The Bachelors (27 page)

'I never noticed it at table,' M. Élie replied. 'But he could do what he liked in his room.' Hats off to M. Élie for this reply which contained a glimmer of honesty. It is a great mistake to put unlimited trust in the malice of men: they seldom do us all the harm they might.

Léon's supposed taste for the bottle enabled M. Octave to look upon himself as the personification of delicacy when he decided to keep his melancholy discovery from Mme Émilie. It also enabled him to believe that he had been shrewd in mistrusting his nephew, that he had been right not to help him more, and that it was more and more providential that he should have been whisked away at the required moment. Considering all the gratifications it brought, it would have been more meritorious had this established fact not been established.

Going through Léon's trunk, M. Octave came across the sealed packet inscribed
To be burned unread after
my
death.
He duly burnt it, with an extremely lively sense of the noble deed he was performing in not apprising himself of its contents. He could scarcely have felt prouder if, to attest some faith or other, he had roasted
himself.
M. Octave put aside Mme de Coantré's letters to her son, to be read at leisure some day, and whole bundles of files which were Mme de Coantré's accounts, the forest of figures in which this penniless person had lived. On the other hand, he read carefully through Léon's diary, though it was of no interest, consisting mainly of humdrum household facts. However, when he arrived at the entry: 'Sentimental session with old Oct. We shall see!' he smiled to himself, without acrimony. This did not in any way alter his opinion of Léon, and everything he thought about it was summed up in the remark he made to himself, 'That's not at all bad!'

M. Octave gave Léon's tools to the chauffeur. He thought of offering some of his old clothes to the
curé
at La Trinité for the poor. But Papon's respectful hesitation when he mentioned it to him gave him to understand that it would be indecent to give away clothes in such a state of dirt and shabbiness (so much so, as Papon remarked in the kitchen, 'that they would run to the tub by themselves if they could move'). Annoyed at having allowed himself to be taught a lesson by his servant (it happened only too frequently), M. Octave would not even allow the clothes to be thrown into the dustbin for fear that the concierge might open the parcel and by a process of elimination work out where they came from. Papon tied M. de Coantré's clothes up in copies of the
Daily Mail
and threw them away after dark in some bushes in the place de la Trinité.

M. de Coantré, always à Jonah, nearly brought off a remarkable achievement: a rift in the almost fifty-year-old friendship between the baron and M. Héquelin du Page. The baron learned through a third person that his friend considered he had not behaved very well towards his nephew. He was cut to the quick. If the world was mistaken, so be it! But that his old friend, who knew all his thoughts (except those he concealed from him), should adopt such a false view of the realities of the case and pass so unjust a judgement was really too bad. Léon himself would have reacted similarly if someone had told him that he had behaved badly towards his mother. M. Octave, deeply upset, was beginning to explain to his friend how he had done more than his duty in regard to Léon when M. Héquelin du Page interrupted him and said that this assurance was enough, that he did not want to hear another word. This short scene had an element of the sublime.

As the years go by, M. Octave shows more and more solicitude for Léon's memory. Contrary to what he had expected, his nephew's death caused him no trouble of a material kind, and he is grateful to Léon for apparently ignoring the many and various ways in which the dead can inconvenience the living. The baron has made a financial arrangement with Chandelier to ensure that his nephew's grave is decently looked after: it is a point of honour with him that the tomb of his sister's son should not appear neglected. In fact, three years ago when the stone was cracked by frost, M. de Coëtquidan had the whole thing remade in a better quality material and had engraved thereon the arms and the coronet of a count, though without abandoning any of his reservations as to the right of the deceased to this coronet (one can be generous towards the dead since they will get no pleasure from it). Whenever M. Octave and his sister are at Fréville, the grave of Léon de Coantré is covered with fresh flowers.

{1}
A character notorious for his indecision and procrastination.

{2}
In English in the original.