the blue sea, studded with pink shoals, threw its silvery fringe softly on the fine sand of the beach, along the amphitheatre terminated by two golden horns. the beauty of the day threw a ray of sunlight on the tomb of chateaubriand. in a room where a balcony looked out upon the beach, the ocean, the islands, and the promontories, therese was reading the letters which she had found in the morning at the st. malo post-office, and which she had not opened in the boat, loaded with passengers. at once, after breakfast, she had closeted herself in her room, and there, her letters unfolded on her knees, she relished hastily her furtive joy. she was to drive at two o’clock on the mall with her father, her husband, the princess seniavine; madame berthier-d’eyzelles, the wife of the deputy, and madame raymond, the wife of the academician. she had two letters that day. the first one she read exhaled a tender aroma of love. jacques had never displayed more simplicity, more happiness, and more charm.
since he had been in love with her, he said, he had walked so lightly and was supported by such joy that his feet did not touch the earth. he had only one fear, which was that he might be dreaming, and might awake unknown to her. doubtless he was only dreaming. and what a dream! he was like one intoxicated and singing. he had not his reason, happily. absent, he saw her continually. “yes, i see you near me; i see your lashes shading eyes the gray of which is more delicious than all the blue of the sky and the flowers; your lips, which have the taste of a marvellous fruit; your cheeks, where laughter puts two adorable dimples; i see you beautiful and desired, but fleeing and gliding away; and when i open my arms, you have gone; and i see you afar on the long, long beach, not taller than a fairy, in your pink gown, under your parasol. oh, so small! — small as you were one day when i saw you from the height of the campanile in the square at florence. and i say to myself, as i said that day: ‘a bit of grass would suffice to hide her from me, yet she is for me the infinite of joy and of pain.’”
he complained of the torments of absence. and he mingled with his complaints the smiles of fortunate love. he threatened jokingly to surprise her at dinard. “do not be afraid. they will not recognize me. i shall be disguised as a vender of plaster images. it will not be a lie. dressed in gray tunic and trousers, my beard and face covered with white dust, i shall ring the bell of the montessuy villa. you may recognize me, therese, by the statuettes on the plank placed on my head. they will all be cupids. there will be faithful love, jealous love, tender love, vivid love; there will be many vivid loves. and i shall shout in the rude and sonorous language of the artisans of pisa or of florence: ‘tutti gli amori per la signora teersinal!”
the last page of this letter was tender and grave. there were pious effusions in it which reminded therese of the prayer-books she read when a child. “i love you, and i love everything in you: the earth that carries you, on which you weigh so lightly, and which you embellish; the light that allows me to see you; the air you breathe. i like the bent tree of my yard because you have seen it. i have walked tonight on the avenue where i met you one winter night. i have culled a branch of the boxwood at which you looked. in this city, where you are not, i see only you.”
he said at the end of his letter that he was to dine out. in the absence of madame fusellier, who had gone to the country, he should go to a wine-shop of the rue royale where he was known. and there, in the indistinct crowd, he should be alone with her.
therese, made languid by the softness of invisible caresses, closed her eyes and threw back her head on the armchair. when she heard the noise of the carriage coming near the house, she opened the second letter. as soon as she saw the altered handwriting of it, the lines precipitate and uneven, the distracted look of the address, she was troubled.
its obscure beginning indicated sudden anguish and black suspicion: “therese, therese, why did you give yourself to me if you were not giving yourself to me wholly? how does it serve me that you have deceived me, now that i know what i did not wish to know?”
she stopped; a veil came over her eyes. she thought:
“we were so happy a moment ago. what has happened? and i was so pleased at his joy, when it had already gone; it would be better not to write, since letters show only vanished sentiments and effaced ideas.”
she read further. and seeing that he was full of jealousy, she felt discouraged.
“if i have not proved to him that i love him with all my strength, that i love him with all there is in me, how am i ever to persuade him of it?”
and she was impatient to discover the cause of his folly. jacques told it. while taking breakfast in the rue royale he had met a former companion who had just returned from the seaside. they had talked together; chance made that man speak of the countess martin, whom he knew. and at once, interrupting the narration, jacques exclaimed: “therese, therese, why did you lie to me, since i was sure to learn some day that of which i alone was ignorant? but the error is mine more than yours. the letter which you put into the san michele post-box, your meeting at the florence station, would have enlightened me if i had not obstinately retained my illusions and disdained evidence.
“i did not know; i wished to remain ignorant. i did not ask you anything, from fear that you might not be able to continue to lie; i was prudent; and it has happened that an idiot suddenly, brutally, at a restaurant table, has opened my eyes and forced me to know. oh, now that i know, now that i can not doubt, it seems to me that to doubt would be delicious! he gave the name — the name which i heard at fiesole from miss bell, and he added: ‘everybody knows about that.’
“so you loved him. you love him still! he is near you, doubtless. he goes every year to the dinard races. i have been told so. i see him. i see everything. if you knew the images that worry me, you would say, ‘he is mad,’ and you would take pity on me. oh, how i should like to forget you and everything! but i can not. you know very well i can not forget you except with you. i see you incessantly with him. it is torture. i thought i was unfortunate that night on the banks of the arno. but i did not know then what it is to suffer. to-day i know.”
as she finished reading that letter, therese thought: “a word thrown haphazard has placed him in that condition, a word has made him despairing and mad.” she tried to think who might be the wretched fellow who could have talked in that way. she suspected two or three young men whom le menil had introduced to her once, warning her not to trust them. and with one of the white and cold fits of anger she had inherited from her father she said to herself: “i must know who he is.” in the meanwhile what was she to do? her lover in despair, mad, ill, she could not run to him, embrace him, and throw herself on him with such an abandonment that he would feel how entirely she was his, and be forced to believe in her. should she write? how much better it would be to go to him, to fall upon his heart and say to him: “dare to believe i am not yours only!” but she could only write. she had hardly begun her letter when she heard voices and laughter in the garden. therese went down, tranquil and smiling; her large straw hat threw on her face a transparent shadow wherein her gray eyes shone.
“how beautiful she is!” exclaimed princess seniavine. “what a pity it is we never see her! in the morning she is promenading in the alleys of saint malo, in the afternoon she is closeted in her room. she runs away from us.”
the coach turned around the large circle of the beach at the foot of the villas and gardens on the hillside. and they saw at the left the ramparts and the steeple of st. malo rise from the blue sea. then the coach went into a road bordered by hedges, along which walked dinard women, erect under their wide headdresses.
“unfortunately,” said madame raymond, seated on the box by montessuy’s side, “old costumes are dying out. the fault is with the railways.”
“it is true,” said montessuy, “that if it were not for the railways the peasants would still wear their picturesque costumes of other times. but we should not see them.”
“what does it matter?” replied madame raymond. “we could imagine them.”
“but,” asked the princess seniavine, “do you ever see interesting things? i never do.”
madame raymond, who had taken from her husband’s books a vague tint of philosophy, declared that things were nothing, and that the idea was everything.
without looking at madame berthier-d’eyzelles, seated at her right, the countess martin murmured:
“oh, yes, people see only their ideas; they follow only their ideas. they go along, blind and deaf. one can not stop them.”
“but, my dear,” said count martin, placed in front of her, by the princess’s side, “without leading ideas one would go haphazard. have you read, montessuy, the speech delivered by loyer at the unveiling of the cadet-gassicourt statue? the beginning is remarkable. loyer is not lacking in political sense.”
the carriage, having traversed the fields bordered with willows, went up a hill and advanced on a vast, wooded plateau. for a long time it skirted the walls of the park.
“is it the guerric?” asked the princess seniavine.
suddenly, between two stone pillars surmounted by lions, appeared the closed gate. at the end of a long alley stood the gray stones of a castle.
“yes,” said montessuy, “it is the guerric.”
and, addressing therese:
“you knew the marquis de re? at sixty-five he had retained his strength and his youth. he set the fashion and was loved. young men copied his frockcoat, his monocle, his gestures, his exquisite insolence, his amusing fads. suddenly he abandoned society, closed his house, sold his stable, ceased to show himself. do you remember, therese, his sudden disappearance? you had been married a short time. he called on you often. one fine day people learned that he had quitted paris. this is the place where he had come in winter. people tried to find a reason for his sudden retreat; some thought he had run away under the influence of sorrow or humiliation, or from fear that the world might see him grow old. he was afraid of old age more than of anything else. for seven years he has lived in retirement from society; he has not gone out of the castle once. he receives at the guerric two or three old men who were his companions in youth. this gate is opened for them only. since his retirement no one has seen him; no one ever will see him. he shows the same care to conceal himself that he had formerly to show himself. he has not suffered from his decline. he exists in a sort of living death.”
and therese, recalling the amiable old man who had wished to finish gloriously with her his life of gallantry, turned her head and looked at the guerric lifting its four towers above the gray summits of oaks.
on their return she said she had a headache and that she would not take dinner. she locked herself in her room and drew from her jewel casket the lamentable letter. she read over the last page.
“the thought that you belong to another burns me. and then, i did not wish that man to be the one.”
it was a fixed idea. he had written three times on the same leaf these words: “i did not wish that man to be the one.”
she, too, had only one idea: not to lose him. not to lose him, she would have said anything, she would have done anything. she went to her table and wrote, under the spur of a tender, and plaintive violence, a letter wherein she repeated like a groan: “i love you, i love you! i never have loved any one but you. you are alone, alone — do you hear? — in my mind, in me. do not think of what that wretched man said. listen to me! i never loved any one, i swear, any one, before you.”
as she was writing, the soft sigh of the sea accompanied her own sigh. she wished to say, she believed she was saying, real things; and all that she was saying was true of the truth of her love. she heard the heavy step of her father on the stairway. she hid her letter and opened the door. montessuy asked her whether she felt better.
“i came,” he said, “to say good-night to you, and to ask you something. it is probable that i shall meet le menil at the races. he goes there every year. if i meet him, darling, would you have any objection to my inviting him to come here for a few days? your husband thinks he would be agreeable company for you. we might give him the blue room.”
“as you wish. but i should prefer that you keep the blue room for paul vence, who wishes to come. it is possible, too, that choulette may come without warning. it is his habit. we shall see him some morning ringing like a beggar at the gate. you know my husband is mistaken when he thinks le menil pleases me. and then i must go to paris next week for two or three days.”
