THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ÉMILE ZOLA. Эмиль Золя

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      William could see perfectly well that her eyes were at times red with weeping. He could guess in part the wounds that she was inflicting on herself. He would have wished to be kind, to console her by becoming more affectionate towards her, and yet, in spite of himself, he was becoming more distressed and more feverish every day. Why did she weep like that? was she unhappy with him? was she regretting a lover? This last thought made him very wretched. He too was losing the faith and blind confidence he used to have. He was thinking of that period of Madeleine’s past history of which he knew nothing, of which he wished to know nothing, and which however he could not help thinking of incessantly. The painful doubts that he had felt on the night of their walk at Verrières seized him again and tortured him. He felt anxious about the years gone by, he watched Madeleine in order to detect a confession in her gestures, or in her looks; then, when he thought that he could perceive a smile that he could not account for, he was distressed that she could be thinking of anything but himself. Now that she was his, she ought to be his without reserve. He would say to himself that his love ought to be sufficient to satisfy her. He would not admit of any ground for her reveries, and he felt himself painfully hurt by her passing fits of indifference. Often, when she was by his side, she was not listening to him; she would let him talk on, staring vacantly around, absorbed in secret thoughts; then he would stop talking, he would think himself slighted, and a sudden feeling of pride would change his love almost into disdain. “My heart is deceived,” he would think; “this woman is not worthy of me; she has already seen too much of life to be able to reward me for my affections.”

      They never had an open quarrel. They continued in a state of tacit hostility. But the few bitter words they sometimes exchanged only left them more dejected and depressed.

      “Your eyes are red,” William would often say to Madeleine, “what is the cause of your secret weeping?”

      “I don’t weep, you are mistaken,” the young woman would reply, trying to smile.

      “No, no, I am not mistaken,” was William’s answer; “I can hear you quite well sometimes in the night. Are you unhappy with me?”

      She would give a shake of denial with her head, and put on a forced laugh, or the look of a persecuted woman. Then the young man would take her hands in his, and try to infuse a little warmth into them, and as these hands continued lifeless and cold, he would let go of them exclaiming:

      “I am a poor lover, am I not? I don’t know how to win love — But there are some people who are never forgotten.”

      Such an illusion would have a painful effect on Madeleine.

      “You are cruel,” she would reply bitterly. “I can’t forget what I am, and that’s why I weep. What can you be thinking of, William?”

      He would hang down his head, and she would add, earnestly:

      “It would, perhaps, be better for you to know my past history. Anyhow you would know what to do, and you would no longer think about shame which does not exist. Would you like me to tell you all?”

      He would vehemently ask her not to, and take her to his heart, beseeching her pardon. This scene, which took place again and again, never went any further: but an hour after, they would forget it all, and go back to their old state: William, to his selfish despair at not possessing her entire affection, Madeleine, to the regrets prompted by her pride and to the dread of being hurt.

      At other times, Madeleine would throw her arms round William’s neck and shed tears unreservedly. These crises of weeping, which nothing could explain to him, were even still more painful to the young man. He did not dare to question his mistress, he consoled her, with a provoked air, which stopped her tears and made her assume a hard, implacable attitude. Then she refused to speak to him, and he had to relent so far as to sob, before they fell into each other’s arms, distressing and consoling one another mutually. And they would have been unable to say what it was that was making them wretched; they were inexpressibly sad, they knew not why; it seemed to them that they were breathing a tainted air and that a lingering, unrelenting dejection was crushing them beneath its oppressiveness.

      There was no termination to a situation like this. There was only one remedy — a frank explanation. But from this Madeleine shrank, for this William was too feeble. For a month, they lived this life of oppression.

      William had got James’s portrait richly framed, and this portrait, placed in the lover’s bedroom, troubled Madeleine. When she retired to rest, it would seem to her as if the eyes of the dead man were watching her get into bed. During the night, she would smother her kisses that he might not hear them. When she was dressing, in the morning, she hurried on her clothes so as not to stand naked before the photograph in broad daylight. Yet, she loved this likeness, and there was nothing painful in the distress that it caused it. Her memories of the past were less hard, yet she no longer looked on James with the eyes of a lover, but from the standpoint of a friend of his who is ashamed of the past. She even felt more modesty with regard to him than before William, and was really pained at seeing him look on at her new passions. Sometimes she thought that she ought to ask his pardon, she would forget herself before his portrait, with no other feeling but one of solace. The days when she wept, or when she had exchanged bitter words with her lover, she gazed at James with a still gentler expression. She regretted him in a vague way, forgetful of her former sufferings.

      Perhaps Madeleine would have wept at last before the likeness like an inconsolable widow, had not an event transpired to lift her and William from the sorrowful life they were leading. Another month, and they would doubtless have quarrelled outright, and cursed the day of their meeting. They were saved by circumstances.

      William received a letter from Véteuil summoning him in all haste. His father was dying. Madeleine, touched at his grief, clasped him in a warm, affectionate embrace, and, for an hour, they sat once more hand in hand. He set out, full of anxiety, telling the young woman that he would write and that she was to wait for his return.