“Though first impressions are sometimes erroneous, I believe there is a balance in favor of their correctness. If a singular antipathy seizes you for a particular person at first sight, no matter how foolish it may seem, you may be almost sure that there is something in your two natures that is destined to remain in constant opposition. You may conquer it for a time; it may even change, as it did in my case, to profound affection; but, sooner or later, it will spring up again, with tenfold strength and deadliness; the reason of your first aversion will be made painfully manifest, and the end of it all will be doubly bitter because of the love that for a brief while sweetened it. I say I loved Silvion Guidèl!—and in proportion to the sincerity of that love, I afterwards measured the intensity of my hate!”
The wedding day draws closer, and Beauvais remains blind to everything save his own joy and the bliss which he fondly imagines will result from the union. True, he sometimes notices a certain lack of enthusiasm in Pauline’s view of the approaching ceremony, but he attributes this and her wistfulness of expression to “the nervous excitement a young girl would naturally feel at the swift approach of her wedding day.” Strangely enough, Guidèl, too, shows signs of physical and mental distress, but when Beauvais rallies him on his manner and appearance, he puts the young banker off with light speeches in which, however, there is a certain bitterness which puzzles the latter considerably. However, Beauvais still suspects nothing. At length Pauline shatters all his dreams of the future, and makes him a miserable wretch for life, by confessing that she loves Silvion Guidèl, that her love is returned, and that, in consequence of this mutual passion, the worst of possible fates has befallen her.
Then Beauvais flies to absinthe drinking, which is the keynote of the story. From that time on it is all absinthe. A broken-down painter, André Gessonex, lures him on to this disastrous form of begetting forgetfulness; and this is the first step down the short steep hill which leads to the young banker’s utter ruin. Having once tasted the potent and fascinating mixture, he returns to it again and again, and gradually it warps him, physically and mentally, finally transforming him into one of the meanest scoundrels in Paris.
But this is after many days. On the morning after his first bout of absinthe drinking, Beauvais decides to challenge Silvion, but discovers that the betrayer of Pauline has disappeared from Paris. Thereupon, though sore at heart, he determines to save Pauline’s family an infinity of shame by marrying the girl; and so the preparations continue.
But in the interval that elapses between this decision and the date fixed for the nuptials, the absinthe works a terrible change in Beauvais’ attitude towards Pauline, with the result that, when the day of the ceremony arrives, he denounces her before her parents and the large assembly of guests as the cast-off mistress of Guidèl, and harshly refuses to make her his wife.
The awful effect of this speech may be imagined; poor Pauline’s looks confirm the truth of his statement; the guests quietly leave the broken-hearted parents with their daughter; there is no marriage. Take the decorations down; fling the wedding feast to the mendicants who whine round the house; there is no marriage!
Even Beauvais père turns on his miscreant of a son as they quit the desolate girl’s abode:
“Gaston, you have behaved like a villain! I would not have believed that my son could have been capable of such a coward’s vengeance!”
I looked at him and shrugged my shoulders.
“You are excited, mon père! What have I done save speak the truth, and, as the brave English say, shame the devil?”