rosy, his belly full, his brain empty, he felt happy.
His frame seemed dead, and Therese barely entered his mind. Occasionally he thought of her as one thinks of a woman one has to marry later on, in the indefinite future. He patiently awaited the time for his marriage, forgetful of the bride, and dreaming of the new position he would then enjoy. He would leave his office, he would paint for amusement, and saunter about hither and thither. These hopes brought him night after night, to the shop in the arcade, in spite of the vague discomfort he experienced on entering the place.
One Sunday, with nothing to do and being bored, he went to see his old school friend, the young painter he had lived with for a time. The artist was working on a picture of a nude Bacchante sprawled on some drapery. The model, lying with her head thrown back and her torso twisted sometimes laughed and threw her bosom forward, stretching her arms. As Laurent smoked his pipe and chatted with his friend, he kept his eyes on the model. He took the woman home with him that evening and kept her as his mistress for many months. The poor girl fell in love with him. Every morning she went off and posed as a model all day. Then she came back each evening. She didn't cost Laurent a penny, keeping herself out of her own earnings. Laurent never bothered to find out about her, where she went, what she did. She was a steadying influence in his life, a useful and necessary thing. He never wondered if he loved her and he never considered that he was being unfaithful to Therese. He simply felt better and happier.
In the meanwhile the period of mourning that Therese had imposed on herself, had come to an end, and the young woman put on light-coloured gowns. One evening, Laurent found her looking younger and handsomer. But he still felt uncomfortable in her presence. For some time past, she seemed to him feverish, and full of strange capriciousness, laughing and turning sad without reason. This unsettled demeanour alarmed him, for he guessed, in part, what her struggles and troubles must be like.
He began to hesitate, having an atrocious dread of risking his tranquillity. He was now living peacefully, in wise contentment, and he feared to endanger the equilibrium of his life, by binding himself to a nervous woman, whose passion had already driven him crazy. But he did not reason these matters out, he felt by instinct all the anguish he would be subjected to, if he made Therese his wife.
The first shock he received, and one that roused him in his sluggishness, was the thought that he must at length begin to think of his marriage. It was almost fifteen months since the death of Camille. For an instant, Laurent had the idea of not marrying at all, of jilting Therese. Then he said to himself that it was no good killing a man for nothing. In recalling the crime, and the terrible efforts he had made to be the sole possessor of this woman who was now troubling him, he felt that the murder would become useless and atrocious should he not marry her. Besides, was he not bound to Therese by a bond of blood and horror? Moreover, he feared his accomplice; perhaps, if he failed to marry her, she would go and relate everything to the judicial authorities out of vengeance and jealousy. With these ideas beating in his head the fever settled on him again.
Now, one Sunday the model did not return; no doubt she had found a warmer and more comfortable place to lodge. Laurent was only moderately upset, but he felt a sudden gap in his life without a woman lying beside him at night. In a week his passions rebelled and he began spending entire evenings at the shop again. He watched Therese who was still palpitating from the novels which she read.
After a year of indifferent waiting they both were again tormented by desire. One evening while shutting up the shop, Laurent spoke to Therese in the passage.
'Do you want me to come to your room to-night,' he asked passionately.
She started with fear. 'No, let's wait. Let's be prudent.'
'It seems to me that I've already waited a long time,' he went on. 'I'm sick of waiting.'
Therese, her hands and face burning hot, looked at him wildly. She seemed to hesitate, and then said quickly:
'Let's get married.'
CHAPTER XVII
Laurent left the arcade with a strained mind. Therese had filled him with the old longing lusts again. He walked along with his hat in his hand, so as to get the fresh air full in his face.
On reaching the door of his hotel in the Rue Saint-Victor, he was afraid to go upstairs, and remain alone. A childish, inexplicable, unforeseen terror made him fear he would find a man hidden in his garret. Never had he experienced such poltroonery. He did not even seek to account for the strange shudder that ran through him. He entered a wine-shop and remained an hour there, until midnight, motionless and silent at a table, mechanically absorbing great glasses of wine. Thinking of Therese, his anger raged at her refusal to have him in her room that very night. He felt that with her he would not have been afraid.
When the time came for closing the shop, he was obliged to leave. But he went back again to ask for matches. The office of the hotel was on the first floor. Laurent had a long alley to follow and a few steps to ascend, before he could take his candle. This alley, this bit of staircase which was frightfully dark, terrified him. Habitually, he passed boldly through the darkness. But on this particular night he had not even the courage to ring. He said to himself that in a certain recess, formed by the entrance to the cellar, assassins were perhaps concealed, who would suddenly spring at his throat as he passed along.
At last he pulled the bell, and lighting a match, made up his mind to enter the alley. The match went out. He stood motionless, breathless, without the courage to run away, rubbing lucifers against the damp wall in such anxiety that his hand trembled. He fancied he heard voices, and the sound of footsteps before him. The matches broke between his fingers; but he succeeded in striking one. The sulphur began to boil, to set fire to the wood, with a tardiness that increased his distress. In the pale bluish light of the sulphur, in the vacillating glimmer, he fancied he could distinguish monstrous forms. Then the match crackled, and the light became white and clear.
Laurent, relieved, advanced with caution, careful not to be without a match. When he had passed the entrance to the cellar, he clung to the opposite wall where a mass of darkness terrified him. He next briskly scaled the few steps separating him from the office of the hotel, and thought himself safe when he held his candlestick. He ascended to the other floors more gently, holding aloft his candle, lighting all the corners before which he had to pass. The great fantastic shadows that come and go, in ascending a staircase with a light, caused him vague discomfort, as they suddenly rose and disappeared before him.
As soon as he was upstairs, and had rapidly opened his door and shut himself in, his first care was to look under his bed, and make a minute inspection of the room to see that nobody was concealed there. He closed the window in the roof thinking someone might perhaps get in that way, and feeling more calm after taking these measures, he undressed, astonished at his cowardice. He ended by laughing and calling himself a child. Never had he been afraid, and he could not understand this sudden fit of terror.
He went to bed. When he was in the warmth beneath the bedclothes, he again thought of Therese, whom fright had driven from his mind. Do what he would, obstinately close his eyes, endeavour to sleep, he felt his thoughts at work commanding his attention, connecting one with the other, to ever point out to him the advantage he would reap by marrying as soon as possible. Ever and anon he would turn round, saying to himself:
'I must not think any more; I shall have to get up at eight o'clock to-morrow morning to go to my office.'
And he made an effort to slip off to sleep. But the ideas returned one by one. The dull labour of his reasoning began again; and he soon found himself in a sort of acute reverie that displayed to him in the depths of his brain, the necessity for his marriage, along with the arguments his desire and prudence advanced in turn, for and against the possession of Therese.
Then, seeing he was unable to sleep, that insomnia kept his body in a state of irritation, he turned on his back, and with his eyes wide open, gave up his mind to the young woman. His equilibrium was upset, he again trembled with violent fever, as formerly. He had an idea of getting up, and returning to the Arcade of the Pont Neuf. He would have the iron gate opened, and Therese would receive him. The thought sent his blood racing.
The lucidity of his reverie was astonishing. He saw himself in the streets walking rapidly beside the houses, and he said to himself:
'I will take this Boulevard, I will cross this Square, so as to arrive there quicker.'
Then the iron gate of the arcade grated, he followed the narrow, dark, deserted corridor, congratulating himself at being able to go up to Therese without being seen by the dealer in imitation jewelry. Next he imagined he was in the alley, in the little staircase he had so frequently ascended. He inhaled the sickly odour of the passage, he touched the sticky walls, he saw the dirty shadow that hung about there. And he ascended each step, breathless,
