobrichon's ideal. Besides, he had only made up his mind after careful deliberation. The child was still young; he said that he could bring her up for his own sole delight, and let her' develop slowly under his eyes, enjoying thus a fore- taste of pleasure in the sight of her ripening beauty ; then, he would have her a perfect virgin, he would fashion her to suit his own desires, like a seraglio slave. Thus there entered into his project of preparing a young girl to be his wife, the monstrous refinement of a man whose appetites have been weaned for many a year. For four years, Madeleine lived peacefully in the little house at Passy. She had only changed her prison, but she did not complain of the active surveilhince of her guardian ; she felt no desire to go out, spending whole days in em- broidery work, without experiencing any of those feelings oS discomfort whioh are so oppressive to girls of her age. Her senses lay dormant till an \musually late period. Besides, Lobriohon was very attentive to his dear child ; he would often take her delicate hands in his, or kiss her on the fore- head with his warm lips. She received his caresses with a calm smile, and never noticed the strange looks of the old fellow, when she took her neckerchief oif in his presence just as she would have done before her father. She had just completed her eighteenth year, when one night the old rag-dealer so far forgot himself as to kiss her on the lips. She thrust him away with an instinctive movement of revolt, and looked him in the face, still unable to understand anything. The old man fell on his knees, and stammered out words unfit for her to hear. The wretch, who for months and months had been tormented by his burning passion, had been unable to act his part of dis- interested protector to the end. Perhaps Madeleine would have married him, had he not been guilty of this outrage^ She withdrew quietly, declaring in a distinct voice that she would leave the house next day. Lobrichon, when left by himself, saw what an irreparable fault he had just committed. He knew Madeleine and was sure she would keep her word. He lost his head, and thought of nothing now but satisfying his passion. He said to him- self that a forcible attempt might perhaps subdue the young girl, and make her cast herself vanquished into his arms. Towards midnight he went up to his ward's bed-chamber ; he had a key for this room, and often, on warm nights, ho had slipped in, in order to look at the half-naked child as she lay in the disorder of sleep. Madeleine was suddenly awakened by a strange feverish sensation. The night lamp had not been quite turned out, and she saw Lobrichon who had crept up to her side and was trying to press her to his breast. With incredible force she took him with both hands by the throat, jumped hastily on to the floor, and held the wretch on the bed till the death- 40 MADELEINE F^RAT. rattle came through his teeth. The sight of this old felloW^ pale and livid, in his shirt, the thought that his limbs had touched hers, filled her with horrible disgust. It seemed to her that she was no longer a virgin. She held on to Lobrichon for a second without moving an inch, looking at him fixedly with her grey eyes and asking herself if she was not going to strangle him ; then she thrust him away with such violence that he knocked his head against the wall of the recess and fell back in a swoon. The young girl dressed herself hastily and left the house. She walked down towards the Seine. As she went along the embankments, she heard the clock strike one. She walked straight on, saying to herself that she would do so till morning and then look for a room. She had become calm, and merely felt profoundly sad. There was one idea only in her head ; passion was infamous, and she would never love. There was always before her eyes the sight of the white legs of the old man in his shirt. When she got to the Pont-Neuf, she turned off -into the Kue Dauphine, to avoid a band of students who were hammering away at the walls. She contiuued to go straight on, no longer knowing where the road would take her to. Soon she noticed that a man was following her ; she wanted to escape, but the man began to run and overtook her. Then, with the decision and frankness of her nature, she turned towards the stranger and, in a few words, told him her history. He politely offered her his arm, and advised her to accept his hospitality. He was a tall young fellow with a bright and sympathetic face. Madeleine examined him in silence, then, calmly and confidingly, she took his arm. The young man had a room in an hotel in the Rue Soufflot. He told his companion to lie down on the bed ; as for him- self, he would sleep very well on the sofa. Madeleine pondered j she looked round the room which was littered MADELEINE PERAT. 41 with swords and pipes ; she siirvpyed her protector, who treated her as a comrade with cordial familiarity. She noticed a pair of lady's gloves on the table. Her companion smilingly reassured her ; he told her that no lady would come to disturb them, and that, besides, if he had been married, he would not have run after her in the street. Madeleine blushed. Next morning, she woke up in the young man's arms. She had thrown herself into them of her own accord, im- pelled by a sudden surrender of herself for which she could not account. What she had refused to Lobrichon witli savage revolt, she had act\ially granted two hours later to a stranger. She felt no regret. She was simply astonished. When her lover learned that the story she had given the night before was no idle tale, he seemed very much sur- prised. He thought he had met a wily woman who was in- venting falsehoods to make him run after her all the more. All the little scene she had acted before getting into the bed had seemed to him got up beforehand. Otherwise, he would have acted more discreetly, he would above all have reflected on the serious consequences of such an intimacy. He was a decent fellow who did not object to amuse himself, but he had a wholesome dread of serious love afiairs. He had calculated that he was simply showing hospitality to Madeleine for a night and that he would see her go off next morning. He was very much cast down at his mistake. "My poor child," he said to Madeleine in a voice of emotion, " we have been guilty of a serious error. Forgive me and forget — me. I have to leave France in a few weeks and I don't know if I shall ever come back." The young girl listened to this confession pretty calmly. In short, she was not at all in love with this young fellow. For him their intimacy was an adventure, for her an accident from which her ignorance had not been able to protect her. The thought of the coming departure of her lover could not 43 MADELEINE FERAT. yet break her heart, but the idea of an immediate sei^aration was peculiarly distressing. In an. indistinct way she said to herself that this man was her husband and that she could not leave him like that. She took one turn round the room, lost in thought, looking for her clothes ; then she came back, sat down on the edge of the bed, and said hesitatingly : " Listen, keep me with you as long as you stay in Paris. It will be more seemly." This last phrase, so touchingly naive, deeply affected the young fellow. He became aware of the life-long misery he had just given to the life of this big child who had confided herself to him with the calmness of a little girl. He drew her to his breast, and answered that his home was hers. During the day, Madeleine went to fetch her belong- ings. She had an interview with her guardian, and made him suhmit to everything she wished. The old man, fear- ing a scandal, and still all shaken with the struggle of the night, stood trembling before her. She made him promise never to try to see her again. She carried off the title-deeds of her income of two thousand francs. This money was a great source of pride to her ; it enabled her to stay with her lover without selling herself. That very night, she was peacefully embroidering in the room in the Kue Sonfflot as she had been the night before at her guardian's. Her life did not seem to her too much .changed. She did not think she had anything to blush for. None of her feelings of independence and frankness had been wounded in the fault she had committed. She liad eurrendered herself freely, and she could not yet understand the terrible consequences of this surrender. The future did not concern her. The esteem which her lover had for women was only that which young men feel who have to do with creatures of an in- ferior class ; but he had the boisterous good-nature of a strong man who livps a happy life. To tell the truth, lie MADELEINE FERAT. 43 speedily forgot his remorse and ceased to pity Madeleine's fate. He was soou in love with her after his fashion ; he thought her very handsome and took a pleasure in showing her to his friends. He treated her as his mistress, taking her on Sundays to Verrieres or somewhere else, and to supper with his comrades' mistresses during the week. These people now simply called her Madeleine. She would perhaps have rebelled if she had not been charmed with her lover ; he had a happy disposition, and made her laugh like a child even at the things that hurt her. She gradually accepted her position. Unknown to herself, her mind was becoming sullied, and she was grow ing acciistomed to shame. The student, who had just been appointed army-surgeon the day before they met, expected his orders to start every day. But they did not come, and Madeleine saw the months pass by, saying to herself that she would perhaps be a widow next day. She had only expected to stay a few weeks in the Kue Soufflot. She stayed there a year. At first she simply felt a kind of affection for the man she was living with. When at the end of two months she began to live in anxious expectation of his departure, her existence was a series of shocks which gradually bound her to him. Had he set off at once, she would perhaps have seen him go ■ away without too much despair. But to be always fearing to lose him and yet have him always with her, this succeeded finally in uniting her to him in a close bond. She never loved him passionately ; she rather received his impression, she felt herself becoming a part of him, and she saw that he was taking entire possession of her body and mind. Now she found that she could not forget him. One day, she went with one of her new lady friends on a little journey. This friend, a law-student's mistress, was called Louise, and she was going to see a child that she had put to nurse some sixty miles from Paris. The young women 44 MADELEINE FERAT. were not to return till the third day, but bad weather came on and they hastened back a day sooner than they had arranged. In a corner of the compartment of the train in which they were returning, Madeleine pondered with a feeling of sad- ness on the scene which she had just witnessed ; the caresses of the mother and the prattle of the child had revealed to her a world of unknown emotions. She was seized with a sudden feeling of anguish at the idea that she too might have become a mother. Then the thought of the near de- parture of the man she was living with filled her with dis- may, like an irreparable calamity of which she had never dreamed. She saw her fall, she saw her false and painful position ; she was eager to get home to put her arms round her lover, to beseech him earnestly to marry her and never leave her. She arrived in the Rue Soufflot in a state of feverish excite- ment. She had forgotten the slender tie, ready to be snapped at any moment, which she had accepted ; she wished in her turn to take entire possession of the man whose memory would possess her for life. When she opened the door of the room in the hotel, she suddenly stopped stupefied on the threshold. Her lover was bending down in fr,ont of the window, fastening the buckles of his trunk ; by his side lay a travell- ing bag and another trunk already fastened up. Madeleine's clothes and belongings were spread out in disorder on the bed. The young fellow had received his orders to set off that very morning, and he had hastened to make his pre- parations, emptying the drawers, separating his own things from Madeleine's. He wanted to get away before his mis- tress came back, really believing himself to be acting under an impulse of kindness. He thought a letter of explanation would have been quite sufficient. When ho turned round and saw Madeleine on the thresh- old, he could not suppress a movement of vexation. He MADELEINE FJilRAT. 45 got up and went towards her with a somewhat forced smile. "My dear girl," he said as he kissed her, "the time for good-bye has come. I wanted to go away without seeing you again. That would have avoided a painful scene for toth of us. You see, I was leaving your things on the bed." Madeleine felt as if she would faint. She sat down on a chair, without thinking of taking off her hat. She was very pale and could not find what to say. Her tearless burning eyes kept looking first at the trunks and then at the heap of her clothes ; it was this unfeeling division of property which put the separation in such a harsh and odious light. Their linen no longer lay side by side in the same drawer ; she was henceforth nothing to her lover. The young fellow was just finishing the fastening up of his last trunk. " They are sending me to the devil," he went on, trying to laugh. " I am going to Cochin China." Madeleine was able to speak at last. " Very well," she said in a hollow voice. " I will go with you to the station.'' She could not think that she had any right to utter a single reproach to this man. He had warned her before- hand, and it was she who had wished to stay. But her feelings revolted, and she felt a strange longing to clasp him round the neck and beg him not to go. Her pride nailed her to her chair. She wished to appear calm, and not to show the young man, who was whistling coolly, how his de- parture was tugging at her heart-strings. Towards evening, a few friends came. They all went in a body to the station, Madeleine smiling, and her lover gaily joking, comforted by her apparent good spirits. He had never felt towards her anything but a good-natured affection, and he went away happy at seeing her so calm. Just as 46 MADELEINE PJ^IRAT. he was going into the waiting-room, he was cruel without meaning to be. "I don't ask you to wait for me, dear girl," he said. " Console yourself and forget me." He went off. Madeleine, who had, up to this, preserved a strange pained smile, went mechanically out of the station, without feeling the ground tinder her feet. She did not even notice that one of the young doctor's friends was taking her by the arm and going with her. She had been walking in this way nearly a quarter of an hour, stunned, hearing and seeing nothing, when the noise of a voice falling on the chilly silence of her brain, gradually compelled her to listen in spite of herself. The student was proposing to her un- ceiemoniously to share his room with him, now that she was free. When she understood his meaning, she looked at the young fellow with an air of terror ; then she let go his arm with a movement of supreme disgust, and ran and shut herself up in the room in the Kue Soufflot. There, all alone at last, she could sob to her heart's desire. Her sobs were sobs of shame and despair. She was a widow, and her grief at her desertion had just been sullied by a proposal which, to her, seemed monstrous. Never yet had she so cruelly comprehended the misery pf her posi- tion. The right to weep was being denied her. The world seemed to think that she had already been able to obliterate the kisses of her first lover. And yet she felt that these kisses were in her soul : she said to herself that they would always be burning there. Then, in the midst of her tears she swore to remain a widow. She felt the eternity of the bonds of the flesh ; any fresh love would degrade her and fill her with avenging memories. She did not sleep in the Rue Soufflot. She went the same night, and took up her quarters in another hotel in the Rue de I'Est. There she lived for two mouths, unsociable and solitary. One time, she had thought of shutting herself up MABELEIJfE F^EAT. 47 in a convent. But she did not feel that she had faith enough. While she was at school, God had been represented to her as a nice young man. She did not believe in a God lilte that. It was at this period that she met William. 48 CHAPTER III. V^TBUiL is a little town of ten thousand inhabitants, situated on the borders of Normandy. The streets are clean and de- serted. It is a place that has had its day. People who want to travel by rail have to go fifteen miles by coach, and wait for the trains that pass through Mantes. Round the town, the open country is very fertile ; it spreads out in rich grazing-land intersected by rows of poplars : a brook, on its way to the Seine, cuts a course through these broad flat tracts and traverses them with along line of trees and reeds. It was in this forsaken hole that William was born. His father,Monsieur de Viai;gue, was one of the last representatives of tlie old nobility of the district. Bom in Germany, during the " emigration," he came to France with the Bourbons, as into a foreign and hostile country. His mother had been cruelly banished, and was now lying in a cemetery at Berlin : his father had died bn the scaffold. He could not pardon the soil which had drunk the blood of his guillotined father, and did not cover the corpse of his poor mother. The res- toration gave him back his family possessions, he recovered the title and the position attached to his name, but he pre- served a no less bitter hatred against that accursed France which he did not recognise as his country. He went and buried himself at Veteuil, refusing preferment, turning a deaf ear to the offers of Louis XVIII. and Charles X., and disdaining to live amongst a people who had assassinated his kindred. He would often repeat that he was no French- man ; he called the Germans his fellow countrymen, and spoke of himself as though be were a veritable exile. MADELEINE FfiRAT. 49 He was still young when he came to France. Tall, strong, and of fiery activity, he soon grew mortally bored in the inaction which he was imposing on himself. He wished to live alone, far from all public events. But his intelligence was of too high an ofder, the restlessness of his mind was too great, to be satisfied with the boorish pleasures of field sports. The dull unoccupied life which he was setting him- self dismayed him. He looked round for something to do. By a singular inconsistency, he was fond of science, that new spirit of method the breath of which had turned upside down the old world that he regretted. He devoted himself to the study of chemistry, he who would dream of the splen- dour of the nobility under Louis XIV. He was a strange scholar, a solitary scholar who studied and made researches for himself only. He turned into a huge laboratory a room in La Noiraude, the name given in the country to the chateau which he lived in, at five minutes' walk from Veteuil. In it he would spend whole days, bending over his crucibles, always eagei-, and yet never succeeding in satisfying his cui-iosity. He was a member of no learned society, and would shut the door in the face of people who came to talk with him about his researches. He wanted to be considered a gentleman. His servants were never, under pain of dismissal, to make any allusion to him, or to the employment of his time. He looked upon his taste for chemistry as a passion whose secret follies no one had a right to penetrate. For nearly forty j-ears, he shut himself up every morning in his laboratory. There, his disregard for the bustle of the world became more pronounced. Though he never owned it, he buried his loves and his hatreds in his retorts and alembics. When he had weighed the substance in his powerful hands, he forgot all about France, and his father's death on the scaflFold, and his mother's in a foreign land : nothing of the gentleman remained but his cold and D 50 MADELEINE FiRAT. haughty sceptical nature. The scholar had killed the man. No one, moreover, could get to the bottom of this strange organization. His own friends were ignorant of the sudden void that had been made in his heart. He kept to himself the secret of the blank, that blank which he thought he had touched with his finger. If he still lived far from the world in exile, as he never ceased to say, it was because he de- spised his fellow-men both rich and poor, and compared him- self to a worm. But he remained solemn and disdainful, icy even in his coldness. He never lowered his mask of pride. There was, however, one shock in the calm existence of this man. A foolish young woman, the wife of a notary in Veteuil, threw herself into his arms. He was then forty, and still treated his neighbours like serfs. He kept the young woman as his mistress, publicly acknowledged her ten miles round, and even liad the audacity to keep her at La Noiraude. This was an unprecedented scandal in the little town. The brusque ways of Monsieur de Viargiie had already caused the finger of dislike to be pointed at him. When he lived openly with the wife of the notary, people were for tearing him to pieces. The husband, a poor fellow who had a mortal dread of losing his place, kept quiet for the two years that the intimacy lasted. He shut his eyes and ears, and seemed to believe that his wife was merely spending a little holiday at Monsieur de Viargue's. The woman became enciente and was delivered of her child in the chateau. A few months later, she grew tired of her lover, who was again passing his days in the laboratory. One fine morning, she went back to her husband, taking care to forget her child. The coimt was not fool enough to run after her. The notary quietly took her back, as if she had returned from a journey. Next day, he went for a walk with her on his arm, through the streets of the town, and from that day she became a MADKLEINE FfiRAT. 51 model wife. Twenty years after, this scandal had not died out at Veteuil. William, the child of this singular intimacy, was brought up at La Noirauile. His father, who had had for his mistress only a passing affection, mingled with a little disdain, ac- cepted this child of fortune with perfect indifference. He let him live with him, that he might not be accused of wish- ing to hide the living testimony of his folly : but, as the memory of the notary's wife was disagreeable to him, he never troubled his head about him. The poor creature grew up in almost complete solitude. His mother, who had not even felt any reason for getting her husband to leave Veteuil, never tried to see him. This woman saw^ now how foolish she had been : she trembled as she thought of the consequences her fault might have : age was creeping on her, and she followed the dictates of her plebeian blood and be- came religious and prudish. The woman who proved a real mother to William, was an old servant who had been in the family when Monsieur de Viargue was born. Genevieve and the count's mother had been foster-sisters. The latter, who belonged to the nobility of central France, had taken Genevifeve with her to Germany, at the time of the emigration, and Monsieur de Viargue, on his return to France, after the death of his mother, had brought her to Veteuil. She was a country-woman from the Cevennes, belonging to the reformed religion, with a narrow zealous mind, filled with all the fanaticism of the early Calvinists, whose blood she felt flowing in her veins. Tall and lank, with sunken eyes, and a big pointed nose, she reminded one of those old witches who used to be burnt at the stake. She carried everywhere an enormous sombre-looking Bible with its binding strengthened with iron clasps; morning and night, she read a few verses from it in a high shrill voice. Some- times she would come across some of those awful words of anger which the terrible God of the Jews heaped on his dis- 52 MADELEINE F:^RAT. mayed people. The count put up with what he called her madness : he knew the strict uprightness, the sovereign justice of this over-excited nature. Besides, he looked upon Genevifeve as a sacred legacy from his mother. She was more a supreme mistress than a servant in the house. At seventy she was still doing heavy work. She had several servants under her, but she took great pride in eetting herself hard tasks. She was humble and yet in- credibly vain. She managed everything at La Noiraude, getting up at day-break, setting each the example of indefatigable activity, and fulfilling her duty with the toughness of a woman who has never felt ill. One of the greatest troubles of her life was the passion of her master for science. As she saw him shut himself up during long days in a room littered with strange apparatus, she firmly believed that he had become a wizard. When she passed the door of this room and heard the noise of his bellows, she would clasp her hands in terror, con- vinced that he was hastening on the fire of hell with his breath. One day, she had the courage to go in and solemnly adjure the count, by the name of his mother, to save his soul by renouncing an accursed work. Monsieur de Viargue gently put her to the door, smiling and promising to reconcile himself to God later on when he died. From ■that time, she prayed for him morning and night. She would often repeat in a sort of prophetic ecstasy, that she heard the devil prowling about every night, and that great calamities were threatening La Noiraude. Genevifeve looked upon the scandalous intimacy of the count with the notary's wife as a first warning of God's anger. The day this woman came to live in'the chateau, she was seized with righteous indignation. She declared to her master that she could not live in the same house with this creature, and that she gave up her place to her. And she did as she said : she went and took up her quarters in a MADELEINE F^RAT. 53 sort of summer-house that Monsieur de Viargue possessed at the further end of the park. The country people who went along by the side of the park wall used to catch the sound of her shrill voice chanting the verses of her big Bible at all hours of the day. The count did not disturb her, he visited her several times, receiving with an impassive air the fervent sermons which she made him listen to. Once only did he nearly get angry; he had met the old woman in the path where he was taking a walk with his mistress, and Genevieve had taken upon herself to rate the young woman with a violence of language quite biblical. She, who had not the least fault to reproach herself with, would have cast the dirt from the roads in the face of sinning women. The notary's wife was very much terrified with this scene, and it is quite credible that the disdain and anger of the old protestant had something to do with her hurried de- partiu-e. As soon as Genevifeve knew that shame had departed from La Noiraude, she quietly went to take again her position as supreme mistress. She only found there an additional child, little William. The thought of this child, when she was still living in the summer-house, had caused her a sacred horror ; he was the child of sin, he might bring with him only misfortune, and perhaps the avenging God had caused him to be born in order to punish his father for his impiety. But when she saw the poor creature, in his pink and white cradle, she felt a sensation of tenderness hitherto unknown to her. This woman, whose feelings and passions had withered in the zealous virginity of a fanatic, ex- perienced a vague sensation that there was awakening in her the yearning of wife and mother which exists in every maiden's nature. She thought herself tempted by Satan, and wished to resist the tenderness that was taking posses- sion of her being. Then she gave up the struggle, and kissed William ■Srith a longing to recommend her soul to God, 54 MADELEINE FlfeRAT. so as to protect herself against this child of sin on whom Heaven must have laid a curse. And she gradually became a mother to him, but she was a strange mother whose caresses were never free from a sort of vague teiTor. At times, she would repulse him, then she would take him again into her arms with the bitter pleasure of a saint who thinks that he feels the devil's claw penetrat- ing his flesh. When he was still quite small, she would look earnestly into his eyes, full of uneasiness, and asking herself if she was not about to 'find the light of hell in the pui-c clear gaze of the innocent creature. Siie could never bring lierself to believe that he did not belong in a small degree to Satan, but her rough kind affection, though it felt tiie shock, was only lavished the more. As soon as he was weaned, she sent the nurse away. She alone had charge of him. Monsieur de Viargue had handed him over to her, authorising her even, with his ironical philosopher's smile, to bring him up in whatever religion slie pleased. The hope of saving William from the everlast- ing fire, by making him a zealous protestant, redoubled Genevieve's devotion. Up to the age of eight, she kept him with her in the room which she occupied on the second floor at La Noiraude. William thus grew up in the very midst of nervous excitement. From the cradle he breathed the chilly air, full of religious terror, which the old fanatic shed around her. He saw nothing on awaking but this woman's face, fervent and speechless bent over him, he heard nothing but the shrill voice of this singer of chants, who would lull him to sleep at night by reciting in a lugubrious fashion one of the seven penitential psalms. The caresses of his foster- mother crushed him, her embraces suffocated him, and they were bestowed in shocks and with tears that would send the boy himself into a state of unwholesome tenderness. He acquired, to his hurt, the sensitiveness of a woman, and his MADELEINE FERAT. 5J nerves became so finely strung that his childish troubles were transformed into real sufferings. Often would his eyes fill witii tears, for no apparent reason, and he would weep, not through angor, for hours, like a grown-up person. When he was seven, Genevifeve taught him his letters out of the big Bible with the iron clasps. This bible, with its paper yellowed with ago and its forbidding appearance, used , to terrify him. He could not understand the sense of the lines he had to spell, but the sinister tone in which his teacher pronounced the words, froze him to his chair. When he was alone, nothing in tlie world would have induced him to open the bible. The old protestant spoke to him about it as about God himself with awed respect. The child, whose intelligence was awakening, lived from that time in a sort of eternal dread. Shut up with the fanatic who talked to him incessantly of the devil, of hell, of the anger of Heaven, he passed days in a state of agonising terror : at night, he would sob, as he pictured to himself the flames running under his bed. This poor being who wanted nothing but play and laughter, had his imagination so unhinged that he did not dare to go into the park for fear of being damned. Genevifeve would repeat to him every morning, in that shrill voice, the tones of which cut like sharp blades, that the world was an infamous place of perdition, and that it would be better for him to die without ever seeing the bright sun. She thought that by these lessons she was saving him from Satan. Sometimes, however, in the afternoon, he would run about in the long passages at La Noiraude, and venture under the trees in the park. The mansion, which was called La ly^oiraude at Vdteuil, was a big square building, three stories high, and all dark and ugly, very much like a house of correction. Monsieur de Viargue disdainfully allowed it to fall into ruins. He occupied a very small portion of it : one room on the first 56 MADELEINE F^IBAT. floor and another at the top of the house, which he had made into his laboratory : on the ground floor, he had reserved him- self a dining-room and a sitting-room. The other apartments in the spacious mansion, except those occupied by Genevifeve and the servants, were completely deserted. They were never even opened. When William went along the gloomy silent passages which traversed La Noiraiide in every direction, he felt seized with secret terror. He hurried past the doors of the empty rooms. Filled with the horrible ideas which Genevifeve put into his head, he fancied he could hear moanings and stifled sobs from these rooms ; he would ask himself fearfully who could inhabit these apartments whose doors were always fastened. He preferred the walks in the park, and yet he did not dare to go far, such a timorous, cowardly mortal had the old protestant made him. Occasionally, he met his father, but the sight of him made him tremble. Up to the age of five, he had hardly seen him. The count was forgetting that he had a sou. He had not even troubled his head about the fonnalities he would have to go through some day if he wished to adopt him. The child had been necessarily declared as born of parents unknown. Monsieur de Viargue was aware the notary always pretended to be ignorant of tiie existence of his wife's bastard, and he promised himself some day to put William's position straight. As he had no other heir, he intended to bequeath his fortune to him. These thoughts, however, did not trouble him very much ; he was absorbed in his experi- ments, more ironical and more haughty than ever : he listened impassively to the accounts that Genevieve gave him from time to time about the child. One day, as he was going down to the park, he met him with the old woman, who was loading him by tlie hand. He was quite astonished to find him so big. William, who was entering on his fifth year, had on one of those delight- MADELEINE F^RAT. 57 ful dresses of light bright-coloured .material that children wear. The father, somewhat struck, stopped for the first time ; he took hold of his son, and raising him up to his face, looked at him attentively. William, by a mysterious phenomenon of blood, was like the count's mother. The resemblance struck the father, and moved him. He kissed the poor little trembling fellow's brow. From that day, he never met his son without kissing him. After his fashion, he loved him as much as he could love. But his embrace was cold, and the hasty kiss whicii he gave him at times was not enough to win the child's heart. When William could avoid the count, without the latter noticing it, he was nearly always delighted to escape his embrace. This stern man who haunted La Noiraude like a cold silent shadow, caused him more fear than affection. Genevifeve, to whom Monsieur de Viargue had given orders to briog him up openly as his son, always represented his father to him as a terrible and absolute master, and this word father only awoke in his mind an idea of reverential dread. Such was William's existence during the first eight years of his life. The strange teaching of the old protestant, and the terror with which his father inspired him, all con- tributed to make him feeble. He was doomed to keep with him through life the shudders and the unwholesome sensi- tiveness of his infancy. At eight years of age. Monsieur de Viargue sent him as a boarder to the communal school at V6teuil. He had, no doubt, noticed the cruel way in which Genevifeve was bringing him up, and wished to remove him entirely from the influence of this disordered brain. At the school, William began in sorrow the apprenticeship of life : he was fatally doomed to be hurt at every turn. The years that he spent as a boarder were one long martyrdom, one long ordeal that a neglected and deserted child has to pass through, trodden on by everybody and 58 MADELEIXE F^RAT. never knowing what he has dune wrong. The inhabitants of Veteuil nursed towards Monsieur de Viargue a secret hatred, which was the result of their jealousy and prudery : they never forgave him for being rich and doing as he liked,' while the scandal of William's birth was an endless theme for their slanderous talk. Though they continued to bow humbly to the father, they avenged themselves for his dis- dainful iudifference on the weakneos of the son, whose heart they could break without danger. The boys of the town, those of twelve and sixteen, all knew William's history through having heard it told a hundred times in their families ; at home their relatives would talk with such indignation of this adulterous child, that they looked upon it as their duty, now that he was their play-fellow, to torture the poor being who was cried out upon by the whole of Veteuil. Their very parents encouraged them in their cowardice, smiling slyly at the persecutions which they inflicted on him. From the very first play-hour, William felt, from the jeering attitude of his new companions, that he was in a hostile country. Two big fellows, fifteen year old louts, came up and asked him his name. When he replied, in a timid voice, that it was William, the whole band jeered. " Your name is Bastard, you mean ! " cried a school-boy, amid the hoots and low jokes of these young scamps, who already liad the vices of grown-up men. The child did not understand the insult, but he began to weep with anguish and terror in the centre of this pililess circle which surrounded him. He got a few shoves, begged pardon, which highly amused these gentlemen, and brought him a few more knocks. The bent was followed, the school victim was found. During every play-hour, he caught a few thumps on the head, he heard himself saluted by the name of Bastard, which made the blood mount to his cheeks, he knew not MADELEINE FEEAT. fiO why. The dread of blows made him cowardly ; he spent his time in the comers, not daring to stir, like a pariah who finds a whole nation up against him and no longer dares to revolt. His masters banded secretly with his comrades ; they saw that it would be a clever stroke of policy to make common cause with the sons of the big wigs at Veteuil, and they overwhelmed the child with punishments, themselves enjoying a wicked pleasure in torturing a feeble creature. William gave himself up to despair) he was a detestible pupil, brutalized with blows, hard words and punishments. Slow, sickly, stupid, he would weep in the dormitory for a whole night : this was his only protest. His sufferings were all the keener for the poignant need that he felt of having somebody to love and only finding objects to hate. His nervous sensitiveness made him cry out with anguish at each fresh insult. " Good God," he would often murmur, "what crime have I committed?" And, with his childish sense of justice, he would try to find out what it was that could bring down on him such cruel punishments; when he could find nothing, he would be filled with strange dread, he would remember Genevifeve's menacing lessons and think himself tormented by demons for unknown sins. On two occasions, he seriously thought of drowning himself in the school-well. He was then twelve years old. On holidays he seemed to get out of a grave. The street children would often stone him to the gates of the town. He was now fond of the deserted park at La Noiraude where no one beat him. He never dared to speak to his father about the persecutions he had to endure. He com- plained only to Genevifeve and asked her what was the meaning of that name Bastard which produced in him the burning sensation of a box on the ears. The old woman listened to him gloomily. She was annoyed that her pupil had been taken awayfrom her, She knewthat the school chap- 60 MADELEINE F^RAT. lain had induced M. de Viargue to let the child be baptised, and she looked upon him as positively doomed to the flames of hell. When William had confided to her his troubles, she exclaimed, without speaking directly to him : " You are the son of sin, you are expiating the crime of the guilty." He could not understand, but the fanatic's tone seemed to him so full of anger, that he never after made her his con- fidante. His despair increased as he grew up. He at last arrived at an age when he knew what his fault was. His comrades, with their vile insults, had educated him in vice. Then, he wept tears of blood. They hit him through his parents, by telling him the shameful story of bis birth. He knew of the existence of his mother by the coarse names which they gave to this woman all around him. The youngsters, once they set foot in the filth, wallowed in it with a sort of vanity ; and the little dandies never spared the Bastard any of the vileness which they could invent out of the intimacy between the notary's wife and Monsieur de Viargue. William was seized at times with an outburst of wild rage ; beneath the blows of his executioners, the martyr revolted at last, fell on the first he could lay hands on and tore him like a wild beast ; but, as a rule, he remained passive under the insult and simply wept in silence. As lie was entering on his fifteenth year, an event hap- pened, the memory of which he kept all his life. One day, as the school was walking out and passing along one of the streets of the town, he heard/his comrades sneering round him and murmuring in their malicious tone : " Eh ! Bastard, look ; there's your mother." He raised his head and looked. A woman was passing along the causeway, leaning on the arm of a man with a weak placid face. This woman sur- veyed William with a curious look. Her clothes almost rubbed against him as she passed. But she had no smile, MADELEINE FERAT. 61 and screwed up her mouth with a sort of sanctified and crabbed grimace. The placid expression of the man who was with her never changed. William, who was nearly fainting, did not hear the banter of his comrades who were bursting with laughter, as if this little adventure had been the greatest joke in the world. He stood savage and speechless. This hurried vision had frozen his life-blood, and he felt himself more miserable than an orphan. For the rest of his life, when he thought of his mother, he would see before him the image of this woman passing by with a sanctimonious scowl, leaning on the arm of her cuckolded and happy husband. His great grief, during these wretched years, was to be loved by no one. The savage tenderness of Gencvifeve frightened him almost, and he found his father's silent affec- tion very cold. He would say to himself that he was alone, and that there was not a single being who had, any pity for him. Crushed beneath the persecutions that he endured, he shut himself up with his inexpressible thoughts of kind- ness ; his gentle nature carefully concealed, as a foolish secret at which people would have laughed, the treasures of love which it could not bestow at large. He would lose himself in the endless dream of an imaginary passion into which he would throw himself heart and soul for ever. And he would dream then of a blissful solitude, of a nook where there were trees and streams, where he would be all alone in company with a cherished passion ; lover or comrade, he hardly knew which ; he simply felt a longing desire for peace. When he had been beaten, and when still all bruised, he would summon up his dream, his hands clasped in a sort of religious frenzy, and he would ask Heaven when he would be able to hide himself and take his rest in a supreme affection. Had his pride not sustained him, he would perhaps have become habituated to cowardice. But, fortunately, he had 62 MADELEINE FERAT. in hiin the blood of the De Viargues; the helpless weakness, to which he was a victim through his chance birth and the plebeian foolishness of his mother, would at times derive an accession of vigour from the pride which he had from his father. He would feel himself better, worthier and nobler than his tormentors ; if he feared them, he had a calm disdain for them ; under their blows his strength of pride did not desert him, and this exasperated the young brutes who did not fail to notice the contempt of their victim. William, however, had one friend in the school. Just as he was promoted into the second form, a new pupil came into the same' class as himself. He was a tall young fellow, vigorous and strongly built, and older than William by two or three years. His name was James Berthier. An orphan, with no other relatives than an uncle who was a lawyer at Veteuil, he had come to the school at this town to finish the studies which he had begun at Paris. His uncle wanted to have him near him, as he had learnt that his dear nephew was rather precocious and was already, at seventeen, running after the young ladies of the Latin quarter. James bore his exile in excellent spirits. He had the happiest disposition in the world. Without any remarkable qualities, he was what you call a fine fellow. The frivolity of his nature was atoned for by a rough-and-ready sort of devotion. His entry into the school was an event ; he came straight from Paris, and spoke of life like a youth who has already tasted the forbidden fruit. The pupils had a sudden respect for him when they learnt that he had slept with women. His easy manners, his strength, and his good fortune made him the king of the school. He would laugh aloud, he would gladly exhibit his powei-ful arms and protect the weak with the good-nature of a prince. The very day of his arrival, he saw a big lout of a scholar hustling William. He marched up, and gave the fellow a MADELEINE FERAT. 63 good shaking, telling him at the same time that he would hear further from him if he bullied the youngsters like that. Then he took the victim's arm and walked about with him during the whole of play-time to the scandal of the scholars who could not conceive how the Parisian could choose such a friend. William was deeply touched with the assistance and friendship which James offered him. The latter had been seized with a sudden feeling of sympathy for the pained face of his new comrade. When he had asked him a few questions, he saw that he was going to have to exercise an active protection and this decided him. " Will you be my friend 1 " he asked as he held out his hand to William. The poor fellow almost wept as he grasped this hand, the first which had been offered him. " I will love you deeply," he replied in the timid tone of a wooer confessing his love. The following play-time, a group of pupils came round the Parisian to tell him William's history. They counted on making him thrash the Bastard by informing him of the scandal of his birth. James listened quietly to the dirty jokes of his comrades. When they had finished, he shrugged his shoulders and said : " You're a pack of idiots. If I catch one of you repeat- ing what you have just said, I'll box his ears." He only felt more sympathy for the pariah as he per- ceived the depths of his wounds. He had already had as a friend, at the Charlemagne college, a love-begot, a boy of rare and charming intelligence, who carried off all his form prizes and was beloved by his comrades and by his masters. This made him accept, as quite a natural thing, the story of the scandal which so raised the indignation of the young brutes of Veteuil. " What geese those fellows are ! '* he said to William. 64 MADELEINE FERAT. " They are ill-natured blockheads. I know all ; but come now, don't be afraid ; if one of them touches you, tell me, and you'll see." From that day, everybody felt a respect for the Bastard. One of the fellows having ventured to salute him with this name, he got such a smack that the whole school saw that there was to be no more joking and sought another victim. William passed through the second class and the rhetoric class in profound peace. He became ardently devoted to his protector. He loved him with the love one has for a first mistress, with absolute faith and blind devotion. His gentle nature had at length found an outlet, his long pent-up tenderness was bestowed in its entirety on the deity whose hand and heart had befriended him. His friend- ship was mingled with a feeling of gratitude so warm that he almost looked upon James as a superior being. He knew not how to pay his debt, and his attitude towards him was humble and respectful. He admired his slightest movements ; this big energetic noisy fellow fiUed him with a sort of respect, when he compared him to his own timid and piteous nature. His easy manners, the stories which he told of his life in Paris convinced him that he had for a friend an extraordinary man who was destined for the highest career. And there was thus, in his affection, a singular mixture of admiration, humility and love, which always left him a feeling at once tender and respectful for Jaraes. The latter accepted, like the good fellow that he was, his protegee's adoration. He loved to show his strength and 1o be flattered. Besides, he was seduced by the devoted endearments of this weak proud nature who crushed the other pupils with his contempts. For the two years that they were at school together, they were inseparable. When they had got through the rhetoric class, James set out for Paris, where he was to attend the lectures at the MADELEINE FERAT, . 6r> School of Medicine. William, left alone at V^teuil, re- mained for a long time inconsolable at the departure of his friend. He had lost all aptitude for work, living at La Noir- aude as ia the heart of a desert. He was then eighteen. His father ?ent for him one day into his laboratory. It was the first time that he had passed the threshold of this room. He found the count standing in the middle of the huge sanctum, his breast covered with a long blue work- man's apron. He seemed to him terribly aged; his temples were bare, and his sunken eyes shone with a strange brilliancy in his thin face all seamed with wrinkles. He had always felt a deep respect for him ; this day, he almost felt a dread of him. "Sir," said the count, "I have sent for you in order to tell you my plans with regard to yourself. Be kind enough to tell me if, by chance, you feel an inclination for any occupation." As William stood embarrassed and hesitating he went on : " That is well, my orders will be the more easy for you to carry out. I wish you, sir, to follow no profession whatever, neither doctor, lawyer, nor anything else.'' And as the young man looked at him, with an air of surprise, he continued in a slightly bitter tone : " You will be rich, you will have it in your power to be a fool and a happy man, if you are fortunate enough to understand life. I regret already that I have had you taught something. Hunt, eat, sleep, these are my orders. Still, if you have a taste for farming, I will allow you to dig." The count was not joking. He spoke in a peremptory tone, in the certainty of being obeyed. He noticed that his son was casting a glance over the laboratory as if to protest against the life of idleness which he was imposing on him. His voice became threatening. "Above all," he said ".swear to me that you will never spend your time on science. After my death, you will shut . 66 MADELEINE F^RAT. this door and never open it again. It is enough that one De Viargue has buried himself here for a whole lifetime. I rely on your word, sir ; you will do nothing, and you will try to be happy." William was going to withdraw, when his father, as if touched with sudden grief and emotion, took him by the hands and murmured as he drew him towards him : " You understand, my child, obey me ; be a simple- minded man, if it is possible." He kissed him hurriedly and dismissed him. This scene had a strange effect on William ; he saw that the coimt must be suffering from a secret grief ; in the few dealings that they had with one another, he showed him, fi-om that day, a more affectionate respect. Besides, he conformed strictly to his orders. He stayed for threeyears at La Noiraude hunting, shooting, roving about the country, and taking an interest in trees and hiUs. These three years, during which he lived in companionship with nature, finished the work of predestination for the joys and sorrows which the future had in store for him. Lost in the green solitudes of the park, .invigorated by the all-pervading ' thrill of nature beneath the foliage, he purified himself of his school-life, he increased in tenderness and pity. He took up the dream of his youth, he hoped again to find, on the brink of some fountain, a being who would take him in her arms and Ciirry him away, kissing him like a child. Ah ! what long reveries, and how sweetly the shadow and silence of the oaks fell on his brow. But for the vague restlessness with which his unsatisfied desires filled him, he would have been perfectly happy. Nobody was persecuting him now: when he happened to pass through V^teuil, he saw his old comrades salute him with more cowardice than they had beaten him ; it was known in the town that he would be the count's heir. His only dread, a strange dread miugled with painful hope, was MADELEINE F^RAT. ' 67 of finding himself face to face with his mother. He did not see her again, and he was sad ; the thought oi this woman would recur to him every day ; her complete forgetfulness of him, was for him an inexplicable monstrosity the cause of which he would have liked to discover. He even asked Genevieve if he ought not to try to see her. The old pro- testant answered him rudely that he was mad. " Your mother is dead," she added, in her voice of inspira- tion ; " pray for her." Genevieve had always loved the child of sin, in spite of the terrors which such affection caused him. Now that this child had become a man, she put more guard on her heart. Yet at bottom, she was absolutely and blindly devoted to him. On two occasions, James came to spend his student's holidays at Veteuil. These times were for William months of wild joy. The tw^o friends were always together ; they would shoot for whole days, or catch crawfish in the little brook that runs through the country. Often, in some secluded nook, they would sit down and talk about Paris, especially about women. James spoke lightly of them, as a man who had no very great regard for them, but who had the gallantry to look kindly on tJiera, and not to speak all his mind on the subject. And William would then reproach him for his coldness of heart ; he set woman on a pedestal, and made her an idol, before which he chanted an eternal song of fidelity and love. " Oh ! do be quiet," the impatient student would exclaim, " You don't know what you are saying. You will soon bore your mistresses, if you are always on your knees before them. But you will do as others do, you will deceive and be deceived. Such is life." " No, no," he woi}ld answer in his obstinate way, " I shall not do as others do. I shall never love but one woman. I shall love her in such a way that I defy fate to disturb our affection." 68 MADELEINE P^RAT. " Kubbish ! we shall see.'' And James would laugh at the artlessness of his country friend. He almost scandalised him by the recital of his love adventures of one night. The journeys that he thus made to V^teuil cemented still more closely the friendship of the two young fellows. Besides, they used to write long letters to one another. Gradually, however, James's letters became less frequent ; the third year, he had ceased to give any sign of life. William was very sad at this silence. He knew, through the student's uncle, that his friend was to leave France, and he would have very ruuch liked to bid him good bye before his departure. He was beginning to get mortally tired at La Noiraude. His father learnt the cause of his languid dejected ways, and said to him one night as he left the table : " I know that you want to go to Paris. I give you leave to live there one year, and I expect that you will do some stupid thing or other. You shall have unlimited credit. You may start to-morrow." Next day on his arrival in Paris, William learnt that James had gone away the day before. He had written a farewell letter to him at Veteuil which Genevi&ve sent on to him. In this letter, which was full of high spirits and very affectionate, his friend informed him that he had been gazetted as surgeon to our expeditionary army to Cochin China, and that he would be doubtless a long time away from France. William returned immediately to La Noiraude, distressed at this hurried departure and terrified at the thought of finding himself alone in an unknown town. He plunged again into his beloved solitude. But, two months later, his father again disturbed his loneliness by ordering him to return to Paris where he intended him to live for a year. William went and took up his quarters in the Eue de I'Est, at the very hotel where Madeleine was already staying. 69 CHAPTEE IV. When Madeleine met William, she was thinking of leaving the hotel and looking for a little room which she would furnish herself. In this house, open to all comers, full of students and young women, she did not feel sufficiently at home, and she found herself exposed to having to listen to horrible proposals which put her in mind cruelly of her desertion. After her removal, she intended to work and to utilise her talent for embroidery. Besides, her income of two thousand francs, was sufficient for her needs. The future filled her with an indistinct feeling of anxiety ; she foresaw that the solitude, to which she wished to' con- demn herself, would be full of perils. Although she had sworn to be brave, there were days that were so devoid of interest and so sad, that on certain nights, she would find herself in the midst of her dejection, entertaining thoughts of weakness that were unworthy of herself. The night of William's ayrival, she saw him on the stair- case. He stepped aside against the wall with such a respectful air, that she was in a way confused and aston ished at his attitude. Usually, the lodgers in the hotel almost walked over her feet and blew whiffs of tobacco in her face. The young man went into a room that adjoined hers, a thin partition separated the two apartments. Madeleine fell asleep listening, in spite of herself, to the step of. the stranger who was taking possession of his quarters. William, respectful as he had been, had not failed to 70 MADELEINE FJ&RAT. notice his neighbour's pearly complexion and lovely golden hair. If he walked about a long time in his room that night, it was because the thought of having a woman so near him caused him a sort of feverishness. He could hear her bed creak when she turned over. Next day, the young people smiled at one another as a matter of course. Their intimacy made rapid progress. Madeleine gave way the more easily to her sympathy for this calm gentle young fellow, because she felt herself perfectly safe with him. She looked upon him somewhat as a child. She thought that if he should ever commit the folly of speaking to her about love, she would give him a lecture and easily get to know the motive of his desires. She felt confidence in her strength, and meant to keep lier oath of widowhood. The following days, she accepted William's arm, and consented to take a little walk in his company. On their return, she went into the young man's room, and he went into hers. But there was not the least tender word, not the least smile to cause uneasiness. They treated one another as friends of a day's standing, with a reserve full of charming delicacy. At bottom, their existence was disturbed in an indis- tinct kind of way. At night when they were alone in their rooms, they would listen to each other's step, and they would dream, without being able to read clearly the feelings that were disturbing them. Madeleine felt that she was loved, and she indulged the sweet thought, saying to her- self all the while that she herself ^^ould not fall in love. To tell the truth, she did not know what real love was ; her first intimacy had been so devoid of tenderness that she enjoyed William's attentions with infinite pleasure; her heart went out to him, in spite of herself, touched by a sympathy which was gradually ripening into affection. If she still happened to think of her wounds, she drove away the cruel memories by musing on her new friend; the MADELEINE FliRAf. f1 passiou of a sanguine temperament had dismayed her, tlio endearing affection of a nervous nature was filling her with a softening languor, and toning down her caprices one by one. As for William, he was living in a dream, he was worshipping the first woman ho had met, and this was fatal. In the beginning he did not even ask himself where this woman came from, she was the first to smile ou him, and that smile was sufficient to make liim kneel down and offer her his life. He was joyously astonished at having found a sweetheart at once, he was in haste to open his heart so long closed, so full of restrained passion ; if he did not embrace Madeleine, it was because he did not dare to, but he thought already that she was his. Things went on like this for a week. William hardly went out ; Paris terrified him, and he had taken good care not to go to one of the big hotels of which his father had given him the addresses. He congratulated himself now on having buried himself behind the Luxembourg iu the heart of that peaceful neighbourhood where love was await- ing him. He would have liked to carry Madeleine off to the fields, far far away, not from a design of making her fall into his arms the sooner, but because he loved the trees, and wished to walk with her in their shade. She resisted, with a sort of presentiment. At last, she consented to go and dine with him at a little inn on the outskirts of Paris. There, at the restaurant in the Verrieres wood, she sur- rendered herself. Next day, when they returned to Paris, the two lovers were so astonished at their adventure, that they would at times speak to each other with a certain amount of cere- mony. They even experienced a feeling of restraint, an uncomfortable sensation which they had not felt when they were simply comrades. By a singular sentiment of shame, they did not wish to sleep both of them in the hotel where, the day before, they had been almost strangers to 72 MACELEtSfE fEEAf, each other. William saw that Madeleine Wodld be pained by the smiles of the -waiters, if she came to live in his room. He went at night to sleep in a neighbouring hotel. Besides, now that she was his, he wanted to have the young woman entirely to himself, in some retreat unknown to the world. He acted as if he were on the point of getting married. The banker, on whom his father had given him unlimited credit, told him, when he made inquiries, of a quiet little house, which was for sale in the Rue de Boulogne. William hurried off to look at the place, and bought it at ouce. He put the workmen in immediately, and furnished it in a few days. The whole thing was the affair of a week at most. One night, he took Madeleine by the hand and asked her if she would be his wife Since the night they had spent in the restaurant in the Verrieres wood, he came to see her every afternoon, like a betrothed young man paying his addresses to his lady-love ; then he went away discreeth'. His request touched Made- leine's heart, and she replied by throwing her arms round his neck. They went into the house in the Rue de Boulogne like two new married people, on the evening of their wedding day. It was theie really that their nuptial night was spent. They seemed to have forgotten the chance circumstance which had thrown them suddenly, one night, into one another's arms : they seemed to think that this was the first time that they had been allowed to exchange kisses. Sweet and happy night when the lovers could picture to themselves that the past was dead for ever, and that their union had the purity and strength of an eternal bond. They lived there for six months, severed from the world and seldom going out. It was a veritable vision of happi- ness. Lulled by their affection, they no longer reminded one another of what had preceded their love, nor were they uueasy about the events that the future might have in store MADELEINE FERAT. 73 for them. They were remote from the past and careless of the future, in a complete contentment of mind, in the peace of a happiness which nothing disturbed. The house, with its little rooms, carpeted and upholstered with brigh;t material, offered them a lovely retreat, secluded, quiet, and cheerful. And then there was the garden, a little patch not much bigger than your hand, where they would forget themselves, in spite of the cold, chatting during the fine winter afternoons. Madeleine used to think that her life only dated from the previous day. She did not know if she loved William ; she only knew that this man brought happiness to her being, and that it was pleasant to repose in this happiness. All her wounds had been healed ; she no longer felt those shocks and burning pangs which had toru her breast ; she was filled with warmth, a genial unfluctuating warmth which gave rest to her heart. She never asked herself any questions. Like a patient recovering with reduced strength from a sharp attack of fever, she abandoned herself to the voluptuous languor of her convalescence, thanking him from the bottom of her heart, who had extricated her from her anguish. It was not the fond embraces of the young man which touched her the most ; her senses were usually quiescent, and there was more maternity than passion in her kisses : it was the profound esteem which he showed for her, the dignity with which he treated her, like a lawful wife. This raised herself in her own esteem^ and she could fancy that she had passed from the arms of her mother to the arms of a husband. This picture which her shame would draw, flattered her pride, and hampered all the modesty of her nature. She could thus hold up her head, and, above all, she enjoyed to the full her new affection, her peacefulness and smiling hopes, in the complete oblivion of the wounds which bled in her no longer. William was in the seventh heaven. At last, the cher- 74 MADKLEINB PERAT. ished dream of his youth and childhood was being realised. When he was at school, crushed by the blows ot his com- rades, he had dreamt of a happy solitude, a hidden secluded nook where he would pass long days of idleness, never beaten, but caressed by some kind and gentle fairy who would always stay by his side ; and later on, at eighteen, when vague desires were beginning to throb in his veins, he had taken up again this dream beneath the trees in the park, on the banks of clear streams, replacing the fairy by a sweetheart, traversing the thicket in the hope of meeting the object of his affection, at every turn in the path. To- day Madeleine was the kind and gentle fairy, the sweetheart that he had sought. She was his in the solitude that he had dreamt of, far from the crowd, in a retreat where not a soul could come to disturb his ecstasy. This, for him, was the highest bliss : to know that he was out of the world, to be no longer afraid of being htirt by anyone, to surrender himself to all the softened peace of his heart, to have by his side one being only, and to live on the beauty and love of this being. Such an existence consoled him for his youth of sorrow : a youth devoid of affection, with a proud ironical father, an old fanatic whose caresses frightened him, and a friend who was not enough to calm his feverish adoration. It consoled him for crushing persecutions, for a childhood of martyrdom and a youth of exile, and for a long series of sorrows which had made him ardently long for the shade and complete silence, for a total annihilation of his sorrow- ful existence in an endless happiness. Thus ho reposed, and took refuge in Madeleine's arms, like a man weary and frightened. All his joys were joys ot tranquillity. Such a peace seemed to him as never to end. He pictured to, him- self that the eternity of the last sleep was opening before him and that he was sleeping in the arms of his Madeleine. It was with both of them a feeling more of repose than of love. You might have said that chance had drawn them MADELEINE FERAT. 75 together that each might staunch the blood of the other's wounds. They both felt a like need of repose, and their words of affection were a sort of thanks which they ad- dressed to one another for the peaceful happy hours which they were enjoying together. They revelled in the present with the egoism of hungry souls. It seemed to them that they had only existed since their meeting; a memory of the past never entered their long lovers' talks. William was no longer uneasy about the years of Madeleine's life before she knew him, and the young woman never thought of questioning him, as women in love do, about his previous existence. It was enough for them to be by each other's side, to laugh, to be happy, like children who have neither regret for the past nor anxiety for the future. Madeleine heard one day of Lobriohon's death. She merely remarked : " He was a bad man." She appeared quite unconcerned, and William seemed to take no interest in this news. When he received letters from Veteuil, he threw them into a drawer after reading them ; his mistress never asked him what these letters con- tained. At the end of six months of this life, they knew as little of each other's history as they did the first day ; their love had been bestowed without inquiries. This dream came to a sudden end. One morning, when William had gone to his banker's, Madeleine, not knowing what to do, began to turn over the leaves of an album which was lying in the room, and which had hitherto escaped her notice. Her lover had come across it the night before, at the bottom of a trunk. It only con- tained three portraits, one of his father, one of Genevieve, and one of his friend James. When the young woman saw the latter, she uttered a cry of pain. With her hands resting on the open leaves of the album, erect and trembling she gazed at James's smiling 76 MADELEINE FERAT, face as if a phantom had risen before her. It was he, the' lover of a night that had become the lover of a year, the man whose memory, long dormant in her breast, was awakening and hurting her cruelly, by this sudden ap- parition. It was a thunder-bolt in her J)eaceful sky. She had for- gotten this young fellow, she considered herself William's faithful wife. Why was James coming between them? Why was he here, in the very room where but a minute be- fore her lover was holding her in his arms? Who had brought him to her to disturb her peace for ever 1 These questions set her distracted head reeling. James was looking at her with a slightly mocking air. He seemed to be joking her on her softened heart ; he was saying to her: ",Good gracious! my poor girl, how you must be bored here ! Come, let us go to Chatou, let us go to Robinson, let us go, quick ! to where there is life and ex- citement — " She could fancy that she heard the sound of his voice and his burst of laughter ; she thought that he was going to stretch out his arms to her in the old familiar way. Like a flash, she saw the past, the room in the Rue Soufflot, all that life which she thouglit so far off, and from which a few months only separated her. She had been in a dream then ; the bliss of yesterday was not hers by right, she was false and dishonest. All the disgrace she had passed through rose to her heart and stifled her. The photograph presented James in the careless attitude of his student's life. He was sitting astride an overturned chair, in his shirt sleeves, his neck aud arms bare, and a clay pipe in his mouth. Madeleine could distinguish a mark that he had on his left arm, and she remembered how often she had kissed that mark. Her recollections caused her a hot burning sensation ; in her suffering she could detect, as it were, the bitter dregs of the cup of pleasure which he had given her to drink. He was in his own room, MADELEINE EERAT. 77 half-undressed, and perhaps going to take her to his heart. Then she seemed to feel, around her waist, the clasp, that she knew so well, of her first lover. Fainting, she sank back in her chair, believing that she was prostituting her- self, and looking round her with the frightened shudder of an adulterous woman. The little room had an appearance of demure quiet, of soft shade ; it was full of that voluptu- ous peace which six months of love impart to a secluded cot ; on a panel, above tiie sofa, hung William's portrait smiling tenderly on Madeleine. And Madeleine grew pale beneath this look of love, in the midst of that peaceful air, as she felt James take possession of her heart and fill her with pain. Then she bethought herself. Before going away, the young doctor had given her his portrait, one exactly like this which a cruel fate had just put under her eyes. But, the day before she came to this house, she had religiously burnt it, unwilling to introduce the likeness of her first lover into William's home. And this portrait was coming to life again, and James was finding his way, in spite of her- self, into her retreat ! She got up, and took the album again. Then, behind the photograph, she read this inscrip- tion : " To my old comrade, to my brotlier William.'' William, James's comrade, James's brother ! Madeleine, pale as death, closed the album and sat down again. With fctony eyes and drooping hands, she remained a long time absorbed in thought. She said to herself that she must be guilty of some great crime, to be punished so cruelly for her six months' bliss. She had surrendered herself to two men, and these two men loved one another with brotherly love. She pictured a sort of incest in her double aflfection. Formerly, in the Latin quarter, she had known a girl who was shared by two friends, and who went quietly from one friend's bed to the other's. She suddenly thought of this 78 MADELEINE F:^KAT. poor -wretch, telling herself with disgust that she was as shameless as she was. Now she felt for certain that she would be haunted by the phantom as she devoted herself to William. Perhaps she would enjoy a horrid pleasure in the embraces of these lovers whom she would confound with each other. The anguish of her future seemed to her then so clearly defined, that she had an idea of fleeing, of disap- pearing for ever. But her cowardice restrained her. The very night before, she had felt so happy in the genial, pleasant warmth of William's adoration. Could she not grow calm beneath the young man's caresses, forget again, and think herself worthy and faithful ? Then she asked herself if it would not be better to tell her lover everything, to confide to him her past, and to get his absolution. The thought of such a disclosure terrified her. How could she dare to confess to William that she had been his comrade's, his brother's former mistress? He would drive her away, he would banish her from his bed, he would never put up with the shame of such a partnership. She reasoned as if she were still James's mistress, so strong did she feel his influence over her even now. She would say nothing, she would keep all the shame to herself. But she could not yet make up her mind to this decision ; her straightforward nature revolted at the idea of an eternal falsehood, she felt that she would not have strength for long to live in her shame and anguish. It were better to confess at once, or flee. These agitating thoughts passed through her reeling head with painful noisy shocks. She examined her feelings without being able to come to a decision. Suddenly she heard the street door open. A rapid step mounted the staircase and William entered. His face was quite agitated. He threw himself on the sofa and burst out sobbing. Madeleine, surprised and MADKLEINE F^RAT. 79 terrified, thought that he had got to know all. She rose up in a tremble. The young man was still weeping, with his face buried in his hands, and shaking with the paroxysms of despair. At last, he held out his arms to his mistress, and said to her in a choking voice : " Comfort me, comfort me. Oh ! how I suffer ! " Madeleine weut and sat down by his side, not daring to understand him, and asking herself if it was she who was making him weep like that. She forgot her own sufferings in the presence of a grief like his. " Tell me, what is the matter with you,'' she asked her lover, as she took his hands in hers. He looked at her like one distracted. "I did not like to sob in the street," he stammered through his tears. "I ran, I was choking — I wanted to get here — Let me be, it does me good, it comforts me — " He wiped his tears, then he almost choked afresh and burst out weeping again. " My God ! my God ! I shall never see him again," he murmured. The young woman thought she understood and was touched with pity. She drew William into her arms, kissed his forehead, wiped his tears, and soothed him with her broken-hearted gaze. " You have lost your father ? " she asked him again. He made a sign of denial. Then he clasped his hands and in the meek voice of despair : " My poor James," he said, seeming to address himself to a shadow seen only by himself ; " my poor James, you will never love me more as you used to love me — I had for- gotten you, I was not even thinking of you when you died." At the name of James, Madeleine, who was still drying her lover's tears, jumped up with a shudder. James dead ! The news fell with a dull thud on her heart. She stood 80 MADELEINE FJj;EAT. stunned, asking herself if it was not she who, without knowing it, had killed this young fellow to get rid of him. .. "You did not know him," William went on, "I have never spoken to you of him, T think. I was ungrateful, our happiness made me forgetful — He was a jewel, he had a nature full of devotion. He was the only friend I had in this world. Before meeting you, I had only known one affection, it was his. You were the only beings that had opened your hearts to me. And I have lost him^ — '' Here he was interrupted by a sob. He went on : " At school, they used to beat me, and it was he who came to my aid. He saved me from tears, he held out to me his friendship and protection, to me, who lived like a pariah in the contempt, in the derision of everybody. When I was a child, I worshipped him like a god ; I would have fallen on my knees before him, h.ad he asked for my prayers, I owed him so much. I would ask myself with such fer- vour how I could pay him, some day, my debt of gratitude ] And I have let him die far away. I have not loved him enough, I feel it.'' His emotion choked him again. After a short silence he continued : " And later on, what long days we passed together. We roamed the fields, hand in hand. I i-emember one morning we were searching for craw-fiish under the willows; he said to me, ' William, there is only one good thing in this world, and it is friendship. Let us be devoted to one another, it will soothe us in after life.' Poor dear fellow, he is gone, and I am alone. But he will live always in my soul — I have nobody but you left, Madeleine, I have lost my brother." He sobbed again, and again held out his arms to the young woman, with a gesture of utter despair. She was in pain. The grief, the poignant regrets of William were causing her a singular feeling of rebellion ; she could not hear from his month his passionate praise of MADELEINE FEKAT. 81 James, without being tempted to exclaim : " Silence ! this man has robbed you of your happiness, you owe him nothing." She had thus far escaped the anguish of being brought face to face with her past by the very man whose love compelled her to forget it. And she did not dare to close his lips, or to confess all to him, terrified by what she had just learnt, by that strong bond of friendship and gratitude which had united her two lovers. She listened to AVilliam's despair, as she would have listened to the threatening roar of a wave which was rushing towards her to swallow her up. Motionless and silent, her impassiveness was remarkable. She felt that her only sensation was one of anger. James's death irritated her. She had at first felt a sort of dull pang, and then she had revolted as she saw that his memory could not fade from her mind. By what right, since he was dead, did he come to disturb her peace 'i William was still holding out his arms to her, and re- peating : " My poor Madeleine, console me — You are the only one left to me in the world." Console him for James's death ; it seemed ridiculous and cruel to her. She was obliged to take him in her arms again, and dry the tears which he was shedding for her first lover. The strange part she was acting at this moment, would have made her weep too, could she have found tears. She was truly unfeeling and pitiless ; no regret, no tender- ness for him whom she had loved, nothing but a secret irritation at William's grief. She was still the daughter of Ferat the workman. " He loved him more than he does me," she thought; " he would cast me off if I were to declare what I think." Then, for the sake of saying something, prompted too by bitter curiosity, she asked in a brief tone, how he had met with his death 1 Then William told her how, having to wait at his baiikgi-'*, 82 MADEJ^EINE FERAT. he had mechanically taken up a newspaper. His eyes had fallen on a paragraph which announced the wreck of the frigate Prophet which had been caught in a gale on nearing the Cape. The vessel had been dashed to pieces on the rocks and not a man had been saved. James, who was going out to Cochin China on this steamer, did not even repose in a grave where his friends could go to pray for him. The news was officially confirmed. When the anguish of the lovers was allayed, during the night that followed, Madeleine meditated more calmly on the unexpected events of the day. Her anger had gone, and she felt herself dejected and sad. Had she heard of James's death under other circumstances, no doubt she would have had a choking sensation in her throat and the tears would have come. Now, aloue in the recess where the bed stood, at the sound of the fitful breathing of her lover who was sleeping the heavy sleep of the wretched, she thought of him who was dead, of the corpse rolled and beaten against the rocks by the waves. Perhaps, as he had fallen into the sea, he had uttered her name. She re- membered how one day he had cut himself rather severely, in the Rue Soufflot, and how she had nearly fainted at the sight of the blood trickling along his hand. She loved him then, she would have sat up with him for months to rescue him from, an illness. And now he was drowned, and she was feeling angry with him. Yet he had not become so in- different to her as all that ; she had him still, on the contrary, always in her breast, in every member ; he had such hold on her that she thought she could feel his breath on her face. Then she felt the quiver which thrilled her in the old days, when the young fellow wound his arms round her body. She felt an inexpressible pang, as if a part of her being had been torn away from her. She began to weep, burying her head in the pillow, so that William might not hear. All her woman's weakness had come back to her ; MADELEINE E:i6rAT. 83 it seemed to her that she was more alone than ever in the ■world. This crisis lasted for a long time. Madeleine prolonged it involuntarily as she called to mind the days of James's love J at each touching detail which came back to her from the past, she became more distressed, and she reproached herself with her petulant indifference during the day, as if it had been a crime. William himself, had he known her history, would have told her to fall on her knees and weep with him. She clasped her hands, she asked pardon of him who was dead, of him whom she evoked, of him whose cries of agony she fancied she could hear mingled with the roar- ing of the sea. A violent desire suddenly seized her. She made no effort to struggle against this irresistible longing. She got quietly out of bed, with infinite precautions, so as not to wake William. When she had put her feet on the carpet, she looked at him uneasily, dreading lest he should ask her where she was going. But he was asleep, his eyes still full of tears. Then, she went and looked for the night- lamp and passed into the sitting-room, trembling when the floor creaked beneath her bare feet. She walked straight to the album, opened it on a little table, and sat down before James's portrait. It was James that she came to look for. Her shoulders covered with her loose hair, wrapping herself up shiveringly in her long night- dress, she gazed long at the portrait in the yellow flickering light of the lamp. A deep silence fell around her, and as she listened, starting with sudden and groundless fears, she could hear nothing but William's feverish breathing in the next room. James no longer appeared to her to have his mocking look of the morning. His bare neck and arms, and his open shirt no longer irritated her memories. The man was ■dead ; his portrait had assumed an indefinable softened ex- 84 MADELEINE F^RAT. pression of friendship and Madeleine felt soothed as she gazed on him. He was smiling at her with his old cordial smile, and even his careless attitude touched her deeply. The young fellow, astride on a chair, smoking his clay pipe, seemed to be forgiving her good-naturedly. He was as she had known him, a good fellow in death ; he looked as if she had opened the door of their room in the Rue Soufflot, and James in his light-hearted, off-hand way was getting forgive- ness for his peccadillos by his gay spirits. Her tears became less bitter, she forgot herself in the con- templation of him who was no more. Henceforth this por- trait would be a relic, and she thought she had nothing to fear from it. Then, she remembered her struggles of the morning, her indecision, her anxiety to know what to do. Poor James, at the moment of her distress at seeing him rise up between herself and her lover, had seemed to have sent her the news of his death to tell her to live in peaca He would come no more to disturb her in her new love ; he seemed to authorise her to bury deep in her heart the secret of their intimacy. Why make William sufiFer ? and why not seek for happiness again t She ought to keep silent out of pity, out of aflfection. James's portrait murmured : " Go, try to be happy, my child. I am no longer near you. I will never appear before you as your living shame. Your lover is a child. I have befriended him, and I implore you to befriend him in your turn. If you are good, just think of me sometimes." Madeleine's mind was made up. She would say nothing, she would not be more cruel than fate which had wished to conceal her first lover's name from William. Besides, had he not said so himself 1 James's memory would live in his mind, and it must live there elevated and serene. It would be doing wrong to speak. When she had sworn to preserve silence, it seemed to her that the portrait thanked her for her resolution. MADELEINE PEEAT. S5 She kissed the likeness. Day was breaking when she went back to bed. William, worn out, was still slumbering. She fell asleep at last, comforted, nursed by distant hope. They would forget this day of anguish, they would come back to their beloved state of bliss and love. But their dream was over. The peaoefulness of their first acquaintance was never more to lull them in their retreat in the Rue de Boulogne. During the days that followed, the rueful phantom of the shipwreck haunted the house, casting around them a gloomy sadness. They forgot their kisses, they would sit for a whole morning side by side, hardly saying a word, absorbed in their sad memories. James's death had entered into their genial solitude like an icy blast; now they shuddered, and it seemed to thera as if the little rooms, where they had lived the day before on each other's knees, were large, dilapidated and exposed to every wind. The silence and the seclusion which they had sought, caused ,them a vague feeling of terror. They found themselves too lonely. One day,' William could not restrain a cruel remark. " This house is really like a grave," he exclaimed, " it is enough to stifle one." He was sorry for it directly he had spoken, and, taking Madeleine's hand, he added : "Forgive me. I shall forget him, and I will be yours again." He was in earnest, but he was not aware that the same dream rarely comes twice. When they had got over their dejection, they had lost the blind confidence of their early acquaintance. Madeleine especially was quite changed. She had just evoked the past, and she could no longer surrender herself to William's embraces like one who knew nothing. Life had inflicted a wound on her, it would do so again, and she must, she thought, be on her guard against the wounds that threatened her. Before, she hardly 86 MADELEINE F]fiRAT. thought of the shame attached to her title of mistress; it seemed to her natural to be loved, she herself loved, smilingly, forgetting the world. Now, her pride had been hurt, she was feeling again the anguish she had felt in the Eue Soufflot, and she looked upon her lover as an enemy who was robbing her of her self-respect. There was a something which made her feel that she was not in her proper sphere in the Eue de Boulogne. The thought, "I am a kept woman," presented itself to her in all its nakedness and made her burn like a hot iron ; she rushed off, and shut herseU up in a room, and there wept bitterly, almost heart-broken. ' William often made her presents, for he was fond of giving. At the beginning she had received these presents with the joy of a child at the gift of a plaything. The value of the object made little difference. She was happy that her lover was constantly thinking of her, and she accepted jewels as mere keep-sakes. After the shock which awoke her from her dream, sbe was strangely troubled at seeing herself dressed in robes of silk and adorned with diamonds that she had not paid for herself. Her life from that time was a continual bitterness, for she was hurt at the sight of this luxury which did not belong to her. She was pained by the lace-work and the softness of her bed, and by the rich furniture in the house. She looked upon everything about her as the price of her shame. " I am selling myself," she would think sometimes, with a horrible oppression at her heart. William, on one of their gloomy days, brought her a bracelet. She grew pale at the sight of the jewel and did not utter a word. The young man, astonished not to see her fling her arms round his neck, as in the old days, said to her gently : " You don't like this bracelet, perhaps ? " She was fiilent for a moment ; then in a trembling voice she said : MADELEINE FEKAT. 87 "My dear, you spend a lot of money on me., You do wrong. I don't want all these presents and I should love you quite as much if you gave me nothing." She restrained a sob. William drew her quietly towards him, surprised and vexed, yet not daring to divine the cause of her paleness. " What is the matter with you? " he answered. " Made- leine, those are horrid thoughts — Are you not my wife?" She looked him in the face, and her steady, almost stern gaze, said plainly : " No, I am not your wife." Had she dared, she would have proposed to him to pay for her food and dress out of her little income. Since her fall, her pride had become refractory ; she felt that everything wounded her feelings and that irritated her all the more. A few days after, William brought her a dress and she said to him with a nervous smile : " Thank you ; but, in future, let me buy these things. You don't understand anything about them, and they cheat you." From that time she made her purchases herself. When her lover wanted to refund her the money that she had spent, she contrived a little plot to refuse it. Thus she was always on her guard, aliyays making little attacks to defend her pride which was so easily wounded by a trifle. The truth was that life was beginning to prove unbearable to her in the Eue de Boulogne. She loved William, but she had made , herself so wretched by her daily revolts, that she would fancy that she did not love him, though this could not prevent her from feeling greatly distressed when she thought that he might leave her as James had done. Then she would weep for hours and ask herself into what new shame she would fall then. William could see perfectly well that her eyes were at times red with weeping. He could guess in part the 88 MADELEIXE FERAT. wounds that she was inflicting on herself. He would have wished to be kind, to console her by becoming more affec- tionate towards her, and yet, in spite of himself, he was becoming more distressed and more feverish every day. Why did she weep like that? was she unhappy with him? was she regretting a lover ? This last thought made him very wretched. He too was losing the faith and blind confidence he used to have. He was thinking of that period of Madeleine's past history of which he knew nothing, of which he wished to know nothing, and which however he could not help thinking of incessantly. The painful doubts that he had felt on the night of their walk at Verriferes seized him again and tortured him. He felt anxious about the years gone by, he watched Madeleine in order to detect a confession in her gestures, or in her looks ; then, when he thought that he could perceive a smile that he could not account for, he was distressed that she could be thinking of anything but himself. Now that she was his, she ought to be his without reserve. He would say to himself that his love ought to be sufficient to satisfy her. He would not admit of any ground for her reveries, and he felt himself painfully hurt by her passing fits of indifference. Often, when she was by his side, she was not listening to him ; she would let him talk on, staring vacantly around, absorbed in secret thoughts ; then he would stop talking, he would think himself slighted, and a sudden feeling of pride would change his love almost into disdain. " My heart is deceived," he would think ; " this woman is not worthy of me ; she has already seen too much of life to be able to reward me for my affections." They never had an open quarrel. They continued in a state of tacit hostility. But the few bitter words they sometimes exchanged only left them more dejected and depressed. "Your eyes are red," WiUiam would often say to MADELEINE F^EAT. 89 Madeleine, "what is the cause of your secret weep- ing?" "I don't weep, you are mistaken," the young woman would reply, trying to smile. " No, no, I am not mistaken," was William's answer ; " I can hear you quite well sometimes in the night. Are you unhappy with me 'i " She would give a shake of denial with her head, and put ' on a forced laugh, or the look of a persecuted woman. Then the young man would take her hands in his, and try to infuse a little warmth into them, and as these hands continued lifeless and cold, he would let go of them exclaiming : " I am a poor lover, am I not ? I don't know how to win love — But there are some people who are never for- gotten." Such an illusion would have a painful effect on Madeleine. " You are cruel," she would reply bitterly. " I can't forget what I am, and that's why I weep. What can you be thinking of, William ? " He would hang down his head, and she would add, earnestly : " It would, perhaps, be better for you to know my past history. Anyhow you would know what to do, and you would no longer think about shame which does not exist. Would you like me to tell you all 1 " He would vehemently ask her not to, and take her to his heart, beseeching her pardon. This scene, which took place again and again, never went any further : but an hour after, they would forget it all, and go back to their old state : William, to his selfish despair at not possessing her entire affection, Madeleine, to the regrets prompted by her pride and to the dread of being hurt. At other times, Madeleine would throw her arms round William's neck and shed tears unreservedly. These crises of weeping, which nothing could explain to him^ were even still go MADELEINE FERAT. more painful to the young man. He did not dare to ques- tion his mistress, he consoled her, with a provoked air, which stopped her tears and made her assume a hard, implacable attitude. Then she refused to speak to him, and he had to relent so far as to sob, before they fell into each other's arms, distressing and consoling one another mutually. And they would have been unable to say what it was that was making them wretched; they were inexpressibly sad, they knew not why ; it seemed to them that they were breathing a tainted air and that a lingering, unrelenting dejection was crushing them beneath its oppressiveness. There was no termination to a situation like this. There was only one remedy — a frank explanation. But from this Madeleine shrank, for this William was too feeble. For a month, they lived this life of oppression. William had got James's portrait richly framed, and this portrait, placed in the lover's bedroom, troubled Madeleine. When she retired to rest, it would seem to her as if the eyes of the dead man were watching her get into bed. During the night, she would smother her kisses that he might not hear them. When she was dressing, in the morning, she hurried on her clothes so as not to stand naked before the photograph in broad daylight. Yet, she loved this likeness, and there was nothing painful in tlie distress that it caused it. Her memories of the past were less hard, yet she no longer looked on James with the eyes of a lover, but from the standpoint of a friend of his who is ashamed of the past. She even felt more modesty with regard to him than before William, and was really pained at seeing him look on at her new passions. Sometimes she thought that she ought to ask his pardon, she would forget herself before his portrait, with no other feeling but one of solace. The days when she wept, or when she had exchanged bitter words with her lover, she gazed at James with a still gentler expression. She re- gretted him in a vague way, forgetful of her former sufferings. MABELEINE F]6rAT. 91 Perhaps Madeleine would have wept at last before the likeness like an inconsolable widow, had not an event transpired to lift her and William from the sorrowful life they were leading. Another month, and they would doubt- less have quarrelled outright, and cursed the day of their meeting. They were saved by circumstances. William received a letter from V^teuil summoning him in all haste. His father was dying. Madeleine, touched at his grief, clasped him in a warm, affectionate embrace, and, for an hour, they sat once more hand in hand. He set out, full of anxiety, telling the young woman that he would write and that she was to wait for his return, 92 CHAPTER V. MoNSiEUE DB ViABGUE was dead. The truth had been con- cealed from William in order that the sad news might be broken gently. Long after, the circumstances connected with this poor man's death would make the servants of La Noiraude shudder. The day before, the count had shut himself up as usual in his laboratory. As she did not see him come down at night, Genevieve seemed surprised ; but he sometimes worked late, and took some food up with him, so the old woman did not disturb him for dinner. That evening, however, she felt a presentiment of something wrong ; the window of the laboratory, which usually shone over the country, like one nf the red mouths of the infernal regions, remained in dark- ness the whole night. Next day, Genevifeve, feeling very uneasy, went and listened at the door. She could hear nothing, not a sound, not a breath. Alarmed at this silence, she shouted out, but there was no reply. She noticed then that the door was simply closed ; this detail terrified her, for the count always double locked it when he went in. She entered. In the middle of the room. Monsieur de Viargue was lying dead on his back, his legs all stiff, his arms apart and convulsed; the grinning head, disfigm-ed with livid spots, was thrown back, exposing the neck which was covered also with long yellow marks. In the fall, the skull had knocked against the floor; a little stream of blood was trickling on and forming a tiny pool right under the stove. The death- MADELEINK FERAT. 93 Struggle hardly seemed to have lasted more than a few seconds. At the sight of the dead body, Genevieve fell back with a shriek. She leaned against the wall and mumbled a short prayer. What terrified her most, were the marks on the face and the neck which looked like contusions ; the devil had strangled her master at last, the imprint of his fingers clearly proved it. She had long been expecting this event ; when she had seen the count shut himself up, she had murmured : " He is going again to invoke the Accursed One : Satan will be even with him ; one of these nights, he will take him by the throat and so have his soul at once." Her prediction was being realised, and she shuddered as she thought of the terrible struggle which must have brought about the death of the heretic. Her ardent imagination pictured the devil to her eyes, hairy and black, seizing his victim by the throat, tearing out his soul and then dis- appearing up the chimney. The shriek she had uttered brought the servants. These domestics whom Monsieur de Viargue had carefully chosen from the most illiterate in the country, were convinced, like Genevifeve, that their master had died in a conflict with the demon. They carried him down and laid him on a bed, with shudders of terror, as they trembled to see some unclean animal come forth from the black, open mouth of the corpse. It was firmly believed, for miles round, that the count was a sorcerer, and that the devil had carried him off. The doctor who came to inquire into the cause of death, explained it otherwise; he could see by the appearance of the livid spots which disfigured the skin, that it was a case of poison- ing, and his curiosity as a medical man was singularly piqued by the strange nature of these yellow marks, the presence of which the action of no known poison could explain : he thought rightly that the old chemist must have poisoned himself by the aid of some new agent dia- 94 MADELEINE FERAT, covered by him during the course of his long researches. This doctor was a prudent man ; he made a sketch of the marks from his love for science, and kept the secret of this violent death to himself. He attributed the decease to an attack of apoplexy, wishing by this to avoid the scandal there must have been, had any mention of Monsieur de Viargue's suicide been made. There is always an interested respect for the memory of the rich and the influential. William arrived an hour before the funeral. His grief was great. The count had always treated him with coldness, and when he lost him, he could not feel that the snapping of the bonds of an affection which had never been very close could tear his heart ; but the poor fellow was then in such a feverish state of mind that he wept bitterly. After the restless and painful days which he had just spent with Madeleine, the least sorrow would melt him to tears. Perhaps two months before, he would not have even sobbed. On the return from the funeral, Genevifeve took him up to her room. There, with the cruel calmness of her fan- aticism, she told him that she had been guilty of sacrilege, in allowing his father to be buried in consecrated ground. Unfeelingly, she related to him, after her fashion, the story of that death which she attributed to the devil. Perhaps she would not have given these details over the hardly closed grave of the count, had she not wished to draw a moral from them ; she adjured the young man, and solemnly implored him to swear that he would never form a compact with hell. William swore to everything she asked. He listened to her with a stupefied look, crushed by his "i-ief unable to understand why she spoke of Satan, and feeling himself going mad at the tale, uttered in her shrill voice, of his father's struggle with the devil. He listened quietly to what she said about the spots on the face and neck of the dead body, but he became quite pale, not daring yet to accept the thought which presented itself to his mind. MADELEIKE FfiRAT. 95 He was infonned, just at this moment, that somebody wished to speak to him. In the hall, William found the doctor, who had investigated the cause of death. Then, this man, after beating about the bush for a long time, told him the horrible truth ; he added, that if he had allowed himself to conceal it from the public, he had thought it his duty to declare everything to the deceased's son. The young man, chilled by such a confidence, thanked him for his concealment of the facts. He was not weeping now, he was looking before him with a fixed and gloomy gaze ; it seemed to him that an unfathomable abyss was opening at his feet. He was going away staggering like one drunk, when the doctor held him back. This man had not come simply, as he said, to inform him of the real truth. Impelled by an irresistible wish to penetrate into the count's laboratory, he had Been that a better opportunity would never occur : the son was to show him into that sauctuaryj the door of which had always been closed to him by the father, during his lifetime. " Excuse me," he said to William, " if I mention these matters to you at a moment like this. But I am afraid that to-morrow it will be too late to investigate certain de- tails. The marks which I noticed on Monsieur de Viargue, were of such a peculiar nature, that I am totally ignorant of the poison which could have produced them — I beg you to he kind enough to allow me to visit the room in which the corpse was found ; that will enable me, no doubt, to give you more precise information." William asked for the key of the laboratory, and went up with the doctor. Had he been asked, he would have taken him anywhere, to the stables, to the cellars, without mani- festing the least surprise, without knowing even what he was doing. But, when he entered the laboratory, the look of this 96 MADELEINE FERAT. room astonished him so, that the shock roused him from his stupor. The hig chamber was so strangely altered, that he hardly knew it again. When he had been in it before, about three years ago, the day that his father had forbidden him all work and all connection with science, it was in a perfect state of order and cleanliness : the tiles in the stove shone bright ; the copper and glass-work of the apparatus reflected the clear light from the big window ; the shelves that ran round the walls were covered with bottles, phials, and receivers of every description : on the middle of the table had stood piles of huge books, all open, and bundles of manuscripts. He still remembered the impression of reverential surprise produced on him by the sight of this study-workshop, littered methodically, so to speak, with quite a multitude of objects. There reposed the fruits of a long life of labour, the precious secrets of a philosopher who had questioned nature for more than half a century, never wishing to confide to anyone the results of his ardent curiosity. As William penetrated into the laboratory, he expected to find again, in their place, the apparatus and the shelves, the books and the manuscripts. He entered into a veritable ruin. A storm seemed to have passed through the room, soiling and breaking everything ; the stove, black with smoke, looked as if it had not been lit for months, and the heap of cold ashes which filled it had partly fallen out on to the floor : the copper of the apparatus was all bent, the glass broken: the phials and bottles on the shelves shivered into a thousand bits, lay piled in a comer, like those heaps of broken crockery one sees in slums; the shelves themselves were hanging down, as if they had been torn from their supports by some furious hand : as for the books and manuscripts, they were strewn, torn and half- burnt, in another corner. And this wreck was not of yesterday ; the laboratory seemed to have been devastated for a considerable time ; huge spider-webs hung from the MADELEINE F^RAT. 07 ceiling, and a thick layer of dust covered the rabbish tbat lay scattered everywhere. At the sight of such destruction, William felt an oppres- sion at his heart. He thought he could account for it. His father had formerly spoken to him of science with secret jealousy and bitter irony. He must have looked on it as a lewd and cruel mistress sapping his life-blood with her charms : and so, from tenderness for her, and disdain for the world, he would have no one take her after him. And the young man drew a sad picture of the day when the old philosopher, seized with rage, had wrecked his labor- atory. He could see him kicking the apparatus against the walls, smashing the phials on the floor, wrenching down the shelves, and tearing and burning his manuscripts. An hour, a few minutes perhaps, had been enough to destroy the researches of a lifetime. Tiien, when not one of his dis- coveries, not one of his observations remained, when he had found himself standing alone in the midst of his laboratory in ruins, he must have sat down and wiped his face with a terrible smile. • What horrified William above everything, was the thought of the frightful days which the man had passed afterwards, buried in this room, this tomb where slept his life, his toils, his loves. For months, he had shut himself up here as before, touching nothing, w&,lkiug up and down, lost in the nothingness that he thought he had found. He would crush beneath his feet the fragments of his beloved instru- ments, he would kick away disdainfully the scraps of his manuscripts, the broken pieces of the phials that still con- tained a few atoms of the substances that he had analysed or discovered : or he would finish the work of destruction, upsetting a vessel still full, or giving a last stamp to an apparatus. What thoughts of supreme disdain, what bitter jeers, what a longing for death must have risen to his powerful mind, during the long hours that 98 MADELEINE FlilEAT. he spent in idleness musing on the self-made rums of his labour ! Nothing remained. As William went round the room, he noticed at last, however, an object which his father's hand had spared ; it was a sort of cupboard fastened in the wall, a little bookcase with glass doors containing small bottles full of liquids of different colours. The count, who had taken great interest in toxicology, had kept there certain violent poisons still unknown, and discovered by himself. The little bookshelf had come from a sitting-room on the ground-floor where William remembered to have seen it in his childhood ; it was of foreign wood, ornamented at the corners with brass, and very chastely inlaid at the sides. This costly bit of furniture, of rich and wonderful workmanship, would not have disfigured a pretty woman's boudoir. The count had dipped his finger in the ink and written the word " Poisons " on each pane, in big black letters. William was deeply touched at his father's cruel irony in preserving from all harm this cupboard and its contents. The whole life, the whole range of knowledge of the count was concentrated there, in a few phials of new poisons. He had destroyed his other discoveries, those which might have been useful, and out of his vast researches, out of the labours of his powerful mind, had bequeathed to humanity merely a few agents of sufiering and death. This bit at learning, this sinister mockery, this disdain for mankind, this last avowal of sorrow, showed clearly what the death- agony of this man must have been, who after fifty years of study seemed to iiave found in his retorts nothing but the few drops of the drug with which he had poisoned himself. William fell buck to the door. Fright and disgust were driving him out. This filthy room, full of nameless rubbish, with its spider webs and its thick dust, exhaled a fetid odour which almost made him sick. The dirty heaps of broken bottles and old papers lying in the corners, seemed MADELEINE FEIIAT. 99 to him the filth of that science from which the count had estranged him, and which he seemed to have scornfully swept aside before dying, as one puts to the door a vile creature that one loves, with a contempt still full of longing desires. And as he opened the door of this poison cupboard, he fancied he could hear the pained laugh of the old chemist as he meditated for months on his suicide. Then, in the middle of the laboratory, he shuddered as he saw the narrow streak of blood which had come from his father's skull and trickled right under the stove. He could see too that this blood was beginning to clot. Meantime the doctor was rummaging about. The moment he had crossed the threshold, he had understood all, and he had become really angry. " What a man ! what a man," he murmured. " He has destroyed everything, broken everything — Oh ! if I had been there, I would have chained him up as a furious madman." And turning towards William he went on : "Your father was a very clever man. He must have made some wonderful discoveries. And see what he has left. It is madness, sheer madness — Can you under- stand it ? A scholar who might have been a member of the Institute and yet preferred to keep to himself the result of his labours ! Still, if I unearth one of his manuscripts, I will publish it, and it will be an honour both to him and myself." He went and groped about among the heap of papers, regardless of the dust ; but he soon began to moan : " Nothing, not a single whole page. I never saw such a madman.'' When he had visited the pile of papers, he passed on to the heap of broken bottles, and there continued to moan and cry out. He put his nose to the broken necks of the phials, sniffing, trying to discover the chemist's secrets. 100 MADELEINE FERAT. At last he came back to the middle of the room, furious at not having been able to learn anything. It was then that he noticed the cupboard containing the poisons. He rushed towards it with a shout of joy. But the key was not in the lock, and he had to be content with examining the phials through the panes. " Sir," he said seriously, addressing hitaself to William, " I beg you as a favour to allow me to analyse these substances. I address this request to you in the name of science, in the name too of the memory of Monsieur de Viargue." The young man shook his head, and pointing to the rubbish which strewed the floor, he replied : "You see, my father has wished to leave no trace of his labours. Those phials shall remain there." The doctor insisted, but he could not break his resolution. He began to walk round the laboratory again, more ex- asperated than ever. When he came to the streak of blood, he stopped and asked if this blood was Monsieur de Viargue's. ' When William replied in the affirmative, his face seemed to brighten. He bent down by the pool which had formed under the stove ; then, with the tips of his nails, he tried, with delicate care, to detach a clot already almost dry. He hoped to be able, by submitting this blood to a minute analysis, to discover what poisonous agent the count had used. When William understood for what object he was doing this, he advanced towards him with quivering lips, and, taking him by the arm, said to him in a peremptory tone : " Come, sir, you can see very well that the place is stifling me — We must not disturb the peace of the dead. Let that blood alone. I insist on it." The doctor left the clot with very bad grace. Urged on by the young man, he went out under protest. William, who had waited for him a moment with feverish impatience, breathed at last when he was in the passage. He shut the MADELEINE FERAT. 101 door of tlie laboratory, quite disposed to keep the oath which he had taken to bis father never to set foot in it. When he got downstairs, he found in the drawing-room on the ground-floor a magistrate from V^teuil. This gentle- man explained to him, in a courteous tone, however, that he had come to put the seals on the deceased's papers, in case a legal will could not be shown him. He even had the delicacy to give the young man to understand that he was aware of the bond of relationship between him and the deceased, of his title of adoptive son, and to say that he did not doubt the existence of a will entirely in his favour. He ended his little speech with a gracious smile : this will would certainly be found in some drawer, but law was law, it might contain legacies of a private nature, and everybody must wait and see. William put a stop to his talk by show- ing him a will which left him sole legatee. The count had had to wait for his son's majority in order to be able to. adopt him and transmit to him his name ; and as the adop- tion entailed the necessity of making his will, he had been allowed to treat his natural son as a legitimate child. The magistrate was full of excuses ; he repeated that law was law, and withdrew, giving, with many bows, the name of Monsieur de Viargue to him whom a few minutes before he had addressed thoughtlessly as Monsieur William, though ho must have known of the right which he had to assume the title of his adoptive father. During the next few days, William was overwhelmed with duties. Not an hour was his own to think of his new position. On all sides, he was pestered with condolences, applications, and offers of service. At last he shut himself up in his room, requesting Genevifeve to reply to the host of people who were importuning him. He left the manage- ment of his affairs entirely to her. The count, in his will, had left the old woman an income which would have per- mitted her to end her days in peace. But she was almost 102 MADELEINE F^KAT. angry, refusing the money, saying that she would die on her legs and that she did not intend to give up her work. Really, the young man was very pleased to find some one who would relieve him of the material cares of life. His indolent and feeble disposition detested activity : the smallest annoyances of existence were for him big obstacles of vexation and disgust. When at last he could find solitude, he was seized with sadness. His feverishness no longer buoyed him up, and he felt himself crushed by gloomy dejection. He had been able to forget for a few days the suicide of his father ; now he thought of it again : he saw once more, in his ever-present thoughts, the laboratory wrecked and stained with blood, and the implacable remembrance of this sinister room brought with it, one by one, the cruel memories of his life. This recent drama seemed to him to be fatally connected with the long series of miseries which had already tortured him. He remembered with anguish his chance birth, bis excited an'd terrified childhood, his boyhood of martyrdom, and his whole existence doomed to soitow. And then his father must go and add to all this the horror of his violent death and the irony of his negations ! The weight of all these sad circumstances pressing on the gentleness of this tender nature, was crushing its finer feelings and dismaying it in its need for affection and peace. William was stifl- ing in this atmosphere heavy with sorrow which he had been breathing from the cradle ; he was shrinking into himself, he was becoming more nervous, and more averse to action as events were bent on destroying his happiness. At last he looked upon himself as the victim of fate, and would have purchased the mournful tranquillity of forgetfulness at the price of any sacrifice. When he saw himself the possessor of a fortune, when he had to begin to play his part as a man, his hesitations and fears increased still more, for he knew nothing of the world, and he trembled before Madeleine ferat. i03 the future as he asked himself what new sorrows were await- ing him. During his hours of meditation, he felt a vague presentiment 'that his ways of life, the circumstances and surroundings in which he had grown up, were going to thrust him to the bottom of some gulf, the moment he ventured to take a step. He thought himself very wretched, and this redoubled his love for Madeleine, and he began to think of her with a sort of religious devotion. She alone, he thought, knew his worth and loved him according to his deserts. Yet if he had examined himself more closely, he would have found within him a secret dread of that intimacy with a woman of whose past he was ignorant ; he would have told himself that this again was one of the fatalities of his existence, one of the consequences of the circumstances which were in- fluencing his life. Perhaps he would have even recoiled had he called to mind the history of his own mother. But he felt such a need of being loved, that he rushed blindly into the passion for the only being who had yet given him a few months of tenderness and peace. He wrote long letters to Madeleine every day, bewailing his loneliness and assuring her that their separation would soon cease. One moment, he resolved to go again and shut himself up with his mistress in the little house in Rue de Boulogne : then he bethought himself of the miserable days they had spent there, and he was afraid of never again finding their by-gone happiness. Next day, he wrote to the young woman begging her to come at once and join him at V^teuil. Madeleine was delighted at this arrangement. She too dreaded the solitude of their little house, filled as it was with James's memory. During the fortnight that she had been living there alone, she had been wretched. The very first night, she had hidden the portrait of the man whose memory never left her; for by keeping it constantly in sight in her bedroom, now that she was free, she would ioi MADELEINE FERAT. have thought each night that she vpas surrendering herself to a phantom. She even felt angry sometimes with William for leaving her like that in a house inhabited by her former lover. It was with unfeigned joy that she shut the door of the little house, for it seemed as if she was imprisoning James's spectre within its walls. William was waiting for her at Mantes. He led her a little way from the station to explain to her the plans of their new life. She was to appear as if she had come to make a short stay in the country, and he would pretend to let her the summer residence situated at the extremity of the park ; there, he would come to see her whenever she wished. Madelein^ shook her head ; the idea of living yet with her lover was repugnant to her, and she tried to think of good reasons for refusing the hospitality which he was offering her. At last she told him that they would not be so free by both living almost in the same house, that this would give rise to gossip and that it would be better a thousand times to let her go into some little house near La Noiraude. The young man perceived the wisdom of these reflections, as he thought of the scandal produced in the country in former days by the intimacy of the count with the notary's wife. It was decided then between them that he was to return by himself in the carriage that had brought him, and that she was to take the coach so as to arrive at V^teuil as a stranger. Directly she had taken a house, she would let William know. Madeleine had the good fortune to find what she was looking for immediately. The proprietor of the hotel where she put up, had a sort of farm about a mile from La Noiraude ; he had had a plain house built there, and he was very sorry for it now, for he hardly ever lived there and he regretted the money that it had cost him. When the young woman, on the night of her arrival, spoke of her wish to stay in the district, provided she could find in the neighbourhood of MADELEINE F:^RAT. 105 the town a house that suited her, he offered to let her his. The next morning, he got her to visit it. It was a one- storied summer residence with four rooms ; the rains of the preceding winter had hardly discoloured the white walls, against which were fastened the grey window shutters ; the red tiles of the roof appeared quite gay among the trees ; a quick-set hedge surrounded the few yards of private garden ; and a little way oif, at about a stone's throw, was the farm, a collection of long black buildings, where she could hear the crowing of cocks and the bleating of sheep. Madeleine was delighted with her find, the more so that the house was let furnished, which allowed her to take possession of it at once. She rented it on the terms of five hundred francs for the six summer months, calcu- lating that she would still have enough to pay for her daily expenses herself. That night, she was settled in her new home. She hummed a tune as she emptied her trunks, and she felt inclined to laugh and skip like a child. Since she had seen the little house with the red roof and grey shutters, white and smiling among the green leaves, she had kept saying to herself : " I feel that I shall be happy here in this secluded nook." About nine o'clock, she had a visit from William to whom she had written in the morning. She did the honours of her house with a sort of joyous playfulness, taking him into every corner, not even forgetting a cup- board. She even wanted him to visit the garden, although the night was very dark. " There," she said with a look of pride, " there, I have strawberries ; there, violets ; here, I think I saw radishes." William could distinguish nothing ; but, in the shadow, he had his arm round Madeleine's waist, he was kissing her bare arms, and laughing at her smiles. When they got to the end of the garden the young woman went on in a grave tone : " Just here, I saw a big gap in the hedge; this is the way you must come in every, day, sir. 106 MADELEINE FJ&RAT. so as not to compromise me." Then she insisted on the young man trying to see if he could get through the gap. It was long since the lovers had enjoyed such a pleasant time together. Madeleine had not been mistaken; her life in this secluded spot was to be a happy one. It seemed as if a new love was filling her heart, a school girl's open smiling love. James's portrait was forgotten in the house in the Rue de Boulogne, where she had shut it up with all the painful memories of the years that were dead. At times, she would fancy that she had hardly left the boarding school, so joyous and free from anxiety did she feel. What charmed her most, was the thought of being at last in a home of her own ; she would say : " My house, my room," with childish glee ; she did the house-keeping, calculated the cost of the dishes that she ate, and became quite con- cerned if the price of eggs and butter went up. William had never made her so happy as on the days when he accepted her invitations to dinner ; on these days, she for- bade him to bring even fruit from La Noiraude, she wanted to take all the expense on herself, and she felt a delight at being able to give now in her turn instead of receiving. Henceforth she could love William on equal tenns, for her affection was free ; the shame in the idea that she was a kept woman could no longer shock the pride of her nature, and her heart expanded, without any relapse, at the sudden thought of her situation. When William came, she would throw her arms round his neck, while her smile, her look, and her unconstraint would say, " It is a free surrender of myself, there is no selling now." Here was the explanation of the new afifection of the lovers. Willitim was surprised and delighted at thus find- ing in Madeleine a phase of her character which he had not known before. Hitherto she had been his mistress; now she had become his sweetheart. That is to say, that MADELEINE FEEAT. 107 hitherto he had loved her at his own house, now he went to pay her his addresses at hers. This difference was the key-stone of their happiness. Unconsciously, he was less free in the little cottage at V^teuil than he had been in the house in the Rue de Boulogne ; he no longer felt himself master of the house and he was more grateful for the kisses which Madeleine allowed him to take. There was less coarseness in their intimacy ; he experienced a sort of delicious re- straint which redoubled his pleasures by giving them a new and delicate charm. His a)ind, prone to respectful love, enjoyed with exquisite relish the delicate touches of their new situation. There was a sensation of pleasure in visit- ing a woman as the lover of her choice ; and he found in this house an unknown perfume of elegance and grace, and a genial warmth which was wanting at La Noiraude. Then he had to go there stealthily, for fear of malicious tongues ; he went across country, tramping through ploughed fields, getting his feet wet in the dew on the grass, as happy as a truant scholar ; when he thought somebody was looking at him, he would pretend to be gathering herbs, stooping down for flowers and grasses; then he would walk on again, looking round anxiously and breathless, happy already in the thought of his coming joys ; and when he got to the garden, when he had crept like a burglar through the hole in the hawthorn hedge, he would throw his posy of wild flowers into Madeleine's skirt who was waiting for him to take him straight to the house, where she* would present him at last her lips and cheeks, far from prying eyes. This little adventure, this walk, and the kiss of welcome became more charming to him every day. Had he been more free, he would perhaps have tired of it sooner. And when they had shut the door, William would take a singular delight in telling himself that his happiness was unknown to everybody. He looked on each visit as a charming adventure, as an appointed meeting with a staid 108 MADELEINE PERAT, maiden. He was completely forgetting the months they had spent in the Eue de Boulogne. Besides, Madeleine was a different woman ; she no longer had her fits of dreaming, she was bright and lively, and still she loved him ; she loved him secretly, like a lady with a character to think of ; she received him in her bedroom with sudden blushes, in that bedroom where he simply paid his visits now, and where the peculiar fragrance caused him at each visit a deep-felt emotion. He had nothing of his own in this room, not even slippers. This pleasant life lasted the whole of the summer. The days glided by in happy peacefulness. The lovers were full of mutual gratitude and affection for the bliss they were conferring on each other, just as formerly they had nearly, quarrelled as they felt that they were making each other unhappy. Madeleine had taken the little house about the middle of April. She knew nothing of the country except a few nooks in the neighbourhood of Paris. Life in the open fields, for a whole summer, was for her a life of delight and health. She saw the trees bloom and the fruits ripen, standing by with happy surprise at the working of the soil. When she came, the bright green leaves were still tender ; the country, still moist with the rains of winter, was bursting into life beneath the vernal rays of the sun, with the charming grace of a child just waking from sleep ; from the depths of these pale horizons there came a sort of breezy and virginal fresh- ness to her heart. Then, the caresses of the zephyrs became warmer, the leaves grew darker, the soil became a woman, an amorous and fruitful woman whose womb trembled with a mighty pleasure in the pangs of maternity. Madeleine, strengthened and soothed by the warmth of spring, felt the heat of the summer fill her with energy and give a steady strong flow to the blood in her veins. She thus found, in the sunshine, peace and vigour ; she resembled one of those MADELEINE F^RAT. 109 shrubs which though battered by the winter winds spring up again, which become young in order to grow afresh and un- fold in the vigour of their foliage. She felt a need of the free air, a love for the open sky which made her delight in long walks. Nearly every day she went out, and walked for miles and miles without ever complaining of fatigue. Usually, she met William in a little wood through which ran the brook where her lover had in former days hunted for crawfish. When they met each other, they walked away gently on the soft grass, hidden by the trees on both sides, ascending a sort of valley concealed by foliage and refreshingly cool. At their feet flowed the brook, a silver streak gliding noiselessly over the sand ; here and there were little waterfalls whose crystal tones seemed as though they proceeded from a shepherd's flute. And, on both sides, rose the big tree-trunks, like the shafts of fantastical pillars, eaten away with a leprosy of moss and ivy ; among these trunks, briars had sprung up, throwing out to one another their long prickly arms, and forming green walls which enclosed the valley and turned it into an interminable path of foliage. Above their heads, the vault was peopled with wrens, like big humming flies ; in places, the branches became more open, which permitted them to catch a glimpse, through this green verdure, of the blue sky, William and Madeleine loved this secluded valley, this natural bower whose end they could never discover ; they forgot themselves for hours as they followed its windings ; the coolness of the water and the silence of the trees filled them with exquisite delight. With their arms round each other's waists, they clasped each other more closely in the hollows where the shade became thicker. At times they would play like children, running after one another, getting entangled in the briars and slipping on the grass. Suddenly Madeleine would disappear ; she had hidden behind a bush ; then her lover, who clearly saw a bit of her bright skirt, no MADELEINE FERAT. would pretend to hunt for her with an uneasy look; then, with a sudden spring, he would catch her and hold her on the ground, shaking with laughter, in his arms. Sometimes, Madeleine would declare that she fell; cold, and that she wanted to walk in the sun ; the shade always became oppressive to her vigorous nature. Then they would go into the sun, the hot July sun. They would stride over the wall of briars and find themselves at the edge of immense corn-fields, undulating in bright waves right to the horizon, and lulled to rest in the heat of the mid-day sun. The at- mosphere was sweltering. Madeleine walked comfortably in this burning furnace ; she took a delight in letting the sun scorch her neck and bare arms ; somewhat pale, her forehead beaded with little drops of perspiration, she re- velled in the caresses of the orb of day. It gave her new strength, she said, when she was tired ; she felt better under the crushing weight of the burning sky which pressed lightly on her strong shoulders. But William suflFered a good deal from this heat ; so when she saw him panting, she led him into the shady walk again, by the side of the clear cool brook. Then they would resume their delightfvd walk, finding a fresh charm in this silence and coolness which they had left for a moment. Thus they came to a sort of amphitheatre where they usually stopped and rested. The valley grew broader, the brook formed a little lake with a surface as smooth as glass, the line of trees made a gentle curve, dis- closing a broad belt of sky. It might have been thought a room made of verdure. At the edge of the pool grew tall waving reeds ; then a carpet of grass was spread beneath the feet, reaching from the water to the foot of the trees, where it lost itself in the tall vuiderwood which surrounded the open- ing with an impenetrable wall. But the charm of their wild and pleasant retreat was a spring which gushed from a rock ; the enormous block, covered at the summit with over- MADELEINE F^RAT. Ill hanging briars, projected out at the top a little, forming at its foot a sort of cavern filled with a pale blue tint; the slender stream glided, with the easy motion of an adder, from the further end of this grotto with its walls covered with climbing plants and oozing with moisture. William and Madeleine would sit here, listening to the drops as they fell one by one in regular cadence from the roof ; there was in this sound an endless lullaby, a vague sensation of sleep and eternity which harmonised with their happy love. Gradually, they ceased to talk, overcome by the monotony of the continual music of the drops of water, fancying that they could hear the beating of their hearts, dreaming and smiling, hand in hand. Madeleine always brought some fruit. She would forget her musing, and eat her supplies with hearty appetite, giving her lover a bite of her peaches and pears. William was enraptured to see her by him ; each day, her beauty seemed more dazzling ; he watched, with admiring surprise, the development of health and strength which the fresh air was imparting to her. The country was really making her another woman. She even seemed to have grown. Full of health and vigour and endowed with strong limbs, she had become a powerful woman, with a broad chest and a clear laugh. Her skin, though slightly tanned, had not lost its transparency. Her gold-red hair, carelessly tied up, fell on her neck in a thick glowing coil. Her whole body gave evidence of superb vigour. William never grew tired of gazing at this healthy being, whose calm lusty kisses soothed his own feverislmess. He felt that a supreme serenity was reigning in her ; she had recovered her strength of will, she lived without agitation, obeying the native simplicity of her being ; these surround- ings of solitude and bright sunshine suited her, under their influence she was tmfolding in grace and strength, becoming what she always would have been had her need for esteem 112 MADELEINE F^BAT. and tranquillity been satisfied. During the long hours that they spent at the Spring, the name they had given to their retreat, William would gaze on Madeleine as she lay stretched on the ground, her neck all red with the reflection of her hair ; he would trace, beneath her light dress, the firm lines of her limbs, and at times he would raise himself up to take her in his arms in a clasping embrace, with a sudden pride of possession. Still there was nothing of the animal in his love ; it was calm and chaste. On the days that the lovers did not visit the spring, they would drive out a few miles in a carriage, then leave their conveyance at some inn and tramp the country wherever the roads took them. They only chose the narrowest lanes, those that would lead them to the unknown. When they had walked for hours, between two hedges of apple-trees, without meeting a living soul, they were as happy as ma- rauders who had escaped the eye of the keeper. These broad Norman plains, rich and monotonous, seemed to them the image of their tranquil afiection ; they never grew tired of the same horizons of meadows and corn-fields. They would often ramble in the fields or visit the farms. Madeleine loved domestic animals ; a brood of chickens pecking round their mother as she clucked and spread out her wings, would amuse her for a whole afternoon ; she would go into cattle- sheds to stroke the cows ; the young skipping kids filled her with delight ; all the little denizens of a poultry yard held her charmed and filled with a longir\g desire to have at her own home hens, ducks, pigeons, and geese ; and had not William's smile checked her, she would never have returned to Veteuil without carrying back some little animal or other in her skirts. She had another passion too, a passion for children ; when she saw one rolling in a farm yard, on a midden, among the poultry, she would gaze at him in silence, somewhat pensively, with a softened smile ; then, as if drawn to him, she would go up and take the little MADELEINE FERAT. 113 urchin in her arms, regardless of his face all smeared with dirt and jam. She would ask for milk, keeping hold of the child until she was served, making him skip and calling her lover to admire the dear creature's large eyes. When she had drank her milk, she would withdraw regretfully, turn- ing round and casting a last glance on the child. Autumn came. Dark clouds crossed the leaden sky driven on by icy winds ; the fields were going to repose. The lovers wished to pay one last visit to the spring. They found their retreat very desolate. A shower of yellow leaves lay strewn on the grass ; the walls of verdure were falling down ; the amphitheatre, exposed to all beholders, was now only formed by the slender trunks of the trees whose branches- stood out in rueful nakedness against the grey sky. The little lake and the spring itself were muddy, troubled by the last storm. William could see that winter was approaching, and that their walks would have to cease. He mused sadly on this death of summer as he looked at Madeleine. The young woman, seated in front of him, full of thought, was breaking the bits of dead branches with which the turf was strewn. Since the previous night William had been thinking of proposing to his mistress to marry her. This idea of im^ mediate marriage had occurred to him in a farm, as he had seen Madeleine fondling one of those little darlings that she adored. He had thought that if she should ever betfome enceinte, he would have a bastard for his son. The memories of his childhood always frightened him at this word bastard. Besides, everything was tending without gainsay to marriage. As he used to say in the old days to James, he was fated to love one woman only, the first he met ; he was fated to love her with his whole being, and to cling, to this. lovCj out of hatred of change, -out of terror for the unknown. He had been lulled to rest in Madeleine's affection : now that u lU MADELEINE FERAT, he was warm, now that he w^as comfortable in this affjction, he intended to stay there for ever. His inert mind and his gentle nature delighted in thinking. "I have a resting- place where I have taken refuge for life." Marriage would simply legalise an union which he already looked upon as eterua . The thought that he might have a son only made Jiim desirous of hastening an end that he had foreseen. Then, winter was coming, he would be cold, all alone in his big deserted chateau; he would no longer spend his days in the warm breath of his loved one. During these long cold months, he would have to run in the rain as he went to knock at Madeleine's door. What a happy warmth, on the contrary, if they lived in the same house ! They would spend the days of bad weather in the chimney corner ; they would pass their chilly honey-mooa in a warm recess, which they would only leave in the following spring, to return to the sunlight. And there was too, in his resolution, the desire to love Madeleine openly, and to confer oh her a mark of esteem which should touch her heart. He thought he could foresee that they would suffer no more from their intimacy, that they would no longer hurt each other's feel- ings, when there was a binding bond between them. Yet at the bottom of the project which "William fondly indulged in, there lay a vague feeling of dread which kept him uneasy, and hesitating. During the months of forget- fulness that they had just passed, he had never been a prey to the terrors about the future which the suicide of his father had awakened in him ; events no longer crushed him ; his love, after so many rebuffs, seemed to him a sovereign repose, a balm for his sufferings and fears. The fact was, he was living in the present, in the hours that glided by, bringing each its pleasure. But since he had begun to think of the future, the unknown in this future filled him with secret uneasiness. Pcr?iaps he was trembling MADELErNE FERAT. 115 unconsciously on the brink of an eternal engagement with a woman whose history he did not know. Anyhow, he was full of conflicting thoughts, for his hesitations did not assume a definite form, while his heart urged him on to his project. He had come to the spring, fully determined to speak. But the trees were so bare, the sky so gldbmy, that be did not venture to open his lips, shivering at the first breath of winter. Madeleine was cold too; a kerchief on her neck, her feet well under her skirts, she was continuing to break the bits of dead branches on the turf, unconscious of what she was doing, gazing with a melancholy air at the clouds charged with rain that were silently drifting across the sky. At last, when it was time to return, William told her his project ; his voice trembled a little and he seemed to be asking for a- favour. Madeleine looked at him with a sur- prised, almost terrified air. Wheu he had finished she said: " Why not stay as we are ? I don't complain, I am happy. We should not be any fonder of each other if we were married. Perhaps that would even spoil our happiness." And as he was opening his lips to insist, she added in a brief tone : " No, indeed. It makes me quite afraid." And she began to laugh, in order to tone down the hard- ness and strangeness of her words. Even she herself was surprised at having uttered them and with such stress. The truth was that William's proposal caused her a singular feeling of revolt; it seemed to her that he was asking for something impossible, as if she were not her own mistress and already in the possession of another man. Her voice and gesture had been like that of a married woman requested by a lover to live with him as his wife. The young fellow, almost hurt, would have perhaps ■withdrawn his offer, had he not thought himself bound now 116 - MADELEINE FfiEAT. to plead the cause of their love. He grew warm ks he spoke, forgetting gradually the oppression of heart that he had felt at the point blank refusal of his mistress, and he melted into gentle and endearing words as he drew a picture of the calm and happy life they would lead when they were married. For some minutes, he thus poured forth his heart in his words, bending over Madeleine in an attitude of prayer and adoration. " I am an orphan," he said, " I have no one in the world but you. Don't refuse to link your life to mine, or I shall think that Heaven continues to persecute me with its anger, and I shall tell myself that you do not love me enough to wish to assure my happiness. Oh ! if you knew how I need your affection ! You alone have soothed me, you alone have opened to me a refuge in your arms. And to-day I know not how to thank you ; I offer you everything that I have, which is nothing in comparison with the happy hours you have given me and will give me again. Come now, I feel that I shall always be your debtor, Madeleine. We love one another, and marriage cannot increase our affection ; but it will permit us to adore each other openly. And what a life ours will be ! a life of peace and pride, a confidence without bounds for the future, an affection constant in the present. Madeleine, I implore you." The young woman listened, as if seized with distressing thoughts, with a curbed impatience which gave to her lips the appearance of a peculiar smile. When her lover could find nothing more to say and stopped, with a choking sensation in his throat, from the emotion which was overpowering him, she sat silent for a moment. Then in an unfeeling tone, she exclaimed : "You cannot however marry a woman of whose past you know nothing. I must tell you who I am, where I came from, and what I have done before knowing you." MADELEINE F^EAT. 117 William was already on his feet and putting his hand on her mouth. " Don't say a word ! " he answered with a sort of terror. "I love you, and I want to know nothing more. Come now, I know you quite well. You are perhaps better than I am ; you certainly have more will and strength. You can't have done wrong. The past is dead ; I am speaking to you of the future." Madeleine was struggling in his clasping embrace of supreme tenderness and absolute faith. When she could speak she said : " Now listen, you are a child, and I must argue for you. You are rich, you are young, and some day you will re- proach me for having accepted your offer too hastily. As for myself, I have nothing, I am a poor girl ! but I am anxious to keep my pride, and I should not like you to turn round and accuse me later on of having entered your house as a fortune-hunter. You see, I am frank. I can make you an adorable mistress ; but if I were to become your wife, you would say to yourself next day that you ought to have married a girl with a better dowry and more worthy of you than myself." If Madeleine had wished to make William more in earnest, she could not have demised a better method. The supposi- tions that she was making almost made him weep. Now he had the anger of a child, and swore to overcome his mistress's resistance at all cost. " You don't know me, Madeleine," he exclaimed, " and you hurt my feelings. Why do you talk like that ? Are you not aware what I have been thinking of and dreaming of, for the whole year that we have been living together ] I should like to go to sleep on your breast and never awake. You know very well that that is the desire of my whole being ; you do wrong to think that my thoughts are like other men's. I am a child, you say ; ah well ! so much 118 MADKLEINE F^RAT. the better ! you can't be afraid of a child who trusts in you." He went on in a gentler tone, and fell again into his tender beseeching accents. He spoke so much that his heart was full. Madeleine was giving way. She was touched by this trembling voice which was offering her so humbly the pardon and the esteem of the w^orld. Yet, deep in her heart, there still continued the vague feeling of revolt. When her lover wound up by saying, " You are free, why refuse me this happiness," she gave a siidden start. " Free," she replied in a strange voice, "yes, I am free." " Well ! " added William, " say nothing more of the past. If you have loved before, that love is dead, and I am marry- ing a widow." Madeleine was struck by this word widow, and became slightly pale. Her hard brow and grey eyes had an expres- sion of painful anxiety. "Let us go back," she said, "night is coming on. I will give you an answer to-morrow.'' They went back. The sky had become dark, and the wind was howling mournfully in the trees that overhung the path. When William left Madeleine, he pressed her silently to his heart. He could find no words to say to her, and he wished to take possession of her being by this last embrace. Madeleine passed a sleepless night. When she was alone, she reflected on her lover's proposal. The thought of marriage flattered her feelings, and yet caused her a sort of terrified surprise. A thought of this ceremony had never occurred to her. She had never ventured to indulge in such a dream. Then, as she thought of the calm and worthy life which William offered her, she was very much surprised at feeling so averse to it. At the recollection of the young man's endearing words, she felt ashamed of having MADELEINE F]!:RAT. 119 shown so much unfeelingness : she asked herself what secret thought had induced her to refuse such an union, which she ought to have accepted with humility and gratitude. Why those fears, those doubts 1 Was she not free as William had said ? What necessity was making her disdain the un- expected happiness which was coming to her t She became bewildered in these questions, and could only feel herself troubled with a vague sense of disquietude. She could have given herself an answer, but it seemed foolish and ridiculous, and she avoided it. The truth was she was thinking of James. She had felt the memory of this man springing up again confusedly in her being, while her lover was speaking. But it could not be this memory which troubled her. James was dead, and she owed him nothing, not even a regret. By what right had he come to life again in her thoughts to remind her that she was his 1 The doubts which she felt now about her liberty irritated her deeply. Now that the phantom of her first lover stood before her, she struggled with him in the flesh, she wished to overcome him in order to show him that she was his no longer. And she had a consciousness, in spite of her disdainful smiles, that it was James alone who had been able to make her harsh towards William. This was monstrous, inexplicable. When these thoughts presented themselves clearly, in the night-mares of her sleeplessness, she made up her mind with all the im- pulsiveness of her nature, that she would silence the dead by marrying the living. Then she fell asleep at day-break. She dreamed that' the shipwrecked man was rising out of the livid waves of the sea, .and coming to snatch her from her husband's arms. When William came in the morning, trembling and anxious, he found Madeleine still asleep. He took her gently in his arms. Madeleine awoke with a start and threw herself on his bosom, as if to take refuge there and t$U hiiQ ; "Japi thine,'' Then cagio the long Hisses, and 120 MADELEINE FERAT. the passionate embraces. They both seemed to feel a need of abandoning themselves to each other's caresses, to each other's arms, so as to be convinced of the strength of their union. That afternoon, William went to arrange about the for- malities of the marriage. When, at night, he announced to Genevifeve that he was going to marry a young lady in the neighbourhood, the protestant looked at him with her malicious eyes, and said : " That will be better." He saw that she knew everything. Peopje had no doubt noticed him with Madeleine, and gossip travelled fast in the country, Genevifeve's remark made him hasten the wedding- day. A few weeks were enough. The lovers were married at the beginning of winter, almost secretly. Five or six inquisitive V^teuil folks alone watched them enter their carriage as they left the mayoralty and the church. When they were back at La Noiraude, they thanked their witnesses and shut themselves up. They were at home, united for life. 121 CHAPTER VI. The four years that followed were calm and happy. The newly-married couple spent them at La Noiraude. They had made plans, the first year, for travelling : they had wished to air their love in Italy or on the hanks of the Rhine, as is the fashion. But they always held back at the moment of starting, finding it useless to go and seek so far away for a happiness which they had at home. They did not even pay a single visit to Paris. The memories which they had left in their little house in the Rue de Boulogne, filled them with uneasiness. Shut up in their beloved solitude, they thought themselves protected against the miseries of this world and defied sorrow. William's existence was one of unmixed bliss. Marriage was realising the dream of his youth. He lived an un- chequered life, free from all agitation, a round of peace and aifection. Since Madeleine had come to live at La Noiraude, he was full of hope, and thought of the future without a fear. It would be what the present was, a long sleep of affection, a succession of days like these and equally happy. His restless mind must have this assurance of uninterrupted tranquillity : his dearest wish was to arrive at the hour of death like this, after a stagnant existence, an existence free from events,, an existence of one unbroken sentiment. He was at rest, and he felt an aversion to quit this state of repose. Madeleine's heart too was at rest. She was enjoying a delicious repose frpm the t;roubles of her past in the calm 122 MADELEINE r:^EAT. of her present life. There was nothing now to hurt her. She could respect herself, and forget the shame of the past. Now she shared her husband's fortune without scruple, and reigned in the house as legitimate wife. The solitude of La Noiraude, of this huge building, all black and ruinous, pleased her. She would not allow William to have the old house done up in modern fashion. She simply permitted him to repair an apartment on the first floor, and the dinirg and drawing-rooms down stairs. The other rooms remained closed. In four years they never once climbed the staircase to the attics. Madeleine liked to feel all this empty space round her j it seemed to isolate her all the more, and pro- tect her against harm from without. She took a pleasure in forgetting everything in the spacious room on the ground floor : a silence which calmed her seemed to fall from the lofty ceiling, and the dark corners of the room made her dream of immensities of peaceful shade. At night, when the lamp was lit, she was deeply soothed at the thought of being alone, and so small in the midst of this infinity. Not a sound came from the country : the secluded sanctity of a cloister, that seclusion one finds in a sleepy province, seemed to have settled on La Noiraude. Then Madeleine's thoughts would recur at times to one of the noisy evenings she had passed in the Rue Soufflot with James ; she would hear the deafening rumble of the carriages on the pavement in Paris, she would see the harsh glare of the gas-lamps, and she would live again, for a second, in the little hotel-apartment full of the fumes of tobacco, chinking of glasses, bursts of laughter and kisses. It was only a flash, like a whiflF of warm and nauseous air coming right into her face, but she would look round, terrified, stifling already. And then she would breathe freely again as she found herself in the sombre and deserted big room : she would awake from her bad dream, trustful and comforted, to bury herself once more with greater pleasure, in the silence and shad? ftrownd bey, MADELEINE F^EAT. 123 How Bweet this placid life was for her straightforward and cold nature, after the agitations of the flesh to which fate had exposed her ! She would thank the cold ceiling, the dumb walls and all this building which enveloped her in a winding-sheet : she would stretch out her hands to William, as if to return thanks to him : he had brought her true joy- by restoring to her her lost dignity, he was her beloved deliverer. They thus passed their winters in almost complete solitude. They never left the drawing-room on the ground- floor, a big fire of logs of wood blazed in the huge fireplace, and they stayed there the whole day long, spending each hour alike. They led a clock-work life, clinging to their habits with the obstinacy of people who are perfectly happy and fear the least agitation. They hardly did anything, they never grew weary, or at least the feeling of gloomy weariness in which they indulged seemed to them bliss itself. Yet, there were no passionate caresses, no pleasures to make them forget the slow march of time. Two lovers will shut themselves up sometimes, and live for a season in each other's arms, satisfying their desires and turning days into nights of love. William and Madeleine simply smiled on each other, their solitude was chaste ; if they shut them- selves up, it was not because they had kisses to conceal, it was because they loved the still silence of the winter, the tranquillity of the cold. It was enough for them to live alone, side by side, and to bestow on each other the calm of their presence. Then, directly the fine days came, they opened their windows and went down to the park. Instead of isolating themselves in the huge room, they would hide in some thicket. There was no change. In this way they lived in the fine weather, wild and retired, shunning the noise. ' William preferred winter, and the warm moist atmosphere of the hearth, but Madeleine was always passionately^ fond 124 MADELEINE F^RAT. of the sunshine, the blazing sunshine -which scorched her neck and made her pulse beat steady and strong. She would often take her husband into the country, they would go and revisit the spring, or follow the open space by the brook reminding each other of their walks in the days gone by, or they would visit the farms again, rambling about, striking into the fields, far away from the villages. But the pilgrimage they loved best was to go and spend the afternoon in the little house where Madeleine had lived. A few months after their marriage, they had bought this house, for they could not bear the idea of its not belonging to them, and they felt an unconquerable desire to go in, whenever they passed by it. When it was theirs, their minds were at rest, and they said to themselves that no one could enter and drive away the memories of their affection. And v;hen the air was mild, they used to go there nearly every day, for a few hours. It was like their country-house, although it was only ten minutes' walk from La Noiraude, Their life there was even more solitary than at La Noiraude, for they had given orders that they were never to be dis- turbed. They sometimes even slept there, and on these nights they forgot the whole world. Often would William say: " If any calamity ever overtakes us, we will come here and forget it ; here we shall be proof against suffering." In this way the months glided by, in this way season succeeded season. The first year after their marriage, a joyful event had happened — Madeleine had given birth to a daughter. William welcomed with profound gratitude this child which his lawful wife, and not his mistress, as might have happened, had presented to him. He saw in this retarda- tion of maternity a kind design on the part of Heaven. Little Lucy peopled their solitude herself. Her mother, strong as she was, could not suckle her herself, and she chose for her nurse a ^'.ouns; woman who had been in her MADELEINE FEEAT. 125 service before her marriage. This , woman, whose father managed the farm by the little house, thus suckled the child quite close to La Noiraude. The parents used to go to inquire about her every day, and later on, when Lucy had grown, they would leaVe her for weeks at the farm, where she used to like to stay and lived a healthy life. There they ■would see her every afternoon, when they went to seclude themselves in their little house. They would take her with them, enjoying an exquisite pleasure in surrounding this little fair head with their happy memories. The dear girl gave a perfume of childhood to the little rooms where they had loved each other, and they would listen to her prattle with melting affection, in their meditation on the past. When they were all three together in their retreat, William would take Lucy with her laughing rosy lips and blue eyes on his knees and say gently : " Madeleine, here we have the present and the future." Then the fond mother would smile serenely on them both. Maternity had given the finishing touch to the equilibrium of Madeleine's temperament. Up to that time, she had re- tained her girlish impulsiveness, and her young woman's amorous gestures; her golden hair fell down her back in wanton freedom ; her hips were too obtrusive in their movements, and in her grey eyes, or on her red lips would play bold expressions of desire. Now, her whole being had toned down, and marriage had imparted to her a sort of precocious maturity ; there was a slight rotundity in her figure, her movements were more gentle and dignified ; her golden-hair, carefully tied up, was now merely a charming token of strength, a vigorous setting for the picture of her now calm face. The girl was giving place to the mother, to the fruitful woman, settled in the plenitude of her beauty. What especially gave to Madeleine her digni- fied bearing, her noble expression of peace and health, her complexion clear and smooth as tranquil water, was the ]20 MADELEINE F^RAT. internal contentedness of her being. She felt herself free, she lived proud and satisfied with herself; her new existence was a suitable atmosphere in which her better part was rapidly developing. Before this, during the first few months that she had spent in the country, she had expanded in joy and strength ; but then she had not been free from a something that seemed coarse, and this coarseness was now being transformed into serenity. Madeleine's smiling vigour was a great solace for William. When he pressed her to his heart, he felt invigorated with a share of her strength. He loved to lay his head on her bosom, to listen to the steady beat of her heart. It was this beat which regulated his life. A fiery and nervous woman would have put him into a state of keen anguish, for his body and mind shi-unk from the slightest shock. Madeleine's regular and steady breathing on the contrary strengthened him. He was becoming a man. His timid weakness was now simply gentleness. His young wife had absorbed him : he was now a part of her. As happens in every union, the strong nature had taken undisputed possession of the weak one, and henceforth William was hers who ruled him. He was in her power in a strange way, in a way which affected his whole being. He was continually influenced by her, subject to her joys and sorrows, following her in each change of her nature. His own identity was disappearing, and he could no longer assert himself. He would have wished to revolt against thus being led captive by Madeleine's will. But from henceforth his tranquillity depended on this woman, and her hfe was irrevocably destined to become his. If she was at peace, he too would live in peace ; if she became agitated, his agitation would be as strong as hers. It was a complete fusion of body and mind. Besides, a broad peaceful future was opening before them, and the husband and wife could look forward to it without fear. The four years of bliss were removing from their MADELEINE FJilRAT. 127 minds all apprehension of calamity. William was contented to abandon himself to Madeleine's will, and to feel himself breathing freely, and growing stronger in this submission ; he would say to her sometimes with a smile : " It is you Made- leine who are the man. '' Then she would kiss him, half-abashed at this power which she was acctuiring, in spite of herself, by the force of her character. Had you seen them going down to the park, with little Lucy between them, each holding one of her hands, you could not have failed to guess the happy serenity of their union. The child was like a bond which united them. When she was not with them, William seemed almost timid by Madeleine's side ; but there was so much affection in their lingering gait, that the thought of an event to mar the happiness of these two smiling beings would never have occurred to anyone. During these first years of their married life, they received very few visitors. They knew soarcelyanybody, and were slow to form connections, having no love for new faces. Their most frequent guests were two neighbours, Monsieur de Rieu and his wife, who lived in Paris during the winter, arid came to spend the summer at V^teuil. Monsieur de Eieu had for- merly been the most intimate friend of William's father. He was a fine old gentleman, of aristocratic bearing, stiff and ironical ; his pale lips were at times lit up by a faint smile, a smile that looked as sharp as a blade of steel. Almost completely deaf, all the keenness of the wanting sense had concentrated in his look. He saw the smallest things, even those that went on behind him. Yet, he seemed to see nothing, his proud bearing never relaxed ; not a crease in his lips would show that he had seen or heard. On enter- ing a house, he would sit down in an arm-chair, and stay there for hours together, as if absorbed in his eternal silence. He would throw his head back, never relaxing the rigidity of his features, and half close his eyes as if asleep : the truth was, he was carefully following the conversation, and study- 128 MADELEINE FERAT. iug the smallest play of features on the faces of the speakers. This amused him wonderfully ; he took a savage delight in this pastime, noting the coarse and wicked thoughts that he fancied he could detect on the faces of these people who looked on him as a post, before which they could without fear confide to each other the most important secrets. For > him, smiles, and pretty delicate expressions did not exist ; he had no eye for anything but grimaces. As he could hear no sounds, he thought every sudden contraction, every' playful turn of the features grotesque. When two peojde were talking in his presence, he' watched them curiously, as if they were two animals showing their teeth. " Which of the two will eat the other," he would think. This con- tinual studj'^, this observation and this science of what he called the grimaces of features had given him a supreme contempt for mankind. Soured by his deafness, which he would not admit, he would tell himself sometimes that he was fortunate in being deaf and able to isolate himself in a corner. His pride of birth was turning into pitiless raillery; he appeared to think himself living in the mjdst of a race of wretched puppets, splashing in the dirt like stray dogs, crouching with a skulk at the sight of the whip, and worrying one another for a bone picked up on the dung-hill. His proud impassive face protested against the turbulence of other faces, and his keen-edged laughs were the bitter jeers of a man delighted with infamy, and disdaining to feel angry at brutes deprived of reason. Yet he felt a little kindness towards the young couple ; but this did not go so far as to disarm his derisive curiosity. When he came to La Noiraude, he looked at his young friend William, with a certain amount of pity ; the latter's attitude of adoration in Madeleine's presence did not escape his notice, and this spectacle of a man at a woman's knees had always seemed to him monstrous. Still, the young couple, who talked but li ttlc, and on whose faces sat an expression of re- MADELEINE F^RAT. 129 lative placidity, seemed to him the most sensible beings he had yet met, and his visit to them was always one of plea- sure. His victim, the eternal subject of his bitter observa- tion and mockery, was his own wife. H^lfene de Rieu, who nearly always accompanied him to La Noiraude, was a woman above forty. She was a little dumpy person, with an insipid fair complexion, and, to her great despair, slightly inclined to stoutness. Picture a chubby-cheeked doll transformed into a woman. Affected, with a passionate love for puerility, she had a quiverful of pouts, glances, and smiles ; she played with her face as on an exquisite instrument, whose celestial harmony was to se- duce everybody ; she never allowed her features to remain at rest, hanging her head down in a languishing fashion, raising it to the sky with sudden feints of passion and poetry, turning it, nodding it, according to the exigencies of attack or defence. She made a vigorous resistance to age, which was bringing flesh and wrinkles : smeared with unguents and pomades, laced up in stays that choked the breath out of her, she fancied herself growing young again. These were only her follies ; but the dear woman had vices. She looked on her husband as a dummy whom she had married to give herself a position in the world, and she thought she ought to be easily excused for never having loved him. " What ! talk about love to a man who can't hear you ! " she would say to her friends. And then she would put on the air of an unhappy and misunderstood woman. The trath was, she did not stint herself of consola- tion. Not wishing to forget the love phrases which she could not utter to Monsieur de Rieu, she rehearsed them to people who had good ears. She always selected lovers of a tender and delicate age, eighteen to twenty at the most. Her girl- ish tastes must have young fellows with rosy cheeks, who had not yet lost the odour of their nurses' milk.. Had she dared, she would have debauched the collegians that she 130 MADELEINE P:&RAT, met, for there was in her passion for children, an appetite of shameful pleasure, a wish to teach vice, and to taste strange delights in the soft embraces of arms still weak. She was fastidious ; she liked timid kisses, which tickled her cheeks without bearing a deep imprint. Thus she was always to be seen in the company of five or six young sparks ; she hid them under her bed, in the wardrobes, everywhere where she could put them. Her happiness consisted in having half-a-dozen tractable lovers fastened to her skirts. She soon tired them out^ changing them every fortnight, and ' living in a per- petual renewal of followers. You would have thought her a boaiding-school mistress, dragging her pupils about. She was never without admirers, she got them anywhere, from that crowd of young idiots whose dream is to have a middle- aged married woman for a mistress. Her forty years, her eiUy girlish airs, her insipid white skin which repelled men of riper years, were an invincible attraction for the young rascals of sixteen. In the eyes of her husband, H^lfene was a singularly curious little machine. He had married her on a day that he felt bored, and he would have driven her away from his house the nest, if he had thought her worth getting angry about. The laborious toil that this coquette made her physiognomy undergo, gave him the greatest pleasure, for he tried to find out the secret wheels that set the eyes and lips of this little machine in motion. This pale face, plastered with paint, which was never at rest, seemed to him a mournful comedy, with its winks, its contortions of the mouth, all its rapid and, to him, silent play. It was after a long contemplation of his wife, that he had come to the conclusion that humanity was composed of wicked and stupid marionettes. When he pried into the wrinkles of this aged doll, he discovered, beneath her grimaces, thoughts of infamy and foolishness which made him look on her as a creature that he ought to have whipped. Yet, he preferred MADELEINE FlilEAT. 131 to amuse himself by studying and despising her. He treated her as a domestio animal; her vices left him as indiiFerent as the caterwauling of a tabby-cat after a torn j setting his honour high above the shame of such a creature, he sat still, with superb disdain and cold irony, at the pro- cesssion of young sparks marching into his wife's room. One might have thought that he took a pleasure in showing off his contempt for mankind, his denial of every virtue, by thus tolerating the vices that were taking place under his own roof, and by seeming to accept debauch and adultery as quite usual and natural things. His silence, his cruelly derisive smile said plainly : " The world is a vile hole of filth ; I have fallen into it, and I have to live there." Helfene did not stand on ceremony with her husband. She spoke to her lovers in his presence, in the most off-hand, familiar way, convinced that he could not hear her. Monsieur de Rieu could read these familiar expressions on her lips, and he then displayed an exquisite politeness to the young men, amusing himself at their embarrassmeut, and obliging them to shout gracious answers into his ears. He never manifested the slightest astonishment at seeing his drawing-room filled with new faces every month ; he welcomed Hflfene's boarders with a paternal good nature, which was a cloak to, his terrible sarcasm. He asked them their ages, and made inquiries about their studies. " We are fond of children," he would often say, in a tone of bantering kindness. When the drawing-room was empty, he would complain of the way in which young people forget their elders. One day even, as his wife's court was not very well attended, he brought her a young fellow of seventeen, but he was hump-backed, and Helfene speedily dismissed him. Sometimes Monsieur de Rieu would be even more cruel still; he would hurriedly enter his wife's room, and keep her panting for an hour, talking to her about the fine weather or the rain, while some poor, simple creature was stifling under the bed-clothes, which 132 MADELEINE FERAT. had been hastily pulled over him at the unexpected entrance of the husband. The title, (title, by the way, which is found in every little town) of cuckolded husband was bestowed on him at V^teuil ; having caught his wife in the very act with a collegian who had slipped out of bounds, he had simply said to this young lover, in his cold, polite voice : " Ah, sir, so young, and without being forced to it ! you must be very courageous." But Monsieur de Eieu was not the man to thrust his nose into a place where he was likely to catch his wife at this sort of thing ; he tried to appear blind as well as deaf ; for this allowed him to preserve his haughty bearing, and his terribly calm attitude. What made his enjoyment more delicious, was the stupidity of his wife, whd thought him simple enough not to suspect any- thing. He pretended to be a good-natured fellow, made scathing allusions with exquisite politeness, enjoying, like a connoisseur, the bitterness of the double-pointed words that he addressed to her, words the refined cruelty of which he alone understood. He played with this woman every hour, and would have been really annoyed if she had repented. At bottom, Monsieur de Eieu wished to know how far disdain can go. There had been between this ironical nature and the disor- dered mind of Monsieur de Viargue, a sort of sympathy which. explained the previous friendship of the two old men. Both had reached the same degree of disdain and denial; the philosopher, as he thought he had put his finger on nothing- ness ; the deaf man, as he fancied he had discovered, beneath the human mask, the mouth of a lewd beast. During the count's lifetime, Monsieur de Rieu was the only person who entered his laboratory, and they often spent a whole day there together. The suicide of the chemist did not appear to surprise his old friend. He came back the following year to La Noiraude, as unmoved as ever ; only, he took the liberty of introducing his wife, accompanied by her young gentlemen. MADELEINE F^EAT. 133 William and Madeleine had been married a few months, when H61ene brought them her last conquest, a young fellow from Veteuil, whom she had taken into her house to wile away the leisures of her residence in the country. This youth's name was Tiburce Rouillard : he was rather ashamed of the RouiUard, and very proud of the Tiburce. The son of a man who had been a cattle-dealer, and who was to leave him a pretty round sum, Monsieur Tiburce had an unbounded ambition : he was vegetating at Veteuil, and intended to go and push his way in Paris. Boorish, crafty, and capable of any act of cowardice likely to prove useful to him, he was already beginning to feel his strength. He was of those scamps who say to themselves, " I am a millionaire ten times over," and who always end by getting their ten millions. Madame de Rieu, when she took him in his youth, had thought, as usual, that she was taking a child in hand. The truth was, the child was already steeped in vice ; if he- pretended ignorance and timidity, it was because he had an interest in showing himself ignorant and timid. Hel&ne had at last found a master. Tiburce, who had seemed to throw himself thoughtlessly in her way, had long calculated his thoughtlessness. He told himself that an intimacy with such a woman, carefully worked, would take him to Paris, where she would open every door to him ; he made himself indispensable to the debauched appetites of his mistress ; whether she would or not he would make her the instrument of his fortune the day he had her under his thumb as a submissive slave. If this scheme had not been the motive of his actions, he would have burst out laughing in Helfene's face at their first meeting. This old woman, who had Slthy tastes, and yet talked about the ideal, seemed to him a grotesque creature ; her embraces took his breath away, but he was a youth with courage, who would have wallowed in a gutter, in order to pick up a twenty-franc-piece. Madame de Rieu appeared delighted with her young 134 MADELEINE FfiRAT. friend. He charmed her as yet with his most delicate flattery and was remarkably docile. She had never found a candour more spiced with budding vice. She adored the rascal to such a degree that her husband had to take a thousand precautions so as not to catch them every minute with their arms round each other's necks. She trotted Tiburce out like a young dog, calling for him, and coaxing him with look and voice. When she introduced him to La Noiraude, he looked upon that as a first service that she was rendering him. He had been at the school at the same time as William, and had shown himself one of his most cruel tormentors: younger than William by two or three years, he took advantage of the latter's terrors as an outcast to enjoy the malicious delight of beating a boy bigger than himself. To-day, he was sorry for this error of his youth : for he had laid it down as a maxim that people ought to beat the poor only, those whose services they are not likely to want in after life. Before becoming acquainted with Helfene, he had schemed in vain to get into La Noiraude. William hardly returned his salute. When his mistress had brought him in the folds of her skirt, he humbled himself to the dust in the presence of his former victim ; he called him " De Viargue " without the Monsieur, laying stress on the aristo- cratic " de," just as formerly he had laid stress on the name Bastard which he had been so ready to cast in his face. His plan was to set up at Veteuil as a person living on familiar, terms with the rich and noble in the country. He would not have objected besides to utilise William and Madeleine for his future career. He even tried to make love to the young wife : he knew, in an indistinct way, the history of her secret intimacy with William, which made him think her of easy virtue. If he had been able to seduce her, he would have had two women instead of one in his service. He dreamed already of turning their rivalry skil- fully to account so as to stimulate their zeal and make them MADELEINE F^EAT'. ISS bid against each for his love. But Madeleine received his proposals with such disdain that be had to abandon his project. The young couple saw with repugnance Tiburce Rouillard come to La Noiraude. There was, besides, at the bottom of this crafty nature, a provincial foolishness, and an obtrusive stupid pride which William could hardly tolerate. When the coxcomb called him his friend, with a sort of personal satisfaction, he could hardly resist his longing to show him the door. It would certainly have come to this, had he not been afraid of causinga scandal which would haveaflfeoted Mon- sieur de Rieu. Madeleine and he then put up with the intru- sion as patiently as they could. Besides, they scarcely had a thought for anything but the tranquillity of their aifection, and they troubled their heads very little about their visitors and forgot them immediately the door was shut behind them. Once a week, every Sunday, they were certain to see the three coming to spend the evening with them at La Noiraude. Helfene, leaning on Tiburce's arm, would come first; while Monsieur de Rieu followed with a serious, uninterested look. Then they all went down to the park ; and it was a sight to see, under the arbour of foliage where they sat, the languishing looks of the lady and the respectful attentions of the young man. The husband, in front of them, watched them with half-closed eyes. By certain despicable and cruel smiles, which curled Tiburce's beardless lips, ho had guessed the vile character and evil designs of this youth. His science, as an observer, told him that his wife had fallen into the hands of a master who would beat her some day. The drama promised to be a curious one, and he enjoyed before- hand the rupture that was to take place between these two puppets ; he fancied he could see the claws on the yet caress- ing fingers of the lover, and he awaited the hour when Helfene would raise a cry of anguish as she felt these claws enter her 136 MADELEIHB! S'EEAT. neck. She would be punished by vice ; she would tremble and humiliate herself at the feet of a child, she who had revelled BO much in young flesh. Monsieur de Rieu, in his silent, sneering fashion, pondered over this vengeance which fate was sending him. At times, Tiburce's cold face with its aped affection almost frightened him too. He treated him with great cordiality and seemed to take care of him like a bull-dog that he was training to bite people. Madeleine, who knew of Madame de Rieu's amours, always looked at her with a sort of astonishment. How could this woman live peaceably in her sins ? When she asked herself this question, she really thought that she had to deal with a monster, with a diseased and exceptional creature. The fact is, Madeleine had one of those sound, cool temperaments which can only accept clearly-defined positions. If her feet had slipped into the mud for a moment, it was by accident, and she had long suffered from the effects of her fall. Her pride could never have become inured to the agitations of mind and the cruel wounds inflicted on the senses by adultery : she must live surrounded by esteem and peace, in an atmosphere where she could walk with her head erect. As she looked on Helfene, she could not help thinking of the fears with which she must be harassed when she was hiding a lover in her bed. As she was not passionate herself, she could not understand the keen charms of passion ; she saw only its sufferings, the terror and the shame in the presence of the husband, the kisses, often cruel, of the lover, and the existence troubled at every hour by the affection and anger of these two men. Her open nature would never have accepted such an existence of baseness and falsehood, and she would have revolted against it at the first feeling of anguish. It is feeble characters and weak bodies that sub- mit to blows, and end at last by building themselves a luxurious nest in anxiety itself, where they willingly go to sleep. As she looked at H^lfene's sleek, shining face, Made- MADELEINE F]feRAT. 137 leine would think : " If I ever surrender myself to any other man than William, I will kill myself." For four summers, the visitors came to La Noiraude. Ti- burce's father had placed him with a lawyer and unfeelingly kept him at Veteuil, where the young fellow chafed bitterly at not being able to follow his mistress to Paris. Hfelfene was so touched by his grief, that on two occasiops she passed several of the winter months at Veteuil ; yet, each spring, she took him again with renewed eagerness, for the woman doted on him and found no other lover who satisfied her. Tiburce was beginning to feel a singular detestation for her. When she turned up, in the middle of December, he felt half disposed to turn a deaf ear to her, for he oared not a straw for her kisses that took his breath away, and was growing desperate at not being able to turn her to advantage. Four summers of useless love-making to this woman, who might have been his mother, had so irritated him, that he would, some day, have eased his feelings by insulting and beating her and then leaving her to chance, if the old cattle-dealer had not had the happy idea of dying from a fit. A fort- night afterwards, young Kouillard was on his way to Paris in the same compartment as H^lfene. more respectful, more affectionate than ever, while Monsieur de Rieu carefully sur- veyed the couple through his half-closed eyes. When the De Rieus were away, especially during the long winter nights, William and Madeleine found themselves alone with Genevifeve. She lived with them on a footing of equality, sitting down at the same table, and occupying the same rooms. She was then ninety ; still perfectly straight, though lanker and more bony, she had relaxed none of the gloomy fervoiir of her mind ; her pointed nose, her sunken lips, and the wrinkles that seamed her face, gave to her ap- pearance the harsh outlines and deep shadows of a sinister mask. At night, when the work of the day was over, she would come and sit in the room where the husband and wife 138 MADELEINE FEEAT. were, she would bring her Bible with its iron clasps, open it wide, and, under the yellow light of the lamp, read through the verses in a sing-song undertone. She would read thus for hours together, with a dull continual murmur, broken only by the rustling of the leaves as she turned them over. In the silence, her droning voice seemed as though it were reciting the prayers for the dead ; she drawled along in mournful lamentations, like the monotonous murmur of the waves. In the huge room one felt quite shivery at this hum which seemed to firoceed from invisible mouths hidden in the gloom of the ceiling. Some nights, Madeleine was seized with secret terror, as she caught a few words of Genevieve's reading. She chose for preference the gloomiest pages of the Old Testament, narratives of blood and horror, which excited her feelings and gave to her accents a sort of restrained fury. She spoke with implacable joy of the anger and of the jealousy of the terrible God, of that God of the Prophets, who was the only Deity she knew of ; she would represent him crushing the earth at His will, and chastising with His cruel arm both beings and things. When she came to verses about murder and fire, her voice would proceed more slowly, in order that she might dwell with longer pleasure on the teiTors of hell, and the displays of the unrelenting justice of Heaven. Her big Bible always showed her Israel prostrate and trembling at the feet of its Judge, and she would feel in her flesh the sacred shudder that shook the Jews, and in her excitement she would give stifled sobs, fancying that on her shoulders were falling the fiery drops of the rain of Sodom. At times, she would resume her reading in a sinister tone : she would condemn the guilty as Jehovah did ; her pitiless fanaticism took a delight in casting sinners into the abyss. To smite the wicked, kill them, bum them, seemed to her a sacred duty, for she looked on God as an executioner, whose mis- sion was to whip the impious world. MADELEINE FERAT. 139 This hard-hearted woman filled Madeleine with dejection. She would become quite pale, as she thought of the year of her life that needed absolution. Pardon had come, and she had thought herself absolved by William's love and esteem, and now in the very midst of her peace she heard these in- exorable words of chastisement. Had not God then blotted out her faults ? Was she to remain till death crushed be- neath the burden of the sin of her youth? Would she have to pay some day her debt of repentance? As these thoughts disturbed her peaceful life she would think of the future with secret disquietude ; she grew alarmed at her present tranquillity, at this smooth water which fed her hope; abysses were forming perhaps beneath this elear peaceful surface, a breath would suffice to throw it into a raging storm and to engulf her in its cruel waves. The heaven which Genevifeve •.disclosed to her eyes, this sombre tribunal of judges, this chamber of torture, where there were cries of agony and odours of burnt flesh, seemed to her like a vision of blood. In her early days, when she was at the boarding-school, she had been taught, at her first communion, that paradise was a delightful confectioner's shop, full of sweetmeats, distri- buted to the elect by white and pink angels. In after life, she had been amused at her girlish credulity, and she had never afterwards set foot in a church. To-day she saw the confectioner's shop changed into a court of justice ; she could no more believe in the eternal sweetmeats than in the eternal red fires of the fallen angels ; but the mournful pictures which the disordered brain of the fanatic evoked, if they did not make her afraid of God, filled her with strange uneasiness as they caused her to think of her past life. She felt that the day Genevifeve learnt her sin, she would condemn her to one of the punishments of which she spoke with such delight ; strong and proud in her life of purity, the old woman would be implacable. At times, Madeleine would fancy that Genevifeve was looking at her in a fierce 140 MADELEINE F^AT. way J then she would hang her head; she would almost blush, and tremble like a guilty person who can hope for no pardon. While she could not believe in God, she had a be- lief in powers and fatal necessities. The old woman would stand erect, severe and unrelenting, pitiless and cruel, and declare to her : " You bear in you the anguish of your past existence. Some day this anguish will rise to your throat and strangle you." It seemed to her that fatality lived at La Noiraude, and surrounded her path, chanting mournful verses of penitence. When she was alone with William, in their bedroom, she thought of her secret shudders of the evening, and spoke in spite of herself of the terror which the protestant caused her. " I am a child," she said to her husband, with a forced smile, "Genevieve has frightened me to-day. She was muttering horrible things by the side of us. Could you not tell her to go and read her Bible somewhere else 1 " " Nonsense ! " William answered, laughing frankly, "that would vex her perhaps. She thinks she is assuring our sal- vation in giving us a share in her readings. However, I will ask her to-morrow to read not quite so loud." Madeleine, seated on the edge of the bed, with a far-off look, seemed to see again the visions evoked by the fanatic. Her lips quivered with a slight movement. " She spoke of blood and anger," she went on in a slow voice. "She does not possess the indulgent good nature of old age, she would be inexorable. How can she be so hard-hearted, when she lives with us, in our happiness, in our peace? Eeally, William, there are moments when this woman makes me afraid." The young man continued to laugh. " My poor Madeleine," he would say taking his wife to his arms, " you are nervous to-night. Come, get into bed, and don't have bad dreams. Genevifeve is an old fool, MADELEINE FERAT. 141 and it is wrong of you to mind her gloomy prayers. It is all habit; formerly, I could not see her open her Bible without being terrified ; now, I should feel something was wanting if she did not lull me with her monotonous mur- mur. Don't you feel greatly soothed, at night, as we sit lovingly in this silence, tremulous with complaints ? " " Yes, sometimes," replied the young wife, " when I don't catch the words, and her voice moves along like a breath of wind. But what stories of horror ! what crimes and punishments ! " " Genevifeve," William went on to say, " is a devoted creature ; she saves us a great deal of trouble and annoy- ance by looking after everything in the chateau ; she was with us when I was born and when my father was born too. Do you know that she must be more than ninety years old, and that she is still strong, and straight ? She will work till she is more than a hundred . . . You must try to like her, Madeleine ; she is an old servant of the family." Madeleine was not listening. She was rapt in an uneasy reverie. Then, with sudden anxiety, she asked : " Do you think that Heaven never pardons ? " Her husband, surprised and saddened, then kissed her, as he asked her, in a voice touched with emotion, why she had doubts about pardon. She did not give a direct reply but murmured : " Genevifeve says that Heaven will have its reckoning of tears — There is no pardon." This scene occurred several times. It was, however, the only trouble which disturbed the serenity of the young couple. In this way they passed the first four years of their marriage, in a seclusion scarcely disturbed by the visits of the De Eieus, and in a state of happiness, the smooth course of which even Genevifeve's lamentations were power- less to trouble seriously. It would have taken a greater calamity than this to rack their hearts again. 142 MADELEINE FERAT. It was at the beginning of the fifth year, in the early part of November, that Tiburoe accompanied H^lfene to Paris. William and Madeleine, certain of not being dis- turbed again, settled down to spend their winter in the large quiet room where they had already lived so peacefully for four seasons. At one time, they spoke of going to live in Paris in their little house in the Kue de Boulogne ; but they put off this project to the following winter, as they did every yearj they could not see any necessity for leaving V^teuil. For two months, from November to January, they lived their secluded life, enlivened by the prattle of little Lucy, who was now grosving up. A peaceful tran- quillity shed on them its balm, and they thought that they would never be disturbed in their bliss. 143 CHAPTER VII. About the middle of January, William had to go to Mantes. A matter of importance which could not very well be attended to by anybody but himself called hitn to this place, and was likely to keep him there the whole evening. He set off in a fly, telling Madeleine that he would be back, about eleven o'clock, so she waited up for him along with Genevieve. After dinner, when the table was cleared, the protestant brought out her big Bible, as usual, and began to read a few pages here and there at random. Towards the end of the evening, the book opened at that touching narrative of the sinning woman pouring ointment on the feet of Jesus, who forgives her and tells her to go in peace. It was very seldom that the fanatic chose a passage from the New Testament, these stories of redemption, these parables full of tender and exquisite poetry could not satisfy the gloomy fervour of her mind. But this night, whether it was that she yielded to the fate that had opened the Bible at a passage full of compassion, or because she was touched by a vague and unconscious feeling of tenderness, she droned aloud the story of Mary Magdalen in a meditative, almost tender voice. • On the silence of the room fell the murmur of the words : "And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet 144 MADELEINE P:fiBAT. with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the oint- ment." Thus she went on, raising her voice, letting the verses fall one by one, slowly, like suppressed tears. Up to this, Madeleine had done her utmost not to listen, for an evening spent in close company with the old woman frightened her. She was even glancing over a book, in the chimney corner, trying to busy herself in her reading, and waiting impatiently for William. The few words of Genevifeve's sing-song that she caught in spite of herself, filled her with discomfort. But when the protestant began the story of the repentant and pardoned sinner, she raised her head and listened with eager emotion. The verses were drawled out one by one, and Madeleine fancied that the big Bible was speaking about her, about her shame, her tears, and the fragrance of her affection. As the story unfolded, interrupted, so to speak, by deep sighs, sighs of remorse and hope, she gradually felt pervaded by a feel- ing of unspeakable tenderness. Sentence by sentence she followed the narrative, waiting with fervency for the last words of the Saviour. At last came the gracious promise that, inasmuch as she had loved greatly and shed bitter tears. Heaven would permit her to taste the joys of the re- demption. She thought of her past life, of her intimacy with James, and the memory of this man which still, at times, caused her cheeks to burn, filled her now with but a tender- ness of repentance. All the ashes of this love were cold, and a breath of compassion had now carried them away. Like the Magdalen, whose name she bore, she could live in the desert, and become purified in her love. It was a supreme absolution that she was receiving. If at times, as Genevifeve had read, she had fancied she could heur invisible mouths, hidden in the gloom of the spacious room, threaten- ing her with a terrible punishment, she thought, at this MADELKINE P£RAT. 145 moment, that she could catch, from endearing voioes, assur- ing words of pardon and bliss. When the protestant came to the verse : " Then said Jesus to the woman, thy sins are forgiven,'' a smile of heavenly joy passed over Madeleine's lips. She felt her eyes filling with tears of gratitude and could not help telling Genevifeve of all the happy feeling which she had just ex- perienced. " What a charming story that is," she said to her, " I am so pleased to have heard it — You shall read it to aie again sometimes.'' The fanatic had raised her head, and was looking at the young wife with her stern expression, without replying. She seemed surprised and displeased at her taste for the touching poems of the New Testament. "How I prefer that narrative," Madeleine went on, "to the cruel pages that you nearly always read ! Now you must confess that it is pleasant to grant pardon and pleasant to receive it Why ! the sinning woman and Jesus himself tell you so." Genevifeve had risen. Her nature protested against Madeleine's tender accents ; her eyes grew dark, and closing the Bible with a bang, she exclaimed in her voice of con- demnation : " God the Father cannot have pardoned her." These terrible words, full of savage fanaticism, this blasphemy which denied every spark of tenderness, froze Madeleine to the soul. It seemed to her as if a lead cloak had fallen on her shoulders. Genevifeve was pushing her back, with her unfeeling cruelty, into the gulf from which she had just escaped : Heaven had no pardon, and she was a foolish creature for having dreamt of the tenderness of Jesus. She was seized at this moment with heart-felt despair. " What have I to fear ?" she thought, " this woman is mad." And yet, in spite of herself, the presentiment of a calamity that might have threatened her, make her cast an £ 146 MADELEINE PERAT. uneasy glance round. The huge room had an air of repose in the lamp's yellow light, and the fire was shining on the hearth. Everything around her, this oppressive silence of a winter's night, and this suhdued light which pervaded the room, seemed to conceal an unfathomable calamity. Genevifeve had gone to the window. A red flash of light had passed across the panes, and the sound of a carriage pulling up in front of the steps had caught her ear. Madeleine, who, only a few minutes before, had been impatiently expecting her husband, sat still in her chair, instead of rushing to meet him, watching the door with strange anxiety. Her heart was beating painfully, but why, she could not say. William burst into the room. He seemed very excited, but it was an excitement of joy. He threw his hat on to a chair in the corner, and wiped his brow, although it was bitterly cold outside. He walked up and down, and at last stopped in front of Madeleine. As soon as he recovered his breath, he asked her with an overpowering desire to teU her his secret straight off : " Guess whom I have found again at Mantes.'' His young wife, still seated, did not answer. The boisterous glee of her husband surprised her, frightened her almost. " Come now, guess — try — I give you a thousand chances," he repeated. " Keally, I don't know," she said at last, " we have no fWend that you could have met to make you so pleased." " You are mistaken, I have met a friend, the only, the best—" "A friend," she replied with a vague sensation of dis- may. William could not keep his good news any longer. He took his wife's hands and suddenly exclaimed in a burst of triumph i MADELEINE PERAT. 147 " I have found James again.'' Madeleine raised no cry, and sat without moving a limb. But she became terribly pale. " It is not true," she murmured, " James is dead." " Oh no ! he is not dead. It is quite a little story, and I will tell it you — When I saw him at Mantes station, I was afraid of him. I took him for a ghost." And he began to laugh, a happy laugh like a pleased child's. He had let go Madeleine's hands and they had fallen lifeless on her knees. She was crushed, speechless, almost insensible under this terrible news. She would fain have got up and fled, but she could not stir a limb. In the stupor that pervaded her whole being, she could hear nothing but Genevifeve's cruel words, " God the Father can- not have pardoned her." And, indeed, God the Father had not pardoned her. She felt certain that the calamity was hanging over her, ready to strangle her. In her stupefac- tion, she gazed on the walls, as if she did not know the huge room; its calm seemed terrible to her, now that fear caused her brain to throb with a deafening noise. At last she fixed her eyes on the protestant and said to herself : " It is that woman who rules the decrees of fate, it is she who has brought James to life again in order to put him between my husband and myself." William, who in his delight failed to notice Madeleine's agitation, had gone up to Genevifeve. " We must have the blue room got ready," he said. "Is James coming to-morrow?" asked the old woman, who always spoke of the doctor as a young boy. This question rang in Madeleine's ears in spite of her stupor. She rose, with staggering step, and leaning on the back of her chair, said rapidly in a feverish voice : "Why should he come to-morrow? He won't come — He saw William at Mantes, and that is all he wanted — 148 MADELEINE FERAT. He has gone to Paris, has he not 1 — He must have business there, and people to visit." Sfie stammered out her words, not knowing what she was saying. William burst into a fit of joyous laughter. " Why James is outside," he said, " he will be here in a second. You may be certain that I did not let him go — He is helping to unyoke the horse that has hurt itself — The roads are frightful, and the night is pitch dark ! " Then he went and opened the window and shouted : " Hallo ! James, make haste." A strong voice from the darkness of the yard answered : "All right, all right!" This voice went to Madeleine's heart, as if she had been struck with a piece of iron. She dropped down again on to her chair, with a sigh like the rattling of the death-agony. Oh ! how gladly she would have died ! What was she going to say when James came in, what attitude would she take up between these two brothers, her husband of the present and her lover of the past 1 She was becoming mad at the thought of the scene that would take place. She would weep with madness and grief, she would bury her face in her hands, while William and James stood aloof in disgust ; she Would crawl to their feet, like a woman crazed, not daring now to take refuge in her husband's arms, and driven to despair at the thought of having cast her shame like a gulf between these friends of boyhood. And she kept on repeat- ing the words : " James is outside, he will be here in a second." Every second that passed was for her an age of anguish. She fixed her eyes on the door and closed them at the slightest noise, so as not to see. In this situation, this waiting which lasted at most a minute, were contained all the sufferings of her life. William was continuing to walk joyously up and down the room. At last he noticed Madeleine's paleness. MADELEINE F^RAT. 149 " Why, what is the matter with you 1 " he asked as he went up to her. " I don't know," she stammered, " I have not been well all the evening." Then, with a vigorous effort, she got up, and tried to summon every bit of energy she had left, in order to run away and put off the terrible explanation. " I am going to bed," she said in a somewhat firmer tone. "Your friend would keep us up talking a long time and I really am worn out. My head is splitting — You shall introduce him tome to-morrow." William, who was looking forward to bringing together • the only two beings he had loved in his life, was annoyed ^t his wife's sudden indisposition. All the way from Mantes he had whipped his horse on without mercy, and the poor beast had even dislocated a leg by slipping in a rut. He had felt as eager as a child to be at La Noiraude ; he had already wanted to push open the door of the dining-room, picturing to himself, with emotions of joy, the touching scene that would take place. One moment, he thought, with childish glee, of acting a little comedy j he would introduce James as a stranger, and enjoy Madeleine's con- fusion, when she learnt the unknown man's name. The fact is, he was really crazed with pleasure ; his heart tere- after was going to be full, full of love and friendship which would make his existence one long series of happy events. He could see himself joining James and Madeleine's hands saying to the one : " This is your sister," and to the other : " This is your brother, love one another, let us all three love one another to the last breath." This picture delighted his timid affection. He tried to get his wife to stay, for it was hard for him to put off till next day the enjoyment that he had been promising himself all the way from Mantes. But Madeleine eeemed so unwell,, that he allowed her to retire. She was 150 MADELEINE F^BAT. going to pass through the door that opened into the entrance-hall, when she thought she heard the noise of footsteps. She drew back, with a sudden terrified move- ment, as if she had wished to escape from somebody who was suddenly forcing his way in; then she hastily dis- appeared through a door that led into the drawing-room. She had hardly closed this door when James entered. "Your horse is very badly hurt," he said to William. •' I am a bit of a veterinary surgeon and I think the beast is lamed for life. " He said this simply for the sake of talking, as he looked enquiringly round the room with an inquisitive glance. As he knew a little about love after his scape-grace fashion, he was very curious to know what sort of a wife his friend, could have married, that friend with the tender, almost womanish heart whose enthusiastic love ideas had made him laugh so in the past. William understood the mute interro- gation of his glance. "My wife is not well," he said, "you shall see her to-morrow." ■ Then, turning towards Genevieve, who had not yet left the room, he continued : " You must be quick and have the blue room got ready. James must be worn out with fatigue." The protestant had noticed Madeleine's heart-felt emotion, and an ardent curiosity alone had retained her in the room. For a long time her inquisitorial mind had scented the young woman's sin. This strong handsome creature, with her red hair and rosy lips, had seemed to her reeking with a. carnal, hellish odour. In spite of the repugnance of her religion to pictures, the fanatic had in her room an engrav- ing representing the temptation of Saint Antony, and its demoniacal medley delighted her visionary nature. Those imps who were tormenting the poor saint with their fright- ful grimaces, and that mouth leading to the infernal regions MADELEINE F^RAT, 151 which was yawning to swallow up virtue the moment it made the least slip, were a faithful symbol of her religious beliefs. In one corner, there were women exposing their naked breasts before the virtuous hermit, and, as chance would have it, one of these women bore a faint resemblance to Madeleine. This resemblance struck Genevifeve's ardent imagination very forcibly, and she was seized with dread as she fancied she could see in William's young wife, the bold smile and wanton hair of the courtesan, of the monster belched forth by the abyss. She would even, in her mind, often call her, with the feverish excitement of an exorcist, by the Latin epithet " Lubrica " which was written on the margin of the engraving below this she-devil. All the lower part of this picture, which was coarsely printed, was covered in like manner with figurative names personifying some vice in each demon. When, on the news of James's coming to life again, Madeleine's face had become suddenly agitated, Genevifeve was convinced that it was the devil with which she was possessed who forced her in spite of nerself to make these grimaces of pain. She thought she could perceive at last the unclean animal hidden beneath this pearly skin, in this flesh of perdition, and she would scarcely have been surprised to see the superb voluptuous body of this young creature change into a monstrous toad. If she did not understand the details of the drama which was racking the mind of the unfortunate woman, she felt certain that it was sin that was choking her. Thus she determined to watch her so as to give her no chance of doing any harm, in case she should try to introduce into La Noiraude that Satan who had left it with Monsieur de Viargue's soul, by the laboratory chimney. She was about to go upstairs to prepare the blue-room, when James cheerily took her shrivelled hand. He made excuses for not having noticed her on coming in, and re- viewed his acquaintance with h(?r, He complimented hev 152 MADELKINE F^RAT. on looking so well, told her that she was growing young again, and actually brought a smile to her pale lips. He had the somewhat clumsy heartiness of a young fellow in capital health who has lived a free and happy life, and never felt a pang at his heart. When Genevifeve had with- drawn, the two friends sat down by the fire which had half died out. A few red coals were burning on the ashes. The vast room seemed filled with an air of repose. " You are half asleep already," said William with a smile, " but I will not keep you long. Ah, my dear James, how pleasant it is to meet again. Let us have a little chat, will youl Let us talk as we used to do by this fire-place, where we warmed our frozen hands on returning from our famous fishing excursions. What craw-fish we did catch ! " James was smiling too. They talked of the days gone by, of the present, of the future ; their memories and hopes were at their conversation's beck. Already, on the way from Mantes to Veteuil, William had overwhelmed his friend with questions, on how he had been rescued from the waves, on his long silence, on what he intended to do in the futiire. He knew James's story, and made him repeat it to him with fresh additions and fresh wonders. The paper that William had read had made a mistake. Two men had escaped alive from the wreck of the Prophet, the doctor and sailor, who had the good fortune to hang on to a boat which was floating on the waves. They would have died of hunger, if the wind had not driven them ashore. There they were dashed with such violence on the shingle, that the sailor was crushed to death, and James was found in a fainting condition, with his ribs half broken. He was carried into a neighbouring house, and stayed there, at the point of death, for nearly a year ; the ignorant doctor who attended to him nearly killed him ten times over. W,U.en hjB was well, instead Qf returning to France, he coiO- MADELEINE F^RAT. 153 tinned his voyage, and calmly went on to Cochin China, where he resumed his duties. He wrote once to his uncle, enclosing another letter for William, which the V^teuil lawyer was to take to La Noiraude. But the worthy man had died, leaving his nephew an income of some ten thousand francs James's correspondence had been lost, and he had never had sufficient courage to write again, for like all men of action, he had a horror of ink and paper. He did not exactly for- get his friend, but he put off from day to day the few words ' that he wanted to send him, and at last said to himself, in his charming, happy-go-lucky, careless way, that it would be time to tell him about himself when he got back to France. The news of his fortune produced very little impression on him, for he was then in love with a native woman, whose strange beauty held him enraptured. Later on, he grew tired of her, and feeling disgusted with his duties, he re- solved to come back and enjoy his income in Paris, and had disembarked the previous day at Brest. However, he had only reckoned on staying one day at V^teuil ; he was going on in all haste to Toulon where one of his comrades, who had just come back from Cochin China to this port, was dying. As this young fellow had once saved his life when he was in danger, he felt it his duty to go and watch by his bedside. William, who could fancy he was listening to one of the stories of the Arabian Nights, was very much amazed at these details. He could never have imagined that so many events could take place in such little time, it seemed in- credible to a man like himself, whose existence of late had been one long dream of tranquillity and affection. His gentle and indolent nature was even somewhat startled at this multiplicity of occurrences. The two friends went on with their merry cordial chat. " What ! " exclaimed William, for the twentieth time per- haps, " jou are only staying with me *ne daj, jsou come 154 MADELEINE F^EAT. and you are off again — Come, let me have you for a week." " It is impossible," replied James ; " I should look upon it as a sin to leave my poor comrade alone at Toulon." "But you will come back 1 " " Most certainly, in a month, in a fortnight, perhaps." " And never to go away again 1 " " Never to go away again, my dear William. I will be at your service, entirely at your service. If you wish it, I will spend next summer here — Meantime, however, I take the train to-morrow night. You have one day of my com- pany, do what you like with me." William was not listening ; he was looking at his friend with tender affection, and seemed to be indulging in a happy reverie. "Listen, James," he said at last, "I have just been drawing a little picture which you can realise ; come and live with us. This house is so big, that we sometimes feel quite lost in it ; half the place is uninhabited, and these empty rooms, which used to terrify me formerly, still make me feel un- comfortable somehow. When you are here, I feel that La Noiraude will no longer seem lonely. You shall have a whole storey if you wish, and live there exactly as you like, as a bachelor. All I ask of you is your presence, your happy smiles, and your hearty greetings : and in return I offer you our calm happiness, and our uninterrapted peace. If you only knew how cozy and nice it is in the nooks where two lovers are hiding ! Don't you feel tempted to come and repose in our secluded nest 1 Come and live in this house, I beg of you ; tell me you will spend years here, far from the bustle and noise of the world : learn to enjoy our placid sleep, and you will see that you will never want to awake again. You will bring us your happy spirits, and we will share with you our blissful reverie. I will continue to be your brother, and my wife shall be your sister." MADELEINE FliRAT. 155 James was listening smilingly to William's impassioned words. His whole attitude was one of slight raillery. His only answer was : " Why, just look at me ! " He took the lamp and turned the light on to his face. His appearance had become, so to speak, cross and hard : the sea breezes and the bright sun had imparted to it a swarthy tan, and his features had lost their delicate out- lines through the rough life he had led. He seemed to have grown and to have become stouter ; his square shoulders, broad chest, and strong limbs almost gave him the appear- ance of a wrestler with enormous fists and an animal's bead. He had come back slightly coarse : his trade as limb-cutter had deadened the few finer feelings of his childhood ; he had eaten so much, laughed so much, and lived such a jolly animal life, during the years he had spent in the army, that he now felt no need of tenderness, and was content to gratify his flesh. Yet at the bottom he was a good-natured fellow, but incapable of understanding friendship, after William's passionate, arbitrary fashion. His idea of life was to have definite pleasures, an existence free from every tie, spent here and there, in the cosiest corners, and at the best tables. His friend, who had not yet examined him closely, was sur- prised to find him so matured, and so manly in his appear- ance ; he felt like a feeble child by the side of him. " Well ! I am looking at you," he replied with an uneasy air, foreseeing what he was driving at. " And you don't renew your ofier, isn't that it, my dear William ? " answered James with a hearty laugh. " I should die in your calm surroundings, I should certainly have a fit before the end of the first year." "No, no, happiness keeps one alive." "But your happiness would never be mine, child that you are ! This house would be a living tomb to me, and your friendship would not save me from the overpowering weariness of those big empty rooms you talk to me about— 156 MADELEINE FlifeRAT. I am speaking my mind frankly, for I know we cannot offend one another." And as he saw William quite distressed at his refusal, he continued: "I don't say that I will never accept your hospitality. I will come and see you, and spend a month with you from time to time. I have already asked per- mission to come and stay with you next summer. But directly the cold comes, I shall be off to Paris for warmtL Bury me here under the snow ! Oh ! no, my good fellow." His lusty voice and sanguine spirits hurt poor William, who was quite disconsolate at seeing his dream dispelled. " And what do you intend to do in Paris ? " he asked, "I don't know, nothing probably," replied James. "I have had a good long spell of work. And since my uncle has been so good as to leave me an income, I am going to enjoy it in the sunshine. Oh ! time will not hang heavy on my hands. I shall eat well, drink plenty of wine, and have more pretty girls to amuse me than I shall want. What more would you have, my dear boy 1 " He burst ^nto another merry laugh. William shook his head. " You will not be happy," he said. " If I were you, I should get married and come and live in this peaceful re- treat, -where happiness is certain. Listen to this stilly silence which surrounds us, and look at the peaceful light of that lamp ; this is my idea of life. Just think what a pleasant life you would live in this perfect calm, if you felt your heart full of affection, and had before you to satisfy this affection, days, months, years, all alike and equally tranquil — Get married and come." This idea of marriage and seclusion in a monastery of love, according to William's description, seemed singularly comic to the doctor. " Ah ! what a curious creature a man in love is," he ex- claimed. " He will not believe that he is the on\j person on MADELEINE F^RAT. 157 earth with -ideas like himself — But, my good frieud, husbands like you are not made now-a-days. If I were to get married, I should perhaps beat my wife at the end of a week, although I am not a bad fellow. You must understand that we are quite different men. You have a ridiculous respect for woman, while I look upon her as a dainty feast where one must not get indigestion. If I were to get married and live retired here, I should sincerely pity the sad creature whom I was shutting up in my company." William shrugged his shoulders. " You make yourself blacker than you are," he said. " You would adore your wife, and look on her as an idol the day she presented you with a child. Don't make sport of my ridiculous respect ; it will be so much the worse for you if you never have any. A man ought to love one woman only in his life, the woman that loves him, and they ought both to live in this mutual affection. " That is a remark I recognise again," replied James, in a somewhat ironical tone, " you have made it to me before under the willows by the brook. Why, you are just the same, and I find in you the enthusiast of former days — But then, I have not changed either, only I look at love in another light. A life-long connexion would make me afraid, and I have always avoided being bewitched by a petticoat, and my mind is so constituted that I desire every woman without loving one — Pleasure has its bright side, my dear hermit." He stopped a moment, then he suddenly asked in his blunt, cheery voice : " Are you happy, yourself, with your wife 1 " WiUiam, who was just on the point of pleading in behalf of his sentiments of life-long affection, was calmed by this personal question, which awoke in him the delicious remem- brance of his last four years of happiness. " Oh, yes, I am happy, perfectly happy," he replied iu a 158 MADELEINE P^RAT. softer tone. "You, who refuse to taste it, cannot picture such Miss. It is an endless sensation of being lulled to rest ; I can fancy I have become a child again and that I have found a mother. For four years we have been living in this unalloyed happiness, and I only wish you had been there to learn how to love. This silence and this shade which frighten you have made our life a heavenly dream, from which we shall never awake, my friend j I feel the certainty and foretaste of an eternity of peace." As he spoke, James was watching him curiously. He had a great wish to question him about his wife, about the kind soul who had consented to drown herself in such a river of milk. " Is your wife pretty ? " he blurted out. " I don't know," replied William. " I am very fond of her. You shall see her to-morrow." " Did you get to know her in Veteuil 1 " •" No, I met her in Paris. We fell inlove with one another, and I married her." It seemed to James that a slight blush had mounted to his friend's cheeks, and he had a vague inkling of the truth. He was not a man to refrain from putting any more questions. " Was she your mistress before she became your wife 1 " he asked. " Yes, for a year," William simply replied. James got up and took a few steps in silence. Then he came and planted himself in front of his friend and said in a serious tone ; " In the old days, you used to listen to me when I scolded you. Allow me for a moment to assume my old character of protector — You have been very foolish, my good fellow ; no one thinks of marrying his mistress. You don't know anything about life; some day you will see your mistake and you will remember my words. M«rria^es of MADELEINE F^RAT. 15P this kind are delightful, but they always turn out badly ; the husband and wife worship one another for a few years, and then detest each other for the rest of their days." William had now jumped up. " Hold your tongue," he exclaimed with sudden firmness, " I love you very well as you are, but I don't want you to judge of us from other married people. When you have seen my wife, you will repent of your words." " I repent already if you wish it," said the doctor in his still grave tone. " Let us say that experience has made me sceptical and that I am unable to under- stand the refinements of your affection. I have simply spoken my mind. It is somewhat late to give you advice j but, if the time should come, you will be able to derive some advantage from my warning." Then there was a painful silence. At this moment a servant came to announce that the blue room was ready. William's face recovered its genial smile, and he held out his hand to his friend with a cordial and endearing move- ment. " You shall go to bed," he said. " To-morrow it will be light and you shall see my wife and my little Lucy — Come now, I will convert you ! I will make you marry some good girl, and you will end by coming and burying yourself in this old house. Happiness is patient, and it will wait for you here." The two young fellows chatted as they walked. When they 'were in the hall, at the foot of the staircase, James took his old comrade by the hand. " Don't be offended at me for my remarks," he said with great effusion : " I desire nothing but your welfare — You are happy, are you not ! " He was already going up the steps to the first floor. " Oh, yes ! " replied William with a last smUe, " every* body is happy here — Good night," ' 160 MADELEINE F:£RAT. Ag he was going back into the dining-room, he saw Madeleine standing in the middle of the room. The young wife had heard the whole of the conversation between the two friends. She had remained behind the drawing-room door, rooted to the spot by James's voice. This voice, whose smallest inflexions she knew again, produced a strange effect on her. She followed the sentences, calling to mind the gestures and movements of the head with which the speaker must be accompanying them. The door which separated her from her former lover did not exist for her ; she fancied that he was before her eyes, living, moving, as in the days when he would take her to his breast in the Rue Soufflot. The presence, the vicinity of this man caused her a bitter pleasure ; her throat choked with anguish at his hearty laughs, while her body burned with the feverish excitement which he had been the first to cause her to know. She felt, though with secret horror, attracted towards him : she would fain have fled, but she could not, and she enjoyed an involuntary pleasure in seeing him brought to life again. Several times she stooped down with an instinctive movement, trying to peep through the key- hole, so as to get a better view of him. The few moments that she stood like this, fainting, and leaning her hands against the door, seemed to her an eternity of torments. " If I fall," she would think, " they will come, and I shall die of shame." Some of James's remarks went to her heart ; when he declared that a man never ought to marry his mistress, she began to sob, stifling her tears, afraid of being heard. This conversation, these projects of happiness which she was going to dash to the ground, and these con- fidences which wounded the very depths of her being, were for her an unspealcable torture. She could hai'dly catch William's gentle voice j her ears were filled with James's scolding accents which burst with terrible fury in the midst of her calm sky. She felt thunderstruck. MADELEIKE FEEAT. 161 When the two friends went to the foot of the staircase, she made a supreme effort, telling herself that all this must end. After what she had just heard it was impossible for her to accept such a situation till to-morrow. Her straight- forward nature revolted at the idea of it. She came back into the dining-room. Her red hair had fallen down; her face, horribly pale, was covered with sudden twitches, and her dilated eyes seemed the sullen vacant eyes of a mad-woman. William, surprised to frad her there, was terrified at seeing her disorder. He hurried up to her, asking : " What is the matter with you, Madeleine ? have you not been to bed ? " She replied in a hollow voice, pointing to the door of the drawing-room. " No, I was there.'' She took a step towards her husband, put her hands on his shoulders, and looking at him with her cold eyes asked in a brief tone : " Is James your friend 1 " "Yes," replied William with astonishment, "you know very well he is, T have told you what a strong bond unites us — James is my brother, and I want you to love him as a sister." At this word sister a strange smile came over her face. She shut her eyes for a moment : then opening them again, she replied, paler and more resolute : " You are dreaming of getting him to share our life ; you want him to come and live with us, so as to have him always by your side 1 " " Certainly," said the young man, " that is my dearest wish — I should be so happy with him and you, as I • should live between the only two beings in the world who love me — In our young days, James and I gworc to have everything in common." 162 MADELEINE F^EAT. " Ah ! you took that oath,'' murmured Madeleine, struck to the heart by her husband's innocent remark. Never had the thought of being shared by James and William caused her so much distress. She had to ke^ silent : her throat was dry, and she could only have uttered cries to confess the truth. At this moment Genevifeve entered the room without attracting the notice of the young couple : she saw their trouble and stood erect in the shade ; her eager eyes shone bright, and her lips were moving silently, as if she was pronouncing words of exorcism in an undertone. During the whole of Madeleine's confession, she stood there, motionless and implacable, like the rigid and mute figure of Fate. " Why do you ask me these questions ? " said "William at last, with a vague feeling of terror at his wife's attitude. Madeleine did not reply at ouce. She continued to lean with her hands on her husband's shoulders, looking at him closely in his eyes with ruthless fixedness. She hoped that he would read the truth in her face, and that she would thus be spared the pain of having to confess her shame aloud. The thought of immediate avowal was horribly dis- tressing to her. She did not know how to begin, and yet she must do it. " I knew James in Paris," she said, slowly. " Is that all 1 " exclaimed William, failing to understand. " You frightened me — Ah well ! if you knew him in Paris, he will be an old acquaintance for both of us, that's all — Do ybu suppose that I dream of blushing on your account 1 I have already told our history to our friend, 1 am proud of our intimacy." " I knew James," repeated the young wife, in a hoarser tone. "Wein The blindness, the absolute confidence of her husband MADELEINE F^RAT. 163 distressed Madeleine. He would not understand, he was compelling her to blurt out the truth. She felt an out- burst of fury, and exclaimed, violently : " Listen, you have implored me never to speak to you of my past. I have obeyed you and almost forgotten it. But now the past is coming to life again, and crushing me, wretched me, who was living so peacefvdly here. I cannot, however, keep silent. I must tell you about it, so that you may prevent James from seeing me — I knew him, do you understand ? " William sank down on a chair in the chimney corner. Ho thought he had received a blow on the skull, and stretched out his hands as if to cling to something ia his fall. His whole body turned cold. The nervous trembling which had made his legs give way shook him from head to foot, and set his teeth a-chattering. " Him ! — Oh ! wretched woman ! wretched woman ! " h^ repeated in a broken voice. He clasped his hands in an attitude of prayer. His hair slightly erect on his temples, his eye-balls dilated, his lips white and quivering, his whole face agitated by poignant anguish, seemed to be praying to heaven not to smite him with so much cruelty. There was more fear than anger in his mind. This was the attitude he used to have at school when his comrades were coming to beat him, and he would shrink despairingly into a corner, asking himself what wrong he could have done. He could find in his bleeding heart, not one reproach, not one insulting word 'to cast at Made- leine to ease his grief: he could do nothing but gaze at her in silence, with a beseeching terrified look in his big child's eyes. Madeleine hoped he would strike her. Her temper would have risen under his blows, and all her energy would have come back. But his looks of despair, and his imploring attitude made her ca^t herself panting at his feet. . 164 MADELEINE FMaT. " Forgive me," she stammered, throwing herself prostrate on the ground, weeping, her hair all down, and shaken with paroxysms of sobs. " Forgive me, William. You are in pain, my poor fellow. Oh ! God has no pity. He punishes His poor creatures like a jealous and implacable master. Genevifeve lad good cause to tremble before Him, and to be afraid of His anger. I would not believe the woman, and I hoped that heaven did pardon sometimes. But He never pardons. I used to say : The past is dead, I can live in peace. The past was the man who had been swallowed up by the sea. He was buried with my shame deep beneath the waves, rolled in the depths of the ocean, beaten against the rocks and lost to sight for ever. But, oh no ! he comes to life again : he returns from the guU with his hearty laughter : fate casts him ashore, and sends him to rob us of our happiness — Can you understand it, William! He was dead, and yet he is not dead — It is horrid and cruel enough to kill one — It is only miracles like this that Providence performs. He would not kill James all at once, for He wanted this ghost to punish me with — But what have we done wrong ? we have loved one another, and we have been happy. It is for our felicity that we are being punished. God wills not that His creatures should live peacefully. It w^ould do me good to blaspheme — Gene- vieve is right — The past, the wrong never dies." "Wretched woman ! wretched woman," repeated William. " Remember, I did not want to accept the marriage you offered me. When you besought me to unite my life to yours, you remember, that gloomy evening in autumn, by the side of the spring then muddy with the rains, a voice cried to me not to reckon on the clemency of Heaven. I said to you : ' Let us stay as we are ; we love one another, and that is enough : perhaps we should love each other less if we were married.' And then you insisted, saying that you wanted to have me all to yourself, and to live openly MADELEINE FERAT. 165 with me : you spoke to me of a life of peace, in words that told of esteem, of life-long affection, and a home in common. Oh ! how unmerciful I was to disregard the secret warning of terror ! You would have accused me then of not loving you ; but to-day I should be escaping from James's presence, and disappearing from your existence, without sullying your trustful affection, without dragging you with me into the dirt. I thought that if I remained your mistress, I should never become infamous in your eyes, and if wo ever were brought face to face with my shame you could drive me away as a worthless creature, and train your disgust to for- get me. I should still be an abandoned wretch passing from one man's bed to another's, and put to the door by my lovers, at the first blush my ignominy brought to their brow. And now we have a little daughter. Oh, forgive me, my good fellow. I was a base woman to give way to you." " Wretched woman ! wretched woman ! " was all William could repeat. " Oh yes ! it was base, but you must understand every- thing. If you knew how weary I was, what a need of repose I felt — But, I am not pretending to be better than others ; only, I know that I did not lose my pride ; I gave way out of need for respect, out of a desire to heal the wounds which my self-esteem has sustained. When you gave me your name, it seemed to me that you were cleansing me from every stain. Yet, it appears that filth leaves spots which cannot be washed out — However, I did not yield without a struggle, did It I passed a whole night asking myself if I should not be committing a base action in accepting your ofier. I had made up my mind to refuse in the morning. But you came before I was awake, and took me in your arms ; I remember, your clothes had the fresh smell of the morning air : you had walked through the wet grass iu order to arrive sooner, and all my courage fled. Yet, James had appeared to me in my sleepless dreams. 166 MADELEINE F^EAT. The spectre had told me that I was his still, that he would be present at our marriage, and live in our bedroom — I revolted, I wanted to prove that I was free, and I was base, base, base — Oh ! how I must wring your heart ; how you do right to hate me." "Wretched woman, wretched woman!" repeated William in a feeble monotonous tone. " Later on, I was a fool, and congratulated myself shame- lessly on having committed a cowardly action, For four years. Heaven has had the cruel mockery to reward me for my misdeed, wishing to deal the blow in the very midst of my calm, so as to render the wound fatal — I lived at peace in this room, persuading myself at times that I had always lived here, and I thought myself pure when I kissed our little Lucy — What days of genial love, what kind caresses, what rapturous affection and happiness all stolen. Yes, I stole it all ; your love, your esteem, your name, the serenity of your life, and my girl's kisses. I deserved nothing good, nothing worthy. Why could I not see that fate was sporting with me, and that some day or other it would snatch away from me these joys which were not meant for a creature like me ? No, I gloried, like a fool, in my bliss, in my theft ; and at last I imagined that these happy days were mine by right ; I was simple enough to tell myself that they would last for ever. And then the crash came — Well, it is nothing but justice, for I am a wretch. But, William, you must not suffer. I won't let you suffer, do you hear ? — I will go away ; you shall forget me, and never hear of me again." And then she began to sob, burying herself in her dress, and brushing away the hair that had stuck to her cheeks with the tears. The despair of this strong woman, whose habitual energy had been crushed by a sudden blow, was full of a suppressed undertone of anger. She humbled herself, but she would be seized at times with a sudden MADELEINE PERAT. l6? attack of fury, and then she would fain have railed at fate itself. She would have become calm all the sooner if her pride had not suffered so much. One gentle thought only really softened her mind : she pitied William. Her knees had given way, and she found herself on the ground : as she spoke in the fitful tones of a delirious dying woman, she raised her eyes to her husband, with a beseeching glance, as if to implore him not to give way so to his anguish. William, bewildered and stupefied, looked at her with a mournful expression, as she lay on the floor. He had taken her head between his hands, repeating " Wretched woman, wretched woman," rocking his head like an idiot who could find no words but these in his empty brain. Indeed, there was nothing but this plaint in his poor aching being. He knew not now why he suffered : he was soothing his mind with this mournful litany, with these words whose meaning had escaped him. When, his wife's voice choked with grief, and she ceased to speak, he seemed quite surprised at the profound silence which reigned around him. Then he remembered, and a shudder of unspeakable suffering passed through his body. " Yet, you knew that James was my friend, my brother," he said, in a strange voice, a voice no longer like his own. Madeleine shook her head with an air of supreme disdain. " I knew all," she replied, " I have been base, I fell you, base and infamous. You remember the day when you came back to the Rue de Boulogne in tears, and brought the news of James's death ? Well, just before you came, I had dis- covered this man's portrait. God is witness that I would have fled that day, to spare you the pain of knowing that you shared me with your brother — It was fate that tempted me. Our history has been Heaven's sinister sport. When I thought that the past was dead, when I learnt that James could not come between us, I grew weak, I had not the courage to sacrifice my affection, and, to excuse myself, m MADfiLEINE FfiRAT. I said that I ought not to make you wretched by learing you. And, from that hour, I have lied, I have lied by my . silence — Yet, shame did not choke me. I should have) kept tlie secret for ever, and you -would have died perhaps in my arms without knowing that I had clasped your brother to my breast — But to-day you would recoil with a shudder ; at my kisses, and you are thinking now with disgust of our five years of love. And yet, I accepted all this in- famy. But then I am wicked." She suddenly stopped, holding her breath and listening : there was an expression of sudden fright on her anxious face. The door of the room leading into the haU had remained half open, and she had fancied she could hear the noise of steps in the staircase. "Listen," she whispered, "James is coming down — Do you know that he might come in any moment 1 " William looked as if he had woke up with a start. Filled with the same anxious thought, he, too, listened. Thus they remained for a moment, both leaning forward, deafened and stifled by the beating of their hearts. You would have thought an assassin was there, in the darkness of the hall, and that they expected to see him every instant burst open the door, and rush on them, with a knife in his hand. William trembled even more than Madeleine. Now that he knew the truth, he could not bear the idea of meeting James face to face, and an immediate explanation made his delicate and feeble mind shrink with revolt. His wife's supposition, the thought that his friend was going to come downstairs again perhaps, almost made him mad, after the crisis which had just crushed him. When he had listened without hearing anything, he fixed his eyes again on Madeleine and gazed on her at his feet with a feeling of deep dejection and abandonment. His whole being felt a supreme need of consolation. With an instinctive movement he glided into the arms Madeleine f^rat. 169 of . his young wife, and she took him and pressed him to her bosom. Thus they wept for a long time, seeming to wish to unite themselves together in one embrace, to cling so closely to each other that James might never be able to separate them. William had clasped his hands behind Madeleine's back, and he sobbed like a child, with his head on her shoulder. His tears were a pardon, this sudden loss of control over himself, which had thrown him into her arms, proved his forgiveness. His want of moral force said : " You are not guilty : it is fate which had done all this. You see I love you still, and do not think you unworthy of my afTeotion. Speak no more of parting.'' And it said, too : " Comfort me, conifort me : take me to your bosom and lull me so as to soothe my suffering. Oh ! how I weep and what a need I feel of finding a refuge in your arms ! Do not leave me, I implore you. I should die if I were alone, I could not bear the weight of my grief. I would rather bleed from your blows than lose you. Heal the wounds you are causing me, be kind now and love me." Madeleine could understand all this in her husband's silence and stifled sighs. She felt she must take pity on his nervous nature and console it. Besides, her heart was filled with sweet comfort by this absolute pardon, and this mute forgiveness, a forgiveness of tears and kisses. Had her husband said : " I pardon you," she would have shaken her head in sadness : but he said nothing, but fell into her arms and hid himself on her breast. He trembled with fear as he asked her to protect him with her aflfeotion, and she gi'ew calm by degrees, and soothed at feel- ing him so absorbed in her, and so grateful for her caresses. Madeleine was the first to tear herself away. It was already an hour past midnight, and they must make up their minds to something. " We can't wait till he wakes up,'' she said, avoiding the ■ mention of James's name. " What do you intend to do ? " 170 MADELEINE FERAT. William looked at her with such an air of consternation tliat she saw it was hopeless to expect him to take any energetic measures in his present distress. She added,, however : " If we were to tell him everything, he would go away, and leave us in peace. You might go upstairs." "No, no," stammered William, "not now, later on." " Would you like me to go up to him 1 " "You!" William pronounced this word with dismayed astonish- ment. Madeleine had oflfered to go up herself, urged by her straightforward and courageous nature. But he could not understand the logic of her proposal, and looked upon it as really monstrous. The thought of his wife being alone with her former lover hurt his finer feelings, and tortured him with a vague sensation of jealousy. " What must we do then t " asked Madeleine. He did not reply at once. He fancied he had heard the sound of footsteps again on the staircasej and he listened, pale with anxiety, as he had done at the previous scare. James's near presence, the idea of his coming and holding out his hand, caused him an anguish which became more and more violent. One thought only filled his head, to flee, and avoid an explanation, and to take refuge in some solitude where he could grow calm. It was always his nature, in painful situations, to seek to gain time and go further away in order to resume his dream of peace. When he raised his head, he said in a whisper : "Let us go away; my head is splitting, and I can't possibly make up my mind to do anything just now — He is only going to spend a day here. When he is gone, we shall have a month before us to recover and establish our happiness." This proposal of flight was repugnant to Madeleine's straightforward nature. She saw that it would settle no- thing and leave them as agitated as before. MADELEINE F^RAT. 171 " It would be better to have it all over,'' she replied. " No, no, come ; I beg of yon,'' whispered William, earnestly — " We will go and sleep in our little house ; we will spend the day there to-morrow, and wait till he has gone — You know how happy we have been in this secluded nook : the warm air of this retreat will soothe us : we will forget everything, and make love to one another as we did in the days when I used to pay you my secret visits. — If either of us sees him again, I feel that our happiness is gone." Madeleine gave a movement of resignation. She was quite upset herself, and she saw her husband was so agitated that she did not dare to demand any courageous decision from him. " Very good," she said, " left us start. Let us go where- ever you like." They looked round them. The fire had gone out, and the lamp only gave a yellowish flickering light. This vast room, ■where they had spent so many comfortable evenings, appeared gloomy, cold, and mournful. Outside, a strong wind had got up, and was blowing hard against the rattling windows. It seemed as if a winter hurricane was passing through the place, carrying away with it all the joy, all the peace of the old home. As William and Madeleine were making towards the door, in the shade they perceived Genevifeve, erect and motionless, following them with her gleaming eyes. During the long scene of despair which she had just wit- nessed, the old woman had never relaxed her rigid and implac- able attitude. She felt a savage delight in listening to these sobs and these cries of the flesh. Madeleine's confession had opened to her a world of desires and regrets, of sorrows and griefs which had never touched her virgin heart, and this picture made her think of the cruel joys of the damned. She said to herself that they would have to laugh and weep 172 MADELEINE FJilRAT. like those who were licked by the flames and caressed by their flaming tongues. And yet, with her horror there was mingled an ardent curiosity, the curiosity of a woman who has grown old in household duties, without ever knowing a man, and suddenly hears the story of a life of passioa Perhaps even for a moment she envied the bitter pleasures of sin, and the burnings of hell with which Madeleine's breast was racked. She .had not been mistaken; this woman was one of Satan's creatures, and Heaven had placed her on this earth for the damnation of men. She watched her writhe and cringe as she would have watched the pieces of a mutilated serpent wriggle in the dust ; the tears that she shed seemed to her the tears of rage of a demon who sees himself unmasked ; her dishevelled red hair, her sleek white neck swollen with sighs, and her limbs? sprawling on the ground seemed to her to reek with carnal and nauseous odour. This was Lubrica, the monster with the plump breasts, and the enticing arms, the infamous courtesan concealing a heap of infectious filth beneath the satiny exterior of her pearly voluptuous skin. When Madeleine advanced towards the door, she stepped back to avoid touching her. " Lubrica, Lubrica," she muttered between her teeth — "Hell has belched you forth, and you are tempting the saint by exposing your impure nakedness. Your red hair and your red lips are still burning with the eternal fire. You have bleached your body and your teeth in the flames of the abyss. You have become fat on the blood of your victims. You are lovely, you are strong, you are lewd be- cause you feed on flesh — But a breath of God will bring you to the dust, Lubrica, cursed woman, and you will rot like a dead dog by the roadside — " William and Madeleine could only catch a few of these words which she mumbled with feverish excitement, as if they were a prayer of exorcism to protect her against the MADELEINE F^EAT. 173 attacks of the demon. They thought that everybody in the house was in bed, and they were surprised and terrified to find her there. She must have heard everything. William was going to beg her not to say a word, when she anticipated him, asking him in her cold sermonizing tone : " What shall I say to-morrow to your friend ? Shall I tell him of your shame 1 " "Silence, madwoman," shouted William with secret irritation. " The woman is right," said Madeleine, " we must explain our absence." " Well ! let her say what she likes — I really don't know — Let her pretend that one of your relatives is dead, or that some unexpected bad news has obliged us to set out immediately." Genevifeve looked at him full of sadness. She answered : " I will tell a lie for your sake, my child. But my false- hood will not save you from the torments which you are bringing on yourself. Take care ! hell is opening, I have just seen the abyss yawning before you, and you will fall into it if you give yourself up to the impure — " " Silence, madwoman," shouted William again. Madeleine recoiled beneath the fanatic's searching glance. " She is not mad," she stammered, " and you would do well to listen to her voice. William — Let me go alone ; it is I who ought to tramp along the roads this winter's night. Listen to the howling of the wind — Stay, forget me, and do not vex Heaven by wishing to share my infamy." " No, I will not leave you," replied the young man, with sudden energy. " We will suffer together, if we are to suffer. But I am hopeful, and I love you. Come, we will console each other and we shall be pardoned." Then Genevifeve's voice rose, in its brief damnatory tone : " God the Father never pardons ! " she said. 174 MALELEINE F^RAT. These words vrbich she had heard, like a presage of ealamity, before James's arrival, and which she now was hearing again, at the moment when she was going to seek for oblivion, froze Madeleine to the soul with a shudder of terror. All the force which had hitherto kept her up, now fled. She staggered and leaned on her husband's shoulders. " Do you hear," she murmured, " God never pardons, never — We shall not escape the punishment." " Don't listen to that woman," said William, dragging her along ; " she lies ; Heaven is kind, and has pardon for those who love and weep." She shook her head and repeated : "Never, never — " Then with a deep cry of anguish she exclaimed : " Oh ! the memories are let loose, I feel them pursuing me." They crossed the entrance hall, and left La Noiraude with a vague sensation of the cruel folly of such a flight. But in their fright at the sudden blow which had just crushed them, they could not resist the instinctive movement of wounded animals, of going and hiding themselves in some corner. They were no longer led by reason. They were escaping from James and leaving him their home. 175 CHAPTER VIII. The night was as black as ink. It was cold, wet and dirty. The wind which had risen was driving along torrents of rain in blinding showers ; far away in the gloomy darkness, it howled mournfully as it twisted the trees in the park, and its sighs resembled the lamentations of human voices, the death-rattle in a thousand throats. The soaked ground, covered with pools of water, yielded beneath the feet like a carpet of decaying filth. William and Madeleine, huddling together, struggling against the wind which blew in their faces with its piercing breath, slipped ih the pools and fell into the holes. When they were out of the park, they instinctively turned their heads, and looked towards La Noiraude ; they were both anxious to assure themselves if James was sleeping, and that the windows of the blue room were not lit up. They saw nothing but the darkness, nothing but the black im- penetrable mass of gloom ; La Noiraude seemed to have been carried away in their rear by the storm. I'hen they began to walk on, painfully and in silence. They could not dis- tinguish the ground, they were entering into fields where they sank up to their ankles in the soil. The road to the little house was quite familiar to them, but the darkness was so complete that it took them nearly half-an-hour to cover a distance of at most three quarters of a mile. They lost their way twice over. Just when they were reaching the door, they were caught in a downpour which wet them to the skin and nearly blinded them. In this state they 176 MADELEINE F:6RAT. entered their retreat, muddy and shivering, half poisoned by the odour oE that sea of dirt through which they had just passed. They had the greatest difficulty in lighting their candle. Then they shut themselves in, aud went up to their bed- room, on the first floor. It was here that they had spent so many happy nights, here that they hoped to recover the genial calm of their love. But when they had opened the door of this room they stood almost heart-broken on the threshold, for they had forgotten the previous day to close the window, and the raiu had been driven in by the wind, forming a large pool of water in the middle of the floor. This they had to mop up with a sponge, and yet the wood remained wet. Winter had taken up its quarters in this room into which it had been entering at will since the pre- vious day ; the walls, the furniture, and aU. the nick-nacks that lay about were oozing with damp. William went down to look for some wood. At last they had a bright fire burn- ing in the grate, and then the young couple hoped they would get dry and comforted again in the warm and sUent atmosphere of their solitude. They always left a few articles of clothing there, and when they had had a change of linen, they sat down by the fire. The thought of going to lie down side by side, still shivering and terrified, in the cold beil where they had for- merly passed so many nights of burning love, caused them a secret repugnance. When three o'clock struck, William said : " I feel that I could not sleep. I shall wait in this chair till the day breaks — But you must be worn out, Madeleine, so go to bed." His young wife shook her head slightly to signify her unwillingness, and then they relapsed into silence. Outside the tempest was howling more violent aud fiercer than ever. Gusts of wind beat against the house with the MADELEINE FJ^RAT. 177 roar of a wild beast, rattling the windows and the doors ; you might have thought that a pack of wolves was besieging the little' co-fe and shakitig it from top to bottom with their lurious clawsi At each fresh gust it seemed as if tho frail dwelling nnust be carried away. Then the clouds would btirst, discharging torrents of rain wliich appeased for a moment the clamour of the wind and fell on the roof with the dull continued beat of the muffled drums at a funeral. The young couple suffered from the crashes of the storm ; each shock, each howl filled them with a vague sensation of distress ; they were seized with sudden anxiety, and listened as if Ihey had heard the moan of human voices down below on the road. When a more than usually violent blast made every bit of wood-worlc in the house creak, they looked up with a start and gazed round with alarmed surprise. Could this be their beloved retreat, which used to be so warm, so fragrant '? It seemed to them that the furniture, the hang- ings, even the building itself had been changed. They cast looks of distrust on each object, recognising nothing. If a memory of the past came back to them, this memory hurt them ; they thought that they had tasted in this room de- lightful pleasures, yet the sensation they felt of the far-off distance of these pleasures assumed the shape of poignant bitterness. William used to say formerly, as he spoke of the little house : " If any calamity ever fails on us, we will go and forget it in this solitude." And to-day when a terrible blow was crushing them and they had hurried to take refuge in this retreat, they found in it only the mourn- ful spectre of their love, and they sat overwhelmed beneath the weight of the present and the painful regret for the past. Little by little, a gloomy prostration pervaded their whole beings. The tramp through the mud, in the wind and rain, had calmed their excitement, and cleared their heads of the feverish feeling that had filled them, fi^mr u 178 MADELEINE FERAT. hair, drenched with rain, had hung almost like pieces of ice on their burning brows. Now, the heat of the fire made their tired limbs feel quite heavy. As the warmth from the hearth penetrated their flesh, which a minute before had been quite numb with cold, it seemed as if their blood became thicker and flowed with greater difficulty. Their sufferings, now less acute, revolved in their minds like slow- moving millstones. They felt nothing but a continual crushing; the keen burning sensations, and the sharp excruciating pains had passed, and they abandoned them- selves to this torpor, as a weary man gives way to his feel- ing of sleep. Yet, they were not sleeping ; their thoughts were drowned in their stupor, but they were stiU floating, confused and heavy, turning over, and filling their brain with vague pangs of pain. They could not have uttered a word without incredible fatigue. Seated before the fire, they had sunk down in their chairs, as silent as if they had been a thousand miles from each other. Madeleine, when she had changed her clothes, had taken off her skirts and muddy stockings. Then she had put on a dry chemise, and simply wrapped herself up in a long dressing-gown of blue cashmere. The lappets of this dress- ing-gown had fallen back on the arms of the easy-chair where she sat, and disclosed her naked lip[ibs on which the flame cast a ruddy glow. She had just slipped her toes into her little slippers, and her feet reflected the rosy tints of the bright fire. The dressing-gown had fallen open higher up too, disclosing her bosom beneath the half-open chemise. Thus she sat staring at the blazing logs, and dreaming. You would have thought she was not aware of her nudity, and that she could not feel the burning caresses of the fire on her skin. William was surveying her. Bit by bit, he let his head fall on the back of his chair, and in this position he half MADELEINE I']&RAT. a79 closed his eyes, appearing to slumber, but never taking his looks from Madeleine. He was absorbed in the spectacle of this half naked creature, whose plump firm frame awoke in his mind but a painful sensation of uneasiness : he felt no pangs of desire, her attitude seemed to him that of a courtesan, and her hard heavy look that of a woman cloyed with pleasure. The flame which fell askant on her face, formed deep shadows, rendered all the blacker by the shining outlines of the nose and forehead; her features stood out harshly, and her whole countenance, mute and curdled, so to speak, had' an appearance of cruelty. And down the cheeks right to the chin, her red hair, still matted with the rain, fell in heavy masses, forming a setting of stiff lines to her face. This cold mask, this corpse-like forehead, these grey eyes and red lips over which passed no brighten- ing smile, caused William an uncomfortable sensation of as- tonishment. He hardly knew this face which he had seen so smiling, and so childlike. It was as if a new being were be- fore him, and he questioned each feature so as to read the thoughts which were producing such a transformation in his young wife. When he allowed his eyes to wander lower down, on the breast and naked limbs, the yellow gleam from the hearth that played on them, caused him a sort of fright. The skin was fair ; and at certain moments, you would have said that it was covered with stains of blood, which flowed rapidly over the curves of the breasts and knees, disappear- ing, and then re-appearing again to speckle this tender and delicate exterior witt red' spots. Madeleine leaned forward, and began to poke the fire, still absorbed in thought, and hardly knowing what she was doing. In this attitude she remained some time, with her face almost in the flames. Her flowing dressing-gown which had nothing to keep it up, had slipped down her shoulders, to the middle of her back. And William then felt an oppression at his heart, at the J80 MADELEINE F^RAT. sight of this majestic nudity. He followed the supple strong movement of the exposed bust, and the flexible lines of the bent neck, and falling shoulders ; thus his eyes went on down the curve of the spine, and passed around the body and under the arm, till they caught a glimpse of the pink nipple of the breast through the shade of the arm-pit. The white- ness of the skin, that milky wliiteness, peculiar to the skin of red-haired women, set oif a little black mark which Made- leine had at the bottom of the neck. And he stopped with pain as his eyes fell on this mark, which he had so often kissed. All this lovely bust, this pearly white flesh, with its delicate curves of exquisite tints, tortured his heart with unspeakable anguish. The fact, was, that in spite of his stupor, his recollections were awakening, not like the quick flashes of memory, but like heavy masses which moved slowly in his brain. He was half asleep, and this semi-con- scious state made him mentally repeat a hundred times the same phrase. His waking dream was a crushing night- mare of which he was unable to rid himself. He thought of the five years that he had passed, with Madeleine in his possession, of the happy nights he had spent sleeping warmly on her white bosom, and he called to mind the rap- ture of their mutual embraces and kisses. In the old days he had given himself up to her entirely, and his tenderness and faith were absolute ; never had the thought occurred to him that he might not be aU in all to this woman, for he judged of her by himself, and he felt that she was all-suffi- cient for him, and that the world disappeared, when he was sleeping on her breast. And now a horrible doubt preyed upon his mind ; he saw himself kissing those soft shoulders, he felt beneath his lips the quiver of that skin, and he asked himself with anguish, if it was his lips alone, which made her quiver, and if she was not still warm and panting with the caresses of another. His heart v/aa free when he Duirendered himself to her, and he could never confoimd MADELEINE F^RAT. 181 with his present pleasure, the ever-living sensation of plea- sures that were past ; but Madeleine's heart was not free like his; when their lips met, she felt again, doubtless, the rap- turous excitement which her first lover had caused her to know. Certainly, she must be thinking of this man when she was in his arms, and he even said to himself, that she might perhaps feel a monstrous pleasure in evoking the de- lights of the past, so as to double those of the present. What infamous and cruel dupery ! While he had thought himself the husband, the only being that she loved, he was no doubt only a passing lover whose mouth simply gave a new zest to the sweet burning sensation of the old kisses that had hardly become cool. Who knows 1 perhaps this woman played him false every hour with a phantom 1 or made use of him as of an instrument whose amorous sighs reminded her of melodies that she had known long ago ; :io doubt he faded from her mind, and she lived in thought with the absent one, and showed her gratitude to him for so many hours of plea- sure. This vile comedy had gone on for four years ; fur four years he had acted, unknown to himself, an odious part, and had allowed himself to be robbed of his heart, and his flesh. As he thought of these things, as he was led away by this horrible reverie, with which the nightmare was fill- ing his brain, he gazed on the nudity of his young wife with supreme disgust ; he fancied he could see on her bosom, and her white shoulders, impure spots, and inefiaceable bruises all bleeding. Madeleine was still poking the fire. Her face had lost none of its impenetrable rigidity. At each movement of her arm, as she stirred the ashes, the dressing-gown had gradually slipped down. William could not remove his eyes from this body, which was becoming exposed by each motion, and displaying itself in all its wanton and superb fulness. It seemed to him a profusion of impurity. Each action of the arms made the 182 MADELEINE F^RAT. fleshy muscles of the shoulder stand out, and produced on him the effect of a lascivious spasm. He had never suffered so much. He thought: "I am not the only one -who knows these little cavities formed below her neck, when she holds out her hands." The idea of having shared this woman with another man, and of only having come second, was un- bearable. Like all delicate and nervous temperaments, he had a refinement of jealousy which was wounded by the merest trifle. He . must have complete possession. The past terrified him, because he d