But at this hypothesis he checked himself, not finishing his thought, which was contradicted by a very just reflection, “If the Baroness hopes to get me to marry her daughter,” thought he, “they would not have robbed me.”
Then, clinging to his illusions, to the love that already had taken such deep root, he tried to find a justification in some accident. “The purse must have fallen on the floor,” said he to himself, “or I left it lying on my chair. Or perhaps I have it about me—I am so absentminded!” He searched himself with hurried movements, but did not find the ill-starred purse. His memory cruelly retraced the fatal truth, minute by minute. He distinctly saw the purse lying on the green cloth; but then, doubtful no longer, he excused Adélaïde, telling himself that persons in misfortune should not be so hastily condemned. There was, of course, some secret behind this apparently degrading action. He would not admit that that proud and noble face was a lie.
At the same time the wretched rooms rose before him, denuded of the poetry of love which beautifies everything; he saw them dirty and faded, regarding them as emblematic of an inner life devoid of honor, idle and vicious. Are not our feelings written, as it were, on the things about us?
Next morning he rose, not having slept. The heartache, that terrible malady of the soul, had made rapid inroads. To lose the bliss we dreamed of, to renounce our whole future, is a keener pang than that caused by the loss of known happiness, however complete it may have been; for is not Hope better than Memory? The thoughts into which our spirit is suddenly plunged are like a shoreless sea, in which we may swim for a moment, but where our love is doomed to drown and die. And it is a frightful death. Are not our feelings the most glorious part of our life? It is this partial death which, in certain delicate or powerful natures, leads to the terrible ruin produced by disenchantment, by hopes and passions betrayed. Thus it was with the young painter. He went out at a very early hour to walk under the fresh shade of the Tuileries, absorbed in his thoughts, forgetting everything in the world.
There by chance he met one of his most intimate friends, a schoolfellow and studio-mate, with whom he had lived on better terms than with a brother.
“Why, Hippolyte, what ails you?” asked François Souchet, the young sculptor who had just won the first prize, and was soon to set out for Italy.
“I am most unhappy,” replied Hippolyte gravely.
“Nothing but a love affair can cause you grief. Money, glory, respect—you lack nothing.”
Insensibly the painter was led into confidences, and confessed his love. The moment he mentioned the Rue de Suresnes, and a young girl living on the fourth floor, “Stop, stop,” cried Souchet lightly. “A little girl I see every morning at the Church of the Assumption, and with whom I have a flirtation. But, my dear fellow, we all know her. The mother is a Baroness. Do you really believe in a Baroness living up four flights of stairs? Brrr! Why, you are a relic of the golden age! We see the old mother here, in this avenue, every day; why, her face, her appearance, tell everything. What, have you not known her for what she is by the way she holds her bag?”
The two friends walked up and down for some time, and several young men who knew Souchet or Schinner joined them. The painter’s adventure, which the sculptor regarded as unimportant, was repeated by him.
“So he, too, has seen that young lady!” said Souchet.
And then there were comments, laughter, innocent mockery, full of the liveliness familiar to artists, but which pained Hippolyte frightfully. A certain native reticence made him uncomfortable as he saw his heart’s secret so carelessly handled, his passion rent, torn to tatters, a young and unknown girl, whose life seemed to be so modest, the victim of condemnation, right or wrong, but pronounced with such reckless indifference. He pretended to be moved by a spirit of contradiction, asking each for proofs of his assertions, and their jests began again.
“But, my dear boy, have you seen the Baroness’ shawl?” asked Souchet.
“Have you ever followed the girl when she patters off to church in the morning?” said Joseph Bridau, a young dauber in Gros’ studio.
“Oh, the mother has among other virtues a certain gray gown, which I regard as typical,” said Bixiou, the caricaturist.
“Listen, Hippolyte,” the sculptor went on. “Come here at about four o’clock, and just study the walk of both mother and daughter. If after that you still have doubts! well, no one can ever make anything of you; you would be capable of marrying your porter’s daughter.”
Torn by the most conflicting feelings, the painter parted from his friends. It seemed to him that Adélaïde and her mother must be superior to these accusations, and at the bottom of his heart he was filled with remorse for having suspected the purity of this beautiful and simple girl. He went to his studio, passing the door of the rooms where Adélaïde was, and conscious of a pain at his heart which no man can misapprehend. He loved Mademoiselle de Rouville so passionately that, in spite of the theft of the purse, he still worshiped her. His love was that of the Chevalier des Grieux admiring his mistress, and holding her as pure, even on the cart which carries such lost creatures to prison. “Why should not my love keep her the purest of women? Why abandon her to evil and to vice without holding out a rescuing hand to her?”
The idea of this mission pleased him. Love makes a gain of everything. Nothing tempts a young man more than to play the part of a good genius to a woman. There
