I
On March 30th, at twelve o’clock at night, the Baragliouls got back to Paris and went straight to their apartment in the Rue de Verneuil.
While Marguerite was getting ready for the night, Julius, with a small lamp in his hand and slippers on his feet, went to his study—a room to which he never returned without pleasure; it was soberly decorated and furnished; one or two Lépines and a Boudin hung on the walls; in one corner a marble bust of his wife by Chapu, which stood on a revolving pedestal, made a patch of whiteness that was somewhat glaring; in the middle of the room stood an enormous Renaissance table, littered with books, pamphlets and prospectuses which had been accumulating during his absence; in a salver of cloisonné enamel lay a few visiting-cards with their corners turned down, and well in sight, apart from the others and leaning against a bronze Barye, there was a letter addressed in a handwriting which Julius recognised as his old father’s. He immediately tore open the envelope and read as follows:
“My dear Son,
“I have been growing much weaker lately. It is impossible to misunderstand the nature of the warnings which tell me I must be preparing to depart; and indeed I have not much to gain by delaying longer.
“I know that you are returning to Paris to-night and I count on you for doing me a service without delay. In order to make some arrangements, of which I shall shortly inform you, it is necessary for me to know whether a young man called Lafcadio Wluiki (pronounced Louki—the w and i are hardly sounded) is still living at No. 12 Impasse Claude-Bernard.
“I should be much obliged if you would be so good as to call at this address and ask to see the said young man. (A novelist like you will easily be able to invent some excuse for introducing yourself.) I want to know:
“1. What the young man is doing;
“2. What he intends to do—whether he is ambitious, and, if so, in what way?
“3. Lastly, tell me shortly what seem to you to be his means of existence, his abilities, his inclinations and his tastes....
“Don’t try to see me for the present; I am in an unsociable mood. You can give me the information I ask just as well by letter. If I am inclined to talk or if I feel the final departure is at hand, I will let you know.
“Yours affecˡʸ,
“Juste-Agénor de Baraglioul.
“P.S. Don’t let it appear that you come from me. The young man knows nothing of me and must continue to know nothing.
“Lafcadio Wluiki is now nineteen—a Roumanian subject—an orphan.
“I have looked at your last book. If after that you don’t get into the Academy, such rubbish is unpardonable.”
There was no denying it, Julius’s last book had not been well received. In spite of his fatigue, the novelist ran his eye over a bundle of newspaper cuttings, in which he found his name mentioned with scant indulgence. Then he opened a window and breathed for a moment the misty night air. Julius’s study windows looked on to the gardens of an Embassy—pools of lustral shadow, where eyes and mind could cleanse themselves from the squalor of the streets and from the meannesses of the world. The pure and thrilling note of a blackbird held him listening a moment or two.... Then he went back to the bedroom where Marguerite was already asleep.
As he was afraid of insomnia he took from the chest of drawers a bottle of orange-flower water which he frequently used. Ever careful to observe conjugal courtesy, he had taken the precaution of lowering the wick of the lamp, before placing it where it would be least likely to disturb the sleeper; but a slight tinkling of the glass as he put it down after he had finished drinking, reached Marguerite, where she lay plunged in unconsciousness; she gave an animal grunt and turned to the wall. Julius, glad of an excuse for considering her awake, drew near the bed and asked as he began to undress:
“Would you like to hear what my father says about my book?”
“Oh, my dear, your poor father has no feeling for literature. You’ve told me so a hundred times,” murmured Marguerite whose one desire was to go on sleeping. But Julius’s heart was too full.
“He says it’s unpardonable rubbish.”
There was a long silence, during which Marguerite sank once more into the depths of slumber. Julius was already resigning himself to uncompanioned solitude, when, making a desperate effort for his sake, she rose again to the surface:
“I hope you’re not going to be upset about it.”
“I am taking it with perfect calm, as you can see,” answered Julius at once. “But at the same time I really don’t think it’s my father’s place to speak so—especially not my father’s—and especially not about that book, which in reality is nothing from first to last but a monument in his honour.”
Had not Julius, indeed, retraced in this book the old diplomat’s truly representative career? As a companion picture to the turbulent follies of romanticism, had he not glorified the dignified, the ordered, the classic calm of Juste-Agénor’s existence in its twofold aspect, political and domestic?
“Fortunately, you didn’t write it to please him.”
“He insinuates that I wrote On the Heights in order to get into the Academy.”
“Well! and if you did! Even if you did get into the Academy by writing a fine book! What then?” And she added with contemptuous pity: “Let’s hope, at any rate, that the reviews will set him right.”
Julius exploded.
“The reviews! Good God! The reviews!” he exclaimed, and then turning furiously upon Marguerite as if it were her fault, added with a bitter laugh:
“They do nothing but abuse me.”
At last Marguerite was effectually awakened.
“Is there a great deal of criticism?” she asked with solicitude.
“Yes, and a great deal of crocodile praise too.”
“Oh, how right you are to despise all those wretched journalists! Think of what M. de Vogué wrote to you the day before yesterday: ‘A pen like yours defends France like a sword!’”
“‘Threatened as France is with barbarism, a pen like yours defends her better than a sword!’” corrected Julius.
“And when Cardinal André promised you his vote the other day, he declared that you had the whole Church behind you.”
“A precious lot of good that’ll do me!”
“Oh, my dear Julius!”
“We’ve just seen in Anthime’s case what the protection of the clergy is worth.”
“Julius, you’re getting bitter. You’ve often told me you didn’t work for the hope of reward—nor for the sake of other people’s approval—that your own was enough. You’ve even written some splendid things to that effect.”
“I know, I know,” said Julius impatiently.
With such a rankling pain at his heart, this soothing syrup was of no avail. He went back to his dressing-room.
Why did he let himself go in this lamentable fashion before his wife? His was not the kind of trouble which could be comforted by the coddling of a wife; pride—shame—should make him hide it in his heart. “Rubbish!” All the time he was brushing his teeth, the word throbbed in his temples and played havoc amongst his noblest thoughts. After all, what did his last book matter? He forgot his father’s phrase—or at any rate he forgot it was his father’s. For the first time in his life awful questionings beset him. He, who up to that time had never met with anything but approval and smiles, felt rising within him a doubt as to the sincerity of those smiles, as to the value of that approval, as to the value of his works, as to the reality of his thought, as to the genuineness of his life. He returned to the bedroom, absent-mindedly holding his tooth-glass in one hand and his tooth-brush in the other; he placed the glass, which was half full of rose-coloured water, on the chest of drawers, and put the brush in the glass; then he sat down at a little satin-wood escritoire, where Marguerite did her writing. He seized his wife’s pen-holder and, taking a sheet of paper, which was tinted mauve and delicately perfumed, began:
“My dear Father,
“I found your note awaiting me on my return home this evening. Your errand shall be punctually performed to-morrow morning. I hope to be able to manage the matter to your satisfaction, and by so doing to give you a proof of my devoted attachment.”
For Julius was one of those noble natures whose true greatness flowers amid the thorns of humiliation. Then, leaning back in his chair, he remained a few moments, pen in hand, trying to turn his sentence:
“It is a matter of grief to me that you, of all people in the world, should be the one to suspect my disinterestedness, which ...”
No! Perhaps:
“Do you think that literary honesty is less dear to me than ...”
The sentence wouldn’t come. Julius, who was in his night things, felt that he was catching cold; he crumpled up the paper, took up his tooth-glass and went back with it to his dressing-room, at the same time throwing the crumpled letter into the slop-pail.
Just as he was getting into bed, he touched his wife upon the shoulder:
“And what do you think of my book?” he asked.
Marguerite half opened a glazed and lifeless eye. Julius was obliged to repeat his question. Turning partly round, Marguerite looked at him. His eyebrows raised under a network of wrinkles, his lips contracted, Julius was a pitiable object.
“What’s the matter, dear? Do you really think your last book isn’t as good as the others?”
That was no sort of answer. Marguerite was eluding the point.
“I think the others are no better than this. So there!”
“Oh, well then!...”
And Marguerite, losing heart in the face of these monstrosities, and feeling that all her tender arguments were wasted, turned round towards the dark and once more slept.