The Complete Works: Short Stories, Novels, Plays, Poetry, Memoirs and more. Guy de Maupassant
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for his wife, he could bring her to Paris, and there introduce her into society as the daughter of Andermatt’s partner. Moreover, she bore the name of the spa, to which he would never bring her back!
Never! never! in virtue of the natural law that streams do not return to their sources. She had a nice face and figure, sufficiently distinguished already to become entirely so, sufficiently intelligent to understand the ways of society, to hold her own in it, to make a good show in it, and even to do him honor. People would say: “This joker here has married a lovely girl, at whom he looks as if he were not making a bad joke of it.” And he would not make a bad joke of it, in fact, for he counted on resuming by her side his bachelor existence with the money in his pockets.
So he turned toward Louise Oriol, and, taking advantage of the jealousy awakened in the skittish heart of the young girl, without being aware of it, had excited in her a coquetry which had hitherto slumbered, and a vague desire to take away from her sister this handsome lover whom people addressed as “Monsieur le Comte.”
She had not said this in her own mind. She had neither thought it out nor contrived it, being surprised at their being thrown together and going off in one another’s company. But when she saw him assiduous and gallant toward her, she felt from his demeanor, from his glances, and his entire attitude, that he was not enamored of Charlotte, and without trying to see beyond that, she was in a happy, joyous, almost triumphant frame of mind as she lay down to sleep.
They hesitated for a long time on the following Thursday before starting for the Puy de la Nugère. The gloomy sky and the heavy atmosphere made them anticipate rain. But Gontran insisted so strongly on going that he carried the waverers along with him. The breakfast was a melancholy affair. Christiane and Paul had quarreled the night before, without apparent cause. Andermatt was afraid that Gontran’s marriage might not take place, for Père Oriol had, that very morning, spoken of him in equivocal terms. Gontran, on being informed of this, got angry and made up his mind that he would succeed. Charlotte, foreseeing her sister’s triumph, without at all understanding this transfer of Gontran’s affections, strongly desired to remain in the village. With some difficulty they prevailed on her to come.
Accordingly the Noah’s Ark carried its full number of ordinary passengers in the direction of the high plateau which looks down on Volvic. Louise Oriol, suddenly becoming loquacious, acted as their guide along the road. She explained how the stone of Volvic, which is nothing else but the lava-current of the surrounding peaks, had helped to build all the churches and all the houses in the district — a circumstance which gives to the towns in Auvergne the dark and charred-looking aspect that they present.
She pointed out the yards where this stone was cut, showed them the molten rock that was worked as a quarry, from which was extracted the rough lava, and made them view with admiration, standing on a hilltop and bending over Volvic, the immense black Virgin who protects the town. Then they ascended toward the upper plateau, embossed with extinct volcanoes. The horses went at a walking pace over the long and toilsome road. Their path was bordered with beautiful green woods, and nobody talked any longer.
Christiane was thinking about Tazenat. It was the same carriage; they were the same persons; but their hearts were no longer the same. Everything seemed as it had been — and yet? and yet? What then had happened? Almost nothing. A little love the more on her part! A little love the less on his! Almost nothing — the invisible rent which weariness makes in an intimate attachment — oh! almost nothing — and the look in the changed eyes, because the same eyes no longer saw the same faces in the same way. What is this but a look? Almost nothing!
The coachman drew up, and said: “It is here, at the right, through that path in the wood. You have only to follow it in order to get there.
All descended, save the Marquis, who thought the weather too warm. Louise and Gontran went on in front, and Charlotte remained behind with Paul and Christiane, who found difficulty in walking. The path appeared to them long, right through the wood; then they reached a crest covered with tall grass which led by a steep ascent to the sides of the old crater. Louise and Gontran, halting when they got to the top, both looking tall and slender, had the appearance of standing in the clouds. When the others had come up with them, Paul Bretigny’s enthusiastic soul was inflamed with poetic rapture.
Around them, behind them, to right, to left, they were surrounded by strange cones, decapitated, some shooting forth, others crushed into a mass, but all preserving their fantastic physiognomy of dead volcanoes. These heavy fragments of mountains with flat summits rose from south to west along an im mense plateau of desolate appearance, which, itself a thousand meters above the Limagne, looked down upon it, as far as the eye could reach, toward the east and the north, on to the invisible horizon, always veiled, always blue.
The Puy de Dome, at the right, towered above all its fellows, with from seventy to eighty craters now gone to sleep. Further on were the Puy de Gravenoire, the Puy de Crouel, the Puy de la Pedge, the Puy de Sault, the Puy de Noschamps, the Puy de la Vache. Nearer, were the Puy de Come, the Puy de Jumes, the Puy de Tressoux, the Puy de Louchadière —— a vast cemetery of volcanoes.
The young men gazed at the scene in amazement. At their feet opened the first crater of La Nugère, a deep grassy basin at the bottom of which could be seen three enormous blocks of brown lava, lifted up with the monster’s last puff and then sunk once more into his throat as he expired, remaining there from century to century forever.
Gontran exclaimed: “As for me, I am going down to the bottom. I want to see how they give up the ghost — creatures of this sort. Come along, Mesdemoiselles, for a little run down the slope.” And seizing Louise’s arm, he dragged her after him. Charlotte followed them, running after them. Then, all of a sudden, she stopped, watched them as they flew along, jumping with their arms linked, and, turning back abruptly, she reascended toward Christiane and Paul, who were seated on the grass at the top of the declivity. When she reached them, she fell upon her knees, and, hiding her face in the young girl’s robe she wore, she burst out sobbing.
Christiane, who understood what was the matter, and whom all the sorrows of others had, for some time past, pierced like wounds inflicted upon herself, flung her arms around the girl’s neck, and, moved also by her tears, murmured: “Poor little thing! poor little thing!” The girl kept crying incessantly, and with her hands dropping listlessly to the ground, she tore up the grass unconscious of what she was doing.
Bretigny had risen up in order to avoid the appearance of having observed her, but this misery endured by a young girl, this distress of an innocent creature, filled him suddenly with indignation against Gontran. He, whom Christiane’s deep anguish only exasperated, was touched to the bottom of his heart by a girl’s first disillusion.
He came back, and kneeling down in his turn, in order to speak to her, said: “Come, calm yourself, I beg of you. They are going to return presently. They must not see you crying.”
She sprang to her feet, scared by this idea that her sister might find her with tears in her eyes. Her throat remained choking with sobs, which she held back, which she swallowed down, which she sent back into her heart, filling it with more poignant grief. She faltered: “Yes — yes — it is over — it is nothing — it is over. Look here! It cannot be noticed now. Isn’t that so? It cannot be noticed now.”
Christiane wiped her cheeks with her handkerchief, then passed it also across her own. She said to Paul:
“Go, pray, and see what they are doing. We cannot see them any longer. They have disappeared under the blocks of lava. I will look after this little one, and console her.”
Bretigny had again stood up, and in a trembling voice, said: “I am going there — and I’ll bring them back, but it will be my affair — your brother — this very day — and he shall give me an explanation of his unjustifiable conduct, after what he said to us the other day.” He began to descend, running toward the center of the crater.
Gontran, hurrying Louise along, had pulled her with all his strength over the steep side of the chasm, in order to hold her up, to sustain her, to put her out of breath, to make her dizzy, and to frighten her. She, carried along