"I accompanied him as far as Marseilles," he told us. "He wanted to kill himself and was crying all the time. You know I am not a gullible sort of a chap … but he actually made me feel sorry for him. Now really!"
And he added:
"You know. He was ready to fight you. … It was his friend, Monsieur Lirat, who kept him from doing that. … I, too, dissuaded him from it because I believe only in a duel to death."
Juliette listened to all these details silently and with apparent indifference. From time to time she drew her tongue across her lips, and in her eyes there was something resembling a reflection of inner joy. Was she thinking of Malterre? Was she happy to learn that someone was suffering on account of her? Alas! I was no longer in a position to ask myself such questions.
A new life began.
I did riot like the apartment where Juliette lived; there were in her house neighbors whom I did not like, and above all the apartment concealed memories which I thought it more convenient to forget. For fear that my plans might not be agreeable to Juliette I did not dare to reveal them too abruptly, but at the very first words I said about the matter she grew enthusiastic.
"Yes! yes!" she cried out with joy. "I have been thinking of it myself, dearie. And do you know of what else I have been thinking? Guess, guess quickly, what your little wifie has been thinking of?"
She placed both hands on my shoulders, and smiling:
"Don't you know? … Really you don't? … Well! she has been thinking of having you come and live with her. … Oh! It'll be so nice to have a pretty little apartment where we shall be alone, just the two of us, to love each other, isn't that right, my Jean? … You'll work and I'll sit right next to you and do some needle work without making a stir, and from time to time, I'll embrace you to inspire you with great ideas. … You shall see, my dear, whether I am a good housekeeper or not, whether I can take care of all your little matters. … In the first place, I'll arrange your things in the bureau. Every morning you will find a fresh flower on it. … Then Spy will also have a nice little niche, all new, with red top-knots. … And then we shall hardly go out at all. … And we'll sleep as late as we wish. … And then … and then. … Oh, how wonderful it will be! … "
Then getting serious again, she said in a grave voice:
"Not to mention the fact that it will be a good deal cheaper. Just about half!"
We rented an apartment on the Rue de Balzac and we busily fixed it up. That was an important task. We were shopping the whole day, examining rugs, choosing hangings, discussing arrangements and estimating things. Juliette would have liked to buy everything she saw, but she professed a preference for elaborate furniture, for loud-colored draperies and heavy embroidery. The glitter of new gold, the dazzling effect of harsh colors attracted, fascinated her. Whenever I ventured to remark something to her, she would say at once:
"How do men come to know about these things? … Women know better."
She was obdurate in her desire to buy a kind of Arabian chest, frightfully daubed up, set with mother-of-pearl, ivory imitation stones, and of immense size.
"You can see for yourself that it's too large, that it won't get into our house at all," I said to her.
"Do you really think so? Well how about sawing off the legs, dearie?"
And more than twenty times during the day she stopped in the middle of her conversation to ask me:
"Well, do you really think it is too large? … That beautiful chest I mean."
In the carriage, as soon as she got in, Juliette nestled close to me, offered me her lips, smothered me with caresses, happy, radiant.
"Oh! you naughty boy, who never said a word to me, and who stood just looking at me, with his sad eyes … yes, your beautiful sad eyes that I love … you naughty! … I had to start it all myself! … hadn't I? … otherwise you would have never dared, would you? … Were you afraid of me, tell me? Do you remember when you took me in your arms, that evening? I did not know where I was, I could no longer see anything. … My throat, my chest felt as though I had swallowed something very hot … isn't that funny. … I thought I was going to die … burned by you. … It was so sweet, so sweet! … Why, I have loved you since the first day we met. … No, I was in love with you before. … Ah, you are laughing! … You don't believe then that you can love someone without knowing or seeing him? … Well I do! … I am sure of it! … "
My heart was beating so fast, these words were so new to me, that I could not find anything to say in reply; I was choking with happiness. All I could do was to clasp Juliette in my arms, mutter some inarticulate words and weep with joy. Suddenly she became thoughtful, the furrow on her forehead deepened, she withdrew her hand from mine. I was afraid I had offended her:
"What's the matter, my Juliette?" I asked her. "Why do you look so? … Have I hurt you?"
And Juliette, disconsolate, said with a sigh:
"The corner-buffet, my dear! … The corner-buffet for the parlor which we have entirely forgotten."
She quickly passed from laughter, from kisses to sudden gravity, mingled words of endearment with ceiling measurements, confused love with tapestry. … It was delightful.
In our room, in the evening, all this pretty childishness disappeared. Love stamped upon the face of Juliette something austere, deliberate and ferocious which I could not explain; it changed her entirely. She was not depraved; on the contrary, her passion showed itself to be strong and normal, and in her caresses there was awe-inspiring nobility and courage. Her body trembled as if in terrible labor.
My happiness lasted but a short time. … My happiness! … It is really remarkable that never, never have I been permitted to enjoy anything fully, and that invariably anxiety came to disturb the brief periods of my happiness. Defenseless and powerless against suffering, not sure of myself and timid in the hours of happiness—such I have been all my life. Is it a tendency peculiar to my nature? A strange perversion of my sensibilities? … Or is it rather that happiness in my own case as well as in the case of everybody else is really deceptive, and that it is nothing but a more tormenting and more refined form of universal suffering? …
Now this for example. … The faint glimmer of the night-lamp flickers feebly upon the curtains and the furniture; Juliette is asleep, early in the morning, the morning after our first night. One of her arms, bare, rests upon the sheet; the other, also bare, is gracefully coiled up under her nape. All around her face—which reflects the pallid light of the bed, a face which looks like that of a murdered person, with eyes encircled by dark rings—her loose black hair is scattered, sinuous and flowing like waves! I contemplate her eagerly. … She is sleeping close to me, with a deep calm sleep, like a child. And for the first time possession occasions no regret, no disgust in me; for the first time I am able to look at a woman who has just given herself to me. I cannot express my feelings at this moment. What I feel is something indefinable, something exceedingly sweet and at the same time very grave and holy, a sort of religious ecstasy similar to the one which I experienced at the time of my first communion. … I recognize the same mystic transport, the same great and sacred awe; it is like another revelation of God taking place in the transplendent light of my soul. … It seems to me that God has come down to me for the second time. … She sleeps, in the silence of the room, with her mouth half-open, her nostrils motionless; she sleeps with a sleep so gentle that I cannot even hear her breathing. … A flower on the mantlepiece is there, withering, and a whiff of its dying fragrance reaches me. I can't hear Juliette at all, she is only asleep, she is breathing, she is alive and yet I can't hear her. I move nearer to her and gently bend over her, almost touching her with my lips, and in an almost inaudible voice I call her.
"Juliette!"