A LOVE CRIME. Paul Bourget
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death, first of
Monsieur de Vaivre, then of his second wife and of their child, suddenly
enriched the young household. Appointed the preceding year to a
municipal post at Paris, the engineer found that he had realised a
hundredfold the most ambitious hopes of his youth. His wife's fortune
amounted to about nine hundred thousand francs, to the returns from
which were added the ten thousand francs of his own salary and the small
income which had been left by his father. But this competency, instead
of blunting the young man's activity, stimulated it to the ambition of
compensating in honour for the inequality of position between himself
and his wife. He had, accordingly, gone back to mathematical labours
with fresh ardour. Admission to the Institute shone on the horizon of
his dreams, like a sort of final apotheosis to a destiny, the happiness
of which he modestly referred to his father's wise maxim: "To keep to
the high road."
Add to this that a son had been born to him, in whom he already
discerned a reflection of his own disposition, and it cannot fail to be
understood how this man would congratulate himself daily for having
taken life, as he had done, with complete submission to all the average
conditions of the social class in which he had been born.
Did these various reflections pass through the mind of the third
individual--the man whom Alfred Chazel had called Armand, as he
contemplated the conjugal tableau through the smoke from a Russian
cigarette which he had just lighted--a liberty which revealed the extent
of his intimacy with the family? The same contrast which separated
Alfred from Helen separated him also from Armand. The latter looked at
first younger than his age, though he too had passed his thirty-second
year. If Alfred's carelessly-worn coat revealed rather the leanness and
disproportion of his body, the frock of the Baron de Querne--such was
Armand's family-name--fitted close to the shoulders and bust of a man,
small but robust, and evidently devoted to fencing, riding, tennis, and
all the sporting habits which the youths of the richer classes have
contracted in imitation of the English, now that political
careers--diplomacy, the Council of State, and the Audit Office--are
denied them by their real or assumed opinions.
The quiet jewellery with which the young baron was adorned, the delicacy
of his hands and feet, and everything in his appearance, from his cravat
and his collar to the curls in his dark hair, and to the turn of his
moustache, drawn out over a somewhat contemptuous lip, disclosed that
deep attention to the toilet which assumes the lengthened leisure of an
idle life. But what preserved De Querne from the commonplaceness usual
to men who are visibly occupied with the trifles of masculine fashion
was a look, in a generally immovable face, of peculiar keenness and
unrest. This look, which was not at all like that of a young man,
contradicted the remainder of his person to the extent of imparting an
appearance of strangeness to one who looked in this way, although a
desire to evade remark, and to be above all things correct, evidently
influenced his mode of dress.
Just as Chazel seemed to have remained quite young at heart, in spite of
the failure of constitution, so the other, if only in the expression of
his eyes, which were very dark ones, appeared to have undergone a
premature aging of soul and intellect, in spite of the energy maintained
by his physical machine. The face was somewhat long and somewhat
browned, like that of one in whom bile would prevail some day, the
forehead without a wrinkle, the nose very refined; a slight dimple was
impressed upon the square chin. It would have been impossible to assign
any profession or even occupation to this man, and yet there was
something superior in his nature which seemed irreconcilable with the
emptiness of an absolutely idle life, as well, too, as lines of
melancholy about the mouth which banished the idea of a life of nothing
but pleasure.
Meanwhile he continued to smoke with perfect calmness, showing every
time that he rejected the smoke small, close teeth, the lower ones being
set in an irregular fashion, which is, people say, a probable indication
of fierceness. He watched Chazel kiss his wife on the temple, while
_she_ lowered her eyelids without venturing to look at Armand; and yet,
had the dark eyes of the young man been encountered by her own, she
would not have surprised any trace of sorrow, but an indefinable
blending of irony and curiosity.
"Yes," said Alfred, replying thus to the mute reproach which Helen's
countenance seemed to make to him, "it is bad form to love one's wife in
public, but Armand will forgive me. Well, goodbye," he went on, holding
out his hand to his friend, "I shall not be away for more than an hour.
I shall find you here again, shall I not?"
The young Baron and Madame Chazel thus remained alone. They were silent
for a few minutes, both keeping the positions in which Alfred had left
them, she standing, but this time with her eyes raised towards Armand,
and the latter answering her look with a smile while he continued to
wrap himself in a cloud of smoke. She breathed in the slight acridity of
the smoke, half opening her fresh lips. The sound of carriage wheels
became audible beneath the windows. It was the rolling of the cab that
was taking Chazel away.
Helen slowly advanced to the easy chair in which Armand was sitting;
with a pretty gesture she took the cigarette and threw it into the fire,
then knelt before the young man, encircled his head with her arms, and,
seeking his lips, kissed him; it looked as though she wished to destroy
immediately the painful impression which her husband's attitude might
have left on the man she loved, and in a clear tone of voice, the
liveliness of which discovered