The cab started off and passed the top of the Rue Coëtlogon. 'He is weeping now,' said Claude to himself; 'what would he say if he saw me going to Colette's?' He little thought that as soon as he had entered the house René had told his sister to get out his dress suit. Astonished at such a request, Emilie ventured upon an interrogation, but was met with, 'I have no time to talk,' uttered in such harsh tones that she dared not insist.
It was Friday, and René, as he had told Claude, knew that Suzanne was at the Opera. He had calculated that this was her week. Why had the idea that he must see her again and at once taken such a firm hold upon him that, in his impatience to be off, he quite upset both his sister and Françoise? Was he about to put his threat into practice and insult his faithless mistress in public? Or did he only wish to feast his eyes once more on her deceptive beauty before his departure? On the occasion of his visit to the Gymnase a week ago, after his interview with Colette, his aim had been clear and definite. It was the outward similarity of that visit with the step he was now taking that made him feel more keenly what a change had come over him and his surroundings in such a short space of time. How hopefully had he then betaken himself to the theatre, and now in what mood of despair! Why was he going at all?
He asked himself this question as he ascended the grand staircase, but he felt himself impelled by some force superior to all reason or effort of will. Since he had seen Suzanne leave the house in the Rue du Mont-Thabor he had acted like an automaton. He took his seat in the stalls just as the ballet scene from 'Faust' was drawing to a close. The first effect produced by the music on his overstrung nerves was a feeling of almost morbid sadness; tears started to his eyes and dimmed his vision as he turned his opera-glasses upon Suzanne's box—that box in which she had looked so divinely modest and pretty on the morrow of Madame Komof's soirée, though not more so than she did now.
To-night she was in blue, with a row of pearls round her fair throat and diamonds in her golden hair. Another woman, whom René had never seen, was seated beside her; she was a brunette, dressed in white, and wore a number of jewels. There were three men behind them. One was unknown to the poet, the other two were Moraines and Desforges. The unhappy lover gazed upon the trio before him—the woman sold to this aged libertine, and the husband who profited by the bargain. At least, René believed that it was so. This picture of infamy changed his feelings of sadness into fury. All combined to madden him—indignation at finding such ideal grace in Suzanne's face when but that afternoon she had hurried home from her disgusting amours, physical jealousy wrought to its highest pitch by the presence of the more fortunate rival, lastly a kind of helpless humiliation at beholding this perfidious mistress happy and admired, in all the glamour of her queenly beauty, whilst he, her victim, was almost dying of grief and unavenged.
By the time that the ballet was over René had lashed himself into that state of fury which in every day language is expressively styled a cool rage. At such moments, by a contrast similar to that observed in certain stages of madness, the frenzy of the soul is accompanied by complete control of the nerves. The individual may come and go, laugh and talk; he preserves a perfectly calm exterior, and yet inside him there is a whirlwind of murderous ideas. The most unheard-of proceedings then seem quite natural as well as the most pronounced cruelties. The poet had been struck with a sudden idea—to go into Madame Moraines' box and express to her his contempt! How? That did not trouble him much. All he knew was that he must ease his mind, whatever the result might be. As he made his way along the corridor, just then filled with the gilded youth of Paris, he was so beside himself that he came into collision with several people, but strode on unheedingly and without proffering a word of excuse. On reaching the ouvreuse, he asked her to show him the sixth box from the stage on the right.
'The box belonging to Monsieur le Baron Desforges?' said the woman.
'Quite right,' replied René. 'He pays for the theatre, too,' he thought; 'that's only as it should be.' The door was opened, and in a trice he had passed through the small ante-room that leads to the box itself. Moraines turned round and smiled at him in his frank and simple way. The next moment he was shaking hands with René in English fashion and saying, 'How d'you do?' as though they were accustomed to meet every day.
Then, turning to his wife, who had witnessed René's entrance without betraying the slightest surprise, he said, 'My darling, this is Monsieur Vincy.'
'I haven't forgotten Monsieur Vincy,' replied Suzanne, receiving her visitor with a graceful inclination of her head, 'although he seems to have forgotten me.'
The perfect ease with which she uttered this phrase, the smile that accompanied it, the painful necessity of shaking hands with this husband whom he regarded as an accessory to his wife's guilt, and of bowing to Baron Desforges as well as to the other persons present in the box—all these details were so strangely out of keeping with the fever consuming the poet that for a few moments he was quite taken aback. Such is life in the world of fashion. Tragedies are played in silence, and amidst an interchange of false compliments, an assumption of meaningless manners, and an empty show of pleasure. Moraines had offered René a seat behind Suzanne, and she sat talking to him about his musical tastes with as much apparent indifference as if this visit were not of terrible significance for her.