Her name is Mme. Hermet. She was very beautiful, a real coquette, loved of many, and full of the joy of life.
She was one of those women whose sole consolation in life is derived from and their conduct dictated by their beauty and their desire to please.
The unremitting anxiety to preserve her freshness, the care of her face, her hands, teeth, of every part of her body that she could display, absorbed all her time and all her attention.
She became a widow, with one son. The child was brought up in the same way as are all children of much admired women. She loved him, however.
He grew up, and she grew old. Whether or not she saw the fatal moment coming, I don’t know. Did she, like so many others, gaze every morning for hours and hours at the skin that used to be so delicate, so clear and fresh, and now is wrinkling a little under the eyes, creasing itself in a thousand lines, that are imperceptible now, but will deepen and deepen, day by day, month by month? And did she see, more and more strongly marked, advancing with slow relentless certainty, the long lines graven on the forehead, those thin serpents whose progress nothing halts? Did she endure the torture, the abominable torture, of the looking-glass, of the small silver hand-glass that she could not resolve to leave on the table, then threw down in anger, and a moment later picked up again, to see once more, ever nearer and nearer, the hateful silent ravages of approaching age? Did she shut herself up ten, twenty times a day, leaving, for no reason, the drawing room where her friends were chatting, to go up to her bedroom and, safeguarded by bolts and locks, gaze again on the destruction at work in the ripened fading flesh, to examine despairingly the hardly perceptible advance that so far no one else seems to notice but of which she herself is bitterly aware? She knows where the most serious ravages are, where the tooth of age bites deepest. And the glass, the small, quite round glass in its frame of chased silver, says dreadful things to her, for it speaks, it seems to laugh, it rails on her and predicts all that is coming to pass, all the miseries of her body, and the atrocious torture of her mind that will endure to the day of her death, which will be that of her deliverance.
Did she weep, distracted, on her knees, her forehead on the ground, and pray, pray, pray to Him who kills His creatures thus, giving them youth only to make age the more bitter, and lending them beauty only to take it back almost at once; did she pray Him, implore Him, to grant to her what He had never granted to anyone, to allow her to keep until her last day, charm and freshness and grace? Then, realising that in vain does she implore the implacable Unknown who adds year to year in endless number, did she roll with writhing arms on the carpet of her room, did she beat her forehead on its furniture and stifle in her throat her frightful despairing cries?
She must have endured these tortures. For this is what happened:
One day (she was then thirty-five years old) her son, aged fifteen, fell ill.
He took to his bed before the doctors had been able to diagnose the cause of his illness or its nature. An abbé, his tutor, watched over him, hardly leaving his side, while Mme. Hermet came morning and evening to hear his report.
She entered in the morning in a rest gown, smiling, already scented, and asked, from the door:
“Well, George, are you getting better?”
The tall youngster, crimson, his face swollen, and wasted by the fever, would answer:
“Yes, mammie, a little better.”
She lingered a few moments in the bedroom, examining the bottles of medicine and making little grimaces of disgust, then suddenly cried: “Oh, I was forgetting something very important,” and she took herself off, running, leaving behind her the delicate fragrance of her morning toilet.
At night she appeared in her evening gown, in a still greater hurry, for she was always late, and she had just time to ask:
“Well, what did the doctor say?”
The abbé replied:
“He’s not sure yet, madame.”
But, one evening, the abbé replied:
“Madam, your son has taken smallpox.”
She uttered a loud cry of fear and rushed away. When her maid came to her room next morning the first thing she noticed in the room was a strong smell of burnt sugar, and she found her mistress, wide-awake, her face pale for lack of sleep and shaking with anguish in her bed.
As soon as the shutters were open Mme. Hermet asked:
“How is George?”
“Oh, not at all well today, madame.”
She did not get up until midday, ate two eggs with a cup of tea, as if she herself were ill, then she went out and consulted a chemist as to the best methods of keeping off the infection of smallpox.
She did not return until dinnertime, laden with phials, and shut herself at once in her room, where she soaked herself in disinfectants.
The abbé was waiting for her in the dining room. As soon as she caught sight of him she cried, in a voice full of emotion:
“Well?”
“Oh, no better. The doctor is very anxious.”
She began to cry, and could eat nothing, so wretched was she.
The next day, at dawn, she sent for news: the report was no better and she spent the whole day in her room, where small braziers were smoking and filling the room with powerful odours. Moreover, her maid declared that she heard her moaning all the evening.
A whole week passed in this way: she did nothing at all but go out for an hour or two to take the air, towards the middle of the afternoon.
She asked for news every hour now, and sobbed when each report was worse.
On the morning of the eleventh day, the abbé
