It was not long before he perceived the secret drama of Joussier's life: the disease which was undermining his constitution, and the cruelty of his mistress. She loved him, she was proud of him: but she had too much vitality: he knew that she was slipping away from him, would slip away from him: and he was aflame with jealousy. She found his jealousy diverting: she was for ever exciting the men about her, bombarding them with her eyes, flinging around them her sensual provocative atmosphere: she loved to play with him like a cat. Perhaps she deceived him with Graillot. Perhaps it pleased her to let him think so. In any case if she were not actually doing so, she very probably would. Joussier dared not forbid her to love whomsoever she pleased: did he not profess the woman's right to liberty equally with the man's? She reminded him of that slyly and insolently one day when he was upbraiding her. He was delivered up to a terrible struggle within himself between his theories of liberty and his violent instincts. At heart he was still a man like the men of old, despotic and jealous: by reason he was a man of the future, a Utopian. She was neither more nor less than the woman of yesterday, to-morrow, and all time.—And Olivier, looking on at their secret duel, the savagery of which was known to him by his own experience, was full of pity for Joussier when he realized his weakness. But Joussier guessed that Olivier was reading him: and he was very far from liking him for it.
There was another interested witness, an indulgent spectator of this game of love and hate. This was the manageress, Amélie. She saw everything without seeming to do so. She knew life. She was an honest, healthy, tranquil, easy-going woman, and in her youth had been free enough. She had been in a florist's shop: she had had a lover of the class above her own: she had had other lovers. Then she had married a working-man. She had become a good wife and mother. But she understood everything, all the foolish ways of the heart, Joussier's jealousy, as well as the young woman's desire for amusement. She tried to help them to understand each other with a few affectionate words:
"You must make allowances: it is not worth while creating bad blood between you for such a trifle…."
She was not at all surprised when her words produced no result….
"That's the way of the world. We must always be torturing ourselves…."
She had that splendid carelessness of the people, from which misfortune of every sort seems harmlessly to glide. She had had her share of unhappiness. Three months ago she had lost a boy of fifteen whom she dearly loved: it had been a great grief to her: but now she was once more busy and laughing. She used to say:
"If one were to think of these things one could not live."
So she ceased to think of it. It was not selfishness. She could not do otherwise: her vitality was too strong: she was absorbed by the present: it was impossible for her to linger over the past. She adapted herself to things as they were, and would adapt herself to whatever happened. If the revolution were to come and turn everything topsy-turvy she would soon manage to be standing firmly on her feet, and do everything that was there to do; she would be in her place wherever she might be set down. At heart she had only a modified belief in the revolution. She had hardly any real faith in anything whatever. It is hardly necessary to add that she used to consult the cards in her moments of perplexity, and that she never failed to make the sign of the cross when she met a funeral. She was very open-minded and very tolerant, and she had the skepticism of the people of Paris, that healthy skepticism which doubts, as a man breathes, joyously. Though she was the wife of a revolutionary, nevertheless she took up a motherly and ironical attitude towards her husband's ideas and those of his party—and those of the other parties,—the sort of attitude she had towards the follies of youth—and of maturity. She was never much moved by anything. But she was interested in everything. And she was equally prepared for good and bad luck. In fine, she was an optimist.
"It's no good getting angry…. Everything settles itself so long as your health is good…."
That was clearly to Christophe's way of thinking. They did not need much conversation to discover that they belonged to the same family. Every now and then they would exchange a good-humored smile, while the others were haranguing and shouting. But, more often, she would laugh to herself as she looked at Christophe, and saw him being caught up by the argument to which he would at once bring more passion than all the rest put together.