The Complete Works: Short Stories, Novels, Plays, Poetry, Memoirs and more. Guy de MaupassantЧитать онлайн книгу.
again. He had often asked how he ought to behave if he met her face to face. Should he bow, or should he seem not to have seen her. “I should not see her,” he thought.
It was cold; the gutters were frozen, and the pavement dry and gray in the gaslight. When he got home he thought: “I must change my lodgings; this is no longer good enough for me.” He felt nervous and lively, capable of anything; and he said aloud, as he walked from his bed to the window: “It is fortune at last — it is fortune! I must write to father.” From time to time he wrote to his father, and the letter always brought happiness to the little Norman inn by the roadside, at the summit of the slope overlooking Rouen and the broad valley of the Seine. From time to time, too, he received a blue envelope, addressed in a large, shaky hand, and read the same unvarying lines at the beginning of the paternal epistle. “My Dear Son: This leaves your mother and myself in good health. There is not much news here. I must tell you, however,” etc. In his heart he retained a feeling of interest for the village matters, for the news of the neighbours, and the condition of the crops.
He repeated to himself, as he tied his white tie before his little looking-glass: “I must write to father tomorrow. Wouldn’t the old fellow be staggered if he could see me this evening in the house I am going to? By Jove! I am going to have such a dinner as he never tasted.” And he suddenly saw the dark kitchen behind the empty café; the copper stewpans casting their yellow reflections on the wall; the cat on the hearth, with her nose to the fire, in sphinxlike attitude; the wooden table, greasy with time and spilt liquids, a soup tureen smoking upon it, and a lighted candle between two plates. He saw them, too — his father and mother, two slow-moving peasants, eating their soup. He knew the smallest wrinkles on their old faces, the slightest movements of their arms and heads. He knew even what they talked about every evening as they sat at supper. He thought, too: “I must really go and see them;” but his toilet being ended, he blew out his light and went downstairs.
As he passed along the outer boulevard girls accosted him from time to time. He replied, as he pulled away his arm: “Go to the devil!” with a violent disdain, as though they had insulted him. What did they take him for? Could not these hussies tell what a man was? The sensation of his dress coat, put on in order to go to dinner with such well-known and important people, inspired him with the sentiment of a new impersonality — the sense of having become another man, a man in society, genuine society.
He entered the anteroom, lit by tall bronze candelabra, with confidence, and handed in easy fashion his cane and overcoat to two valets who approached. All the drawingrooms were lit up. Madame Walter received her guests in the second, the largest. She welcomed him with a charming smile, and he shook hands with two gentlemen who had arrived before him — Monsieur Firmin and Monsieur Laroche-Mathieu, deputies, and anonymous editors of the Vie Francaise. Monsieur Laroche-Mathieu had a special authority at the paper, due to a great influence he enjoyed in the Chamber. No one doubted his being a minister some day. Then came the Forestiers; the wife in pink, and looking charming. Duroy was stupefied to see her on terms of intimacy with the two deputies. She chatted in low tones beside the fireplace, for more than five minutes, with Monsieur Laroche-Mathieu. Charles seemed worn out. He had grown much thinner during the past month, and coughed incessantly as he repeated: “I must make up my mind to finish the winter in the south.” Norbert de Varenne and Jacques Rival made their appearance together. Then a door having opened at the further end of the room, Monsieur Walter came in with two tall young girls, of from sixteen to eighteen, one ugly and the other pretty.
Duroy knew that the governor was the father of a family; but he was struck with astonishment. He had never thought of his daughters, save as one thinks of distant countries which one will never see. And then he had fancied them quite young, and here they were grown-up women. They held out their hands to him after being introduced, and then went and sat down at a little table, without doubt reserved to them, at which they began to turn over a number of reels of silk in a work-basket. They were still awaiting someone, and all were silent with that sense of oppression, preceding dinners, between people who do not find themselves in the same mental atmosphere after the different occupations of the day.
Duroy having, for want of occupation, raised his eyes towards the wall, Monsieur Walter called to him from a distance, with an evident wish to show off his property: “Are you looking at my pictures? I will show them to you,” and he took a lamp, so that the details might be distinguished.
“Here we have landscapes,” said he.
In the center of the wall was a large canvas by Guillemet, a bit of the Normandy coast under a lowering sky. Below it a wood, by Harpignies, and a plain in Algeria, by Guillemet, with a camel on the horizon, a tall camel with long legs, like some strange monument. Monsieur Walter passed on to the next wall, and announced in a grave tone, like a master of the ceremonies: “High Art.” There were four: “A Hospital Visit,” by Gervex; “A Harvester,” by Bastien-Lepage; “A Widow,” by Bouguereau; and “An Execution,” by Jean Paul Laurens. The last work represented a Vendean priest shot against the wall of his church by a detachment of Blues. A smile flitted across the governor’s grave countenance as he indicated the next wall. “Here the fanciful school.” First came a little canvas by Jean Beraud, entitled, “Above and Below.” It was a pretty Parisian mounting to the roof of a tramcar in motion. Her head appeared on a level with the top, and the gentlemen on the seats viewed with satisfaction the pretty face approaching them, while those standing on the platform below considered the young woman’s legs with a different expression of envy and desire. Monsieur Walter held the lamp at arm’s length, and repeated, with a sly laugh: “It is funny, isn’t it?” Then he lit up “A Rescue,” by Lambert. In the middle of a table a kitten, squatted on its haunches, was watching with astonishment and perplexity a fly drowning in a glass of water. It had its paw raised ready to fish out the insect with a rapid sweep of it. But it had not quite made up its mind. It hesitated. What would it do? Then the governor showed a Detaille, “The Lesson,” which represented a soldier in a barrack-room teaching a poodle to play the drum, and said: “That is very witty.”
Duroy laughed a laugh of approbation, and exclaimed: “It is charming, charm— “ He stopped short on hearing behind him the voice of Madame de Marelle, who had just come in.
The governor continued to light up the pictures as he explained them. He now showed a watercolor by Maurice Leloir, “The Obstacle.” It was a sedan chair checked on its way, the street being blocked by a fight between two laborers, two fellows struggling like Hercules. From out of the window of the chair peered the head of a charming woman, who watched without impatience, without alarm, and with a certain admiration, the combat of these two brutes. Monsieur Walter continued: “I have others in the adjoining rooms, but they are by less known men. I buy of the young artists now, the very young ones, and hang their works in the more private rooms until they become known.” He then went on in a low tone: “Now is the time to buy! The painters are all dying of hunger! They have not a sou, not a sou!”
But Duroy saw nothing, and heard without understanding. Madame de Marelle was there behind him. What ought he to do? If he spoke to her, might she not turn her back on him, or treat him with insolence? If he did not approach her, what would people think? He said to himself: “I will gain time, at any rate.” He was so moved that for a moment he thought of feigning a sudden illness, which would allow him to withdraw. The examination of the walls was over. The governor went to put down his lamp and welcome the last comer, while Duroy began to re-examine the pictures as if he could not tire of admiring them. He was quite upset. What should he do? Madame Forestier called to him: “Monsieur Duroy.” He went to her. It was to speak to him of a friend of hers who was about to give a fête, and who would like to have a line to that effect in the Vie Francaise. He gasped out: “Certainly, Madame, certainly.”
Madame de Marelle was now quite close to him. He dared not turn round to go away. All at once he thought he was going mad; she had said aloud: “Good evening, Pretty-boy. So you no longer recognize me.”
He rapidly turned on his heels. She stood before him smiling, her eyes beaming with sprightliness and affection, and held out her hand. He took it tremblingly, still fearing some trick, some perfidy. She added, calmly: “What has become of you? One no longer sees anything of you.”