Stefan Zweig - The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig

“You mustn’t keep thinking so much of your studies and your sterling qualities! There are certain skills that matter more in Paris. You must learn to put yourself forward. You’re an attractive man; be clever, make good use of your youth, above all, don’t neglect women. Women mean everything in Paris, so our weakness must be your strength. Learn to choose your lovers and exploit them well, and you’ll become a minister. Have you ever had a lover here?”

The young man started. All of a sudden his face was dark as blood. An overpowering sense of intolerable strain urged him to run to the door, but there was a heaviness in him, as if he were dazed by the fragrance of this woman’s perfume, by her breath. All his muscles felt cramped, his chest was tense, he felt himself running crazily wild.

Then there was a crack. His clutching fingers had broken the arm of the chair. He jumped up in alarm, unspeakably humiliated by this mishap, but she, charmed by his elemental passion, just smiled and said, “Oh, you mustn’t take fright like that when you’re asked a question that you’re not used to. You’ll find it often happens in Paris. But you must learn a few more courtly manners, and I’ll help you. I find it difficult to do without my secretary anyway; I would like it if you’d take his place here.”

His eyes shining, he stammered effusive thanks and pressed her hand so hard that it hurt. She smiled, a sad smile—here it was again, the old delusion of imagining herself loved, when the reality was that one man had a position in mind, another his vanity, a third his career. All the same, it was so delightful to keep forgetting that. And here she had no one to delude but herself. Three days later he was her lover.

But the dangerous boredom had only been scared away, not mortally wounded. It dragged itself through the empty rooms again, lying in wait behind their doors. Only unwelcome news came from Paris. The King did not reply to her at all; Marie Leszczynska sent a few frosty lines inquiring after her health and carefully avoiding any hint of friendly feeling. She thought the lampoons were tasteless and offensive, besides showing too clearly who had commissioned them, which was enough to make her position at court even at worse, in so far as anyone there still remembered her. Nor was there a word in the letter she received from her friend Alincourt about any return, not even a glimmer of hope. She felt like a woman who was thought dead but wakes in her coffin underground, screaming and raving and hammering on its sides, while no one hears her up above, men and women walk lightly over the ground, and her voice chokes alone in the solitude. Madame de Prie wrote a few more letters, but with the same feeling that she was buried alive and screaming, well aware that no one would hear her, that she was hammering helplessly against the walls of her isolation. However, writing them passed the time, and here in Courbépine time was her bitterest enemy.

Her game with the young man soon bored her too. She had never shown any constancy in her affections (it was the main reason behind her fall from favour), and this young fellow’s few words of love, the awkwardness that he soon forgot once she had given him good clothes, silk stockings and fine buckles for his shoes, could not keep her mind occupied. Her nature was so sated with the company of crowds that she soon wearied of a single man, and as soon as she was alone she seemed to herself repulsive and wretched. Seducing this timid peasant, schooling his clumsy caresses, making the bear dance had been a pretty game; she found possessing him was tedious, indeed positively embarrassing.

And furthermore, he no longer pleased her. She had been charmed by the adoration he had shown her, his devotion, his confusion. But he soon shed those qualities and developed a familiarity that repelled her; his once humble gaze was now full of relish and self-satisfaction. He preened in his fine clothes, and she suspected that he showed off to the village in them. A kind of hatred gradually arose in her, because he had gained all this from her unhappiness and loneliness, because he was healthy and ate with a hearty appetite, while she ate less and less out of rage and her injured feelings, and grew thin and weak. He took her for granted as his lover, oaf that he was, he lolled contentedly in the idle bed of his conquest, instead of showing his first amazement when she gave him the gift of herself, he grew apathetic and lazy, and she, bitterly envious, burning with unhappiness and ignominy, hated his repellent satisfaction, his boorish avarice and base pride. And she hated herself for sinking so low that she must reach out to such crude folk if she was not to founder in the mud of solitude.

She began to provoke and torment him. She had never really been vicious, but she felt a need to avenge herself on someone for everything, for her enemies’ triumph, her exile from Paris, her unanswered letters, for Courbépine. And she had no one else to hand. She wanted to rouse him from his lethargic ease, make him feel small again, not so happy, make him cringe. She mercilessly reproached him for his red hands, his lack of sophistication, his bad manners, but he, with a man’s healthy instinct, took little notice now of the woman who had once summoned him to her. He was defiant, he laughed, and indignantly shook off her sarcasm. But she did not stop: irritating someone made a nice game to relieve her boredom. She tried to make him jealous, told him on every occasion about her lovers in Paris, counted them on her fingers for him. She showed him presents she had been given, she exaggerated and told lies. But he merely felt flattered to think that, after all those dukes and princes, she had chosen him. He smacked his lips with satisfaction and was not discomposed. That enraged her even more. She told him other, worse things, she lied to him about the grooms and valets she had had. His brow darkened at last. She saw it, laughed, and went on. Suddenly he struck the table with his fist.

“That’s enough! Why are you telling me all this?”

Her expression was perfectly innocent. “Because I like to.”

“But I don’t want to hear it.”

“I do, my dear, or I wouldn’t do it.”

He said nothing, but bit his lip. She had so naturally commanding a tone of voice that he felt like a servant. He clenched his fists. How like an animal he is when he’s angry, she thought, feeling both revulsion and fear. She sensed the danger in the atmosphere. But there was too much anger pent up in her, she couldn’t stop tormenting him. She began again.

“What strange ideas you have of life, my dear. Do you think Parisians live as you do in your hovels here, where one is slowly bored to death?”

His nostrils flared; he snorted. Then he said, “People don’t have to come here if they think it’s so boring.”

She felt the pang deep within her. So he knew about her exile too. She supposed the valet had spread the news. She felt weaker now that he knew, and smiled to veil her fear.

“My dear, there are reasons that you may not necessarily understand even if you’ve learned a little Latin. Perhaps you would have found it more useful to study better manners.”

He said nothing, but she heard him snorting quietly with rage. That aroused her even more and she felt something like a sensual desire to hurt him.

“And there you stand proud as a cockerel on the dunghill. Why do you snort like that? You’re acting like a lout!”

“We can’t all be princes or dukes or grooms.”

He was red in the face and had clenched his fists. She, however, poisoned by unhappiness, leaped to her feet.

“Be quiet! You forget who I am. I won’t be spoken to like that by a rustic oaf!”

He made a gesture.

“Be quiet! Or else…”