“You have a great grudge, then, against Pellerin?”
Frederick did not hide his rancour.
The painter, in the meantime, had withdrawn the notorious picture from the show-window. A person should not let himself be put out by trifles. What was the good of making an enemy for himself?
“He has given way to a burst of ill-temper, excusable in a man who hasn’t a sou. You, of course, can’t understand that!”
And, when Deslauriers had gone up to his own apartments, the shopman did not part with Frederick. He even urged his friend to buy the portrait. In fact, Pellerin, abandoning the hope of being able to intimidate him, had got round them so that they might use their influence to obtain the thing for him.
Deslauriers spoke about it again, and pressed him on the point, urging that the artist’s claims were reasonable.
“I am sure that for a sum of, perhaps, five hundred francs—”
“Oh, give it to him! Wait! here it is!” said Frederick.
The picture was brought the same evening. It appeared to him a still more atrocious daub than when he had seen it first. The half-tints and the shades were darkened under the excessive retouchings, and they seemed obscured when brought into relation with the lights, which, having remained very brilliant here and there, destroyed the harmony of the entire picture.
Frederick revenged himself for having had to pay for it by bitterly disparaging it. Deslauriers believed in Frederick’s statement on the point, and expressed approval of his conduct, for he had always been ambitious of constituting a phalanx of which he would be the leader. Certain men take delight in making their friends do things which are disagreeable to them.
Meanwhile, Frederick did not renew his visits to the Dambreuses. He lacked the capital for the investment. He would have to enter into endless explanations on the subject; he hesitated about making up his mind. Perhaps he was in the right. Nothing was certain now, the coal-mining speculation any more than other things. He would have to give up society of that sort. The end of the matter was that Deslauriers was dissuaded from having anything further to do with the undertaking.
From sheer force of hatred he had grown virtuous, and again he preferred Frederick in a position of mediocrity. In this way he remained his friend’s equal and in more intimate relationship with him.
Mademoiselle Roque’s commission had been very badly executed. Her father wrote to him, supplying him with the most precise directions, and concluded his letter with this piece of foolery: “At the risk of giving you nigger on the brain!”
Frederick could not do otherwise than call upon the Arnouxs’, once more. He went to the warehouse, where he could see nobody. The firm being in a tottering condition, the clerks imitated the carelessness of their master.
He brushed against the shelves laden with earthenware, which filled up the entire space in the centre of the establishment; then, when he reached the lower end, facing the counter, he walked with a more noisy tread in order to make himself heard.
The portières parted, and Madame Arnoux appeared.
“What! you here! you!”
“Yes,” she faltered, with some agitation. “I was looking for—”
He saw her handkerchief near the desk, and guessed that she had come down to her husband’s warehouse to have an account given to her as to the business, to clear up some matter that caused her anxiety.
“But perhaps there is something you want?” said she.
“A mere nothing, madame.”
“These shop-assistants are intolerable! they are always out of the way.”
They ought not to be blamed. On the contrary, he congratulated himself on the circumstance.
She gazed at him in an ironical fashion.
“Well, and this marriage?”
“What marriage?”
“Your own!”
“Mine? I’ll never marry as long as I live!”
She made a gesture as if to contradict his words.
“Though, indeed, such things must be, after all? We take refuge in the commonplace, despairing of ever realising the beautiful existence of which we have dreamed.”
“All your dreams, however, are not so—candid!”
“What do you mean?”
“When you drive to races with women!”
He cursed the Maréchale. Then something recurred to his memory.
“But it was you begged of me yourself to see her at one time in the interest of Arnoux.”
She replied with a shake of her head:
“And you take advantage of it to amuse yourself?”
“Good God! let us forget all these foolish things!”
“ ’Tis right, since you are going to be married.”
And she stifled a sigh, while she bit her lips.
Then he exclaimed:
“But I tell you again I am not! Can you believe that I, with my intellectual requirements, my habits, am going to bury myself in the provinces in order to play cards, look after masons, and walk about in wooden shoes? What object, pray, could I have for taking such a step? You’ve been told that she was rich, haven’t you? Ah! what do I care about money? Could I, after yearning long for that which is most lovely, tender, enchanting, a sort of Paradise under a human form, and having found this sweet ideal at last when this vision hides every other from my view—”
And taking her head between his two hands, he began to kiss her on the eyelids, repeating:
“No! no! no! never will I marry! never! never!”
She submitted to these caresses, her mingled amazement and delight having bereft her of the power of motion.
The door of the storeroom above the staircase fell back, and she remained with outstretched arms, as if to bid him keep silence. Steps drew near. Then someone said from behind the door:
“Is Madame there?”
“Come in!”
Madame Arnoux had her elbow on the counter, and was twisting about a pen between her fingers quietly when the bookkeeper threw aside the portière.
Frederick started up, as if on the point of leaving.
“Madame, I have the honour to salute you. The set will be ready—will it not? I may count on this?”
She made no reply. But
