– She was, the little minx, ten times more so than she was worth…
– `And you will be. Since it is gold that you love, you must seek it out.´ It was Tuesday, and the minister had set the date of departure for Friday without delay. I bid him farewell as he was wrestling with himself, attempting to wrest himself from the arms of the beautiful, disgraceful and cruel Reymer. Of such a disorder of ideas, hopelessness, agony, I have never seen a second example. This was not a wail; it was an extended scream. Madame Reymer was still in bed. He held one of her hands. He could not stop saying and repeating: `Cruel woman! Woman cruel! What more do you need than the comfort you enjoy, and a friend, a lover such as myself? I have tried to find fortune in the sweltering countries of America; she wants me to seek it out once more in the ice floes of the North. My friend, I am aware that this woman is mad; I am aware that I am foolish, but I am less afraid of death than I am of causing her sadness. You want me to leave you; I will leave you.´ He was on his knees beside her bed, mouth glued to her hand and face hidden in the covers, which, in stifling his mutterings, only made them sadder and more dreadful. The bedroom door opened; his head rose up brusquely; he saw the coachman who had come to announce that the horses were hitched up. He cried out, and again hid his face under the covers. After a moment´s silence, he rose, he said to his love, `Kiss me, madame. Kiss me one more time, for you will never see me again.´ His premonition was only too accurate. He departed. He arrived in Petersburg and, three days later, was struck by a fever from which he died on the fourth.
– I knew all of that.
– Perhaps you were one of Tanié´s successors?
– You got it. And it is with this abominable beauty that I ruined my business.
– Poor Tanié!
– There are some who would call him silly.
– I will not defend him, but I will wish from the bottom of my heart that their bad luck sends them to a woman as beautiful and duplicitous as Madame Reymer.
– You are cruel in your choice of revenge.
– Moving on, if there are evil women and good men, there are also good women and evil men. And this supplement is no more a story2 than the preceding.
– I am sure.
– M. d´Hérouville…
– The one still living? The Lieutenant General of the King´s army? The one that married that charming creature named Lolotte3?
– The same.
– A gallant man, lover of sciences.
– And of scholars. For a long time he was working on a general history of war in every century and every nation4.
– A staggering project.
– To complete it he called for the help of some young gentlemen of distinguished merit, like M. de Montucla5, the author of the History of Mathematics.
– Good lord! He had many men of that caliber?
– But the one named Gardeil, the hero of the adventure that I am going to tell to you, hardly yielded to him. A common passion for the study of Greek created a bond between Gardeil and I that time, the reciprocity of guidance, a taste for seclusion, and above all the facility with which we saw each other, made blossom into a rather striking intimacy.
– So you were still staying at the Estrapade.
– He, Sainte-Hyacinthe street, and his lady friend Mademoiselle de La Chaux, Saint-Michel square. I call her by her own name because the poor thing is no more, because her life can only honor it in every well-made mind and award it the admiration, the regret and the tears of those that nature will favor or punish with a small portion of the sensibility of her soul.
– Well! Your speech is halting, and I believe you are crying.
– I can still see her big dark eyes, soft and twinkling, and the moving sound of her voice resounding in my ears and shaking my heart. Charming creature! Unique creature! You are no more! You have been no more for nearly twenty years; and my heart still tightens at the thought of you.
– You loved her?
– No. Oh La Chaux! Oh Gardeil! You were each a marvel; you, for a woman´s tenderness; you, for a man´s ingratitude. Mademoiselle de La Chaux was an honest woman. She left her parents to throw herself into the arms of Gardeil. Gardeil had nothing, Mademoiselle de La Chaux enjoyed considerable wealth, and this wealth was entirely sacrificed for Gardeil´s needs and whims. She regretted neither the dissipation of her fortune nor her blackened reputation. Her lover took the place of everything for her.
– So Gardeil was a charmer, amiable?
– Not at all. A small gruff man, taciturn and caustic; angular face, swarthy complexion; a wholly puny, thin figure; ugly, if a man can be ugly with a face so full of intelligence.
– And that was what made this charming woman fall head over heals?
– That surprises you?
– Still.
– You?
– Me.
– So you have forgotten your adventure with la Deschamps and the profound despair into which you fell when this creature closed her doors to you.
– Drop it; continue.
– I had said to you, `So she is very beautiful?´ And you answered sadly, `No. – She has a good personality? – She is foolish. – So it is her talents that sway you? – She has but one. – And this rare, sublime, marvelous talent? – Is to make me happier in her arms than I have ever been with any other woman.´ But Mademoiselle de La Chaux, the good, sensible Mademoiselle de La Chaux, secretly counted on, by instinct, unbeknownst to him, the good fortune that you once knew, and which made you say of la Deschamps: `If this unfortunate girl, if this despicable woman insists on kicking me out, I will grab a gun and blow my brains out in her foyer.´ You said that, correct?
– I said it; and even now I do not know why I did not do it.
– Admit it, then.
– I will admit to anything if it pleases you.
– My friend, the wisest amongst us is much happier not having encountered any woman, beautiful or ugly, clever or foolish, that would drive him mad enough for the Petites-Maisons. We men complain a great deal, we criticize them occasionally. We watch the years go by like so many moments, carried off by the evil that shadows us; and we only think to cower at the strength of certain natural attractions, especially those of us with sensitive souls or ardent imaginations. The spark that alights by chance on a powder keg does not produce so terrible an effect. The finger ready to light the fatal spark over you or me is perhaps raised.
M. d´Hérouville, wanting to speed up his project, greatly overworked his colleagues. Gardeil´s health suffered for it. To lighten his load Mademoiselle de La Chaux learned Hebrew, and while her lover rested she spent a portion of the night translating and transcribing bits of Hebrew. It came time to tackle the Greek authors; Mademoiselle de La Chaux rushed to perfect her then superficial knowledge of this language: while Gardeil slept she was busy translating and copying passages of Xenophon and Thucydides. She added Italian and English to her knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. Her English was so good that she could translate Hume´s first essays on metaphysics into French, a work whose difficult subject matter added infinitely to the difficulty of the idiom. When study exhausted her resources she amused herself by writing music. When she feared her lover might be overcome with ennui she sang. I am not exaggerating anything, as can be attested to by M. Le Camus, doctor of medicine, who consoled her when she was troubled and cared for her when she was in need, who remained by her side in the attic that her poverty had relegated her to, and who closed her eyes when she died. But I am forgetting one of her first misfortunes: the persecution that she had to suffer at the hands of a family outraged by the scandalous and public relationship. Both truth and lies were employed to dispose of her liberty in a humiliating manner. Priests and her parents pursued her from quarter to quarter, from house to house, for many years reducing her to a solitary and hidden life. She spent her days working for Gardeil. We visited her at night, and in the presence of her lover all her grief, all her worries vanished. – My word! Young, timorous, tenderhearted in the face of so many difficulties. What a happy being.
– Happy? Yes, she only ceased to be so when Gardeil was revoltingly ungrateful.