"Wait," replied Madame Castel.
Wait! It is Wisdom's last word; but the impassioned soul devours itself grievously in the waiting. As for Marie Alice, whose life was wholly concentrated upon her child, every hour now was turning the knife about in the wound. She found it impossible not to abandon herself ceaselessly to that inquisition into petty details to which the noblest jealousies are victims. She noticed in her son every new trifle such as young men wear, and asked herself whether some memory of his guilty love was not attached to it.
Thus he had on his little finger a gold wedding ring which she did not recognise as one of his own. Ah! what would she have given to know whether there were words and a date engraved on the inside! Sometimes, when kissing him, she would inhale a scent the name of which she did not know, and which was certainly that used by his mistress. Whenever Madame Liauran encountered the penetrating and voluptuous delicacy of this perfume, it was as though a hand had physically bruised her heart. At last her passion had reached such a pitch, that everything was bound to inflict, and did inflict, a wound. If she ascertained that his eyes looked worn and his complexion pale, she would say to her mother:
"She will kill me."
It had always been the custom in this simple-mannered family that the letters should be given into the hands of Madame Liauran herself, who afterwards distributed them to their several owners. Hubert had not ventured to ask Firmin, the doorkeeper, to break the rule for him. Would not this have been to admit the servant into the secret of the differences which separated his mother and himself? Now, his mistress and he used to correspond every day, whether they had already met or not, with the prodigality of heart characteristic of lovers who know not how to give enough of themselves to each other. Hubert often succeeded in preventing his mother from seeing these letters by making an agreement as to the exact time that Theresa should despatch her note, and hastening down in time to take the post himself from the doorkeeper's hands.
Often, also, the letter would arrive unpunctually, and had to come to him through Madame Liauran. The latter was never deceived about it. She recognised the writing which to her was the most hateful in the world. Often, again, instead of a letter, Theresa would send one of those little blue, quick-travelling missives, and the sense that this paper had been handled by her son's mistress an hour before was intolerable to the poor woman. To save Hubert dishonourable strategies, and herself such terrible palpitation of the heart, she resolved upon ordering her son's letters to be delivered directly to himself. But then she lost the only tokens she possessed of the reality of the young man's relations with Madame de Sauve, and this was a source of fresh hopes, and consequently of fresh disillusions.
In the month of July, Hubert ceased to go out in the evening, and she imagined that they had quarrelled; then George Liauran, whom she had made a confidant of her anxieties, because she knew that he was acquainted with Theresa, informed her that the latter had left for Trouville, and the deception was a blow the more to her. It is the privilege and the scourge of those organisms in which nerves predominate, that griefs, instead of being lulled by habituation, become incessantly more exaggerated and inflamed. The smallest details comprehend an infinity of sorrow within them, as a drop of water comprehends the infinity of heaven.
[CHAPTER VI]
Of the few persons composing the home circle in the Rue Vaneau, it was George Liauran himself who was most anxious about the sorrow of Marie Alice, because it was to him that she most completely betrayed her pain. She understood that he was the only one who might some day be of service to her. At every visit he compared the ravages which her one thought had wrought upon her. Her features were growing thin, her cheeks hollow, and her complexion livid, while her hair, hitherto so dark, was whitening in entire tresses. It sometimes happened that George would go out into society at the conclusion of one of these visits, and meet his cousin Hubert, nearly always in the same circle as Madame de Sauve, elegant, handsome, with brilliant eyes and happy mouth.
The contrast roused within him strange feelings, which were a mixture of good and evil. On the one hand, indeed, George was very fond of Marie Alice, and with an affection which, during the early days of their youth, had been a very romantic one with them both. On the other, the, to him, indubitable connection between this charming Hubert and Theresa irritated him with a nervous anger without his well knowing why. He felt towards his cousin that insurmountable ill-will which men of more than forty and less than fifty years of age profess for the very young men whom they see making their way in society, and, in fact, taking their own places.