When we have accustomed ourselves to play a certain part in the eyes of the world for years together we continue to play it even when alone. Desforges was ashamed of his weakness—like an officer who, sent out on a night expedition, blushes to find himself afraid and refuses to admit the presence of that feeling. 'It is not true,' he said to himself; 'I am not jealous.' He conjured up a vision of Suzanne in René's arms, and it tickled his vanity to feel that the picture, though not a pleasant one, did not cause him one of those fits of intense pain that constitute jealousy. By way of contrast, he recalled the poet's entry in the box, his agitated manner, and the unconquerable frenzy that betrayed itself in every lineament. There you had a really jealous man, exposed to the full fury of that terrible mania.
The antithesis between the relative calm he felt within him and his rival's despair was so flattering to the Baron's vanity that for a moment he was absolutely happy. He caught himself making use of his customary expression, one he had inherited from his father, a clever speculator, who had again had it from his mother, a fine Normandy woman who had linked her fortunes with those of the first Baron Desforges, a Prefect under the grand empereur, 'Gumption! Why should I be jealous? In what has Suzanne deceived me? Did I expect her to love me with a love such as this fool of a poet no doubt dreamt of? What could a man of more than fifty ask of her? To be kind and amiable? That she has been. To afford me an opportunity of spending my evenings agreeably? She has done so. Well, what then? She has met a strapping youth, a bit wild, with a fresh-looking complexion, and a fine pair of lips. As she couldn't very well ask me to get him for her, she has indulged in a little luxury on her own account. But, of the two of us, I should say that he is the cuckold!'
This reflection, so purely Gallic in form, occurred to him just as he reached the door of his club. The plain language in which it had found expression relieved him for a moment. 'That's all very well,' he thought; 'but what would Crucé say?' The adroit collector had once sold him a worthless daub at an exorbitant figure, and Desforges had ever since entertained for him that mixture of respect and resentment felt by very clever men for those who have duped them well. He drew a picture of the small club-room and the cunning Crucé relating Suzanne's adventure with René to two or three of his most envious colleagues. The idea was so hateful to the Baron that it stopped him from entering the club, and he walked away in the direction of the Champs-Elysées trying to shake off its influence. 'Bah! Neither Crucé nor the others will know anything of it. It's lucky after all that she didn't hit upon any of these men about town.' He threw a glance at the club windows that looked out upon the Place de la Concorde, and which were all lit up. 'Instead of that she has taken some one who is not in Society, whom I never meet, and whom she has neither patronised nor presented. I must do her the justice to admit that she has been very considerate. Her trepidation, too, just now, was entirely on my account. Poor little woman!'
'Poor little woman!' he repeated, continuing his soliloquy under the trees of the avenue. 'This beast is capable of making her repent her caprice most bitterly. He seemed in a pretty rage to-night! What want of taste and manners! In my box, too! What irony! If this good Paul were not the husband I have made him, she would be a ruined woman. And then he has discovered the secret of our meetings, and we shall have to leave the Rue du Mont-Thabor. No—the fellow is impossible!' This was one of his favourite expressions. A fresh fit of ill humour had seized him, this time directed against the poet, but, as he prided himself upon being a man of sense and upon his clear-sightedness, he suppressed it at once. 'Am I going to be angry with him for being jealous of me? That would be the height of folly! Let me rather think upon what he is likely to do. Blackmail! No. He is too young for that. An article in some paper? A poet with pretensions to sentiment—that won't be in his line. I wonder whether his indignation will lead him to cast her off altogether? That seems too good to be true. A young scribbler, as poor as a church mouse, shall give up a beautiful and loving mistress, surrounded by all the refinements of luxury, who costs him nothing! Get out! But what if he asks her to break with me, and she is foolish enough to yield?' He saw at once and clearly what disturbance such a rupture would create in his life. 'Firstly, there would be the loss of Suzanne, and where should I find another so charming, so sprightly, so accustomed to my ways and habits? Then, again, I should have to find something to do in the evenings, to say nothing of the fact that I have no better friend in Paris than this excellent Paul.' To remove his fears concerning these contingencies he was obliged to recapitulate the bonds of interest that made him indispensable to the Moraines. 'No,' he concluded, as he reached the door of his mansion in the Cours-la-Reine, 'he will not let her go, she will not give me up, and everything will come right. Everything always comes right in the end.'
This assurance and philosophy were probably not so sincere as the Baron's vanity—his only weakness—would have him believe, and for the first time in his life he got out of patience with his valet, a pupil of his who for years had helped him to undress. Though he was still anxious about the future, and more inwardly upset than he cared to admit, this easy-going egoist nevertheless slept right off for seven hours, according to his wont. Thanks to a life of moderate and continual activity, to a careful system of diet, to absolute regularity in rising and retiring, and, above all, to the care he took to rid his brain at midnight of all troublesome thoughts, he had acquired such a fixed habit of dropping off to sleep at the same hour that nothing less than the announcement of another Commune—the most terrible calamity he could think of—would have kept him awake. On opening his eyes in the morning, his mind refreshed by his recuperative slumbers, all irritation was so completely dispelled that he recalled the events of the preceding night with a smile.
'I am sure that he has not done as much,' he said to himself, thinking of the sleepless hours that René must have spent, 'nor Suzanne either'—she had been so agitated—'nor Moraines.' An indisposition of his wife's always turned that poor fellow upside down. 'What a fine title for a play—"The happiest of the four!" I must take credit for its invention.' His joke pleased him immensely, and when Doctor Noirot, during the process of massage, had said to him, 'Monsieur le Baron's muscles are in excellent condition this morning; they are as healthy, supple, and firm as those of a man of thirty,' the sensation of well-being abolished the last traces of his ill humour.
He had now but one idea—how to prevent last night's scene from bringing any change into his comfortable existence, so well adapted to his dear person. He thought of it as he drank his chocolate, a kind of light and fragrant froth which his valet prepared according to the precepts of a master of the culinary art. He thought of it as he galloped through the Bois on this bright spring morning. He thought of it as he sat down to luncheon about half-past twelve opposite the old aunt whose duties consisted of looking after the linen, the silver, and the servants' accounts, until such time as she should be called upon to look after him. He decided to adopt the principle of every wise policy, both public and private—to wait! 'Better give the young man time to make a fool of himself and slip away of his own accord. I must be very kind, and pretend I have seen nothing.'
Turning this resolve over in his mind, he made his way on foot to the Rue Murillo about two o'clock. He stopped before the shop window of an art dealer whom he knew very well, and his eyes fell upon a Louis XVI. watch, its chased gold case set in a wreath of roses and bearing a charming miniature. 'An excellent means,' he thought, 'of proving to her that I am for the status quo.' He bought the pretty toy at a reasonable price, and congratulated himself upon its acquisition when, on entering Suzanne's little salon, he saw how anxiously she had awaited his coming. Her careworn look and her pallor told him that she must have spent the night in concocting plans to get out of the dilemma into which the scene with René had led her, and by the way in which she eyed him the Baron saw that she knew she had not escaped his perspicacity. This compliment was like balm to his wounded vanity, and he felt real pleasure in handing her the case containing the little bauble with the words, 'How do you like this?'
'It is charming,' said Suzanne; 'the shepherd and shepherdess are most life-like.'
'Yes,' replied Desforges; 'they almost look as though they were singing the romance of those days: