“Come, another glass of port. …”
“Not quite full, please.”
“You see, the great weakness of the symbolist school is that it brought nothing but an aesthetic with it; all the other great schools brought with them, besides their new styles, a new ethic, new tables, a new way of looking at things, of understanding love, of behaving oneself in life. As for the symbolist, it’s perfectly simple; he didn’t behave himself at all in life; he didn’t attempt to understand it; he denied its existence; he turned his back on it. Absurd, don’t you think? They were a set of people without greed—without appetites even. Not like us … eh?”
Olivier had finished his second glass of port and his second cigarette. Reclining in his comfortable armchair, with his eyes half shut, he said nothing, but signified his assent by slightly nodding his head from time to time. At this moment a ring was heard, and almost immediately afterwards a servant entered with a card which he presented to Robert. Robert took the card, glanced at it and put it on his writing desk beside him.
“Very well. Ask him to wait a moment.” The servant went out. “Look here, my dear boy, I like you very much and I think we shall get on very well together. But somebody has just come whom I absolutely must see and he wants to speak to me alone.”
Olivier had risen.
“I’ll show you out by the garden, if you’ll allow me. … Ah! whilst I think of it. Would you care to have my new book? I’ve got a copy here, on handmade paper. …”
“I haven’t waited for that to read it,” said Olivier, who didn’t much care for Passavant’s book, and tried his best to be amiable without being fulsome.
Did Passavant detect in his tone a certain tincture of disdain? He went on quickly: “Oh, you needn’t say anything about it. If you were to tell me you liked it, I should be obliged to doubt either your taste or your sincerity. No; no one knows better than I do what’s lacking in the book. I wrote it much too quickly. To tell the truth, the whole time I was writing it I was thinking of my next one. Ah! that one is a different matter. I care about that one. Yes, I care about it exceedingly. You’ll see; you’ll see. … I’m so very sorry, but you really must leave me now. … Unless. … No, no; we don’t know each other well enough yet, and your people are certainly expecting you back for dinner. Well, goodbye; au revoir. I’ll write your name in the book; allow me.”
He had risen; he went up to his writing desk. While he was stooping to write, Olivier stepped forward and glanced out of the corner of his eye at the card which the servant had just brought in:
Victor Strouvilhou
The name meant nothing to him.
Passavant handed Olivier the copy of The Horizontal Bar, and as Olivier was preparing to read the inscription:
“Look at it later,” said Passavant, slipping the book under his arm.
It was not till he was in the street that Olivier read the manuscript motto with which the Comte de Passavant had adorned the first page and which he had culled out of the book itself:
“Prithee, Orlando, a few steps further. I am not perfectly sure that I dare altogether take your meaning.”
Underneath which he had added:
To Olivier Molinier
from his presumptive friend
Comte Robert de Passavant
An ambiguous motto, which made Olivier wonder, but which after all he was perfectly free to interpret as he pleased.
Olivier got home just after Edouard had left, weary of waiting.
XVI
Vincent and Lilian
Vincent’s education, which had been materialistic in tendency, prevented him from believing in the supernatural—which gave the demon an immense advantage. The demon never made a frontal attack upon Vincent; he approached him crookedly and furtively. One of his cleverest manoeuvres consists in presenting us our defeats as if they were victories. What inclined Vincent to consider his behaviour to Laura as a victory of his will over his affections, was that, being naturally kindhearted, he had been obliged to force himself, to steel himself to be hard to her.
Upon a closer examination of the evolution of Vincent’s character in this intrigue, I discover various stages, which I will point out for the reader’s edification:
1st.—The period of good motives. Probity. Conscientious need of repairing a wrong action. In actual fact: the moral obligation of devoting to Laura the money which his parents had laboriously saved to meet the initial expenses of his career. Is this not self-sacrifice? Is this motive not respectable, generous, charitable?
2nd.—The period of uneasiness. Scruples. Is not the fear that this sum may be insufficient, the first step towards yielding, when the demon dangles before Vincent’s eyes the possibility of increasing it?
3rd.—Constancy and fortitude. Need after the loss of this sum to feel himself “above adversity.” It is this “fortitude” which enables him to confess his loss at cards to Laura; and which enables him by the same occasion to break with her.
4th.—Renunciation of good motives, regarded as a cheat, in the light of the new ethic which Vincent finds himself obliged to invent in order to legitimize his conduct; for he continues to be a moral being, and the devil will only get the better of him by furnishing him with reasons for self-approval. Theory of immanence, of totality in the moment; of gratuitous, immediate and motiveless joy.
5th.—Intoxication of the winner. Contempt of the reserve in hand. Supremacy.
After which the demon has won the game.
After which the being who believes himself freest is nothing but a tool at his service. The demon will never rest now till Vincent has sold his brother to that creature of perdition—Passavant.
And yet Vincent is not bad. All this, do what he will, leaves him unsatisfied, uncomfortable. Let us add a few words more:
The
