'How I love her! How I love her!' he would exclaim, increasing his passion by the fervour with which he uttered these words. Again, he would delight in conjuring up a vision of the room in which these meetings, awaited with such feverish impatience, took place. He had been more lucky in finding a suitable place than his inexperience had led Suzanne to expect, It was a small suite consisting of three rooms, rather prettily furnished by Malvina Raulet, a brunette of about thirty-five, whose sweet voice, demure looks, and general air of propriety had at once enchanted René. This lady, whose attire was almost severe in its simplicity, gave herself out as a widow. She lived ostensibly on a small income left her by the late M. Raulet, an imaginary individual whose profession she defined in a vague way by saying that 'he was in business.' As a matter of fact, the shrewd and cunning landlady had never been married. She was, for the moment, being 'protected' by a respectable physician—a well-known man and the father of a family—whom she had so thoroughly taken in by her fine manners that she managed to get five hundred francs a month out of him, regularly paid on the first, like the salary of a Civil Servant.
Being before all else a thrifty soul, she had conceived the idea of increasing her monthly income by letting out three of the rooms she did not want, and as there were two doors to her flat she was able to give this small suite a separate entrance. The almost elegant furniture it contained had come to her as a weird inheritance. For ten years she had been the mistress of a madman, whose family, desiring for some reason to keep this insanity secret, had paid her well. Upon her unhappy lover's death, Malvina had, according to promise, received twenty thousand francs and the contents of the house in which she had played such a strange part. This woman's dark and hideous past René was never to know. In that gay city, where clandestine attachments abound, how many of the thoughtless youths who hire such places know aught of the history of those who pander to their wants? Nor could the poet think for one moment that this woman with the irreproachable manners had seen right through his demands at the first glance. He had told her that he lived in Versailles, and that he was obliged to come to Paris two or three times a week. The name he gave her was that of his favourite hero—the paradoxical d'Albert in 'Mademoiselle de Maupin;' but as he wrote it at the bottom of the agreement which the careful Madame Raulet got him to sign, he placed his hat on the table, and there the crafty landlady could plainly read the real initials of her new lodger.
'If you would like my servant to undertake the cleaning of the rooms,' she said, 'it will be fifty francs a month extra.'
This exorbitant demand was made in such a cool tone, and Madame Raulet, moreover, looked so thoroughly respectable, that René dared not discuss the amount. He could, however, not help eyeing her somewhat distrustfully. Her appearance, it was true, disarmed all suspicion. She wore a dark dress, well but simply made. Round her neck hung one of those long gold chains so much worn at one time by the French bourgeoisie—a chain which had no doubt once belonged to her sainted mother. She wore her watch in her belt; a brooch containing a lock of white hair—that of a beloved father, most probably—fastened her neat lace collar, and through the meshes of the silk mittens that covered her long hands might be seen her wedding ring.
As René was leaving, this virtuous creature remarked, 'The house is a very quiet one, sir. You are a young man,' she added with a smile, 'and you will not be offended if I make so bold as to say that the least noise on the stairs at night, or anything like that, would be sufficient reason for my asking you to leave.'
René felt himself blush as she spoke. In his excessive simplicity he feared lest the worthy widow might give him notice after his first meeting there with Suzanne. This ridiculous fear impelled him to visit his landlady immediately Madame Moraines had gone under pretence of speaking to her about some trifling matter he wanted done. She received him with the polite air of a woman who knows nothing, understands nothing, and has seen nothing, although she had been watching Suzanne's departure from her window, and had, with the practised eye of a Parisian, taken that lady's measure at a glance. Malvina now saw through it all—her lodger's visitor was a woman in the first ranks of Society, but he himself, although well dressed, showed by the cut of his beard, his hair, his walk and his whole appearance that he belonged to a lower station in life. The landlady thought that most probably the rent would be paid by the mistress, and not by the lover, and she regretted not having asked more than five hundred francs a month besides the fifty for attendance. The whole of the flat cost her fourteen hundred francs a year, and she paid her maid-of-all-work forty-five francs! No matter, she would make up for it in the extras—in the firing, the washing, and especially in the meals, if ever the young man asked her to provide lunch, as she had offered to do.
'She is an excellent woman, and very attentive,' said René, when Suzanne questioned him about Madame Raulet. Was the poet wrong in being so trustful? Of what use would it have been to indulge, as Claude would have done, in a pessimistic analysis of this woman's character, except to conjure up thoughts of blackmail and other dangers, all entirely imaginary, as it happened? For although Malvina was far from being a saint, she was at the same time a bourgeoise who had a sincere hankering after respectability, and who proposed, as soon as she had made her little pile, to return to her native town of Tournon, and lead a life of absolute purity. The fear of seeing her name figure in the report of some evil-smelling case was sufficient to deter her from practising any pronounced form of imposition. So far did her love of respectability carry her that she wove a complicated web of falsehoods to the concierge about her new lodger. She made out that Suzanne and René were a happy couple who lived in the country all the year round, and that they were distantly related to the late M. Raulet. Then, in order that he should have nothing whatever to do with the said concierge, she herself handed René two keys even before he had asked for them.
What cared the poet for the real cause of her attentiveness? The young have sense enough not to go into facts which lend themselves to the gratification of their desires. This system sometimes leads them along perilous paths, but they cull many a flower by the wayside and enjoy its fragrance, nevertheless. When the poet walked across half Paris to reach his little suite in the Rue des Dames there was a music in his heart that shut out all dissonant voices of suspicion. His meetings with Suzanne were generally in the morning. René had never asked himself why that time of the day was most convenient to his beloved. As a matter of fact it was the hour when she was most certain of escaping the watchfulness of Desforges. In the forenoon the hygienic Baron devoted himself to what was dearest to him on earth—his health. First he had a bout of fencing, which he called his 'dose of exercise'; then he galloped through the Bois, which was his 'air cure'; lastly he 'burnt his acid,' a formula he owed to Doctor Noirot.
The double Madonna, who had studied her man thoroughly, knew that he was as much a slave to these rules of health as Paul was to those of his office. She therefore felt a secret pleasure in thinking of her husband seated at his desk, of her 'excellent friend' bestriding an English mare, and of her René entering a florist's to buy some flowers wherewith to adorn the chapel of their love. Roses were his usual choice, roses red as his darling's lips, roses fair as her blushing cheeks, fresh and living blooms that filled the air with their sweet and penetrating perfume. As she was borne towards the harbour of their love she knew that René would be standing at the window listening to the rattle of the cabs as they passed. How delighted he would be when hers stopped before the house! She would ascend the stairs, and there he would be waiting for her, having softly opened the door so as not to lose one second of her sweet presence. Then he would hold her in his arms devouring her with silent kisses that pierced the black lace veil as they sought her fresh and mobile lips.
Suzanne's great triumph consisted in her ability to preserve her innocent Madonna-like expression amidst all the madness of their love; and, by a singular dispensation of nature, too, this strange creature was entirely devoid of all sense of remorse. She belonged, no doubt by heredity, being the daughter of a statesman, to the great race of active beings whose dominant trait is a faculty for distributing their energies. These beings have the power to make the most of the present without allowing themselves to be troubled either by the past or the future. In modern slang we find a pretty phrase to express this power of temporary oblivion—it is called 'cutting the cord.' Suzanne had parcelled out her life into three parts—one belonging to Paul, one to Desforges, and one to René. During the time she devoted to each there was such absolute suspension of the rest of her existence that she would have had some difficulty in realising the extent of her duplicity had she cared to probe her conscience—a proceeding she never dreamt of whilst the opium of pleasure coursed through her brain. She generally remained with René till about twelve o'clock, and when she was gone Madame Raulet would send up his lunch; and he would stay in the rooms for the rest of the day, ostensibly to work, for he had some of his papers there, but really to gloat over the reminiscences that floated in the very air he breathed. When night was beginning to fall he would wend his way homewards, under the twinkling gas lamps that illumined his route, possessed by a divine languor that seemed to combine and blend into one harmonious whole all the delights of the day.