How strange was the relation between this man, young, ardent, hungry for all the good things of the earth, and this woman, scarcely older than himself, elegant, pretty, gentle, good enough to eat, who, as the years passed, were often alone together, without any hint of anything equivocal in their friendship! The calm Solange maternally advised Philippe about his clothes, about the little problems of society and the practical life. Philippe's pride was not ashamed to accept this, to ask advice and even make her his confidante, to tell her of his ambitions and his disappointments. He could do so without fear. Solange would hear nothing that was evil, nothing that was real. What did it matter? She listened, and she said afterwards, with her kind smile, "You want to frighten me, but I don't believe you."
For she only believed what was not true.
And this man, pitiless to everything that was mediocre, made only one exception in life: for Solange. He abstained from judging her.
Preceded by a reputation of the American kind, flashy, but substantial, and based on indisputable realities, he had come back to Paris seven or eight years before. The support of his patron, bringing official favor with it in the wake of his insolent dollars, had opened a way for him in spite of the triple barriers piled up by routine, jealousy and the just rights of those who had been long awaiting their turn to enter. Whether it was just or not, he was advanced over them all. Philippe had not permitted himself to accept any honors or advantages he had not deserved; but, knowing that he deserved them, he did not trouble himself about the means by which he got them. He despised men too much not to borrow their own contemptible weapons, when it was necessary, in order to get the better of them. He did not despise a newspaper puff that pierced people's ears like the brass instruments that used to accompany the village tooth-pullers on their platforms. He was a great man for fashionable exhibitions, first nights, varnishing-days, official galas. He lent himself to sensational interviews. He himself wrote—one is never served better than by oneself—and, through one or two examples, showed those who contradicted him that he could handle the pen as well as the knife. A counsel for amateurs! . . . Never be ambiguous! His way of holding out his hand meant, "Alliance or war?" He allowed no means to escape him by being neutral.
At the same time, a habit of working desperately, with no more consideration for himself than he had for others, an indifference to risks, brilliant results that could not be denied, made the internes in the hospital he directed his enthusiastic partisans. He indulged in rash communications to the Academy that aroused the exasperated incredulity of comfortably settled souls who did not like to be turned upside down: Homeric jousts from which he almost always emerged with the decisive word and always with the last one.
He terrified the timid. He had no regard for individuals when the interests of science or humanity seemed to him at stake. He would have liked to experiment on criminals, destroy monsters, sterilize the abnormal, undertake heroic operations on living subjects. He loathed sentimentality. He did not give way to sympathy with his patients, and he did not allow them to pity themselves. Their groans had no interest for him. But when he was able to save them he did save them—harshly; he cut down to the quick to cure the living man. He was hard of heart, but his hands were gentle. People were afraid of him and they pursued him. He fleeced the rich and asked nothing of the poor.
He lived in a large way, for he had acquired the taste for luxury. He could give it up, however, on a day's notice; but, leading this life, he led it whole-heartedly. His wife was part of his luxury. He enjoyed them both and he never demanded of them anything they could not give. He did not ask Noémi to share in his intellectual life; he did not give her a chance to do so. Noémi did not care; if she had the rest, she had, as she thought, the important part. He had made up his mind that in any case this was all that women ought to have. A woman who thought was a cumbersome bit of furniture.
Why, then, was he so immediately captivated by Annette?
Through that which resembled himself. Through the quality in the Annette of this period that was like himself, the quality he alone could perceive. At the first crossing of their glances, as their first responses struck, steel against steel, he said to himself, "She sees these people as I see them. She's one of my kind."
Of his kind? It scarcely seemed so, to judge by the facts. Annette had fallen out of the social sphere into which Philippe had succeeded in elbowing himself, and they had met each other, in passing, on one of the rungs of the ladder. But at this particular moment they were on an equal footing, they both felt that they were strangers in this world, adversaries of this world, that they both really belonged to another race, once mistress of the soil, but now dispossessed, scattered over the earth and almost vanished. After all, who knows the mysteries of races and their vicissitudes, that mingling of all, in the ultimate future towards which, as it seems, humanity is moving for the final triumph of mediocrity? . . . But it has its unexpected resurgences, and sometimes the former master of the soil resumes his estate for a day. Whether it was his estate or not, Philippe claimed it as his own. And in this way he had just appropriated Annette.