The Confession
When Captain Hector-Marie de Fontenne married Mlle. Laurine d’Estelle, parents and friends were of the opinion that it was a most unsuitable match.
Mlle. Laurine, pretty, slender, fragile, fair and self-possessed, had at twelve the assurance of a woman of thirty. She was one of those precocious little Parisians who seem to have been born with a perfect understanding of the art of life, equipped with every feminine wile, every intellectual audacity, and with the profound guile and subtlety of mind that makes certain men and women seem fated, however they may act, to trick and deceive others. Their every action seems premeditated, their every move calculated, their every word carefully weighed; their existence is only a part that they play to an audience of their fellow creatures.
She was charming too: bubbling with laughter, laughter that she could neither restrain nor moderate when she came across anything amusing or odd. She laughed in people’s faces in the most impudent way in the world, but so charmingly that no one was ever offended.
She was rich, immensely rich. A priest acted as intermediary to arrange her marriage with Captain de Fontenne. Educated in a seminary, in the most austere fashion, this officer had brought to the regiment the manners of the cloister, the strictest principles and an armour-plated intolerance. He was one of those men who become by an inevitable fate either saints or nihilists, over whose minds ideas exercise an absolute tyranny, whose beliefs are never shaken nor their resolutions broken.
He was a tall dark youth, grave, austere, ingenuous, single-minded, curt and obstinate, one of those men who go through life with not the least understanding of its hidden meanings, its halftones and its subtleties, guessing nothing, suspecting nothing, never admitting that anyone thinks, judges, believes or acts otherwise than they do themselves.
Mlle. Laurine saw him, read his character at a glance, and agreed to take him for her husband.
They got on splendidly together. She was tactful, quick-witted and subtle, able to adapt herself to any role circumstances demanded of her, diligent in good works and ardent in pleasure, assiduous in her attendance at church and theatre, urbane and correct, with a delicate suggestion of irony and a gleam that lurked in her eye when she was holding grave converse with her grave husband. She related to him the charitable enterprises she undertook with all the priests of the parish and the neighbourhood, and these pious occupations provided her with an excuse for staying out from morning till night.
But sometimes, in the very middle of reciting some charitable deed, she fell abruptly into a wild fit of laughter, nervous and quite irrepressible laughter. Captain de Fontenne was surprised and uneasy and a little shocked by the spectacle of his wife choking with mirth. When she was recovering her self-control he would ask: “Well, what is it, Laurine?” “It’s nothing,” she answered; “I just thought of an odd thing that happened to me.” And she would proceed to tell him some tale or other.
Well, during the summer of 1883, Captain Hector de Fontenne took part in the grand manoeuvres of the 32nd Army Corps.
One evening, when they were camping in the outskirts of a town, after ten days of living under canvas and in the open country, ten days of hard work and rough living, the captain’s comrades determined to stand themselves a good dinner.
At first M. de Fontenne refused to accompany them; then, as his refusal caused surprise, he agreed.
His neighbour at table, Major de Faure, under cover of talking about military operations, the only thing in which Captain de Fontenne was passionately interested, filled his glass again and again. The day had been very warm, with a heavy, scorching, thirsty heat; and Captain de Fontenne went on drinking without thinking what he did: he did not notice that, little by little, an unwonted gaiety was taking possession of him, a sharp heady excitement. He was glad to be alive, full of wakening desires, new appetites, vague longings.
With the dessert, he was drunk. He talked, laughed, gesticulated, completely and clamorously drunk, with the mad drunkenness of your habitually quiet and abstemious man.
It was proposed to finish the evening at the theatre: he accompanied his comrades. One of them recognised an actress whose lover he had been; and a supper party was arranged that included part of the feminine personnel of the company.
Captain de Fontenne woke up next morning in a strange bedroom and in the arms of a little, fair-haired woman, who greeted him with: “Good morning, dearie,” when she saw him opening his eyes.
At first he did not realise what had happened; then, slowly, things came back to him—a little confusingly, however.
Then he got up without saying a word, dressed, and emptied his purse on the mantelpiece.
He was overwhelmed with shame at the vision of himself standing, in uniform, sword at his side, in this apartment room, with its shabby curtains and a stain-mottled couch of dubious aspect: he dared not go away, nor walk down the staircase where he would meet people, nor pass the concierge, and above all he dared not walk out into the street under the eyes of passersby and neighbours.
The woman continued to reiterate: “What’s got you? Have you lost your tongue? You wagged it freely enough last night. You are a freak, you are!”
He saluted her ceremoniously, and summoning up courage to get away, he strode back to his lodging, convinced that everyone knew by his
