The Counterfeiters (27 page)

Edouard has irritated me more than once (when he speaks of Douviers, for instance)—enraged me even; I
hope I haven’t shown it too much; but now I may be allowed to say so. His behaviour to Laura—at times so generous—has at times seemed to me revolting.

What I dislike about Edouard are the reasons he gives himself. Why does he try and persuade himself that he is conspiring for Boris’s good? Does the torrent which drowns a child pretend that it is giving him drink?… I do not deny that there are actions in the world that are noble, generous and even disinterested; I only say that there often lies hidden behind the good motive a devil who is clever enough to find his profit in the very thing one thought one was wresting from him.

Let us make use of this summer season which disperses our characters to examine them at leisure. And besides, we have reached that middle point of our story, when its pace seems to slacken, in order to gather a new impetus and rush on again with swifter speed to its end. Bernard is assuredly much too young to take direction of an intrigue. He is convinced he will be able to guard Boris; but the very utmost he will be able to do is to observe him. We have already seen Bernard change; passions may come which will modify him still more. I find in a note-book a sentence or two in which I have written down what I thought of him some time ago:

“I ought to have been mistrustful of behaviour as excessive as Bernard’s at the beginning of his story. It seems to me, to judge by his subsequent state, that this behaviour exhausted all his reserves of anarchy, which would no doubt have been kept replenished if he had continued to vegetate, as is fitting, in the midst of his family’s oppression. And from that time onwards his life was, so to speak, a reaction and a protest against this original action. The habit he had formed of rebellion and opposition incited him to rebel against his very rebellion. Without a doubt not one of my heroes has disappointed me more than he, for perhaps there was not
one who had given me greater hopes. Perhaps he gave way too early to his own bent.”

But this does not seem very true to me any longer. I think we ought to allow him a little more credit. There is a great deal of generosity in him; virility too and strength; he is capable of indignation. He enjoys hearing himself talk a little too much; but it’s a fact that he talks well. I mistrust feelings that find their expression too quickly. He is very good at his studies, but new feelings do not easily fill forms that have been learnt by heart. A little invention would make him stammer. He has already read too much, remembered too much, and learnt a great deal more from books than from life.

I cannot console myself for the turn of chance which made him take Olivier’s place beside Edouard. Events fell out badly. It was Olivier that Edouard loved. With what care he would have ripened him! With what lover-like respect he would have guided, supported, raised him to his own level! Passavant will ruin him to a certainty. Nothing could be more pernicious for him than to be enveloped in so unscrupulous an atmosphere. I had hoped that Olivier would have defended himself a little better; but his is a tender nature and sensitive to flattery. Everything goes to his head. Moreover I seem to gather from certain accents in his letter to Bernard that he is a little vain. Sensuality, pique, vanity—to what does not all this lay him open? When Edouard finds him again, I very much fear it will be too late. But he is still young and one has the right to hope.

Passavant …? best not speak of him, I think. Nothing spreads more ruin or receives more applause than men of his stamp—unless it be women like Lady Griffith. At the beginning, I must confess, she rather took me in. But I soon recognized my mistake. People like her are cut out of a cloth which has no thickness. America exports a great many of them, but is not the
only country to breed them. Fortune, intelligence, beauty—they seem to possess everything, except a soul. Vincent, we may be sure, will soon find it out. No past weighs upon them—no constraint; they have neither laws, nor masters, nor scruples; by their freedom and spontaneity, they make the novelist’s despair; he can get nothing from them but worthless reactions. I hope not to see Lady Griffith again for a long time to come. I am sorry she has carried off Vincent, who interested me more, but who becomes commonplace by frequenting her. Rolling in her wake, he loses his angles. It’s a pity; he had rather fine ones.

If it ever happens to me to invent another story, I shall allow only well-tempered characters to inhabit it—characters that life, instead of blunting, sharpens. Laura, Douviers, La Pérouse, Azaïs … what is to be done with such people as these? It was not I who sought them out; while following Bernard and Olivier I found them in my path. So much the worse for me; henceforth it is my duty to attend them.

Part Three
         
Paris

When we are in possession of a few more local monographs—then, and only then, by grouping their data, by minutely confronting and comparing them, we shall be able to re-consider the subject as a whole, and take a new and decisive step forward. To proceed otherwise, would be merely to start, armed with two or three rough and simple ideas, on a kind of rapid excursion. It would be, in most cases, to pass by everything that is particular, individual, irregular—that is to say, everything, on the whole, that is most interesting
.

L
UCIEN
F
ÈBVRE:
La Terre et L’Evolution Humaine
.

Sept. 22nd
.—Hot; bored. Have come back to Paris a week too soon. My eagerness always makes me respond before I am summoned. Curiosity rather than zeal; desire to anticipate. I have never been able to come to terms with my thirst.

Took Boris to see his grandfather. Sophroniska, who had been the day before to prepare him, tells me that Madame de La Pérouse has gone into the home. Heavens! What a relief!

I left the little boy on the landing, after ringing the bell, thinking it would be more discreet not to be present at the first meeting; I was afraid of the old fellow’s thanks. Questioned the boy later on, but could get nothing out of him. Sophroniska, when I saw her later, told me he had not said anything to her either. When she went to fetch him after an hour’s interval, as had been arranged, a maid-servant opened the door; she found the old gentleman sitting in front of a game of draughts and the child sulking by himself in a corner at the other end of the room.

“It’s odd,” said La Pérouse, very much out of countenance, “he seemed to be amused, but all of a sudden he got tired of it. I am afraid he is a little wanting in patience.”

It was a mistake to leave them alone together too long.

Sept. 27th
.—This morning met Molinier under the arcades of the Odéon. Pauline and George are not coming back till the day after to-morrow. If Molinier, who has been by himself in Paris since yesterday, was as bored as I am, it’s no wonder that he seemed enchanted to see me. We went and sat down in the Luxembourg, till it should be time for lunch, and agreed to take it together.

Molinier, when he is with me, affects a rather jocose—even, at times, a kind of rakish tone—which he no doubt thinks the correct thing to please an artist. A desire too to show that he is still full of beans.

“At heart,” he declared, “I am a passionate man.” I understand that what he really meant was that he was a libidinous one. I smiled, as one would if one heard a woman declare she had very fine legs—a smile which signifies “I never doubted it for a moment.” Until that day I had only seen the magistrate; the man at last threw aside his toga.

I waited till we were seated at table at Foyot’s before speaking to him of Olivier; I told him that I had recently had news of him through one of his schoolfellows, and that I had heard he was travelling in Corsica with the Comte de Passavant.

“Yes, he’s a friend of Vincent’s: he offered to take him with him. As Olivier had just passed his
bachot
rather brilliantly, his mother thought it would be hard to refuse him such a pleasure.… The Comte de Passavant is a writer. I expect you know him.”

I did not conceal that I had no great liking for either his books or his person.

“Amongst
confrères
one is sometimes apt to be a little severe in one’s judgments,” he retorted. “I tried to read his last novel; certain critics think very highly of it.
I didn’t see much in it myself; but it’s not my line, you know.… ” Then as I expressed my fear as to the influence Passavant might have over Olivier:

“In reality,” he added in his rather woolly way, “I personally didn’t approve of this expedition. But it’s no good not realizing that when they get to a certain age our children escape from our control. It’s in the nature of things and there’s nothing to be done. Pauline would like to go on hanging over them for ever. She’s like all mothers. I sometimes say to her: ‘But you worry your sons to death. Leave them alone. It’s you who put things into their heads with all your questions.… ’ For my part I consider it does no good to watch over them too long. The important thing is that a few good principles should be inculcated into them during their early education. The important thing above all is that they should come of a good stock. Heredity, my dear friend, heredity triumphs over everything. There are certain bad lots whom nothing can improve—the predestined, we call them. Those must have a tight hand kept over them. But when one has to do with well-conditioned natures, one can let them go a bit easy.”

“But you were telling me,” I insisted, “that you didn’t approve of Olivier’s being carried off in this way.”

“Oh! approve … approve!” he said with his nose in his plate, “there’s no need for my approval. There are many households, you know—and those the most united—where it isn’t always the husband who settles things. But you aren’t married; such things don’t interest you.… ”

“Oh!” said I, laughing, “but I’m a novelist.”

“Then you have no doubt remarked that it isn’t always from weakness of character that a man allows himself to be led by his wife.”

“Yes,” I conceded by way of flattery, “there are strong and even dominating men whom one discovers to be of a lamb-like docility in their married life.”

“And do you know why?” he went on. “Nine times out of ten, when the husband submits to his wife, it is because he has something to be forgiven him. A virtuous woman, my dear fellow, takes advantage of everything. If the man stoops for a second, there she is sitting on his shoulders. Oh! we poor husbands are sometimes greatly to be pitied. When we are young, our one wish is to have chaste wives, without a thought of how much their virtue is going to cost us.”

I gazed at Molinier, sitting there with his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands. The poor man little suspected how naturally his backbone fell into the stooping attitude of which he complained; he kept mopping his forehead, ate a great deal—not like a gourmet, but like a glutton—and seemed particularly to appreciate the old Burgundy which we had ordered. Happy to feel himself listened to, understood, and, no doubt he thought, approved, he overflowed in confessions.

“In my capacity as magistrate,” he continued, “I have known women who only lent themselves to their husbands against the grain of their heart and senses … and who yet are indignant when the poor wretch who has been repulsed, seeks his provender elsewhere.”

The magistrate had begun his sentence in the past; the husband finished it in the present, with an unmistakable allusion to himself. He added sententiously between two mouthfuls:

“Other people’s appetites easily appear excessive when one doesn’t share them.” He drank a long draught of wine, then: “And this explains, my dear friend, how a husband loses the direction of his household.”

I understood, indeed—it was clear under the apparent incoherence of his talk—his desire to make the responsibility of his own shortcomings fall upon his wife’s virtue. Creatures as disjointed as this puppet, I said to myself, need every scrap of their egoism to bind together the disconnected elements of which they are
formed. A moment’s self-forgetfulness, and they would fall to pieces. He was silent. I felt I must pour a few reflections over him, as one pours oil on an engine that has accomplished a bout of work; and to set him going again I remarked: