Short Fiction

shoulders.

“As if he did more than anyone else! He has a bright wife, that is all. She captivated the head of the department and now gets everything she wants. In this life we have to look out that we are not fooled by circumstances.”

What did he really mean? What did she infer? What occurred? Each of them had a calendar on which the days which separated them from the fatal term were marked; and every week they were overcome by a sort of madness, a desperate rage, a wild exasperation, so that they felt capable of committing a crime if necessary.

And then one morning Madame Bonnin, with shining eyes and a radiant face, laid her hands on her husband’s shoulders, looked at him intently, joyfully, and whispered: “I believe that I am pregnant.” He experienced such a shock that he almost collapsed; and suddenly clasping his wife in his arms, he drew her down on his knee, kissed her like a beloved child and, overwhelmed by emotion, sobbed aloud.

Two months later, doubt was no longer possible. He went with her to a physician and had the latter make out a certificate which he handed to the executor of the will. The lawyer stated that, inasmuch as the child existed, whether born or unborn, he could do nothing but bow to circumstances, and would postpone the execution of the will until the birth of the heir.

A boy was born, whom they christened Dieudonné, in remembrance of the practice in royal households.

They were very rich.

One evening, when M. Bonnin came home⁠—his friend Frédéric Morel was to dine with them⁠—his wife remarked casually: “I have just requested our friend Frédéric never to enter this house again. He insulted me.” Léopold looked at her for a second with a light of gratitude in his eyes, and then he opened his arms; she flew to him and they kissed each other tenderly, like the good, united, upright little couple that they were.

And it is worth while to hear Madame Bonnin talk about women who have transgressed for love, and those whom a great passion has led to adultery.

The Will

I knew that tall young fellow, René de Bourneval. He was an agreeable companion, though rather melancholy, and disillusioned about everything, very sceptical, with a scepticism which was direct and devastating, and especially skilful in exposing social hypocrisies in a biting phrase. He often used to say:

“There are no honest men, or, at least, they only appear so in comparison with swine.”

He had two brothers, whom he shunned, the Messieurs de Courcils. I thought they were by another father, on account of the difference in the name. I had frequently heard that something strange had happened in the family, but no details were given.

As I took a great liking to him, we soon became intimate, and one evening, when I had been dining with him alone, I asked him by chance: “Are you by your mother’s first or second marriage?” He grew rather pale; then he flushed, and did not speak for a few moments; he was visibly embarrassed. Then he smiled in that melancholy and gentle manner peculiar to him, and said:

“My dear friend, if it will not bore you, I can tell you some very strange details about my life. I know you to be a sensible man, so I am not afraid that our friendship will suffer by my revelations, and if it did, I should not care about having you for my friend any longer.

“My mother, Madame de Courcils, was a poor, timid, little woman, whom her husband had married for the sake of her fortune. Her whole life was a martyrdom. Of an affectionate, timorous and sensitive nature, she was constantly ill-treated by the man who ought to have been my father, one of those boors called country gentlemen. A month after their marriage he was living with a servant, and besides that, the wives and daughters of his tenants were his mistresses, which did not prevent him from having two children by his wife, three, if you count me. My mother said nothing, and lived in that noisy house like one of those little mice which slip under the furniture. Self-effacing, retiring and nervous, she looked at people with bright, uneasy, restless eyes, the eyes of some terrified creature which can never shake off its fear. And yet she was pretty, very pretty and fair, a grey blonde, as if her hair had lost its colour through her constant fears.

“Among Monsieur de Courcils’s friends who constantly came to the château there was an ex-cavalry officer, a widower, a man to be feared, a man at the same time tender and violent, and capable of the most energetic resolution, Monsieur de Bourneval, whose name I bear. He was a tall, thin man, with a heavy black mustache, and I am very like him. He was a man who had read a great deal, and whose ideas were not like those of most of his class. His great-grandmother had been a friend of J. J. Rousseau, and it seemed as if he had inherited something from this connection of his ancestor’s. He knew the Contrat Social and the Nouvelle Héloïse by heart, and, indeed, all those philosophical books which led the way to the overthrow of our old usage, prejudices, superannuated laws, and imbecile morality.

“It seemed that he loved my mother, and she loved him, but their intrigue was carried on so secretly that no one guessed it. The poor, neglected, unhappy woman must have clung to him desperately, and in her intimacy with him must have imbibed all his ways of thinking, theories of free thought, audacious ideas of independent love. But as she was so timid that she never ventured to speak aloud, it was all driven back, condensed, and compressed in her heart, which never opened itself.

“My two brothers were very cruel to her, like their father, and never gave her a caress.