A Living Lie

by Paul Bourget

René had entered the house in the Rue de Bagneux a prey to painful impressions, and when he left it his impressions were more painful still. Then he had been discontented with his surroundings—now he was discontented with himself. He had called on Rosalie with the idea of giving her a little pleasure, and sparing her the trifling pain of hearing all about his success from the mouth of another; instead of which his visit had only caused the girl fresh grief. Although the poet had never harboured aught else than an imaginary love for this child with the beautiful black eyes, that love had gone deep enough to implant in his breast what is last to die in the break-up of any passion—an extraordinary power of following the least movements of that virgin heart, and a pity, as unavailing as it was distressing, for all the pain he had caused it.

Once more he asked himself this question: 'Is it not my duty to tell her I no longer love her?' An insoluble question, for it admits of only two replies—both impossible ones—the first, cruel and brutal in its egoism, if our feelings are plain; the second a frightful mixture of pity and treachery, if they are complicated. The young man shook his head as if to chase away the obtrusive thought, and muttering the eternal 'We shall see—later on,' by which so many agonies have been prolonged, forced himself to look about him. He had mechanically turned his steps towards that portion of the Faubourg Saint-Germain where, in younger days, he had loved to walk, and, inspired by Balzac, that dangerous Iliad of poor plebeians, imagine that he saw the face of a Duchesse de Langeais or de Maufrigneuse looking out from every window.

He was now in that wide but desolate thoroughfare called Rue Barbet-de-Jouy, which, by reason of the total absence of shops, the grandeur of its buildings, and the countrified look of its enclosed gardens, seems a fitting frame for some fine lady of artificial aristocracy. An inevitable association of ideas brought René's mind back to the Komof mansion, and the thought of that lordly dwelling conjured up, for the fourth time that day, but more clearly than ever, the image of Madame Moraines. This time, however, worn-out by the fretful emotions through which he had passed, he became entirely absorbed in the contemplation of that image instead of trying to dispel it. To think of Madame Moraines was to forget Rosalie, and experience, moreover, a peculiarly sweet sensation.

After a few minutes of this mental contemplation the natural roamings of his fancy led the young man to ask himself, 'When shall I see her again?' He recalled the tone of her voice and her smile as she had said, 'On Opera days, before dinner.' Opera days? This novice of Society did not even know them. He felt a childish pleasure, out of all proportion to its ostensible cause—like that of a man who is realising his wildest dreams—in gaining the Boulevard des Invalides as quickly as possible and in finding one of the posts that display theatrical advertisements. It was Friday, and the bills announced a performance of the Huguenots. René's heart began to beat faster. He had forgotten Rosalie, his remorse of a little while ago, and the question that he had put to himself. That inner voice which whispers in our soul's ear such advice as would, upon reflection, astonish us, had just said to him: 'Madame Moraines will be at home to-day. What if you went?'

'What if I went?' he repeated aloud, and the bare idea of this visit parched his throat and set him trembling. It is the facility with which extreme emotions are brought into play upon the slightest provocation that makes the inner life of young men full of such strange and rapid transitions from the heights of joy to the depths of misery. René had no sooner put the temptation that beset him into words than he shrugged his shoulders and said, 'It's madness.' Having arrived at that decision, he commenced to plead the cause of his own desire under pretence of summing up the objections. 'How would she receive me?' The remembrance of her beautiful eyes and of her sweet smile made him reply, 'But she was so gentle and so indulgent.' Then he resumed his questioning. 'What could I say to justify a visit less than twenty-four hours after having left her?' 'Pooh!' replied the tempting voice, 'the occasion brings its own inspiration.' 'But I am not even dressed.' Well, he had only to go to the Rue Coëtlogon. 'But I don't even know her address.' 'Claude knows it—I have only to ask him.'

The idea of calling on Larcher having once presented itself to his mind, he felt that it would be impossible not to put at least that part of his plan into execution. To call on Claude was the first step towards reaching Madame Moraines; but, instead of confessing that, René was hypocrite enough to pretend other reasons. Ought he not really to go and obtain news of his friend? He had left him so unhappy, so truly miserable, on the previous evening. Perhaps he was now fretting like a child? Perhaps he was preparing to pick a quarrel with Salvaney? In this way the poet excused himself for the haste with which he was now making for the Rue de Varenne. It was not only Suzanne's address that he hoped to obtain, but information about her too—and all the while he was trying to persuade himself that he was simply fulfilling a duty of friendship.

In a very short time he had reached the corner of the Rue de Bellechasse, and a few moments later he found himself before the great doors of the strange house in which Larcher had taken up his abode. Pushing these open, he entered an immense courtyard in which everything spoke of desolation, from the grass that grew between the stones to the cobwebs that covered the windows of the deserted stables on the left. At the bottom of the courtyard stood a noble mansion, built in the reign of Louis XIV., and bearing the proud motto of the Saint-Euvertes, whose town house this had been, Fortiter. The stones of this building, already bearing traces of the ravages of time, its long shuttered windows and its silence were all in harmony with the solitude of the courtyard. The old Faubourg Saint-Germain contains many such houses, strange as the destiny of their owners, and which will always prove peculiarly attractive to minds in search of the psychologically picturesque—if we may unite these two words to define an almost indefinable shade of meaning.

René had heard the history of this mansion from his friend; how the old Marquis de Saint-Euverte, reduced to despair by the almost simultaneous loss of his wife, his three daughters, and their husbands, had, six years ago, gone to live with his grandsons on his estates in Poitou. An epidemic of typhoid fever suddenly breaking out in a small watering-place where all the family were staying together had made this happy old man the lonely guardian of a tribe of orphans. Even during the lifetime of the Marquise—an excellent business woman—two small wings in the house had been let to quiet tenants. These wings had also a history of their own, the grandfather of the present Marquis having placed them at the disposal of two cousins—Knights of Saint-Louis and at one time political refugees—who, after a wretched, wandering existence, had ended their days here. M. de Saint-Euverte had left everything as his wife had arranged it. Claude therefore one day found himself the only tenant in the whole of this silent, gloomy building, for the occupant of the other wing had been scared away by the loneliness of the place, and no one else had yet seemed anxious to bury himself in this tomb, standing between a desolate courtyard and a still more desolate garden.

But all these points, that were so displeasing to others, were a source of delight to Larcher. The oddness of the place appealed particularly to this dreamer and maker of paradoxes. It pleased him to set his irregular existence as an artist and a swell clubman in this framework of imposing solitude; and here, too, he could shut himself up with his secret agonies. The love of analytical introspection with which he knew he was infected, and which, like a doctor cultivating his own disease for the sake of a fine 'case,' he carefully nurtured, could not have found a better home. Then, again, here Larcher enjoyed absolute freedom. The concierge, won over by a few theatre tickets and fascinated by the reputation of his tenant, would have allowed him to hold a saturnalian feast in every hall of the Saint-Euverte mansion had Claude felt any desire to found another Club de Haschischins or to reproduce some scene of literary orgies out of love for the romanticism of 1830. The concierge was absent from his post when René arrived, so that the poet walked straight across the courtyard to the house. Entering the main hall, where the magnificent lamps bore testimony to the grandeur of the receptions once held here, he mounted the stone staircase, whose wrought-iron balustrade formed a splendid ornament to the huge well of the house. On the second floor he turned down a corridor, at the end of which heavy curtains of Oriental texture proclaimed a modern installation hidden in the depths of a mansion that seemed to be peopled only with the bewigged ghosts of grands seigneurs.

The man-servant who answered his ring possessed that type of face peculiar to nearly all custodians of old buildings; it is met with both in the guides of ruined castles and in the vergers of cathedrals, and shows how vast must be the influence which places have on human beings. It is a face with a greenish tint and with a hawk-like expression about the eyes and mouth; from its appearance one would suppose that it smelt damp. Ferdinand—that was the name of this individual—differed from his kind only in dress, which, consisting as it did of Claude's cast off clothes, was fashionable and smart. He had been valet to the late Comte de Saint-Euverte, and, in addition to his duties as Larcher's servant, he was a kind of housekeeper for the whole mansion, from which he seldom emerged more than once a month. The concierge went on all the writer's errands, and his wife did the cooking. This little world lived entirely under the spell of Claude, who, through his knowledge of character and his infantile goodness of heart, possessed in a rare degree the gift of winning the attachment of his inferiors. When Ferdinand saw who the caller was he could not help showing great uneasiness.