“It’s odd,” said La Pérouse, very much out of countenance, “he seemed to be amused, but all of a sudden he got tired of it. I am afraid he is a little wanting in patience.”
It was a mistake to leave them alone together too long.
Sept. 27th.—This morning met Molinier under the arcades of the Odéon. Pauline and George are not coming back till the day after tomorrow. If Molinier, who has been by himself in Paris since yesterday, was as bored as I am, it’s no wonder that he seemed enchanted to see me. We went and sat down in the Luxembourg, till it should be time for lunch, and agreed to take it together.
Molinier, when he is with me, affects a rather jocose—even, at times, a kind of rakish tone—which he no doubt thinks the correct thing to please an artist. A desire too to show that he is still full of beans.
“At heart,” he declared, “I am a passionate man.” I understand that what he really meant was that he was a libidinous one. I smiled, as one would if one heard a woman declare she had very fine legs—a smile which signifies “I never doubted it for a moment.” Until that day I had only seen the magistrate; the man at last threw aside his toga.
I waited till we were seated at table at Foyot’s before speaking to him of Olivier; I told him that I had recently had news of him through one of his schoolfellows, and that I had heard he was travelling in Corsica with the Comte de Passavant.
“Yes, he’s a friend of Vincent’s: he offered to take him with him. As Olivier had just passed his bachot rather brilliantly, his mother thought it would be hard to refuse him such a pleasure. … The Comte de Passavant is a writer. I expect you know him.”
I did not conceal that I had no great liking for either his books or his person.
“Amongst confrères one is sometimes apt to be a little severe in one’s judgments,” he retorted. “I tried to read his last novel; certain critics think very highly of it. I didn’t see much in it myself; but it’s not my line, you know. …” Then as I expressed my fear as to the influence Passavant might have over Olivier:
“In reality,” he added in his rather woolly way, “I personally didn’t approve of this expedition. But it’s no good not realizing that when they get to a certain age our children escape from our control. It’s in the nature of things and there’s nothing to be done. Pauline would like to go on hanging over them forever. She’s like all mothers. I sometimes say to her: ‘But you worry your sons to death. Leave them alone. It’s you who put things into their heads with all your questions. …’ For my part I consider it does no good to watch over them too long. The important thing is that a few good principles should be inculcated into them during their early education. The important thing above all is that they should come of a good stock. Heredity, my dear friend, heredity triumphs over everything. There are certain bad lots whom nothing can improve—the predestined, we call them. Those must have a tight hand kept over them. But when one has to do with well-conditioned natures, one can let them go a bit easy.”
“But you were telling me,” I insisted, “that you didn’t approve of Olivier’s being carried off in this way.”
“Oh! approve … approve!” he said with his nose in his plate, “there’s no need for my approval. There are many households, you know—and those the most united—where it isn’t always the husband who settles things. But you aren’t married; such things don’t interest you. …”
“Oh!” said I, laughing, “but I’m a novelist.”
“Then you have no doubt remarked that it isn’t always from weakness of character that a man allows himself to be led by his wife.”
“Yes,” I conceded by way of flattery, “there are strong and even dominating men whom one discovers to be of a lamblike docility in their married life.”
“And do you know why?” he went on. “Nine times out of ten, when the husband submits to his wife, it is because he has something to be forgiven him. A virtuous woman, my dear fellow, takes advantage of everything. If the man stoops for a second, there she is sitting on his shoulders. Oh! we poor husbands are sometimes greatly to be pitied. When we are young, our one wish is to have chaste wives, without a thought of how much their virtue is going to cost us.”
I gazed at Molinier, sitting there with his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands. The poor man little suspected how naturally his backbone fell into the stooping attitude of which he complained; he kept mopping his forehead, ate a great deal—not like a gourmet, but like a glutton—and seemed particularly to appreciate the old Burgundy which we had ordered. Happy to feel himself listened to, understood, and, no doubt he thought, approved, he overflowed in confessions.
“In my capacity as magistrate,” he continued, “I have known women who only lent themselves to their husbands against the grain of their heart and senses … and who yet are indignant when the poor wretch who has been repulsed, seeks his provender elsewhere.”
The magistrate had begun his sentence in the past; the husband finished it in the present, with an unmistakable allusion to himself. He added sententiously between two mouthfuls:
“Other people’s appetites easily appear excessive when one doesn’t share them.” He drank a long draught of wine, then: “And this explains, my dear friend, how a husband loses the direction of his household.”
I understood, indeed—it was clear under the apparent incoherence of his talk—his desire to make the responsibility of his own shortcomings fall upon his wife’s virtue. Creatures as disjointed as
