“A wife with brains!” returned Frederick automatically.
“I believe you.”
And once more Arnoux began to sing his wife’s praises. There was no one like her for spirit, tenderness, and thrift; he added in a low tone, rolling his eyes about: “And a woman with so many charms, too!”
“Goodbye!” said Frederick.
Arnoux made a step closer to him.
“Hold on! Why are you going?” And, with his hand half-stretched out towards Frederick, he stared at the young man, quite abashed by the look of anger in his face.
Frederick repeated in a dry tone, “Goodbye!”
He hurried down the Rue de Bréda like a stone rolling headlong, raging against Arnoux, swearing in his own mind that he would never see the man again, nor her either, so brokenhearted and desolate did he feel. In place of the rupture which he had anticipated, here was the other, on the contrary, exhibiting towards her a most perfect attachment from the ends of her hair to the inmost depths of her soul. Frederick was exasperated by the vulgarity of this man. Everything, then, belonged to him! He would meet Arnoux again at his mistress’s door; and the mortification of a rupture would be added to rage at his own powerlessness. Besides, he felt humiliated by the other’s display of integrity in offering him guaranties for his money. He would have liked to strangle him, and over the pangs of disappointment floated in his conscience, like a fog, the sense of his baseness towards his friend. Rising tears nearly suffocated him.
Deslauriers descended the Rue des Martyrs, swearing aloud with indignation; for his project, like an obelisk that has fallen, now assumed extraordinary proportions. He considered himself robbed, as if he had suffered a great loss. His friendship for Frederick was dead, and he experienced a feeling of joy at it—it was a sort of compensation to him! A hatred of all rich people took possession of him. He leaned towards Sénécal’s opinions, and resolved to make every effort to propagate them.
All this time, Arnoux was comfortably seated in an easy-chair near the fire, sipping his cup of tea, with the Maréchale on his knees.
Frederick did not go back there; and, in order to distract his attention from his disastrous passion, he determined to write a “History of the Renaissance.” He piled up confusedly on his table the humanists, the philosophers, and the poets, and he went to inspect some engravings of Mark Antony, and tried to understand Machiavelli. Gradually, the serenity of intellectual work had a soothing effect upon him. While his mind was steeped in the personality of others, he lost sight of his own—which is the only way, perhaps, of getting rid of suffering.
One day, while he was quietly taking notes, the door opened, and the manservant announced Madame Arnoux.
It was she, indeed! and alone? Why, no! for she was holding little Eugène by the hand, followed by a nurse in a white apron. She sat down, and after a preliminary cough:
“It is a long time since you came to see us.”
As Frederick could think of no excuse at the moment, she added:
“It was delicacy on your part!”
He asked in return:
“Delicacy about what?”
“About what you have done for Arnoux!” said she.
Frederick made a significant gesture. “What do I care about him, indeed? It was for your sake I did it!”
She sent off the child to play with his nurse in the drawing-room. Two or three words passed between them as to their state of health; then the conversation hung fire.
She wore a brown silk gown, which had the colour of Spanish wine, with a paletot of black velvet bordered with sable. This fur made him yearn to pass his hand over it; and her headbands, so long and so exquisitely smooth, seemed to draw his lips towards them. But he was agitated by emotion, and, turning his eyes towards the door:
“ ’Tis rather warm here!”
Frederick understood what her discreet glance meant.
“Ah! excuse me! the two leaves of the door are merely drawn together.”
“Yes, that’s true!”
And she smiled, as much as to say:
“I’m not a bit afraid!”
He asked her presently what was the object of her visit.
“My husband,” she replied with an effort, “has urged me to call on you, not venturing to take this step himself!”
“And why?”
“You know M. Dambreuse, don’t you?”
“Yes, slightly.”
“Ah! slightly.”
She relapsed into silence.
“No matter! finish what you were going to say.”
Thereupon she told him that, two days before, Arnoux had found himself unable to meet four bills of a thousand francs, made payable at the banker’s order and with his signature attached to them. She felt sorry for having compromised her children’s fortune. But anything was preferable to dishonour; and, if M. Dambreuse stopped the proceedings, they would certainly pay him soon, for she was going to sell a little house which she had at Chartres.
“Poor woman!” murmured Frederick. “I will go. Rely on me!”
“Thanks!”
And she arose to go.
“Oh! there is nothing to hurry you yet.”
She remained standing, examining the trophy of Mongolian arrows suspended from the ceiling, the bookcase, the bindings, all the utensils for writing. She lifted up the bronze bowl which held his pens. Her feet rested on different portions of the carpet. She had visited Frederick several times before, but always accompanied by Arnoux. They were now alone together—alone in his own house. It was an extraordinary event—almost a successful issue of his love.
She wished to see his little garden. He offered her his arm to show her his property—thirty feet of ground enclosed by some houses, adorned with shrubs at the corners and flower-borders in the middle. The early days of April had arrived. The leaves of the lilacs were already showing their borders of green. A breath of pure air was diffused around, and the little birds chirped, their song alternating with the distant sound that came from a coachmaker’s forge.
Frederick went to look for a
