A Living Lie

by Paul Bourget

An appointment had been made for eleven o'clock on the following Tuesday, in the Salon Carré of the Louvre. Whilst Suzanne was being driven to the old palace in a cab she was counting up for the tenth time the dangers of her matutinal escapade. 'No, it's not a very wise thing to do,' she thought; 'and suppose Desforges discovers I've been out? Well, there's the dentist. And what if I meet some one I know? It's very improbable, but in that case I would tell them just as much of the truth as was absolutely necessary.'

That was one of her great maxims—to tell as few lies as possible, to maintain a discreet silence about most things, and never to deny established facts. She was therefore ready to say to her husband, and to the Baron as well, if necessary, 'I went into the Louvre this morning as I passed. I was lucky enough to find Madame Komof's little poet there, and he showed me through a few of the rooms. Yes,' she said to herself, 'that will do for once. But it would be madness to try it on often.'

Her mind then became occupied with other thoughts of less positive purport. The uncertainty of what would take place in this interview with René caused her greater agitation than she cared for. She had played the part of a Madonna before him, and the time had now come to get down from the altar upon which she had been so piously adored. Her feminine tact had hit upon a bold plan—lead the poet to a declaration, reply by a confession of her own feelings, then flee from him as if in remorse, and so leave the way open for any step she might afterwards care to take. Whilst playing havoc with René's heart, this plan would suspend his judgment of her acts and absolve her of any follies she might commit. It was bold but clever, and, above all, simple. There were, nevertheless, a few real dangers connected with it. Let the poet entertain distrust but for one moment and all was lost. Suzanne's heart beat faster at the thought. How many women there are who have been similarly situated, and who, after having reared a most elaborate fabric of falsehoods, have been compelled to continue their rôle in order to obtain satisfaction for the true feelings that originally actuated them! When the men on whose account such women as these have played their hypocritical rôles discover the lie palmed off upon them, their indignation and contempt abundantly prove how important a factor vanity is in all affection.

'Come, come,' exclaimed Suzanne, 'here am I trembling like a school-girl!' She smiled indulgently as she uttered the words, because they proved once more the sincerity of her feelings, and again she smiled when, on alighting from her cab and crossing the courtyard, she saw that she was there to the minute. 'Still a school-girl!' she repeated to herself. A momentary fear came over her at the thought that if René happened to arrive just after her he would see her obliged to ask one of the attendants for the entrance to the galleries—she who had boasted of having been there so often. She had not been in the place three times in her life, though to-day her little feet trotted across the spacious courtyard in their dainty laced boots as confidently as though they performed the journey daily. 'What a child I am!' said the inner voice once more—the voice of the Baron's pupil, who had acquired as deep a knowledge of life as any hoary diplomat. 'He has been waiting for me upstairs for the last half-hour!' Still she could not refrain from looking anxiously about her as she asked her way of one of the attendants. But her worldly knowledge had not deceived her, for no sooner had she reached the doorway between the Galerie d'Apollon and the Salon Carré than she saw René; he was leaning against the iron railing, just underneath the noble work by Veronese, representing Mary Magdalene washing our Saviour's feet, and opposite the famous Noces de Cana.

In his boyish timidity the poor fellow had considered it his duty to put on his very best clothes in coming to meet one who, besides being a Madonna in his eyes, was a 'Society woman'—that vague and fanciful entity which exists in the brain of so many young bourgeois, and is a curious medley of their most erroneous impressions. He was attired in a smart-fitting frock coat, and, although the morning was a cold one, he wore nothing over it. He possessed only one overcoat, and that, having been made at the beginning of the winter, did not come from the tailor to whom he had been introduced by his friend Larcher. With his brand-new chimney-pot hat, his new gloves, and his new boots, he almost looked as though he had stepped out of a fashion plate, though his dress contrasted strangely with his artistic face. If he had made himself appear still more ridiculous, Suzanne would have found still more reasons for growing fonder of him. Such is the way of women in love.

She understood at once that he had been afraid he would not look nice enough to please her, and she stood in the doorway for a few seconds in order to enjoy the anxiety that was depicted on the poet's face. When he saw her there was a sudden rush of blood to his cheeks, though the blush soon died away beneath the gold of his fair silken beard. What a flash, too, lit up those dark blue eyes, dispelling the look of anguish they contained! 'It is lucky there is no one here to see our meeting,' she thought, for the pale light that came through the glass roof fell only upon a few painters setting up their easels and upon a few tourists wandering about, guide-book in hand.

Suzanne, who had taken all this in at a glance, could therefore abandon herself to the pleasure which René's agitation afforded her; as he came towards her he said, in a voice trembling with emotion, 'I hardly dared to hope that you would come.'

'Why not?' she replied, with an air of candid astonishment. 'Do you really think I cannot get up early? Why, when I go and visit my poor I am up and dressed at eight.' And in what a tone of voice it was that she said this! A pleasant, modest tone—like that in which a hero would tell of something extraordinary he had done without seeing anything in it himself—the tone in which an officer would say, 'As we were charging the enemy!' The joke of it was that she had never ventured even to set her foot in a poor man's dwelling. She had as great a horror of poverty as of sickness or of old age, and to her selfish nature charity was a thing almost unknown. But at that moment René would have looked upon anyone who dared charge her with selfishness as guilty of the most infamous blasphemy. After having uttered her well-chosen words this novel Sister of Mercy stopped for a moment in order to enjoy their effect. In René's eyes shone that look of blind faith which these pretty hypocrites are so accustomed to regard as their due that they charge all who refuse it them with heartlessness. Then, as if to evade an admiration that embarrassed her modesty, she went on, 'You forget that you are my guide to-day. I will pretend I know nothing of any of these pictures; I shall then be able to see whether we have the same tastes.'

'Mon Dieu!' thought René, 'I must take care not to show her anything that might give her a bad opinion of me!' The most commonplace women can, when they choose, inspire a man who is vastly superior to them with this sensation of utter inferiority.

They had now commenced their tour, he leading her to those masterpieces which he thought would please her. How well acquainted he was with all the galleries of his dear Louvre! There was not one of these pictures that did not recall the memory of some dream of his youth—a youth entirely spent in adorning with beautiful images the shrine we all carry within us before our twentieth year, but from which our passions soon expel all but the image of Venus! These pale and noble frescoes of Luini that hang in the narrow room to the right of the Salon Carré—how often had he not come to gaze upon their pious scenes when he wished to lend his poetry the soft charm, the broad and tender touch, of the old Lombard master! He had feasted his eyes for whole hours upon the mighty Crucifixion by Mantegna—a fragment of the magnificent painting in the church of San Zeno at Verona—as well as upon that most glorious of Raphaels, Saint George—an ideal hero dealing the dragon a furious stroke of his sword whilst spurring his white charger in pink trappings across the fresh greensward, symbolic of youth and hope. But it was more especially the portraits which had been the objects of his most fervent pilgrimages—from those of Holbein, Philippe de Champaigne, and Titian, to that of the elegant and mysterious lady simply attributed in the catalogue to the Venetian school, and bearing a cipher in her hair. He loved to think, in company with a clever critic, that this cipher meant Barbarelli and Cecilia—the name of the Giorgione and that of the mistress for whom tradition says that this great master died. During a visit he had once paid to the Louvre with Rosalie he had told her the romantic and tragic story on this very spot and before this very portrait. He now found himself repeating it to Suzanne, and in almost the same words.