Chapter IV: Part 4

"Why, I have not the slightest inclination to kill myself. I love myself as much as other men love themselves; indeed, I love myself with all my heart, I swear! But I say that my palette, the instrument of my glory, is the instrument of my torture, since I cannot work without suffering. Thereupon I seek in dissipation, not death of body or mind, but to fatigue and tranquillize my nerves. This is the whole of it, Thérèse. What is there in that that is not reasonable? I cannot work decently except when I am ready to drop with fatigue."

"That is true," said Thérèse, "I have noticed it, and I wonder at it as an anomaly; but I am very much afraid that method of working will kill you; indeed, I cannot imagine how it can be otherwise. Stay, answer one question: did you begin life by hard work and abstinence, and did you feel the necessity of seeking distraction for the sake of rest?"

"No; just the opposite. When I left school, I was very fond of painting, but did not expect that I should ever be compelled to paint. I believed that I was rich. My father died leaving only about thirty thousand francs, which I made haste to devour, in order to have at least one year of luxury in my life. When I found that I was stranded, I took to the brush; I have been pulled to pieces, and lauded to the clouds, which, in our day, constitutes the greatest possible success, and now I lead a life of luxury and pleasure from time to time, for a few months or a few weeks, so long as the money lasts. When it is all gone, I have no fault to find, for I am always at the end of my strength and my desires alike. Thereupon I go back to my work, frantically, with mingled sorrow and ecstasy, and when the work is finished, idleness and extravagance begin again."

"Have you been leading this life long?"

"Nothing can be long at my age! About three years."

"Ah! but that is long for your age, I tell you! And then you began badly; you set fire to your vital spirits before they had taken their flight; you drank vinegar to stunt your growth. Your head continued to grow none the less, and genius developed in it in spite of everything; but perhaps your heart has atrophied, perhaps you will never be complete either as man or as artist."

These words, spoken with tranquil melancholy, irritated Laurent.

"So you despise me, do you?" he said, rising.

"No," she replied, holding out her hand, "I pity you!"

And he saw two great tears roll slowly down her cheeks.

Those tears produced a violent reaction in him; his own face was bathed in tears as he threw himself at Thérèse's feet, not like a lover declaring his passion, but like a child making his confession.

"Ah! my poor dear friend!" he cried, taking her hands, "you are quite right to pity me, for I need it! I am unhappy, so unhappy that I am ashamed to tell you! This indescribable something that I have in my breast in place of a heart is crying incessantly for I know not what, nor do I know what to give it to appease it. I love God, and I do not believe in Him. I love all women, and I despise them all! I can say this to you, who are my comrade and my friend! I surprise myself sometimes on the point of idolizing a courtesan, whereas beside an angel I should probably be colder than a marble statue. Everything is turned topsy-turvy in my notions; it may be that everything has gone wrong in my instincts. Suppose I should tell you that the time has already passed when I can find cheerful ideas in wine! Yes, I am depressed when I am drunk, it seems, and they told me that the day before yesterday, in that debauch at Montmorency, I declaimed tragic things with a vehemence as ghastly as it was absurd. What do you suppose will become of me, Thérèse, if you do not have pity for me?"

"To be sure, I have pity for you, my poor child," said Thérèse, wiping his eyes with her handkerchief; "but what good can that do you?"

"Ah! but if you should love me, Thérèse! Do not take your hands away! Have you not given me leave to be a sort of friend to you?"

"I have told you that I was fond of you; you replied that you could not believe in a woman's friendship."

"I might, perhaps, believe in yours; you must have a man's heart, since you have a man's strength and talent. Give it to me."

"I have not taken yours, and I propose to try to be a man for you," she replied; "but I don't quite know how to go about it. A man's friendship should be more outspoken and authoritative than I feel capable of being. In spite of myself, I shall pity you more than I shall scold you, as you see already! I had made up my mind to humiliate you to-day, to make you angry with me and yourself; instead of which, here I am weeping with you, and that doesn't advance matters at all."

"Yes, it does! yes, it does!" cried Laurent. "These tears do me good, they have watered the parched place; perhaps my heart will grow again there! Ah! Thérèse, you told me once, when I boasted before you of things that I should have blushed for, that I was a prison-wall. You forgot only one thing: that there is a prisoner behind that wall! If I could open the door, you would see him; but the door is closed, the wall is of bronze, and not my will, nor my faith, nor my affection, nor even my voice can penetrate it. Must I then live and die thus? What will it avail me, I ask you, to have daubed the walls of my dungeon with a few fanciful pictures, if the word _love_ is written nowhere there?"

"If I understand you," said Thérèse dreamily, "you think that your work needs to be enlivened by sentiment."

"Do not you think so, too? Is not that what all your reproaches say?"

"Not precisely. There is only too much fire in your execution; the critics blame you for it. For my part, I have always felt deep respect for that youthful exuberance which makes great artists, and the beauties of which prevent any one who has true enthusiasm from harping upon its defects. Far from considering your work cold and positive, it seems to me burning and impassioned; but I have tried to make out where the seat of that passion was; I see now: it is in the craving of the heart. Yes," she added, still musing, as if she were seeking to pierce the veil of her own thought, "desire certainly may be a passion."

"Well, what are you thinking about?" said Laurent, following her absorbed glance.

"I am wondering if I ought to declare war on this power that is in you, and if, by persuading you to be happy and tranquil, I should not quench the sacred fire. And yet--I fancy that aspiration cannot be a durable condition of the mind, and that, when it has been earnestly expressed during its feverish stage, it must either subside of itself or overpower us. What do you say? Has not each age its special force and manifestation? Are not what we call the different _manners_ of a master, simply the expression of the successive transformations of his being? At thirty, will it be possible for you to have aspired to everything without attaining anything? Will you not be compelled to adopt some fixed theory touching some point or other? You are at the age of caprice; but soon will come the age of light. Do you not wish to make progress?"

"Does it depend upon me to do it?"

"Yes, if you do not attempt to disturb the equilibrium of your faculties. You cannot persuade me that exhaustion is the proper remedy for fever: it is simply its fatal result."

"What febrifuge do you suggest, then?"

"I don't know; marriage, perhaps."

"Horror!" cried Laurent, bursting with laughter.

And he added, still laughing, and without any very clear idea of the source of that corrective:

"Unless I marry you, Thérèse. Ah! that is an idea, on my word!"

"Charming," she rejoined, "but altogether impossible."

This reply impressed Laurent by its conclusive tranquillity, and what he had just said by way of jest suddenly assumed the guise of a buried dream, as if the operation had taken place in his mind. That powerful and ill-fated mind was so constituted that the word _impossible_ was all that was necessary to make him desire a thing, and that was just the word Thérèse had uttered.

Instantly his inclination to fall in love with her reawoke, and with it his suspicions, his jealousy, and his anger. Hitherto the spell of friendship had lulled and, as it were, intoxicated him; of a sudden he became bitter, and cold as ice.

"Ah! yes, of course," he said, taking his hat to go, "that is the key-word of my life, which constantly turns up on every occasion, at the end of a jest, as well as at the end of every serious subject: _impossible_! You do not know that foe, Thérèse; your love is tranquil and undisturbed. You have a _lover_, or a _friend_, who is not jealous, because he knows you to be cold or reasonable! That reminds me that it is getting late, and that your _thirty-seven cousins_ are probably here, waiting for me to go."

"What is that you are saying?" demanded Thérèse in utter amazement; "what ideas have come into your head? Are you subject to attacks of insanity?"

"Sometimes," he added, taking his leave. "You must excuse them."

II

The next day, Thérèse received the following letter from Laurent:

"MY DEAR GOOD FRIEND:

"How did I leave you last night? If I said some horrible thing to you, forget it, I had no consciousness of it. I had an attack of vertigo which did not leave me at your door; for I found myself at my own door, in a cab, with no idea how I got there.

"It often happens with me, my dear friend, that my mouth says one thing when my brain is saying another. Pity me and forgive me. I am ill, and you were right in saying that the life I lead is detestable.

"By what right do I put questions to you? Do me the justice to admit that this is the first time I have ever questioned you, in the three months that I have known you intimately. What does it matter to me whether you are engaged, married, or a widow? You do not choose that anybody shall know, and have I tried to find out? Have I asked you? Ah! Thérèse, my head is still in confusion this morning, and yet I feel that I am lying, and I do not intend to lie to you. Friday evening I had my first attack of curiosity with regard to you, and yesterday's was the second; but it shall be the last, I swear, and to have done with the subject once and for all, I propose to make a clean breast of everything. I was at your door the other evening, that is to say, at your garden gate. I looked, and saw nothing; I listened and I heard! Even so, what does it matter to you? I do not know his name, I did not see his face; but I know that you are my sister, my consolation, my confidante, my mainstay. I know that I wept at your feet last night, and that you wiped my eyes with your handkerchief, and said: 'What are we to do, what are we to do, my poor boy?' I know that you, wise, hard-working, placid, respected creature that you are, since you are free and beloved, since you are happy, find time and charity to remember that I exist, to pity me, and to try to make my life better. Dear Thérèse, the man who would not bless you would be an ingrate, and, although I am a miserable wretch, I do not know ingratitude. When will you receive me, Thérèse? It seems to me that I insulted you? That only was lacking! Shall I come to you this evening? If you say no, on my word, I shall go to the devil!"

Laurent's servant brought back Thérèse's reply. It was very short: _Come this evening_. Laurent was neither a _roué_ nor a puppy, although he often thought of being, or was tempted to be, one or the other. He was, as we have seen, a creature full of contrasts, whom we describe without trying to explain, for that would not be possible; certain characters elude logical analysis.

Thérèse's reply made him tremble like a child. She had never written him in that tone. Was it meant as a command to him to come to receive his dismissal upon stated grounds? or was she summoning him to a love-meeting? Had those three words, cold or ardent as it happened, been dictated by indignation or by passion?

_Laurent succeeded, therefore, in calming himself sufficiently to study the American's regular, placid features._]

Monsieur Palmer arrived, and Laurent, agitated and preoccupied as he was, must needs begin his portrait. He had made up his mind to question him with consummate art, and to extort all Thérèse's secrets from him. He could devise no way of broaching the subject, and as the American posed conscientiously, as motionless and dumb as a statue, hardly a word was spoken on either side during the sitting.

Laurent succeeded, therefore, in calming himself sufficiently to study the American's regular, placid features. His beauty was without a blemish, a fact that imparted to his face at first sight the inanimate air peculiar to absolutely regular faces. But, on examining him more closely, you could detect a certain shrewdness in his smile and fire in his glance. At the same time that Laurent made these observations, he was trying to determine his model's age.

"I beg your pardon," he said abruptly, "but it would be well for me to know whether you are a young man somewhat overworked, or a middle-aged man wonderfully well preserved. It is of no use for me to look at you, I do not understand what I see."

"I am forty years old," replied Monsieur Palmer simply.

"God save us!" exclaimed Laurent; "then you must enjoy robust health?"

"Excellent!" said Palmer.

And he resumed his graceful pose and his tranquil smile.

"It's the face of a happy lover," said the artist to himself, "or else of a man who has never cared for anything but roast beef."

He could not resist the temptation to ask:

"So you knew Mademoiselle Jacques when she was very young?"

"She was fifteen years old when I first saw her."

Laurent had not the courage to ask him in what year that was. It seemed to him that the blood rushed to his face when he mentioned Thérèse. What did her age matter to him? It was her story that he would have liked to hear. Thérèse did not appear thirty; Palmer might have been no more than her friend. And then his voice was loud and penetrating. If it had been he to whom Thérèse had said: _I love no one but you_, he would have made some sort of a reply that Laurent would have heard.

At last, the evening came, and the artist, who was not in the habit of being punctual, arrived before the time at which Thérèse usually received him. He found her in her garden, unoccupied, contrary to her custom, and walking back and forth in evident agitation. As soon as she spied him, she went to meet him, and said, taking his hand with an air of authority rather than affection:

"If you are a man of honor, you will tell me all that you heard through this shrubbery. Come, speak; I am listening."

She sat down on a bench, and Laurent, irritated by this unusual reception, tried to worry her by making evasive replies; but she cowed him by her manifest displeasure, and by an expression of the face which was entirely strange to him. The dread of a definitive rupture with her led him to tell her the simple truth.

"So that was all you heard?" she said. "I said to a person whom you did not even see: 'You are now my only love on earth?'"

"Did I dream it, Thérèse? I am ready to believe it, if you bid me."

"No, you did not dream it. I may have said it, nay, I probably did say it. And what was the answer?"

"None that I heard," replied Laurent, upon whom Thérèse's admission had the effect of a cold shower-bath; "I didn't even hear the sound of his voice. Is your mind at rest?"

"No, I have other questions to ask you. To whom do you suppose that I said that?"

"I suppose nothing. I know no one but Monsieur Palmer, with whom the nature of your relations is not known."

"Ah!" cried Thérèse, with a strange air of satisfaction, "so you think it was Monsieur Palmer?"

"Why should it not be he? Do I insult you by supposing the possibility of an old liaison recently renewed? I know that your relations with all those whom I have seen here for the past three months are as disinterested on their part and as indifferent on yours as my own relations with you. Monsieur Palmer is very handsome, and he has the manners of a gallant man. I like him very much. I have neither the right nor the presumption to examine you touching your private sentiments. But--you will say that I have been watching you."

"I shall, indeed," rejoined Thérèse, who did not seem to think of denying anything whatsoever; "why do you watch me? It seems to me a wretched thing to do, although I don't understand it at all. Tell me how you came to do it."

"Thérèse!" replied the young man eagerly, determined to rid himself of all that he had on his mind, "tell me that you have a lover, and that Palmer is the man, and I will love you truly, I will talk to you with absolute frankness. I will ask your pardon for an outbreak of madness, and you shall never have any reason to reproach me. Come, do you wish me to be your friend? Despite all my boasting, I feel that I need your friendship and that I am capable of being your friend. Be frank with me, that is all that I ask of you!"

"My dear fellow," Thérèse replied, "you talk to me as if I were a coquette who was trying to keep you by her side, and who had some confession to make. I cannot accept that situation; it is in no respect suited to me. Monsieur Palmer is not and never will be to me anything more than a highly valued friend, with whom I am not even on intimate terms, and whom I had lost sight of for a long time until recently. So much I may say to you, but nothing more. My secrets, if I have any, do not require a confidant, and I beg you to take no more interest in them than I desire you to do. It is not for you to question me, therefore, but to answer my questions. What were you doing here four days ago? Why were you watching me? What is the _outbreak of madness_ which I am to know about and pass judgment upon?"

"The tone in which you speak to me is not encouraging. Why should I confess, when you no longer deign to treat me as a comrade and to have confidence in me?"

"Do not confess then," said Thérèse, rising. "That will prove to me that you did not deserve the esteem I felt for you, and that you did not reciprocate it in the least, since you tried to find out my secrets."

"So you turn me out," said Laurent, "and it is all over between us?"

"It is all over, adieu!" replied Thérèse in a severe tone.

Laurent left the house in a rage which made it impossible for him to say a word; but he had not taken thirty steps in the street, when he returned, telling Catherine that he had forgotten to deliver a message which somebody had given him for her mistress. He found Thérèse sitting in a small salon; the garden door was still open; she seemed to have gone so far, and to have paused there, grieved and downcast, absorbed in her reflections. She received him frigidly.

"So you have come back?" she said; "what is it that you forgot?"

"I forgot to tell you the truth."

"I no longer care to hear it."

"But you asked me for it?"

"I thought that you might tell it spontaneously."

"And I might have, I should have; I was wrong not to do it. Look you, Thérèse, do you think it possible for a man of my age to see you without falling in love with you?"

"In love?" said Thérèse, with a frown. "So you were making sport of me, were you, when you told me that you could not fall in love with any woman?"

"No, indeed; I said what I thought."

"Then you were mistaken, and you are really in love! are you quite sure of it?"

"Oh! don't be angry; great Heaven! I am not sure enough for that. Thoughts of love have passed through my head, through my senses, if you choose. Have you so little experience that you considered it impossible?"

"I am old enough to have had experience," she replied; "but I have lived alone for a long while. I have had no experience of certain situations. Does that surprise you? It is true, none the less. I am very simple-minded, although I have been deceived, like everybody else! You have told me a hundred times that you respected me too much to look upon me as a woman, for the reason that your love for women was altogether gross. So I believed that I was in no danger from the outrage of your desires; and of all that I esteemed in you, your sincerity upon that point was what I esteemed most highly. I allowed myself to become interested in your destiny with the greater freedom, because, you remember, we said to each other, laughing, but with serious meaning: 'Between two persons, of whom one is an idealist and the other a materialist, there is the Baltic Sea.'"

"I said it in all sincerity, and I walked confidently along the shore on my side, without an idea of crossing; but it happened that the ice would not bear. Is it my fault that I am twenty-four, and that you are beautiful?"

"Am I still beautiful? I hoped not."

"I cannot say; I did not think so at first, and then, one fine day, you seemed beautiful to me. So far as you are concerned, it is involuntary, I know that perfectly well; but it was involuntary on my part, too, my feeling this fascination, so involuntary that I fought against it and tried to divert my mind from it. I rendered unto Satan what belongs to Satan, that is to say, my poor soul, and I brought here unto Cæsar only what belongs to Cæsar,--my respect and my silence. But for eight or ten days this accursed emotion has reappeared in my dreams. It vanishes as soon as I am with you. On my word of honor, Thérèse, when I see you, when you speak to me, I am calm, I no longer remember that I cried out for you in a moment of frenzy, which I cannot understand myself. When I speak of you, I say that you are not young, or that I don't like the color of your hair. I declare that you are my comrade, that is to say, my brother, and I feel when I say it that I am perfectly loyal. And then a few puffs of spring surprise the winter in my idiotic heart, and I fancy that it is you who blow them. And it is you, in truth, Thérèse, with your adoration of what you call real love! That sets me thinking, whatever kind of love one may have!"

"I think that you are mistaken, I never speak of love."

"No, I know it. You follow a rigid rule in that respect. You have read somewhere that even to speak of love was to give it or take it; but your silence is most eloquent, your reticence gives one the fever, and your excessive prudence has a diabolical fascination."

"In that case, let us meet no more," said Thérèse.

"Why not? what is it to you that I have had a few sleepless nights, since it depends solely upon you to make me as tranquil as I used to be."

"What must I do to bring that about?"

"What I told you: tell me that you belong to some one. I shall look upon that as final, and as I am very proud, I shall be cured as by a fairy's wand."

"And suppose I tell you that I belong to no one, because I no longer care to love any one, will not that suffice?"

"No; I shall be conceited enough to think that you may change your mind."

Thérèse could not help laughing at the adroitness with which Laurent manœuvred.

"Very well," said she, "be cured, and give me back a friendship of which I was proud, instead of a life for which I should have to blush. I love some one."

"That is not enough, Thérèse: you must tell me that you belong to him."

"Otherwise you would think that some one was yourself, eh? Well, so be it, I have a lover. Are you satisfied?"

"Perfectly. As you see, I kiss your hand to thank you for your frankness. Come, be a good girl, tell me that it is Palmer."

"I cannot do that: it would be false."

"Then--I don't know what to think!"

"It is no one whom you know; it is a person who is absent from Paris."

"But who comes sometimes?"

"Apparently, since you overheard an outpouring of sentiment."

"Thanks, thanks, Thérèse. Now I am fairly on my feet again; I know who you are and who I am, and, if I must tell you the whole truth, I believe that I love you better so, for you are a woman now, and not a sphinx. Ah! why didn't you speak sooner?"

"Has this passion made such terrible ravages?" said Thérèse, mockingly.

"Why, yes, perhaps! Ten years hence I will tell you about it, Thérèse, and we will laugh together over it."

"Agreed; good-night."

Laurent went to bed in a very tranquil frame of mind and altogether undeceived. He had really suffered on Thérèse's account. He had passionately desired her, but had never dared to let her suspect it. Certainly it was not a meritorious passion. There was as much vanity as curiosity in it. That woman of whom all her friends said: "Whom does she love? I wish it were I, but it is no one," had appeared to him in the guise of a beautiful ideal to be grasped. His imagination had taken fire, his pride had bled with the dread, the almost certainty, of failure.

But this young man was not exclusively given over to pride. He had at times a dazzling and dominating vision of the right, the good, and the true.

He was an angel, gone astray and diseased, if not absolutely fallen like so many others. The craving for love devoured his heart, and a hundred times a day he asked himself in dismay if he had not abused life too much already, and if he still had strength to be happy.

He awoke calm and depressed. He already regretted his chimera, his beautiful sphinx, who read his thoughts with good-natured attention, who admired him, scolded him, pitied him, and encouraged him by turns, without ever revealing a corner of her own destiny, but affording a foretaste of treasures of affection, devotion, perhaps of sensual pleasure! At all events, it was in this way that it pleased Laurent to interpret Thérèse's silence touching herself, and a certain smile, as mysterious as Joconda's, which played about her lips and in the corner of her eye, when he blasphemed in her presence. At such times, she seemed to say to herself: "I could, if I chose, describe the paradise in contrast with that villainous hell; but the poor fool would not understand me."

When the mystery of her heart was once unveiled, Thérèse lost her prestige in Laurent's eyes at first. She was no longer anything more than a woman like other women. He was even tempted to degrade her in her own esteem, and, although she had never allowed him to question her, to accuse her of hypocrisy and prudery. But, from the moment that he knew that she belonged to some one, he ceased to regret that he had respected her, and he no longer desired anything of her, not even her friendship, which, he thought, he would have no difficulty in supplying elsewhere.

This state of affairs lasted two or three days, during which Laurent prepared several explanations, in the event that Thérèse should ask him, to account for the time that had passed without his calling upon her. On the fourth day, Laurent found himself in the clutches of a savage attack of _spleen_. Harlots and courtesans made him ill; he found in none of his friends the patient and delicate kindliness with which Thérèse would detect his ennui, try to divert his mind, help him to seek its cause and remedy, in a word, give her whole mind to him. She alone knew what ought to be said to him, and seemed to understand that the fate of an artist like him was not a matter of trifling importance, as to which a more exalted mind had the right to declare that, if he were unfortunate, it was so much the worse for him.

He ran to her house in such hot haste, that he forgot what he intended to say by way of apology; but Thérèse showed neither displeasure nor surprise because of his neglect, and spared him the necessity of lying by asking him no questions. He was stung by her indifference, and discovered that he was more jealous of her than before.

"She has probably seen her lover," he thought; "she has forgotten me."

However, he did not manifest his irritation, and kept such close watch upon himself thereafter, that Thérèse was deceived.

Several weeks passed in alternations of frenzy, coldness, and affection. Nothing else on earth was so necessary to him and so beneficent as that woman's friendship, nothing so bitter and so galling as to be unable to seek her love. The confession he had demanded, far from curing him as he had flattered himself that it would, had intensified his suffering. It was jealousy, which he could no longer conceal from himself, since it had a definite and admitted cause. How, in Heaven's name, could he ever have fancied that as soon as he knew that cause, he would scorn the idea of striving to destroy it?

And yet he made no effort to supplant the invisible and happy rival. His pride, which was excessive when he was with Thérèse, would not allow him to do it. When he was alone, he hated him, decried him to himself, attributing all sorts of absurdities to that phantom, insulting him and challenging him ten times a day.

Then he would become disgusted with suffering, seek comfort in debauchery, forget himself for a moment, but instantly relapse into profound depression, and go to pass an hour or two with Thérèse, overjoyed to see her, to breathe the air that she breathed, and to contradict her in order to have the pleasure of listening to her voice, scolding and caressing by turns.

Finally he detested her for not divining his torments; he despised her for remaining faithful to that lover of hers, who could not be a man of more than ordinary talent, since she did not feel the need of talking about him; he would leave her, swearing that he would not go near her again for a long while, and he would have returned an hour later if he had had any hope that she would receive him.

Thérèse, who had caught a glimpse of his love for a moment, no longer suspected it, so well did he play his part. She was sincerely attached to the unhappy youth. Being an enthusiastic artist beneath her calm and thoughtful exterior, she had set up a sort of altar, she said, _to what he might have been_, and she still felt for him an indulgent pity, blended with genuine respect for genius diseased and gone astray. If she had been very certain of not arousing any evil desire, she would have fondled him like a son, and there were times when she checked herself as she was on the point of using the familiar form of address to him.

Was there a touch of love in that maternal sentiment? There surely was, unknown to Thérèse; but a truly chaste woman, who has lived longer by work than by passion, can keep from herself for a long while the secret of a love which she has resolved to fight against. Thérèse believed that she was certain of having no thought of her own satisfaction in that attachment of which she bore all the burden; as soon as it was evident that Laurent found tranquillity and contentment with her, she found tranquillity and contentment to give him. She was well aware that he was incapable of loving as she understood the word; so that she had been hurt and alarmed at the momentary caprice which he had confessed. That paroxysm past, she congratulated herself upon having found in a harmless fib a means of preventing its recurrence; and, as on all occasions, whenever he felt at all excited, Laurent hastened to proclaim the impassable barrier of ice _of the Baltic Sea_, she was no longer afraid, and accustomed herself to live amid flames without being burned.

All these sufferings and perils of the two friends were concealed and, as it were, incubated beneath a habitual satirical gaiety, which is the natural mood, the indelible seal, as it were, of French artists. It is a sort of second nature, for which the people of more northern countries blame us severely, and for which the serious English, above all, look down upon us. Yet it is that which constitutes the charm of refined liaisons, and often preserves us from many a mad or foolish step. To seek the absurd side of things is to discover the weak and illogical side. To laugh at the perils by which the heart is encompassed, is to practise defying them, like our soldiers, who go into fire laughing and singing. To make fun of a friend is often to save him from some weakness in which our pity would have led him to gratify himself. And, finally, to make fun of one's self is to rescue one's self from the foolish intoxication of overweening self-esteem. I have noticed that people who never jest are generally endowed with puerile and intolerable vanity.

Laurent's gaiety, like his talent, was dazzling with color and wit, and was the more natural because it was original. Thérèse had less wit than he, in the sense that she was naturally given to musing, and was an indolent talker; but what she needed was a playful spirit in others; then her own would gradually wake, and her quiet merriment was not without charm.

The result of this habitual good humor was that love, a subject upon which Thérèse never jested and did not like to have others jest in her presence, found no opportunity to slip in a word, to utter a note.

One fine morning, Monsieur Palmer's portrait was finished, and Thérèse handed to Laurent, in her friend's name, a snug little sum which the young man promised to put aside, to be used in case of illness or of some unforeseen and unavoidable expense.

Laurent had become intimate with Palmer while painting his portrait. He had found him what he was: upright, just, generous, intelligent, and well-informed. Palmer was a wealthy American of the middle class, whose patrimonial fortune was derived from trade. He had been in business himself and had travelled extensively in his younger days. At thirty, he had had the excellent sense to consider himself rich enough, and to determine to live for his own enjoyment. So he no longer travelled except for pleasure, and after he had seen, as he said, many curious things and extraordinary countries, he took delight in the sight of beautiful things and in studying countries which were really interesting by reason of their civilization.

Although he was not a very enlightened student of art, his judgment was reasonably reliable, and on all subjects his ideas were as healthy as his instincts. His French showed the effect of his timidity, to such a degree that it was almost unintelligible and absurdly incorrect at the beginning of a conversation; but when he felt at ease, one could see that he knew the language, and that all he lacked was longer practice or greater confidence to speak it very well.

Laurent had studied him with much curiosity and perturbation at the outset. When it was proved by affirmative evidence that he was not Mademoiselle Jacques's lover, he estimated his character more fairly, and conceived a sort of friendship for him which resembled, albeit at a long distance, his sentiment for Thérèse. Palmer was a tolerant philosopher, strict enough in his dealings with himself and very charitable to others. In his ideas, if not in his character, he resembled Thérèse, and he was almost always in accord with her on all points. Now and then Laurent still felt jealous of what he called, in musical parlance, their imperturbable _unison_; and, as it was simply an intellectual jealousy, he ventured to complain of it to Thérèse.

"Your definition amounts to nothing," she said. "Palmer is too placid and too perfect for me. I have a little more fire, and I sing a little louder than he does. Compared with him, I am the high note in the major third."

"In that case, I am only a false note," said Laurent.

"No," said Thérèse, "with you I am modified and go down the scale to form the minor third."

"Then with me you descend half a tone?"

"And I am half an interval nearer to you than to Palmer."

III

One day, at Palmer's request, Laurent went to the Hôtel Meurice, where the American lived, to see that the portrait was suitably framed and packed. The lid was nailed on in their presence, and Palmer himself wrote his mother's name and address thereon with a brush; then, as the porters carried the box away to dispatch it on its long journey, Palmer grasped the artist's hand, and said:

"I owe it to you that my dear mother is soon to have a very great pleasure, and I thank you again. Now will you allow me to talk with you a few moments? I have something to say to you."

They went into a salon where Laurent saw several trunks.

"I start to-morrow for Italy," said the American, offering him some excellent cigars and a taper, although he did not smoke himself; "and I do not choose to part with you without a few words touching a delicate matter, so delicate that, if you interrupt me, I shall not be able to find the proper French words for what I want to say."

"I swear that I will be as mute as the tomb," said Laurent, with a smile, surprised and considerably disturbed by this preamble.

"You love Mademoiselle Jacques," continued Palmer, "and I think that she loves you. Perhaps you are her lover; if you are not, I feel certain that you will be sooner or later. Ah! you promised not to speak! Say nothing, for I ask you nothing. I consider you worthy of the honor I attribute to you; but I am afraid that you are not well enough acquainted with Thérèse to know that, if your love is an honor to her, hers is no less an honor to you. I am afraid of that because of the questions you asked me about her, and of certain remarks that have been made about her before us two, by which I saw that you were more moved than I was. That proves that you know nothing about her; now I, who know the whole story, propose to tell you the whole story, so that your attachment to Mademoiselle Jacques may be founded on the esteem and respect which she deserves."

"Wait a moment, Palmer," cried Laurent, who was burning to hear what was coming, but was restrained by an honorable scruple. "Do you propose to tell me this with Mademoiselle Jacques's permission, or by her command?"

"Neither," replied Palmer. "Thérèse will never tell you the story of her life."

"Then say no more! I do not wish to know anything except what she wishes me to know."

"Good, very good!" rejoined Palmer, shaking his hand; "but suppose that what I have to tell you clears her from all suspicion?"

"Then why does she conceal it?"

"From consideration for others."

"Well, go on," said Laurent, unable to resist the temptation.

"I shall mention no names," said Palmer. "I will simply tell you that, in one of the large cities of France, there was once a rich banker who seduced a charming girl, his own daughter's governess. He had by her a female child who was born twenty-eight years ago on Saint Jacques's Day, was entered on the municipal register as born of unknown parents, and received no other family name than Jacques. Thérèse is that child.

"The governess received a sum of money from the banker, and, five years later, married one of his clerks, an honest fellow who had no suspicion of anything wrong, the whole affair having been kept very secret. The child was brought up in the country. Her father had taken charge of her. She was afterward placed in a convent, where she received a very fine education and was the object of much care and affection. Her mother saw her constantly during the first years; but after she was married, her husband became suspicious, and, resigning his position with the banker, took his wife to Belgium, where he went into business on his own account and made a fortune. The poor mother had to force back her tears and obey.

"That mother still lives a long way from her daughter; she has other children, and her conduct since her marriage has been beyond reproach; but she has never been happy. Her husband, who loves her dearly, keeps her almost under lock and key, and has never ceased to be jealous of her; which is in her eyes the merited penalty of her sin and her falsehood.

"It would seem that age should have brought confession on the one hand and forgiveness on the other. It would have been arranged so in a novel; but there is nothing less logical than real life, and that household is as disturbed as on the first day, the husband deep in love, uneasy and rough, the wife penitent, but silent and down-trodden.

"And so, under the difficult circumstances in which Thérèse was placed, she was deprived of the support, the assistance, the advice, and the consolation of her mother. But the mother loves her all the more dearly for being obliged to see her in secret, by stealth, when she succeeds in coming to Paris alone for two or three days, as has happened recently. But it is only within a few years that she has been able to devise pretexts of one sort or another, and obtain these occasional leaves of absence. Thérèse adores her mother, and will never make any admission that can possibly compromise her. That is why she will never endure a word of blame concerning the conduct of other women. You may well have thought that at such times she was indirectly claiming indulgence for herself. Nothing of the sort. Thérèse has nothing for which to seek forgiveness; but she has forgiven her mother everything; such is the story of their relations.

"I now have to tell you the story of the Comtesse de ---- _three stars_. That is what you say in French, I believe, when you do not wish to call people by name. This countess, who bears neither her title nor her husband's name, is Thérèse again."

"So she is married? she is not a widow?"

"Patience! she is married, and she is not. You will see in a moment. Thérèse was fifteen years old when her father, the banker, became a widower and a free man; for his lawful children were all settled in life. He was an excellent man, and, despite the misstep of which I have told you and which I do not justify, it was impossible not to love him, he was so entertaining and generous. I was very intimate with him. He had told me in confidence the story of Thérèse's birth, and on several occasions he took me with him when he went to see her at the convent where she was. She was beautiful, intelligent, lovable, high-spirited. He would have been glad, I think, to have me make up my mind to ask her hand in marriage; but my heart was not free at that time; otherwise---- But I could not think of it.

"He then asked me some questions about a young Portuguese nobleman who was a frequent visitor at his house, who had very large interests in Havana, and who was very handsome. I had met this Portuguese in Paris, but I did not really know him, and I abstained from giving any opinion about him. He was very fascinating; but, for my part, I would never have placed any confidence in his face. He was the Comte de ----, to whom Thérèse was married a year later.

"I was obliged to go to Russia; when I returned, the banker had died of apoplexy, and Thérèse was married, married to that foreigner, that madman, I will not say that villain, because he was able to retain her love, even after she discovered his crime: that man already had a wife in the colonies when he had the incredible audacity to seek Thérèse's hand and to marry her.

"Do not ask me how Thérèse's father, a man of sense and experience, had allowed himself to be so deceived. I could but repeat to you what my own experience has taught me, to wit: that in this world, the things that happen are at least half of the time the direct opposite of what seemed likely to happen.

"In the later years of his life the banker had done divers other foolish things which would lead one to think that his reason was slightly clouded. He had left Thérèse a legacy instead of giving her a marriage-portion outright in his life-time. This legacy was of no effect as against the lawful heirs, and Thérèse, who adored her father, would not have applied to the courts even if there had been any chance of success. She was left penniless, therefore, just as she became a mother, and, at the same time, a frantic woman made a descent upon her, demanding her rights and threatening to make a scandal: it was her husband's first and only lawful wife.

"Thérèse had an extraordinary amount of courage: she pacified the unfortunate creature, and persuaded her not to apply to the courts; she induced the count to take back his wife and start for Havana with her. Because of Thérèse's birth and the secrecy with which her father had chosen to encompass the manifestations of his affection, her marriage had taken place secretly, abroad, and the young couple had lived abroad ever since. Indeed, their life had been most mysterious. The count, unquestionably afraid of being unmasked if he should reappear in the world, made Thérèse believe that he had a passion for living in solitude with her, and the trustful young wife, in love with her husband and naturally romantic, considered it altogether natural that her husband should travel with her under a false name, to avoid meeting people who were indifferent to him.

"Thus when Thérèse awoke to the horror of her situation, it was not impossible that everything might be shrouded in silence. She consulted a discreet lawyer, and, having acquired the certainty that her marriage was null and void, but that it required a judgment to quash it, if she wished ever to make use of her liberty, she instantly and irrevocably made up her mind to be neither free nor married, rather than besmirch her child's father with a degrading scandal and conviction. That made the child a bastard beyond recall; but it was better that he should have no name and should remain forever in ignorance of his birth, than that he should claim a tarnished name and bring dishonor upon his father.

"Thérèse still loved the wretch! she confessed as much to me, and he loved her with a diabolical passion. There were heart-rending struggles, indescribable scenes, in which Thérèse fought with an energy beyond her years, I will not say beyond her sex; a woman, when she is heroic, is not heroic by halves.

"At last, she carried the day; she kept her child, expelled the culprit from her arms, and saw him depart with her rival, who, although consumed by jealousy, was so far overcome by her magnanimity that she kissed her feet when they parted.

"Thérèse changed her abode and her name, passed as a widow, having resolved to be forgotten by the few people who had known her, and began to live for her child, with pitiful energy. The child was so dear to her, that she thought that she could find consolation with him; but this last joy was destined not to be of long duration.

"As the count was wealthy, and had no children by his first wife, Thérèse had been persuaded, at her rival's earnest entreaty, to accept a reasonable allowance, in order to enable her to give her son a suitable education; but the count had no sooner taken his wife back to Havana than he abandoned her again, made his escape, returned to Europe, and threw himself at Thérèse's feet, imploring her to fly with him and the child to the other side of the world.

"Thérèse was inexorable; she had reflected and prayed. Her heart had become strong, she no longer loved the count. On her son's account, she did not propose that such a man as the count should become the master of her life. She had lost the right to be happy, but not the right to respect herself; she repulsed him, without reproaches, but without weakness. The count threatened to leave her penniless; she replied that she was not afraid to work for a living.

"The wretched madman thereupon devised an execrable scheme, to place Thérèse at his mercy, or to be revenged for her resistance. He kidnapped the child and disappeared. Thérèse hurried after him; but he had taken his measures so carefully that she went astray and did not overtake him. It was at that crisis that I met her in England, dying of despair and fatigue at an inn, almost insane, and so changed by unhappiness that I hardly recognized her.

"I persuaded her to rest, and let me act for her. My investigations were lamentably successful. The count had returned to America. The child had died of fatigue on arriving there.

"When I was obliged to convey that horrible news to the unhappy creature, I was terrified myself at the calmness she displayed. At last, she wept, and I saw that she was saved. I was forced to leave her; she told me that she proposed to settle where she was. I was distressed by her destitution; she deceived me by telling me that her mother would not allow her to lack anything. I learned later that her poor mother would have been powerless to help her; she had not a centime at her disposal for which she had not to account. Moreover, she was entirely ignorant of all her daughter's misfortunes. Thérèse, who wrote to her in secret, had concealed them in order not to drive her to desperation.