'Candidly,' replied René, 'I prefer not to see her.'
'And how do matters stand with you?' asked Claude.
After the poet had briefly acquainted him with the present position, the scene at the Opera, Suzanne's visit, and her request for a meeting, Larcher rejoined: 'What can I say to you? Have I the right to advise you, weak as I am myself? But does that really matter? I can see my own follies clearly enough, although I am continually stumbling like a blind man. Why, then, should I not see clearly for you, who have perhaps more energy than I? You are younger, and have never stumbled yet. . . . It comes to this. Have you resolved to become, like me, an erotic maniac, a madman ruled only by sexual passion, and—worse than all—a wretch sensible of his own degradation? Then keep this appointment. Suzanne will give you no reasons, not one. Don't you see that if she were innocent the very sight of you would be hateful to her after what you have said? She came to your house. Why? To blind you once more with her beauty. Now she summons you to the very place where you will be least able to resist that beauty. She will say what women always say in these cases. Words—and words—and words again. But you will see her, you will hear the rustle of her skirts. And, believe me, there is no love-potion so powerful as treachery! You will feel the truth of this when you stifle her with savage and brutish embraces—and then, good-bye to reproaches! Everything is forgotten. But what follows? You saw how brave I was yesterday. See what a coward I am to-day, and say to yourself, like the workman who sees his drunken comrade staggering helplessly along, "That's how I shall be on Sunday!" If, after all, you feel unable to do without her—if you must have her, as the drunkard must have his wine—you will find solace in this cowardice, even though it kill you. That solace I have found. Glut yourself with this woman's love. It will rid you either of your love for her or of your self-respect. You will learn to treat Suzanne exactly as I treat Colette. But remember what I have told you to-night—it is the end of all. Talent I no longer possess. Honour! What should I do with it, having forgiven what I have forgiven? My poor boy,' he concluded in tones of entreaty, 'you can still save yourself. You are at the top of the ladder that leads down to the sewer—listen to the cry of an unhappy wretch who is up to his neck in filth at the bottom. And now, good-bye, if you don't want to see Colette. Why did she tell you what she did? You knew nothing, and where ignorance is bliss—— Good-bye once more, old man. Think of me and pity me!'
'No,' said the poet, as he made his way home, 'I will not descend to such depths.' For the first time perhaps since witnessing Claude's unhappy passion he really understood the nature of his wretched friend's malady. He had just discovered in himself feelings identical to those which had made such an abject slave of Colette's lover—a mingling of utter contempt and ardent physical longing for a woman justly tried and condemned. Yes, in spite of all he had learnt he still desired Suzanne—still desired those lips kissed by Desforges and all that beauty which the hoary libertine had stained but not destroyed. It was that fair white flesh that troubled his senses now—nought but that flesh! To this had come his noble love, his worship of her whom he had once called his Madonna. Claude was right: if he yielded to this base longing but once, all would be lost. His loathing for the slough of corruption in which his friend was helplessly struggling was so intense that it gave him strength to say, 'I pledge myself not to go to the Rue des Dames on Monday,' and he knew he would keep his word.
Whilst Suzanne was undergoing the tortures of hope and despair in the little blue salon on the appointed morning René too was suffering intensely, but it was in his own room. 'I won't go—I won't go!' he muttered repeatedly. Then he thought of his friend, and he sighed 'Poor Claude!' as he fully realised the position of the man who had been beaten in the struggle in which he himself was now engaged. He pitied himself whilst pitying Colette's victim, and this pity, as well as his old and long-continued religious habits, aided his courage. For some time now he had refrained from all observances, and had surrendered himself to those doubts which all modern writers entertain more or less before returning to Christianity as the sole source of spiritual life. But even during the period of doubt the moral muscle, developed by exercise in childhood and youth, continues to put forth its strength. In his resistance to the most pressing calls of passion, the nephew and pupil of the Abbé Taconet once more found this power at his service. When the last stroke of twelve had died away he said to himself, 'Suzanne has gone home—I am saved.'
Saved he was not, and his inability to follow Claude's advice to the letter ought to have convinced him of this. Neither on the Monday nor the following days could he summon up sufficient courage to leave the city that contained the woman from whom he now both wished and thought himself freed. He invented all kinds of shallow pretexts for remaining in Paris. 'I am as far from her in this room as I should be in Rome or Venice; I shall not go to her, and she will not come here.' In reality, he was expecting—he scarce knew what. He only knew that his passion was too intense to die in this way. A meeting would take place between Suzanne and himself. How or where mattered little, but it would certainly take place. He would not confess to this cowardly and secret hope, but it had taken such hold upon him that he remained a prisoner in the Rue Coëtlogon in hourly expectation of receiving another letter or of finding himself the object of some last attempt. No letter came, no attempt was made, and his heart grew heavier within him.
At times this desire to see Suzanne once more—a desire he felt, but would not admit—drove him to his writing-table, where he would sit and indite page after page of the wildest sentiment to the abandoned creature. His pent-up rage found vent in the mad lines in which he both insulted and idolised her, and in which terms of endearment mingled with words of hatred. Then Claude's piteous laments would re-echo in his ears, and he would tear up the paper as he stifled an answering wail that rose within him. He lay down at night with despair in his heart, thinking of death as the only thing to be desired. He rose, and his thoughts were unchanged. The bright days, so glorious in the budding time of Nature, were to him intolerable, and his poetic soul longed for the twilight hour and the darkness that matched so well the black night in his heart. In the gloaming, too, he could find sweet solace in tears. It was the hour that his poor sister feared most for him. They had become reconciled on the very next day after their quarrel.
'Are you still angry with me?' she had asked him, with that gentleness of voice that betokens true affection.
'No,' he replied; 'I was entirely in the wrong; but, unless you wish to see me act so unjustly again, I entreat you never to re-open that subject.'
'Never,' she said, and she kept her word. Meanwhile she saw her brother wasting away, his cheeks growing still thinner and a fierce light that frightened her burning in his sunken eyes. It was for this reason, then, that she generally chose the dangerous hour of twilight to come and sit with him. One day Fresneau had gone to take Constant for a walk in the Luxembourg; she herself had found some pretext for staying at home. She took her darling brother's hand in hers, and this dumb caress made the unhappy fellow feel inexpressibly sad. He returned her pressure without a word, her benign and soothing influence controlling him until thoughts of Desforges suddenly flashed across his brain. 'Leave me,' he said to Emilie, and she obeyed him in the hope of easing his pain. As soon as she was gone he buried his head in the pillows of the bed whilst jealousy gripped his heart with relentless claws. Ah! the agony of it!