“Where can I see you—speak to you?” he said. “It will kill me if I must perpetually disguise my looks and my voice, my heart and my love.”
Moved by the tear, Marie promised to go to the Bois whenever the weather did not make it impossible. This promise gave Raoul more happiness than Florine had brought him in five years.
“I have so much to say to you! I suffer so from the silence to which we are condemned.”
The Countess was gazing at him rapturously, unable to reply, when the Marchioness returned.
“So!” she exclaimed as she entered, “you had no retort for de Marsay!”
“One must respect the dead,” replied Raoul. “Don’t you see that he is at the last gasp? Rastignac is acting as nurse, and hopes to be mentioned in the will.”
The Countess made an excuse of having calls to pay, and took leave, as a precaution against gossip. For this quarter of an hour Raoul had sacrificed precious time and most urgent claims. Marie as yet knew nothing of the details of a life which, while to all appearance gay and idle as a bird’s, had yet its side of very complicated business and extremely taxing work. When two beings, united by an enduring love, lead a life which each day knits them more closely in the bonds of mutual confidence and by the interchange of counsel over difficulties as they arise; when two hearts pour forth their sorrows, night and morning, with mingled sighs; when they share the same suspense and shudder together at a common danger, then everything is taken into account. The woman then can measure the love in an averted gaze, the cost of a hurried visit, she has her part in the business, the hurrying to and fro, the hopes and anxieties of the hard-worked, harassed man. If she complains, it is only of the actual conditions; her doubts are at rest, for she knows and appreciates the details of his life. But in the opening chapters of passion, when all is eagerness, suspicion, and demands; when neither of the two know themselves or each other; when, in addition, the woman is an idler, expecting love to stand guard all day at her door—one of those who have an exaggerated estimate of their own claims, and choose to be obeyed even when obedience spells ruin to a career—then love, in Paris and at the present time, becomes a superhuman task. Women of fashion have not yet thrown off the traditions of the eighteenth century, when every man had his own place marked out for him. Few of them know anything of the difficulties of existence for the bulk of men, all with a position to carve out, a distinction to win, a fortune to consolidate. Men of well-established fortune are, at present, rare exceptions. Only the old have time for love; men in their prime are chained, like Nathan, to the galleys of ambition.
Women, not yet reconciled to this change of habits, cannot bring themselves to believe any man short of the time which is so cheap a commodity with them; they can imagine no occupations or aims other than their own. Had the gallant vanquished the hydra of Lerna to get at them, he would not rise one whit in their estimation; the joy of seeing him is everything. They are grateful because he makes them happy, but never think of asking what their happiness has cost him. Whereas, if they, in an idle hour, have devised some stratagem such as they abound in, they flaunt it in your eyes as something superlative. You have wrenched the iron bars of destiny, while they have played with subterfuge and diplomacy—and yet the palm is theirs, dispute were vain. After all, are they not right? The woman who gives up all for you, should she not receive all? She exacts no more than she gives.
Raoul, during his walk home, pondered on the difficulty of directing at one and the same time a fashionable intrigue, the ten-horse chariot of journalism, his theatrical pieces, and his entangled personal affairs.
“It will be a wretched paper tonight,” he said to himself as he went; “nothing from my hand, and the second number too!”
Mme. Félix de Vandenesse went three times to the Bois de Boulogne without seeing Raoul; she came home agitated and despairing. Nathan was determined not to show himself till he could do so in all the glory of a press magnate. He spent the week in looking out for a pair of horses and a suitable cabriolet and tiger, in persuading his partners of the necessity of sparing time so valuable as his, and in getting the purchase put down to the general expenses of the paper. Massol and du Tillet agreed so readily to this request, that he thought them the best fellows in the world. But for this assistance, life would have been impossible for Raoul. As it was, it became so taxing, in spite of the exquisite delights of ideal love with which it was mingled, that many men, even of excellent constitution, would have broken down under the strain of such distractions. A violent and reciprocal passion is bound to bulk largely even in an ordinary life; but when its object is a woman of conspicuous position, like Mme. de Vandenesse, it cannot fail to play havoc with
