Divorce
Maître Bontran, the celebrated Parisian lawyer, who for ten years had pleaded and won all divorce actions brought by ill-assorted couples, opened the door of his consulting-room and drew back to admit the new client.
He was a stout red-faced man with thick fair whiskers, corpulent, full-blooded and vigorous. He bowed.
“Please be seated,” said the lawyer.
The client sat down, coughed and said:
“I have come to ask you, sir, to act for me in a divorce case.”
“Please go on, I am listening.”
“I was formerly a notary.”
“Retired already?”
“Yes, already. I am thirty-seven years old.”
“Go on.”
“I have made an unfortunate marriage, very unfortunate.”
“You are not the only one.”
“I know it, and I sympathise with the others, but my case is quite unique, and my complaints against my wife are of a very peculiar nature. But I will begin at the beginning. I married in a very strange way. Do you believe in dangerous ideas?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Do you believe that certain ideas may be as dangerous for certain minds as poison for the body?”
“Well, yes, perhaps.”
“I am sure of it. There are ideas that enter into us, gnaw us, kill us, madden us, if we are unable to resist them. It’s a sort of spiritual phylloxera. If we are unfortunate enough to let one of these thoughts creep into our minds, if we don’t in the instant of its entry realise that it is an invader, a master, a tyrant, that hour by hour and day by day it takes firmer hold on us, returns again and again, roots itself in, drives out all our usual preoccupations, absorbs all our attention and changes the angle of our judgment, we are lost.
“Listen to what has happened to me. As I have told you, I was a notary in Rouen, and in rather tight circumstances, not poor, but pinched for money, always careful, forced to economise the whole time, obliged to limit all my desires, yes, all! and that’s hard at my age.
“In my capacity as a notary, I used to read with great care the announcements on the fourth page of the newspaper, the Offered and Wanted columns, the personal columns, etc., etc.; and it often happened that I was enabled by these means to arrange advantageous marriages for some clients.
“One day I came across this one:
“ ‘Young lady, pretty, well educated, of good birth, with a dowry of two and a half million francs, wishes to marry an honourable man. No agents.’
“Well, that very day I dined with two of my friends, a solicitor and a mill-owner. I don’t know how the conversation came to turn on marriages, and I told them, laughing, about the young lady with two and a half million francs.
“ ‘What sort of women are these women?’ the mill-owner said.
“The solicitor had seen several excellent marriages made in this way and he gave details; then he added, turning towards me:
“ ‘Why the devil don’t you look into that on your own behalf? Lord! two and a half million francs would make things easy for you!’
“We all three of us burst out laughing, and the talk turned on another subject.
“An hour later I went home.
“It was a cold night. I lived, besides, in an old house, one of those old provincial houses that are like mushroom beds. When I put my hand on the iron railing of the staircase, a cold shiver ran down my arm; I stretched out the other to find the wall and when I touched it, I felt another shiver strike through me, a shiver of damp this time; they met in my chest, and filled me with anguish, sadness and utter weariness of mind and body. A sudden memory woke in my mind and I murmured:
“ ‘God, if only I had two and a half million francs!’
“My bedroom was dismal, a Rouen bachelor’s bedroom, looked after by a servant who was cook as well as chambermaid. You can just imagine what it was like! a big curtainless bed, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, washstand, no fire. Clothes on the chairs, papers on the floor. I began to hum, to a music-hall tune for I sometimes went to such places:
“ ‘Deux millions,
Deux millions,
Sont bons
Avec cinq cent mille
Et femme gentille.’29
“To tell the truth, I hadn’t thought of the woman before, and I thought of her suddenly as I was creeping into my bed. I even thought of her so earnestly that I was a long time in falling asleep.
“When I opened my eyes next morning, before it was light, I recollected that I had to be at Darnétal at eight o’clock on important business. So I would have to get up at six—and it was freezing.
“ ‘Christ, two and a half millions!’
“I returned to my office about ten o’clock. It was full of a smell of rusty stove, old papers, the smell of papers relating to old lawsuits—nothing stinks as they do—and a smell of clerks, boots, frock-coats, shirts, hair and bodies, ill-washed winter-bound bodies, all heated to a temperature of sixty-five degrees.
“I ate my usual lunch, a burnt cutlet and a morsel of cheese. Then I set to work again.
“It was then that for the first time I thought really seriously of the young lady with two and a half millions. Who was she? Why should I not write? Why not find out about it?
“Well, to cut a long story short: for a fortnight the idea haunted, obsessed, tortured me. All my annoyances, all the little miseries I constantly suffered, until then unconsciously, almost without realising them, pricked me now like the stabbing of needles, and every one of these little sufferings made my thoughts leap to the young lady with two and a half millions.
“I began at last to imagine the story of her life. When you want a thing to be, you think of it as being just what you wish it were.
“Of course, it was not very usual for a young girl of good family, possessed of so attractive a dowry, to seek a husband by way of a newspaper advertisement. However, this particular girl might be honourable and unfortunate.
“From the first, this fortune of two and a half million francs had not dazzled me by any sense of fabulous wealth. We are used, we people who are always reading offers of this kind, to matrimonial propositions accompanied by six, eight, ten or even twelve millions. The twelve-million figure is even quite common. It attracts. I’m quite aware that we hardly credit the reality of these promises. But they do accustom our minds to the contemplation of these fantastic figures; to a certain extent they do induce our nodding credulity to accept as reasonable the prodigious sums of money they represent, and lead us to consider a dowry of two and a half million francs as very possible and probable.
“Suppose a young lady, the illegitimate daughter of a parvenu and a lady’s maid, inheriting unexpectedly from the father, had learned at the same time the disgrace of her birth, and to avoid revealing it to any man who might fall in love with her was trying to get into touch with strangers by a very customary medium, which did in itself imply almost a confession of dubious antecedents.
“My supposition was a stupid one. But I clung to it. Men of my profession, notaries, ought never to read novels—and I have read them.
“So I wrote in my professional capacity in the name of a client, and I waited.
“Five days later, about three o’clock in the afternoon, I was working hard in my office when the head clerk announced:
“ ‘Mlle. Chantefrise.’
“ ‘Ask her to come in.’
“Thereupon a woman about thirty years old appeared, rather stout, dark, and with an embarrassed air.
“ ‘Please sit down, madame.’
“She sat down and murmured:
“ ‘I’ve come, sir.’
“ ‘But, madame, I haven’t the honour to know you.’
“ ‘I’m the person you wrote to.’
“ ‘About a marriage?’
“ ‘Yes.’
“ ‘Ah, just so.’
“ ‘I have come myself, because these things are best arranged personally.’
“ ‘I agree with you, madame. So you wish to marry?’
“ ‘Yes.’
“ ‘You have parents?’
“She hesitated, lowered her glance, and stammered:
“ ‘No. … My mother … and my father … are dead.’
“I started. So I had guessed right … and a sudden swift sympathy woke in my heart for this poor creature. I did not insist, in order to spare her sensitiveness, and I went on:
“ ‘Your fortune is quite net?’
“This time she answered without hesitating:
“ ‘Yes.’
“I regarded her attentively, and honestly she didn’t displease me, although she was a little mature, more mature than I had expected. She was a fine, healthy woman, a superior woman. And I took it into my head that I might play a charming little comedy of sentiment, fall in love with her, and supplant my imaginary client, when I had made sure that the dowry was not fictitious. I talked to her about this client, whom I depicted as a grave, very honourable man, and something of an invalid.
“ ‘Oh,’ she said quickly, ‘I like people who are really strong and healthy.’
“ ‘You shall see him, however, madame, but not for three or four days, for he went to England yesterday.’
“ ‘Oh! how vexing!’ said she.
“ ‘Good heavens! It is and it isn’t. Are you in a hurry to return home?’
“ ‘Not at all.’
“ ‘Well, stay here. I will give myself the pleasure of helping you to pass the time.’
“ ‘You are too kind.’
“ ‘You are staying in a hotel?’
“She mentioned the best hotel in Rouen.
“ ‘Well, madam, will you allow your future … notary to take you to dine this evening?’
“She seemed to hesitate, uneasy and irresolute; then she made up her mind.
“ ‘Yes.’
“And I escorted her to the door.
“At seven o’clock I was at the hotel. She had made an elaborate toilet for me and received me in a very coquettish fashion.
“I took her to dine in a restaurant where I was known, and I ordered a stimulating meal.
“Within an hour we were very friendly, and she was telling me her story. She was the daughter of a great lady who had been seduced by a nobleman, and had been brought up by some country people. She was rich now, having inherited large sums from her father and her mother, whose names she would never tell, never. It was no use asking her for them, no use begging her, she would not give them. As I was not much concerned to know them, I questioned her about her fortune. She spoke of it readily and like a practical woman, quite sure of herself, sure of figures, securities, income, dividends and investments. The competent way she dealt with this made me feel great confidence in her at once, and I made myself very agreeable to her, with a certain amount of reserve, however, but I let her see quite plainly that I was attracted by her.
“She began to give herself airs, and they didn’t become her badly, either. I pressed her to have champagne, and I drank some myself, and it went to my head a little. I saw very plainly that I was going to become rash, and I was afraid, afraid of myself, afraid of her, afraid that she too was a little excited and might yield. To steady myself, I began to talk to her about her dowry again, which must be verified beyond any possibility of mistake, for my client was a business man.
“She answered gaily:
“ ‘Oh, I know. I have brought all the proofs.’
“ ‘Here, to Rouen?’
“ ‘Yes, to Rouen.’
“ ‘You have them at the hotel?’
“ ‘Of course.’
“ ‘Can you show them to me?’
“ ‘Of course.’
“ ‘This evening?’
“ ‘Of course.’
“This was a complete relief to me. I settled the bill, and off we went to her hotel.
“She had, as she said, brought all her securities. I could not doubt their existence, I held them, fingered them, read them. This filled me with such heartfelt joy that I was immediately seized with a violent desire to embrace her. I mean, with a chaste desire, the desire of a satisfied man. And upon my word, I embraced her. Once, twice, ten times … so heartily that—the champagne helping—I succumbed … or rather … no … she succumbed.
“Oh, I made a rare scene about it, after that … and so did she. She wept like a fountain, and begged me not to betray her, not to ruin her. I promised everything she wanted, and I went away in a dreadful state of mind.
“What was I to do? I had outraged my client. That would not have mattered at all if I had had a client for her, but I hadn’t one. I was the client, the simple-minded client, the deceived client, deceived by myself. What a situation! I could leave her in the lurch, of course. But the dowry, actual, certain! Besides, had I the right to leave her in the lurch, poor girl, after having taken advantage of her like that? But what anxieties I should be laying up for myself!
“What security could I feel with a wife who succumbed so easily!
“I spent a dreadful night, unable to make up my mind, tortured with remorse, harried by fears, torn this way and that by every kind of scruple. But in the morning my brain cleared. I dressed myself carefully, and as eleven o’clock was striking, I presented myself at the hotel where she was staying.
“When she saw me, she blushed to the roots of her hair.
“I said:
“ ‘Madame, there is only one thing I can do to repay you the wrong I have done you. I ask you to marry me.’
“She stammered:
“ ‘I consent.’
“I married her.
“For six months all went well.
“I had given up my office, I was living on my income, and really, I had nothing, not a single thing, to reproach my wife with.
“However, I began to notice that every now and then she went out and stayed out for an appreciable time. This happened at regular times, one week on Tuesday, another week on Friday. I was sure she was deceiving me, and I followed her.
“It was a Tuesday. She set out on foot, about one o’clock, walked down the Rue de la République, turned to the right down the street that runs from the Archbishop’s Palace, took the Rue Grand-Pont as far as the Seine, went along the quay as far as the Pierre bridge and crossed the water. At this point, she seemed uneasy; she kept turning round to scrutinise all the passersby.
“As I had got myself up to look like a coal-heaver, she did not recognise me.
“At last she went into the station on the left side of the river: I had no further doubts, her lover was coming on the 1:45 train.
“I hid myself behind a dray, and waited. A whistle … a rush of passengers. … She walked towards them, then ran forward, clasped in her arms a little three-year-old girl accompanied by a stout peasant woman, and kissed her passionately. Then she turned round, saw another younger child, a girl or a boy, carried by another countrywoman, threw herself on him, embraced him wildly and went off, escorted by the two mites and their two nurses, towards the long dreary deserted promenade of Cours-la-Reine.
“I returned home, bewildered and in great distress of mind, half understanding and half not, and not daring to hazard a guess.
“When she came home to dinner, I rushed at her:
“ ‘Who are those children?’
“ ‘What children?’
“ ‘The children you were expecting on the train from Saint-Sever.’
“She gave a great cry and fainted. When she recovered consciousness, she confessed to me, in a flood of tears, that she had four. Yes, sir, two for the Tuesday, two girls, and two for the Friday, two boys.
“And that … oh, the shame of it! … that was the origin of the fortune. The four fathers! … She had gathered together her dowry.
“Now, sir, what do you advise me to do?”
The lawyer replied gravely:
“Acknowledge your children, sir.”