The Complete Works: Short Stories, Novels, Plays, Poetry, Memoirs and more. Guy de Maupassant
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for the sun to set, so as to witness until the very end the spectacle of the black and battlemented mount drawn in outline upon a horizon of flame. Their conversation now was upon ordinary topics, such as might be discussed in presence of a stranger, and from time to time Mme de Burne and Mariolle glanced at each other. Then they all returned to the villa, which stood just outside Avranches in a fine garden, overlooking the bay.
Wishing to be prudent, and a little disturbed, moreover, by M. de Pradon’s cold and almost hostile attitude toward him, Mariolle withdrew at an early hour. When he took Mme de Burne’s hand to raise it to his lips, she said to him twice in succession, with a peculiar accent: “Till tomorrow! Till tomorrow!”
As soon as he was gone M. and Mme. Valsaci, who had long since habituated themselves to country ways, proposed that they should go to bed.
“Go,” said Mme de Burne. “I am going to take a walk in the garden.”
“So am I,” her father added.
She wrapped herself in a shawl and went out, and they began to walk side by side upon the white-sanded alleys which the full moon, streaming over lawn and shrubbery, illuminated as if they had been little winding rivers of silver.
After a silence that had lasted for quite a while, M. de Pradon said in a low voice: “My dear child, you will do me the justice to admit that I have never troubled you with my counsels?”
She felt what was coming, and was prepared to meet his attack. “Pardon me, papa,” she said ‘but you did give me one, at least.”
“I did?”
“Yes, yes.”
“A counsel relating to your way of life?”
“Yes; and a very bad one it was, too. And so, if you give me any more, I have made up my mind not to follow them.”
“What was the advice that I gave you?”
“You advised me to marry M. de Burne. That goes to show that you are lacking in judgment, in clearness of insight, in acquaintance with mankind in general and with your daughter in particular.”
“Yes I made a mistake on that occasion; but I am sure that I am right in the very paternal advice that I feel called upon to give you at the present juncture.”
“Let me hear what it is. I will accept as much of it as the circumstances call for.”
“You are on the point of entangling yourself.” She laughed with a laugh that was rather too hearty, and completing the expression of his idea, said: “With M. Mariolle, doubtless?”
“With M. Mariolle.”
“You forget,” she rejoined, “the entanglements that I have already had with M. de Maltry, with M. Massival, with M. Gaston de Lamarthe, and a dozen others, of all of whom you have been jealous; for I never fall in with a man who is nice and willing to show a little devotion for me but all my flock flies into a rage, and you first of all, you whom nature has assigned to me as my noble father and general manager.”
‘No, no, that is not it,” he replied with warmth; “you have never compromised your liberty with anyone. On the contrary you show a great deal of tact in your relations with your friends.”
“My dear papa, I am no longer a child, and I promise you not to involve myself with M. Mariolle any more than I have done with the rest of them; you need have no fears. I admit, however, that it was at my invitation that he came here. I think that he is delightful, just as intelligent as his predecessors and less egotistical; and you thought so too, up to the time when you imagined that you had discovered that I was showing some small preference for him. Oh, you are not so sharp as you think you are! I know you, and I could say a great deal more on this head if I chose. As M. Mariolle was agreeable to me, then, I thought it would be very nice to make a pleasant excursion in his company, quite by chance, of course. It is a piece of stupidity to deprive ourselves of everything that can amuse us when there is no danger attending it. And I incur no danger of involving myself, since you are here.”
She laughed openly as she finished, knowing well that every one of her words had told, that she had tied his tongue by the adroit imputation of a jealousy of Mariolle that she had suspected, that she had instinctively scented in him for a long time past, and she rejoiced over this discovery with a secret, audacious, unutterable coquetry. He maintained an embarrassed and irritated silence, feeling that she had divined some inexplicable spite underlying his paternal solicitude, the origin of which he himself did not care to investigate.
“There is no cause for alarm,” she added. “It is quite natural to make an excursion to Mont Saint-Michel at this time of the year in company with you, my father, my uncle and aunt, and a friend. Besides no one will know it; and even if they do, what can they say against it? When we are back in Paris I will reduce this friend to the ranks again, to keep company with the others.”
“Very well,” he replied. “Let it be as if I had said nothing.”
They took a few steps more; then M. de Pradon asked:
“Shall we return to the house? I am tired; I am going to bed.”
“No; the night is so fine. I am going to walk awhile yet.”
He murmured meaningly: “Do not go far away. One never knows what people may be around.”
“Oh, I will be right here under the windows.”
“Good night, then, my dear child.”
He gave her a hasty kiss upon the forehead and went in. She took a seat a little way off upon a rustic bench that was set in the ground at the foot of a great oak. The night was warm, filled with odors from the fields and exhalations from the sea and misty light, for beneath the full moon shining brightly in the cloudless sky a fog had come up and covered the waters of the bay. Onward it slowly crept, like white smoke-wreaths, hiding from sight the beach that would soon be covered by the incoming tide.
Michèle de Burne, her hands clasped over her knees and her dreamy eyes gazing into space, sought to look into her heart through a mist that was as impenetrable and pale as that which lay upon the sands. How many times before this, seated before her mirror in her dressing-room at Paris, had she questioned herself:
“What do I love? What do I desire? What do I hope for? What am I?”
Apart from the pleasure of being beautiful, and the imperious necessity which she felt of pleasing, which really afforded her much delight, she had never been conscious of any appeal to her heart beyond some passing fancy that she had quickly put her foot upon. She was not ignorant of herself, for she had devoted too much of her time and attention to watching and studying her face and all her person not to have been observant of her feelings as well. Up to the present time she had contented herself with a vague interest in that which is the subject of emotion in others, but was powerless to impassion her, or capable at best of affording her a momentary distraction.
And yet, whenever she had felt a little warmer liking for anyone arising within her, whenever a rival had tried to take away from her a man whom she valued, and by arousing her feminine instincts had caused an innocuous fever of attachment to simmer gently in her veins, she had discovered that these false starts of love had caused her an emotion that was much deeper than the mere gratification of success. But it never lasted. Why? Perhaps because she was too clear-sighted; because she allowed herself to become wearied, disgusted. Everything that at first had pleased her in a man, everything that had animated, moved, and attracted her, soon appeared in her eyes commonplace and divested of its charm. They all resembled one another too closely, without ever being exactly similar, and none of them had yet presented himself to her endowed with the nature and the merits that were required to hold her liking sufficiently long to guide her heart into the path of love.
Why was this so? Was it their fault or was it hers? Were they wanting in the qualities which she was looking for, or was it she who was deficient in the attribute that makes one loved? Is love the result of meeting with a person whom one believes