Paul Bourget - A LOVE CRIME

return no more.

"Then what? Nothing. I have not even grown old of heart; I am abortive.

My sentimental adventures, which have been pursued in spite of

everything, for women are even yet what is least indifferent to me,

have, alas, convinced me that there are no kisses that do not resemble

those already given and received. It is all so short, and superficial,

and vain. How desperate I should be rendered by the thoughts of

myself--of that self which I shall never be able completely to

renounce--did I often indulge in them! What else but the damnation of

the mystics is _non-love_?"

Such were a few of the pages among many others, and the abominable

monograph of a secret disease of soul was continued in hundreds of

similar confidences. Often simply the date was written, together with

two or three facts: Rode, paid visits, went to the club, the theatre in

the evening, or a party, or ball, and then came a single word like a

refrain--_Spleen._ At the beginning of the last of these note-books,

Armand, when he had closed it, could read a list of all the years of his

life since 1860, and after each date he had scrawled--_Torture_, and at

the end, these words:

"I did not ask for life. If I have committed faults, frightful ones, too,

I have also known sufferings such as, set over against the others, might

say to the inconceivable Power that has created and that sustains me, if

such a Power possess a heart: 'Have pity upon me!'"

The young man thrust away with his hand the heap of papers wherein he

encountered so faithful an image of his present moral aridity. Slowly he

began to walk about the room. Everywhere in it he recognised the same

tokens of his inward nihilism. The low bookcase contained but those few

books which he still liked: novels of withering analysis--"Dangerous

Liaisons," "Adolphus," "Affinities"--moralists of keen and self-centred

misanthropy, and memoirs. The photographs scattered over the walls

reminded him of his travels--those useless travels during which he had

failed to beguile his weariness. On the chimney-piece, between the

likenesses of two dead friends, he kept an enigmatic portrait,

representing two women, with the head of the one resting upon the

shoulder of the other. It was the present, life-like remembrance of a

terrible story--the story of the bitterest faithlessness he had ever

endured. He had been cynical or artificial enough to laugh over it

formerly with the two heroines, but he had laughed with death in his

heart.

At the sight of all these objects witnessing to the manner of his life,

he was so completely sensible of his emotional wretchedness that he

wrung his hands, saying quite aloud: "What a life! Good God! what a

life!" It was owing to experiences such as these that his lips and eyes

preserved that expression of silent melancholy to which he had perhaps

owed Helen's love. It is their pity that leads to the capture of the

noblest women. But these crises did not last long with Armand. In his

case muscles were stronger than nerves. He took up his journals, and

threw them, rather than put them, away in the box.

"That's a rational sort of occupation," he thought to himself, "for the

night before an assignation."

Immediately, his thoughts turned again to Helen. The charming air of

distinction that she possessed returned to his recollection, and

suddenly softened him to an extraordinary degree.

"Why have I entered into her life," he said, "since I do not love her?

For eleven little months she did not know me, and she was at peace.

There would still be time enough to act the part of an honest man."

He was seized by the temptation to do what he had done once already--to

renounce, before any irrevocable step had been taken, an intrigue in

which he ran the risk of taking another's heart without giving his own

in return.

"Perhaps she loves me," he said to himself; and he sat down at his

table, and even got ready a sheet of paper in order to write to her.

Then, leaning back in his easy chair, he reflected. The recollection of

Varades suddenly beset him, as also of the serenity with which Helen had

deceived her husband that evening. "Innocent child," he said aloud,

speaking to himself, "if it were not I, it would be someone else. When a

fast woman meets with a libertine, they form a pair."

He began to laugh in a nervous fashion, and recalled the boundless

contempt with which he had formerly been covered by the lady whom his

scruples had led him to give up. She was the only enemy that he had kept

among all the women with whom he had had to do. The clock struck.

"Two o'clock," he said, "and I have to get up early in order to visit

worthy Madame Palmyre, and reserve one of her little suites, as in

Madame de Rugle's days. I shall be tired. Monsieur de Varades will be

missed."

Half-an-hour later he was in bed, and, head on arm, sleeping that

infantine sleep which, in spite of his life, had still been left to him.

So he was represented in a drawing by his father, which hung on one of

the walls of his bed-room. Ah! if the dead ones, whose son he was, had

been able to see him, would they have condemned him? Would they have

pitied him?

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