At last, he was about to take his departure for Nogent, when he got a letter from Deslauriers. Two fresh candidates had offered themselves, the one a Conservative, the other a Red; a third, whatever he might be, would have no chance. It was all Frederick’s fault; he had let the lucky moment pass by; he should have come sooner and stirred himself.
“You have not even been seen at the agricultural assembly!” The advocate blamed him for not having any newspaper connection.
“Ah! if you had followed my advice long ago! If we had only a public print of our own!”
He laid special stress on this point. However, many persons who would have voted for him out of consideration for M. Dambreuse, abandoned him now. Deslauriers was one of the number. Not having anything more to expect from the capitalist, he had thrown over his protégé.
Frederick took the letter to show it to Madame Dambreuse.
“You have not been to Nogent, then?” said she.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because I saw Deslauriers three days ago.”
Having learned that her husband was dead, the advocate had come to make a report about the coal-mines, and to offer his services to her as a man of business. This seemed strange to Frederick; and what was his friend doing down there?
Madame Dambreuse wanted to know how he had spent his time since they had parted.
“I have been ill,” he replied.
“You ought at least to have told me about it.”
“Oh! it wasn’t worth while;” besides, he had to settle a heap of things, to keep appointments and to pay visits.
From that time forth he led a double life, sleeping religiously at the Maréchale’s abode and passing the afternoon with Madame Dambreuse, so that there was scarcely a single hour of freedom left to him in the middle of the day.
The infant was in the country at Andilly. They went to see it once a week.
The wet-nurse’s house was on rising ground in the village, at the end of a little yard as dark as a pit, with straw on the ground, hens here and there, and a vegetable-cart under the shed.
Rosanette would begin by frantically kissing her baby, and, seized with a kind of delirium, would keep moving to and fro, trying to milk the she-goat, eating big pieces of bread, and inhaling the odour of manure; she even wanted to put a little of it into her handkerchief.
Then they took long walks, in the course of which she went into the nurseries, tore off branches from the lilac-trees which hung down over the walls, and exclaimed, “Gee ho, donkey!” to the asses that were drawing cars along, and stopped to gaze through the gate into the interior of one of the lovely gardens; or else the wet-nurse would take the child and place it under the shade of a walnut-tree; and for hours the two women would keep talking the most tiresome nonsense.
Frederick, not far away from them, gazed at the beds of vines on the slopes, with here and there a clump of trees; at the dusty paths resembling strips of grey ribbon; at the houses, which showed white and red spots in the midst of the greenery; and sometimes the smoke of a locomotive stretched out horizontally to the bases of the hills, covered with foliage, like a gigantic ostrich’s feather, the thin end of which was disappearing from view.
Then his eyes once more rested on his son. He imagined the child grown into a young man; he would make a companion of him; but perhaps he would be a blockhead, a wretched creature, in any event. He was always oppressed by the illegality of the infant’s birth; it would have been better if he had never been born! And Frederick would murmur, “Poor child!” his heart swelling with feelings of unutterable sadness.
They often missed the last train. Then Madame Dambreuse would scold him for his want of punctuality. He would invent some falsehood.
It was necessary to invent some explanations, too, to satisfy Rosanette. She could not understand how he spent all his evenings; and when she sent a messenger to his house, he was never there! One day, when he chanced to be at home, the two women made their appearance almost at the same time. He got the Maréchale to go away, and concealed Madame Dambreuse, pretending that his mother was coming up to Paris.
Ere long, he found these lies amusing. He would repeat to one the oath which he had just uttered to the other, send them bouquets of the same sort, write to them at the same time, and then would institute a comparison between them. There was a third always present in his thoughts. The impossibility of possessing her seemed to him a justification of his perfidies, which were intensified by the fact that he had to practise them alternately; and the more he deceived, no matter which of the two, the fonder of him she grew, as if the love of one of them added heat to that of the other, and, as if by a sort of emulation, each of them were seeking to make him forget the other.
“Admire my confidence in you!” said Madame Dambreuse one day to him, opening a sheet of paper, in which she was informed that M. Moreau and a certain Rose Bron were living together as husband and wife.
“Can it be that this is the lady of the races?”
“What an absurdity!” he returned. “Let me
