No; what Hubert Liauran remembered of this first interview did not consist of questions concerning the singularity of Madame de Sauve's charm. Neither had he examined himself as to the shade of character that might be indicated by the movements of the woman. Instead of studying her face he had enjoyed it as a child will relish the freshness of the atmosphere, with a sort of unconscious delight. The complete absence of irony which distinguished Theresa, and which might be noted in her gentle smile, her calm gaze, her smooth voice, and her tranquil gestures, had instantly been sweet to him. He had not felt in her presence those pangs of painful timidity which the incisive glance of most Parisian ladies inflicts upon all young men.
During the journey which they had made together, while De Sauve and George Liauran were speaking of a law concerning religious congregations, the tenour of which was at that time exciting every party, he had sat opposite to her, and had been able to talk to her softly and, without knowing why, with intimacy. He who was usually silent about himself, with a vague idea that the almost insane excitability of his being made him a unique exception, had opened his mind to this woman of twenty-five, whom he had not known for half-an-hour, more than he had ever done to people with whom he dined every fortnight.
In answer to a question from Theresa about his travels in the summer, he had naturally, as it were, spoken of his mother and her complaint, then of his grandmother, and then of their common life. He had given this stranger a glimpse of the secret retreat in the house in the Rue Vaneau, not indeed without remorse; but the remorse had been later, when he was no longer within the range of her glances, and had come less from a feeling of outraged modesty than from a fear of having been displeasing to her. How captivating, in truth, were those gentle glances. There emanated from them an inexpressible caress, and when they settled upon your eyes, full in your face, the resultant sensation was like that of a tender touch, and bordered upon physical voluptuousness.
Days afterwards Hubert still remembered the species of intoxicating comfort which he had experienced in this first chat merely through feeling himself looked at in this way, and this comfort had only increased in succeeding interviews, until it had almost immediately become a real necessity for him, like breathing or sleeping. When leaving the carriage she had told him that she was at home every Thursday, and he had soon learnt the way to the house in the Boulevard Haussmann, where she lived. In what recess of his heart had he found the energy for paying this visit, which fell on the next day but one after their meeting? Almost immediately, she had asked him to dinner. He remembered so vividly the childish pleasure which he took in reading and re-reading the insignificant note of invitation, in inhaling its slight perfume, and in following the details of the letters of his name, written by the hand of Theresa. It was a handwriting which, from the abundance of little, useless flourishes, presented a peculiarly light and fantastic appearance, in which a graphologist would have been prepared to read the sign of a romantic nature; but, at the same time, the bold fashion in which the lines were struck and the firmness of the down-strokes, where the pen pressed somewhat liberally, denoted a willingly practical and almost material mode of life.
Hubert did not reason so much as this; but, from the first note, every letter that he received in the same handwriting became to him a person whom he would have recognised among thousands, of others. With what happiness had he dressed to go to that dinner, telling himself that he was about to see Madame de Sauve during long hours, hours which, reckoned in advance, appeared infinite to him! He had felt a somewhat angry astonishment when his mother, at the moment that he was taking leave of her, had uttered a critical observation on the familiarity that was customary in society now-a-days. Then, separated though he was by months from those events, he was able, thanks to the special imagination with which, like all very sensitive creatures, he was endowed, to recall the exact shade of emotion which had been caused him by the dinner and the evening, the demeanour of the guests and that of Theresa. It is according as we possess a greater or smaller power of imagining past pains and pleasures anew that we are beings capable of cold calculation, or slaves to our sentimental life. Alas! all Hubert's faculties conspired to rivet round his heart the bruising chain of memories that were too dear.
Theresa wore, that first evening, a dress of black lace with pink knots, and, for her only ornament, a heavy bracelet of massive gold on one wrist. Her dress was not low enough to shock the young man, whose modesty was of virginal susceptibility on this point. There were some persons in the drawing-room, not one of whom, with the exception of George Liauran, was known to him. They were, for the most part, men celebrated by different titles in the society more particularly denominated Parisian by those journals which pique themselves on following the fashion. Hubert's first sensation had been a slight shock, owing merely to the fact that some of these men presented to the malevolent observer several of the little toilet heresies familiar to the more fastidious if they have gone too late into society. Such is a coat of antiquated cut, a shirt-collar badly made and worse bleached, or a neck-tie of a white that borders upon blue, and tied by an unskilful hand.
These trifles inevitably appeared signs of a touch of Bohemianism—the word in which correct people confound all social irregularities—in the eyes of a young man accustomed to live under the continuous superintendence of two women of rare education, who had sought to make him something irreproachable. But these small signs of unsatisfactory dress had rendered Theresa's finished distinction still more graceful in his eyes, just as, to him, the sometimes cynical freedom of the talk uttered at table had imparted a charming significance to the silence of the mistress of the house. Madame Liauran had not been mistaken when she affirmed that there was very daring conversation at the house of the De Sauves.
The evening that Hubert dined there for the first time a divorce suit was discussed during the first half-hour, and a great lawyer gave some unpublished details of the case—the abominable character of a politician who had been arrested in the Champs Elysées, the two mistresses of another politician and their rivalry—but all related, as things are related only at Paris, with those hints which admit the telling of everything. Many allusions escaped Hubert, and he was accordingly less shocked by such narrations than by other speeches bearing upon ideas, such as the following paradox, started by one of the most famous novelists of the day.
"Ah! divorce! divorce!" said this man, whose renown as a daring realist had crossed the threshold even of the house in the Rue Vaneau, "it has some good in it; but it is too simple a solution for a very complicated problem. Here, as elsewhere, Catholicism has perverted all our ideas. The characteristic of advanced societies is the production of many men of very different kinds, and the problem consists in constructing an equally large number of moralists. For my part, I would have the law recognise marriages in five, ten, twenty categories, according to the sensitiveness of the parties concerned. Thus we should have life-unions intended for persons of aristocratic scrupulosity; for persons of less refined consciences, we should establish contracts with facilities for one, two or three divorces; for persons inferior still, we should have temporary connections for five years, three years, one year."
"People would marry just as they grant a lease," it was jestingly observed.