Being well read in Rabelais, La Fontaine, and Molière, he called himself by the downright, outspoken name that he knew beyond the shadow of a doubt was fitted to his case. But that stopped his laugh, if it could be truthfully said that he had laughed.
“Of course,” said he to himself, “it is a petty, commonplace incident in reality. But I am myself suitably proportioned to it, being but an unimportant item in the social structure. It seems, therefore, an important thing to me, and I ought to feel no shame at the misery it brings me.”
Following up this thought, he drew his grief round him like a cloak, and wrapped himself in it. Like a sick man full of pity for himself, he pursued the painful visions and the haunting ideas which swarmed endlessly in his burning head. What he had seen caused him physical pain; noticing this fact, he instantly set himself to find the cause of it, for he was always ruled by the philosophical bent of his temperament.
“The objects,” thought he, “which are associated with the most powerful desires of the flesh cannot be regarded with indifference, for when they do not give delight, they cause disgust. It is not in herself that Madame Bergeret possesses the power of putting me between these two alternatives; it is as a symbol of that Venus who is the joy of gods and men. For to me, although she may indeed be one of the least lovable and least mysterious of these symbols of Venus, yet at the same time she must needs be one of the most characteristic and vivid. And the sight of her linked in community of act and feeling with my pupil, M. Roux, reduced her instantly to that elementary type-form which, as I said, must either inspire attraction or repulsion. Thus we may see that every sexual symbol either satisfies or disappoints desire, and for that reason attracts or repels our gaze with equal force, according to the physiological condition of the spectators, and sometimes even according to the successive moods of the same witness.
“This observation brings one to the true reason for the fact that, in all nations and at all periods, sexual rites have been performed in secret, in order that they might not produce violent and conflicting emotions in the spectators. At length it became customary to conceal everything that might suggest these rites. Thus was born Modesty, which governs all men, but particularly the more lascivious nations.”
Then M. Bergeret reflected:
“Accident has enabled me to discover the origin of this virtue which varies most of all, merely because it is the most universal, this Modesty, which the Greeks call Shame. Very absurd prejudices have become connected with this habit which arises from an attitude of mind peculiar to man and common to all men, and these prejudices have obscured its true character. But I am now in a position to formulate the true theory of Modesty. It was at a smaller cost to himself that Newton discovered the laws of gravitation under a tree.”
Thus meditated M. Bergeret from the depths of his arm-chair. But his thoughts were still so little under control that he rolled his bloodshot eyes, gnashed his teeth and clenched his fists, until he drove his nails into his palms. Painted with merciless accuracy on his inner eye was the picture of his pupil, M. Roux, in a condition which ought never to be seen by a spectator, for reasons which the professor had first accurately deduced. M. Bergeret possessed a measure of that faculty which we call visual memory. Without possessing the rich power of vision of the painter, who stores numberless vast pictures in a single fold of his brain, he could yet recall, accurately and easily enough, sights seen long ago which had caught his attention. Thus there lived in the album of his memory the outline of a beautiful tree, of a graceful woman, when once these had been impressed on the retina of his eye. But never had any mental impression appeared to him as clear, as exact, as vividly, accurately and powerfully coloured, as full, compact, solid and masterful, as there appeared to him at this moment the daring picture of his pupil, M. Roux, in the act of embracing Madame Bergeret. This accurate reproduction of reality was hateful; it was also false, inasmuch as it indefinitely prolonged an action which must necessarily be a fleeting one. The perfect illusion which it produced showed up the two characters with obstinate cynicism and unbearable permanence. Again M. Bergeret longed to kill his pupil, M. Roux. He made a movement as if to kill; the idea of murder that his brain formulated had the force of a deed and left him overwhelmed.
Then came a moment of reflection and slowly, quietly he strayed away into a labyrinth of irresolution and contradiction. His ideas flowed together and intermingled, losing their distinctive tints like specks of paint in a glass of water. Soon he even failed to grasp the actual event that had happened.
He cast miserable looks around him, examined the flowers on the wall-paper and noticed that there were badly-joined bunches, so that the halves of the red carnations never met. He looked at the books stacked on the deal shelves. He looked at the little silk and crochet pin-cushion that Madame Bergeret had made and given him some years before on his birthday. Then he softened at the thought of the destruction of their home life. He had never been deeply in love with this woman, whom he had married on the advice of friends, for he had always found a difficulty in settling his own affairs. Although he no longer loved her at all, she still made up a large part of his life. He thought of his daughters, now staying with their aunt at Arcachon, especially of his favourite Pauline, the eldest, who resembled him. At this he shed tears.