Guy Maupassant - Comedy of Marriage and Other Tales

MONSIEUR DE SALLUS

JACQUES DE RANDOL

MADAME DE SALLUS

Time: Paris, 1890

Mme. de Sallus in her drawing-room, seated in a corner by the fireplace. Enter Jacques de RANDOL noiselessly; glances to see that no one is looking, and kisses Mme. de Sallus quickly upon her hair. She starts; utters a faint cry, and turns upon him.

MME. DE SALLUS

Oh! How imprudent you are!

JACQUES DE RANDOL

Don’t be afraid; no one saw me.

MME. DE SALLUS

But the servants!

JACQUES DE RANDOL

Oh, they are in the outer hall.

MME. DE SALLUS

How is that? No one announced you

JACQUES DE RANDOL

No, they simply opened the door for me.

MME. DE SALLUS

But what will they think?

JACQUES DE RANDOL

Well, they will doubtless think that I don’t count.

MME. DE SALLUS

But I will not permit it. I must have you announced in future. It does not look well.

JACQUES DE RANDOL [ laughs ]

Perhaps they will even go so far as to announce your husband —

MME. DE SALLUS

Jacques, this jesting is out of place.

JACQUES DE RANDOL

Forgive me. [ Sits .] Are you waiting for anybody?

MME. DE SALLUS

Yes – probably. You know that I always receive when I am at home.

JACQUES DE RANDOL

I know that I always have the pleasure of seeing you for about five minutes – just enough time to ask you how you feel, and then some one else comes in – some one in love with you, of course, – who impatiently awaits my departure.

MME. DE SALLUS [ smiles ]

Well, what can I do? I am not your wife, so how can it be otherwise?

JACQUES DE RANDOL

Ah! If you only were my wife!

MME. DE SALLUS

If I were your wife?

JACQUES DE RANDOL

I would snatch you away for five or six months, far from this horrible town, and keep you all to myself.

MME. DE SALLUS

You would soon have enough of me.

JACQUES DE RANDOL

No, no!

MME. DE SALLUS

Yes, yes!

JACQUES DE RANDOL

Do you know that it is absolute torture to love a woman like you?

MME. DE SALLUS [ bridles ]

And why?

JACQUES DE RANDOL

Because I covet you as the starving covet the food they see behind the glassy barriers of a restaurant.

MME. DE SALLUS

Oh, Jacques!

JACQUES DE RANDOL

I tell you it is true! A woman of the world belongs to the world; that is to say, to everyone except the man to whom she gives herself. He can see her with open doors for a quarter of an hour every three days – not oftener, because of servants. In exceptional cases, with a thousand precautions, with a thousand fears, with a thousand subterfuges, she visits him once or twice a month, perhaps, in a furnished room. Then she has just a quarter of an hour to give him, because she has just left Madame X in order to visit Madame Z, where she has told her coachman to take her. If he complains, she will not come again, because it is impossible for her to get rid of her coachman. So, you see, the coachman, and the footman, and Madame Z, and Madame X, and all the others, who visit her house as they would a museum, – a museum that never closes, – all the he’s and all the she’s who eat up her leisure minute by minute and second by second, to whom she owes her time as an employee owes his time to the State, simply because she belongs to the world – all these persons are like the transparent and impassable glass: they keep you from my love.

MME. DE SALLUS

[ dryly ]

You seem upset to-day.

JACQUES DE RANDOL

No, no, but I hunger to be alone with you. You are mine, are you not? Or, I should say, I am yours. Isn’t it true? I spend my life in looking for opportunities to meet you. Our love is made up of chance meetings, of casual bows, of stolen looks, of slight touches – nothing more. We meet on the avenue in the morning – a bow; we meet at your house, or at that of some other acquaintance – twenty words; we dine somewhere at the same table, too far from each other to talk, and I dare not even look at you because of hostile eyes. Is that love? We are simply acquaintances.

MME. DE SALLUS

Then you would like to carry me off?

JACQUES DE RANDOL

Unhappily, I cannot.

MME. DE SALLUS

Then what?

JACQUES DE RANDOL

I do not know. I only know this life is wearing me out.

MME. DE SALLUS

It is just because there are so many obstacles in the way of your love that it does not fade.

JACQUES DE RANDOL

Oh! Madeline, can you say that?

MME. DE SALLUS [ softening ]

Believe me, dear, if your love has to endure these hardships, it is because it is not lawful love.

JACQUES DE RANDOL

Well, I never met a woman as positive as you. Then you think that if chance made me your husband, I should cease to love you?

MME. DE SALLUS

Not all at once, perhaps, but – eventually.

JACQUES DE RANDOL

What you say is revolting to me.

MME. DE SALLUS

Nevertheless, it is quite true. You know that when a confectioner hires a greedy saleswoman he says to her, “Eat all the sweets you wish, my dear.” She stuffs herself for eight days, and then she is satisfied for the rest of her life.

JACQUES DE RANDOL

Ah! Indeed! But why do you include me in that class?

MME. DE SALLUS

Really, I do not know – perhaps as a joke!

JACQUES DE RANDOL

Please do not mock me.

MME. DE SALLUS

I say to myself, here is a man who is very much in love with me. So far as I am concerned, I am perfectly free, morally, since for two years past I have altogether ceased to please my husband. Now, since this man loves me, why should I not love him?

JACQUES DE RANDOL

You are philosophic – and cruel.

MME. DE SALLUS

On the contrary, I have not been cruel. Of what do you complain?

JACQUES DE RANDOL

Stop! you anger me with this continual raillery. Ever since I began to love you, you have tortured me in this manner, and now I do not even know whether you have the slightest affection for me.

MME. DE SALLUS

Well, you must admit that I have always been – good-natured.

JACQUES DE RANDOL

Oh, you have played a queer little game! From the day I first met you I felt that you were coquetting with me, coquetting mysteriously, obscurely, coquetting as only you can without showing it to others. Little by little you conquered me with looks, with smiles, with pressures of the hand, without compromising yourself, without pledging yourself, without revealing yourself. You have been horribly upright – and seductive. I have loved you with all my soul, yes, sincerely and loyally, and to-day I do not know what feeling you have in the depths of your heart, what thoughts you have hidden in your brain; in fact, I know-I know nothing. I look at you, and I see a woman who seems to have chosen me, and seems also to have forgotten that she has chosen me. Does she love me, or is she tired of me? Has she simply made an experiment – taken a lover in order to see, to know, to taste, – without desire, hunger, or thirst? There are days when I ask myself if among those who love you and who tell you so unceasingly there is not one whom you really love.

MME. DE SALLUS

Good heavens! Really, there are some things into which it is not necessary to inquire.

JACQUES DE RANDOL

Oh, how hard you are! Your tone tells me that you do not love me.