第 6 页

son-in-law whom it was easy to conquer. As it happened, Henri had been

mastered by a violent passion for Eve's blond beauty, which was then

dazzling. He wished to marry her, and his father, who knew him,

consented, in reality greatly amused to think that Justus was making an

execrably bad stroke of business. The enterprise became indeed disastrous

for Justus when Henri succeeded his father and the man of prey appeared

from beneath the man of pleasure and carved himself his own huge share in

exploiting the unbridled appetites of the middle-class democracy, which

had at last secured possession of power. Not only did Eve fail to devour

Henri, who in his turn had become Baron Duvillard, the all-powerful

banker, more and more master of the market; but it was the Baron who

devoured Eve, and this in less than four years' time. After she had borne

him a daughter and a son in turn, he suddenly drew away from her,

neglected her, as if she were a mere toy that he no longer cared for. She

was at first both surprised and distressed by the change, especially on

learning that he was resuming his bachelor's habits, and had set his

fickle if ardent affections elsewhere. Then, however, without any kind of

recrimination, any display of anger, or even any particular effort to

regain her ascendency over him, she, on her side, imitated his example.

She could not live without love, and assuredly she had only been born to

be beautiful, to fascinate and reap adoration. To the lover whom she

chose when she was five and twenty she remained faithful for more than

fifteen years, as faithful as she might have been to a husband; and when

he died her grief was intense, it was like real widowhood. Six months

later, however, having met Count Gerard de Quinsac she had again been

unable to resist her imperative need of adoration, and an intrigue had

followed.

"Have you been ill, my dear Gerard?" she inquired, noticing the young

man's embarrassment. "Are you hiding some worry from me?"

She was ten years older than he was; and she clung desperately to this

last passion of hers, revolting at the thought of growing old, and

resolved upon every effort to keep the young man beside her.

"No, I am hiding nothing, I assure you," replied the Count. "But my

mother has had much need of me recently."

She continued looking at him, however, with anxious passion, finding him

so tall and aristocratic of mien, with his regular features and dark hair

and moustaches which were always most carefully tended. He belonged to

one of the oldest families of France, and resided on a ground-floor in

the Rue St. Dominique with his widowed mother, who had been ruined by her

adventurously inclined husband, and had at most an income of some fifteen

thousand francs* to live upon. Gerard for his part had never done

anything; contenting himself with his one year of obligatory military

service, he had renounced the profession of arms in the same way as he

had renounced that of diplomacy, the only one that offered him an opening

of any dignity. He spent his days in that busy idleness common to all

young men who lead "Paris life." And his mother, haughtily severe though

she was, seemed to excuse this, as if in her opinion a man of his birth

was bound by way of protest to keep apart from official life under a

Republic. However, she no doubt had more intimate, more disturbing

reasons for indulgence. She had nearly lost him when he was only seven,

through an attack of brain fever. At eighteen he had complained of his

heart, and the doctors had recommended that he should be treated gently

in all respects. She knew, therefore, what a lie lurked behind his proud

demeanour, within his lofty figure, that haughty _facade_ of his race. He

was but dust, ever threatened with illness and collapse. In the depths of

his seeming virility there was merely girlish _abandon_; and he was

simply a weak, good-natured fellow, liable to every stumble. It was on

the occasion of a visit which he had paid with his mother to the Asylum

of the Invalids of Labour that he had first seen Eve, whom he continued

to meet; his mother, closing her eyes to this culpable connection in a

sphere of society which she treated with contempt, in the same way as she

had closed them to so many other acts of folly which she had forgiven

because she regarded them as the mere lapses of an ailing child.

Moreover, Eve had made a conquest of Madame de Quinsac, who was very

pious, by an action which had recently amazed society. It had been

suddenly learnt that she had allowed Monseigneur Martha to convert her to

the Roman Catholic faith. This thing, which she had refused to do when

solicited by her lawful husband, she had now done in the hope of ensuring

herself a lover's eternal affection. And all Paris was still stirred by

the magnificence exhibited at the Madeleine, on the occasion of the

baptism of this Jewess of five and forty, whose beauty and whose tears

had upset every heart.

* About 3000 dollars.

Gerard, on his side, was still flattered by the deep and touching

tenderness shown to him; but weariness was coming, and he had already

sought to break off the connection by avoiding any further assignations.

He well understood Eve's glances and her tears, and though he was moved

at sight of them he tried to excuse himself. "I assure you," said he, "my

mother has kept me so busy that I could not get away." But she, without a

word, still turned her tearful glance on him, and weak, like herself, in

despair that he should have been left alone with her in this fashion, he

yielded, unable to continue refusing. "Well, then," said he, "this

afternoon at four o'clock if you are free."

He had lowered his voice in speaking, but a slight rustle made him turn

his head and start like one in fault. It was the Baroness's daughter

Camille entering the room. She had heard nothing; but by the smile which

the others had exchanged, by the very quiver of the air, she understood

everything; an assignation for that very day and at the very spot which

she suspected. Some slight embarrassment followed, an exchange of anxious

and evil glances.

Camille, at three and twenty, was a very dark young woman, short of

stature and somewhat deformed, with her left shoulder higher than the

right. There seemed to be nothing of her father or mother in her. Her

case was one of those unforeseen accidents in family heredity which make

people wonder whence they can arise. Her only pride lay in her beautiful

black eyes and superb black hair, which, short as she was, would, said

she, have sufficed to clothe her. But her nose was long, her face

deviated to the left, and her chin was pointed. Her thin, witty, and

malicious lips bespoke all the rancour and perverse anger stored in the

heart of this uncomely creature, whom the thought of her uncomeliness

enraged. However, the one whom she most hated in the whole world was her

own mother, that _amorosa_ who was so little fitted to be a mother, who

had never loved her, never paid attention to her, but had abandoned her

to the care of servants from her very infancy. In this wise real hatred

had grown up between the two women, mute and frigid on the one side, and

active and passionate on the other. The daughter hated her mother because

she found her beautiful, because she had not been created in the same

image: beautiful with the beauty with which her mother crushed her. Day

by day she suffered at being sought by none, at realising that the

adoration of one and all still went to her mother. As she was amusing in

her maliciousness, people listened to her and laughed; however, the

glances of all the men--even and indeed especially the younger ones--soon

reverted to her triumphant mother, who seemingly defied old age. In part

for this reason Camille, with ferocious determination, had decided that

she would dispossess her mother of her last lover Gerard, and marry him

herself, conscious that such a loss would doubtless kill the Baroness.

Thanks to her promised dowry of five millions of francs, the young woman

did not lack suitors; but, little flattered by their advances, she was

accustomed to say, with her malicious laugh: "Oh! of course; why for five

millions they would take a wife from a mad-house." However, she, herself,

had really begun to love Gerard, who, good-natured as he was, evinced

much kindness towards this suffering young woman whom nature had treated

so harshly. It worried him to see her forsaken by everyone, and little by

little he yielded to the grateful tenderness which she displayed towards

him, happy, handsome man that he was, at being regarded as a demi-god and

having such a slave. Indeed, in his attempt to quit the mother there was

certainly a thought of allowing the daughter to marry him, which would be

an agreeable ending to it all, though he did not as yet acknowledge this,

ashamed as he felt and embarrassed by his illustrious name and all the

complications and tears which he foresaw.

The silence continued. Camille with her piercing glance, as sharp as any

knife, had told her mother that she knew the truth; and then with another

and pain-fraught glance she had complained to Gerard. He, in order to

re-establish equilibrium, could only think of a compliment: "Good

morning, Camille. Ah! that havana-brown gown of yours looks nice! It's

astonishing how well rather sombre colours suit you."

Camille glanced at her mother's white robe, and then at her own dark

gown, which scarcely allowed her neck and wrists to be seen. "Yes," she

replied laughing, "I only look passable when I don't dress as a young

girl."

Eve, ill at ease, worried by the growth of a rivalry in which she did not

as yet wish to believe, changed the conversation. "Isn't your brother

there?" she asked.

"Why yes, we came down together."

Hyacinthe, who came in at that moment, shook hands with Gerard in a weary

way. He was twenty, and had inherited his mother's pale blond hair, and

her long face full of Oriental languor; while from his father he had

derived his grey eyes and thick lips, expressive of unscrupulous

appetites. A wretched scholar, regarding every profession with the same

contempt, he had decided to do nothing. Spoilt by his father, he took

some little interest in poetry and music, and lived in an extraordinary

circle of artists, low women, madmen and bandits; boasting himself of all

sorts of crimes and vices, professing the very worst philosophical and

social ideas, invariably going to extremes, becoming in turn a

Collectivist, an Individualist, an Anarchist, a Pessimist, a Symbolist,

and what not besides; without, however, ceasing to be a Catholic, as this

conjunction of Catholicity with something else seemed to him the supreme

_bon ton_. In reality he was simply empty and rather a fool. In four

generations the vigorous hungry blood of the Duvillards, after producing

three magnificent beasts of prey, had, as if exhausted by the contentment

of every passion, ended in this sorry emasculated creature, who was

incapable alike of great knavery or great debauchery.

Camille, who was too intelligent not to realise her brother's

nothingness, was fond of teasing him; and looking at him as he stood

there, tightly buttoned in his long frock coat with pleated skirt--a

resurrection of the romantic period, which he carried to exaggeration,

she resumed: "Mamma has been asking for you, Hyacinthe. Come and show her

your gown. You are the one who would look nice dressed as a young girl."

However, he eluded her without replying. He was covertly afraid of her,

though they lived together in great intimacy, frankly exchanging

confidences respecting their perverse views of life. And he directed a

glance of disdain at the wonderful basket of orchids which seemed to him

past the fashion, far too common nowadays. For his part he had left the

lilies of life behind him, and reached the ranunculus, the flower of

blood.

The two last guests who were expected now arrived almost together. The

first was the investigating magistrate Amadieu, a little man of five and

forty, who was an intimate of the household and had been brought into

notoriety by a recent anarchist affair. Between a pair of fair, bushy

whiskers he displayed a flat, regular judicial face, to which he tried to

impart an expression of keenness by wearing a single eyeglass behind

which his glance sparkled. Very worldly, moreover, he belonged to the new

judicial school, being a distinguished psychologist and having written a

book in reply to the abuses of criminalist physiology. And he was also a

man of great, tenacious ambition, fond of notoriety and ever on the

lookout for those resounding legal affairs which bring glory. Behind him,

at last appeared General de Bozonnet, Gerard's uncle on the maternal

side, a tall, lean old man with a nose like an eagle's beak. Chronic

rheumatism had recently compelled him to retire from the service. Raised

to a colonelcy after the Franco-German War in reward for his gallant

conduct at St. Privat, he had, in spite of his extremely monarchical

connections, kept his sworn faith to Napoleon III. And he was excused in

his own sphere of society for this species of military Bonapartism, on

account of the bitterness with which he accused the Republic of having

ruined the army. Worthy fellow that he was, extremely fond of his sister,

Madame de Quinsac, it seemed as though he acted in accordance with some

secret desire of hers in accepting the invitations of Baroness Duvillard

by way of rendering Gerard's constant presence in her house more natural

and excusable.

However, the Baron and Duthil now returned from the study, laughing

loudly in an exaggerated way, doubtless to make the others believe that

they were quite easy in mind. And one and all passed into the large

dining-room where a big wood fire was burning, its gay flames shining

like a ray of springtide amid the fine mahogany furniture of English make