During the last days employed by the legal formalities required before proceeding to arrest for debt,Raoul went about,in spite of himself,with that coldly sullen and morose expression of face which may be noticed in persons who are either fated to commit suicide or are meditating it.The funereal ideas they are turning over in their minds appear upon their foreheads in gray and cloudy tints,their smile has something fatalistic in it,their motions are solemn.These unhappy beings seem to want to suck the last juices of the life they mean to leave;their eyes see things invisible,their ears are listening to a death-knell,they pay no attention to the minor things about them.
These alarming symptoms Marie perceived one evening at Lady Dudley's.
Raoul was sitting apart on a sofa in the boudoir,while the rest of the company were conversing in the salon.The countess went to the door,but he did not raise his head;he heard neither Marie's breathing nor the rustle of her silk dress;he was gazing at a flower in the carpet,with fixed eyes,stupid with grief;he felt he had rather die than abdicate.All the world can't have the rock of Saint Helena for a pedestal.Moreover,suicide was then the fashion in Paris.Is it not,in fact,the last resource of all atheistical societies?Raoul,as he sat there,had decided that the moment had come to die.Despair is in proportion to our hopes;that of Raoul had no other issue than the grave.
"What is the matter?"cried Marie,flying to him.
"Nothing,"he answered.
There is one way of saying that word "nothing"between lovers which signifies its exact contrary.Marie shrugged her shoulders.
"You are a child,"she said."Some misfortune has happened to you.""No,not to me,"he replied."But you will know all soon enough,Marie,"he added,affectionately.
"What were you thinking of when I came in?"she asked,in a tone of authority.
"Do you want to know the truth?"She nodded."I was thinking of you;Iwas saying to myself that most men in my place would have wanted to be loved without reserve.I am loved,am I not?""Yes,"she answered.
"And yet,"he said,taking her round the waist and kissing her forehead at the risk of being seen,"I leave you pure and without remorse.I could have dragged you into an abyss,but you remain in all your glory on its brink without a stain.Yet one thought troubles me--""What is it?"she asked.
"You will despise me."She smiled superbly."Yes,you will never believe that I have sacredly loved you;I shall be disgraced,I know that.Women never imagine that from the depths of our mire we raise our eyes to heaven and truly adore a Marie.They assail that sacred love with miserable doubts;they cannot believe that men of intellect and poesy can so detach their soul from earthly enjoyment as to lay it pure upon some cherished altar.And yet,Marie,the worship of the ideal is more fervent in men then in women;we find it in women,who do not even look for it in us.""Why are you making me that article?"she said,jestingly.
"I am leaving France;and you will hear to-morrow,how and why,from a letter my valet will bring you.Adieu,Marie."Raoul left the house after again straining the countess to his heart with dreadful pressure,leaving her stupefied and distressed.
"What is the matter,my dear?"said Madame d'Espard,coming to look for her."What has Monsieur Nathan been saying to you?He has just left us in a most melodramatic way.Perhaps you are too reasonable or too unreasonable with him."The countess got into a hackney-coach and was driven rapidly to the newspaper office.At that hour the huge apartments which they occupied in an old mansion in the rue Feydeau were deserted;not a soul was there but the watchman,who was greatly surprised to see a young and pretty woman hurrying through the rooms in evident distress.She asked him to tell her where was Monsieur Nathan.
"At Mademoiselle Florine's,probably,"replied the man,taking Marie for a rival who intended to make a scene.
"Where does he work?"
"In his office,the key of which he carries in his pocket.""I wish to go there."
The man took her to a dark little room looking out on a rear court-yard.The office was at right angles.Opening the window of the room she was in,the countess could look through into the window of the office,and she saw Nathan sitting there in the editorial arm-chair.
"Break in the door,and be silent about all this;I'll pay you well,"she said."Don't you see that Monsieur Nathan is dying?"The man got an iron bar from the press-room,with which he burst in the door.Raoul had actually smothered himself,like any poor work-girl,with a pan of charcoal.He had written a letter to Blondet,which lay on the table,in which he asked him to ascribe his death to apoplexy.The countess,however,had arrived in time;she had Raoul carried to her coach,and then,not knowing where else to care for him,she took him to a hotel,engaged a room,and sent for a doctor.
In a few hours Raoul was out of danger;but the countess did not leave him until she had obtained a general confession of the causes of his act.When he had poured into her heart the dreadful elegy of his woes,she said,in order to make him willing to live:--"I can arrange all that."
But,nevertheless,she returned home with a heart oppressed with the same anxieties and ideas that had darkened Nathan's brow the night before.
"Well,what was the matter with your sister?"said Felix,when his wife returned."You look distressed.""It is a dreadful history about which I am bound to secrecy,"she said,summoning all her nerve to appear calm before him.
In order to be alone and to think at her ease,she went to the Opera in the evening,after which she resolved to go (as we have seen)and discharge her heart into that of her sister,Madame du Tillet;relating to her the horrible scene of the morning,and begging her advice and assistance.Neither the one nor the other could then know that du Tillet himself had lighted the charcoal of the vulgar brazier,the sight of which had so justly terrified the countess.
"He has but me in all the world,"said Marie to her sister,"and Iwill not fail him."
That speech contains the secret motive of most women;they can be heroic when they are certain of being all in all to a grand and irreproachable being.