A Living Lie

by Paul Bourget

To the passionate feelings that inspired her there was now added the fear of displeasing the man she was resolved to win. On entering this chamber, where she was sure no woman had ever been before her, her plan of action was as clearly traced as plans of that kind can be. Room must always be left for the unforeseen. Suzanne felt that with René there would be many difficulties which with others might have been lightly and safely glided over. His simplicity both charmed and frightened her. In him she could rely, it was true, upon the impulse of the passions—more daring than cool calculation—but to arouse unnoticed that impulse in the poet when she was herself suffering its tortures was no easy matter.

Whilst he stood gazing at her after the door had closed she felt a momentary hesitation; then, almost forgetting her plans and her part, she threw herself upon his neck and stammered out, 'I was in such terrible fear. Your letter frightened me so that I could not help coming. I have had an awful struggle, and could not hold out any longer. My God, my God! What will you think of me?'

He held her in his arms, and a thrill ran through her. Then he lifted her lovely head and commenced to kiss her, first on her eyes, those eyes whose sadness had so touched him as she passed him in her brougham—next on her cheeks, those cheeks whose ideal form had so charmed him from the first—finally on her sweet mouth, which gave his kisses back. What did he think of her? How could any idea shape itself in his mind, absorbed as it was by that union of the lips which is in itself complete and intoxicating possession? What delight, too, that embrace was to Suzanne! Through all the horrible complexities of her feminine diplomacy one sincere desire had grown stronger and stronger within her—that of meeting with a fresh and spontaneous, natural and thrilling passion. This passion she found in René's breath; it stirred the very depths of her soul and made her almost faint with emotion. Ah! this was youth, with its complete and absolute abandonment, expressing neither thought nor word; oblivious of all, except the immediate present; effacing all, except the fleeting sensation whose sweetness and whose very outlines seem to lie in a kiss.

This woman, corrupted by the influence of a Parisian cynic of fifty and degraded by that horrible venality which has not the excuse of necessity—this Machiavelian courtesan, who had regulated her passion for René like a game of chess—tasted for one second that divine joy. The punishment of those who let calculation enter into their love lies in the remembrance of their calculation in the moment of ecstasy. Though intoxicated by the mad kisses she had given and received, Suzanne clearly saw that she could not abandon herself at once to her lover's arms. She therefore broke away from him and said, 'Let me go now that I have seen you and now that I know you are alive. I beg you to let me go. O René!'—she had never called him by this name before—'don't come near me!'

'Suzanne,' replied the poet, maddened by the burning nectar he had found on those lips—the certainty of being loved—'don't be afraid of me. When shall we have another hour like this to ourselves? Let me beg of you to stop. See,' he added, receding still farther from her, 'I will obey you. I obeyed you even when I found it so very hard. Ah! you believe me now!' he exclaimed, seeing that Suzanne's face no longer expressed such intense fear. 'Will you be very nice?' he continued, in that playful tone which takes so well with women, and which will make any one of them, be she a lady of high degree or a simple girl, call a man a 'darling.' 'Sit down there in that arm-chair, where I have so often sat at work, and then be nicer still, and try to look as though you were not on a visit.'

He had again come closer and had forced her into the chair; then he took away her muff and began to unbutton her coat. She submitted to this with a sad smile, like one who yields against her will. This smile was the death agony of the Madonna, the last act in the comedy of the Ideal performed by Suzanne. He also took off her bonnet, a toque that matched her coat. He was now kneeling before her and gazing at her with that look of idolatry a woman is sure to provoke in her lover if she but give him one of those proofs of affection that flatter a man's vanity and love—the lower passions and the higher passions of the heart. The poet said to, himself: 'How she must love me to have come here, she whom I know to be so pure, so pious, and so devoted to her duty!'

All the lies she had so carefully told him came back to his mind like further proofs of her sincerity as he said: 'How delighted I am to have you here, and just now, too! Don't be afraid—we are quite alone. My sister has gone out for the whole afternoon, and the slave'—this was the name he gave Françoise, in order to amuse Suzanne—'the slave is busy in the kitchen. And I have you here! You see, this is my own little kingdom, this room—the place in which I have endured so much! There is not one of these corners, not one of these objects that could not tell you what I have suffered these past few days. My poor books'—and he pointed to his low bookcase—'were left unopened. These dear old engravings I scarcely looked at. The pen with which I had written to you I never touched. I sat just where you are sitting now counting the hours as they passed. God! what a week I have spent! But what does it all matter now that you are here and I can gaze at you? It is happiness to me to tell you even my troubles!'

She listened with half-closed eyes, giving herself up to the music of his words, and following out her plan in spite of the passions that welled up within her. Does the knowledge of danger as he faces his adversary drive from the mind of a skilful swordsman the lessons he learnt in the school? René's assurance that they were alone in the house had sent a thrill of joy through Suzanne, and the glance she had thrown round the little room, so neatly and carefully kept, had proved, to her delight and satisfaction, that she had not been mistaken concerning her lover's past. Everything here spoke of a studious and secluded life, the pure and noble life of an artist who surrounds himself with an atmosphere of beautiful dreams. Above all, the poet himself pleased her, with his love-lit eyes and the playful way in which he treated her, and she began to see that this exchange of confidences respecting their mutual sufferings would lead her to her goal without the least risk of diminishing her prestige in his eyes.

'And don't you think that I have suffered too?' she replied. 'Why should I deny it? You speak of your letters—God knows that I did not want to read them! I kept the first one in my pocket a whole day, having neither the courage to tear it open nor to burn it. To read your words was to hear you speak once more, and I had determined that it should not be! I had prayed to my guardian angel so long and so fervently for strength to forget you. How I struggled to do so!' Here the Madonna appeared for the last time. She lifted her eyes to heaven—or rather to the ceiling, from which hung two or three little Japanese dolls—and in her glorious orbs were reflected the wings of her guardian angel as he flew far, far away. . . .

Fixing her blue eyes once more on René, she sighed in that tone of abandonment that proves a conquered heart: 'I am lost now, but what of that? I love you so dearly that I do not care what happens—only I cannot bear to picture you in distress.'