A Tragic Idyl

by Paul Bourget

But there was another reason that caused her to detest this friendship. Like all young women who marry into a different circle from their own, she was mortally anxious about her husband's past. Olivier, in one of those half-confidences that even the most self-contained men fall into in the moment of candor following marriage, had allowed her to see that he had suffered a particularly cruel disillusion in the latter part of his bachelor life. Another half-confidence had enabled her to learn that this incident had taken place at Rome, and that the cause of it was a foreigner of noble birth.

Olivier had completely forgotten these two imprudent phrases, but Berthe treasured them in the recesses of her memory. She had even not been content to brood over the avowals; she had put them side by side, and had completed them by that species of mental mosaic work in which women excel, seizing a detail here, another there, in the most insignificant conversation to add them to the story upon which they are at work. They make deductions in this way that the most scientific observers, the most wily detectives, cannot equal.

Olivier had not the least suspicion of this work going, on in Berthe's mind. Still less did he suspect that she had discovered the first name of this unknown mistress, a name whose very singularity had helped to betray it. It happened in this way: When they were married he had destroyed a number of letters, thrown a lot of faded flowers into the fire with many a portrait. Then—it is the common story of those mental autos da fé—his hand had trembled in taking up some of these relics, relics of a troubled, unhappy youth, of his youth. And this had made him treasure a portrait of Madame de Carlsberg, in profile, so beautiful, so clear cut, so marvellously like the profile of some antique medallion that he could not bear to burn it. He slipped the portrait into an envelope, and, some one happening to call upon him at this moment, he placed the envelope in a large portfolio in which he carried his papers. Then he forgot all about it. He had never thought about the portrait until he was in Egypt. Again he decided to burn it, and again he could not bear to destroy it.

In the cosmopolitan society into which his diplomatic functions called him it is a frequent thing for women to give their photographs bearing their signatures to their friends, sometimes even to mere acquaintances. Ely's name written at the foot of the photograph, therefore, signified nothing. Berthe would never find the portrait, or if she did all that he would need to do would be to speak of her as an acquaintance. He, therefore, returned the photograph to its hiding-place in the portfolio, and one day the improbable happened in the simplest way in the world. They were staying at Luxor. He happened to be away from the hotel for a short time. Berthe, who during the entire journey kept the accounts of their expenses with a natural and cultivated exactitude, was looking for a bill that her husband had paid, and, without thinking, opened the portfolio. There she found the photograph. But the second half of Olivier's reasoning was faulty. She never thought of questioning him upon the subject. The presence of the portrait among Olivier's papers, the regal and singular beauty of the woman's face, the strangely foreign name, the elegant toilet, the place where the photograph had been taken,—Rome,—all told the young wife that this was the mysterious rival who had taken up such a large place in her husband's past.

She thought about it continually. But she could not speak to Olivier without his thinking that she had spied upon him, that she had deliberately searched among his papers. And besides, what was there to ask him about? She divined all that she did not actually know. So she kept silent, her heart seared with this torturing and fatal curiosity.

Her knowledge was sufficient to make her think, when her husband went out the day before with the most intimate friend of his youth: "They are going to talk about her!" For who could be in Olivier's confidence if not Pierre Hautefeuille? Was any other reason necessary to explain her antipathy? She had noticed Olivier's agitation upon his return from the walk with his friend. And she had said to herself: "They have talked about her." In the night she had heard her husband walking restlessly about in his room, and she had thought: "He is thinking about her." And this was the reason why she remained, now that the door was again closed, alone, her brow resting upon her hand, motionless, with her heart beating as though it would burst, and hating with an intense hatred the friend who knew what she ignored. By dint of concentrated reflection, she had divined a part of the truth. It would have been better for her, better for Olivier, better for all, had she only known it all!

Olivier's heart was also beating rapidly when, after having knocked at Pierre's door, he heard the words, "Come in," spoken by the voice he knew so well and whose sound he had so longed to hear the night before upon this very staircase. Pierre was not yet out of bed, though it was eleven o'clock. He excused himself merrily.

"You see what Southern habits I have fallen into. I shall soon be like one of the Kornows who stays here. Corancez called the other day and found him in bed at five o'clock in the afternoon. 'You know,' said Kornow, 'we are not early risers in Russia.'"

"You do well to take care of yourself," said Olivier, "seeing that you have been so ill."

He had spoken with some embarrassment and a little at random. How he wished his friend would tell him of his nocturnal promenade in reply! But no, a little crimson flush colored Pierre's cheek, and that was all. But it was sufficient to remove all doubt from Olivier's mind as to the reason of his midnight absence. His mind suddenly made a choice between the two alternatives imagined when he had found the room empty. The evidence was overpowering. Pierre had a mistress and he had gone to meet her. He saw the countenance, still so youthful, reposing upon the pillow and bearing the traces of a voluptuous lassitude imprinted upon it. The eyes were sunken, his face had that pallor that follows the excesses of a too exquisite passion, as though the blood were momentarily fatigued, and his lips were curved in a smile that was both languid and yet contented.