Monsieur de Camors — Complete. Feuillet Octave

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СКАЧАТЬ and simple, provoking and timid, suggestive and reticent—in short, charming.

      The same evening that M. de Camors, the elder, returned to his home bent on suicide, his son, passing up the Avenue Maillot, was stopped by Lescande on the threshold of his villa.

      “My friend,” said the latter, “as you are here you can do me a great favor. A telegram calls me suddenly to Melun—I must go on the instant. The ladies will be so lonely, pray stay and dine with them! I can’t tell what the deuce ails my wife. She has been weeping all day over her tapestry; my mother-in-law has a headache. Your presence will cheer them. So stay, I beg you.”

      Camors refused, hesitated, made objections, and consented. He sent back his horse, and his friend presented him to the ladies, whom the presence of the unexpected guest seemed to cheer a little. Lescande stepped into his carriage and departed, after receiving from his wife an embrace more fervent than usual.

      The dinner was gay. In the atmosphere was that subtle suggestion of coming danger of which both Camors and Madame Lescande felt the exhilarating influence. Their excitement, as yet innocent, employed itself in those lively sallies—those brilliant combats at the barriers—that ever precede the more serious conflict. About nine o’clock the headache of Madame Mursois—perhaps owing to the cigar they had allowed Camors—became more violent. She declared she could endure it no longer, and must retire to her chamber. Camors wished to withdraw, but his carriage had not yet arrived and Madame Mursois insisted that he should wait for it.

      “Let my daughter amuse you with a little music until then,” she added.

      Left alone with her guest, the younger lady seemed embarrassed. “What shall I play for you?” she asked, in a constrained voice, taking her seat at the piano.

      “Oh! anything—play a waltz,” answered Camors, absently.

      The waltz finished, an awkward silence ensued. To break it she arose hesitatingly; then clasping her hands together exclaimed, “It seems to me there is a storm. Do you not think so?” She approached the window, opened it, and stepped out on the balcony. In a second Camors was at her side.

      The night was beautifully clear. Before them stretched the sombre shadow of the wood, while nearer trembling rays of moonlight slept upon the lawn.

      How still all was! Their trembling hands met and for a moment did not separate.

      “Juliette!” whispered the young man, in a low, broken voice. She shuddered, repelled the arm that Camors passed round her, and hastily reentered the room.

      “Leave me, I pray you!” she cried, with an impetuous gesture of her hand, as she sank upon the sofa, and buried her face in her hands.

      Of course Camors did not obey. He seated himself by her.

      In a little while Juliette awoke from her trance; but she awoke a lost woman!

      How bitter was that awakening! She measured at a first glance the depth of the awful abyss into which she had suddenly plunged. Her husband, her mother, her infant, whirled like spectres in the mad chaos of her brain.

      Sensible of the anguish of an irreparable wrong, she rose, passed her hand vacantly across her brow, and muttering, “Oh, God! oh, God!” peered vainly into the dark for light—hope—refuge! There was none!

      Her tortured soul cast herself utterly on that of her lover. She turned her swimming eyes on him and said:

      “How you must despise me!”

      Camors, half kneeling on the carpet near her, kissed her hand indifferently and half raised his shoulders in sign of denial. “Is it not so?” she repeated. “Answer me, Louis.”

      His face wore a strange, cruel smile—“Do not insist on an answer, I pray you,” he said.

      “Then I am right? You do despise me?”

      Camors turned himself abruptly full toward her, looked straight in her face, and said, in a cold, hard voice, “I do!”

      To this cruel speech the poor child replied by a wild cry that seemed to rend her, while her eyes dilated as if under the influence of strong poison. Camors strode across the room, then returned and stood by her as he said, in a quick, violent tone:

      “You think I am brutal? Perhaps I am, but that can matter little now. After the irreparable wrong I have done you, there is one service—and only one which I can now render you. I do it now, and tell you the truth. Understand me clearly; women who fall do not judge themselves more harshly than their accomplices judge them. For myself, what would you have me think of you?

      “To his misfortune and my shame, I have known your husband since his boyhood. There is not a drop of blood in his veins that does not throb for you; there is not a thought of his day nor a dream of his night that is not yours; your every comfort comes from his sacrifices—your every joy from his exertion! See what he is to you!

      “You have only seen my name in the journals; you have seen me ride by your window; I have talked a few times with you, and you yield to me in one moment the whole of his life with your own—the whole of his happiness with your own.

      “I tell you, woman, every man like me, who abuses your vanity and your weakness and afterward tells you he esteems you—lies! And if after all you still believe he loves you, you do yourself fresh injury. No: we soon learn to hate those irksome ties that become duties where we only sought pleasures; and the first effort after they are formed is to shatter them.

      “As for the rest: women like you are not made for unholy love like ours. Their charm is their purity, and losing that, they lose everything. But it is a blessing to them to encounter one wretch, like myself, who cares to say—Forget me, forever! Farewell!”

      He left her, passed from the room with rapid strides, and, slamming the door behind him, disappeared. Madame Lescande, who had listened, motionless, and pale as marble, remained in the same lifeless attitude, her eyes fixed, her hands clenched—yearning from the depths of her heart that death would summon her. Suddenly a singular noise, seeming to come from the next room, struck her ear. It was only a convulsive sob, or violent and smothered laughter. The wildest and most terrible ideas crowded to the mind of the unhappy woman; the foremost of them, that her husband had secretly returned, that he knew all—that his brain had given way, and that the laughter was the gibbering of his madness.

      Feeling her own brain begin to reel, she sprang from the sofa, and rushing to the door, threw it open. The next apartment was the dining-room, dimly lighted by a hanging lamp. There she saw Camors, crouched upon the floor, sobbing furiously and beating his forehead against a chair which he strained in a convulsive embrace. Her tongue refused its office; she could find no word, but seating herself near him, gave way to her emotion, and wept silently. He dragged himself nearer, seized the hem of her dress and covered it with kisses; his breast heaved tumultuously, his lips trembled and he gasped the almost inarticulate words, “Pardon! Oh, pardon me!”

      This was all. Then he rose suddenly, rushed from the house, and the instant after she heard the rolling of the wheels as his carriage whirled him away.

      If there were no morals and no remorse, French people would perhaps be happier. But unfortunately it happens that a young woman, who believes in little, like Madame Lescande, and a young man who believes in nothing, like M. de Camors, can not have the pleasures of an independent code of morals without suffering cruelly afterward.

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