The Counterfeiters (37 page)

A ring was heard at the door. Edouard rose to open it. It was Bernard and Lucien Bercail. Edouard kept them in the hall and told them what had happened; then, taking Bernard aside, he asked if he knew whether Olivier was subject to attacks of giddiness, to fits of any kind?… Bernard suddenly remembered their conversation of the day before, and, in particular, some words of Olivier’s which he had hardly listened to at the time, but which came back to him now, as distinctly as if he heard them over again.

“It was I who began to speak of suicide,” said he to Edouard. “I asked him if he understood a person’s killing himself out of mere excess of life, ‘out of enthusiasm,’ as Dmitri Karamazof says. I was absorbed in my thought and at the time I paid no attention to anything but my own words; but I remember now what he answered.”

“What did he answer?” insisted Edouard, for Bernard stopped as though he were reluctant to say anything more.

“That he understood killing oneself, but only after having reached such heights of joy, that anything afterwards must be a descent.”

They both looked at each other and added nothing further. Light was beginning to dawn on them. Edouard at last turned away his eyes; and Bernard was angry with himself for having spoken. They went up to Bercail.

“The tiresome thing is,” said he, “that people may think he has tried to kill himself in order to avoid fighting.”

Edouard had forgotten all about the duel.

“Behave as if nothing had happened,” said he. “Go and find Dhurmer, and ask him to tell you who his seconds are. It is to them that you must explain matters, if
the idiotic business doesn’t settle itself. Dhurmer didn’t seem particularly keen.”

“We will tell him nothing,” said Lucien, “and leave him all the shame of retreating. For he will shuffle out of it, I’m certain.”

Bernard asked if he might see Olivier. But Edouard thought he had better be kept quiet.

Bernard and Lucien were just leaving, when young George arrived. He came from Passavant’s, but had not been able to get hold of his brother’s things.

“Monsieur le Comte is not at home,” he had been told. “He has left no orders.”

And the servant had shut the door in his face.

A certain gravity in Edouard’s tone, in the bearing of the two others, alarmed George. He scented something out of the way—made enquiries. Edouard was obliged to tell him.

“But say nothing about it to your parents.”

George was delighted to be let into a secret.

“A fellow can hold his tongue,” said he. And as he had nothing to do that morning, he proposed to accompany Bernard and Lucien on their way to Dhurmer’s.

After his three visitors had left him, Edouard called the charwoman. Next to his own room was a spare room, which he told her to get ready, so that Olivier might be put into it. Then he went noiselessly back to the studio. Olivier was resting. Edouard sat down again beside him. He had taken a book, but he soon threw it aside without having opened it, and watched his friend sleeping.

“I think he will be glad to see you,” said Edouard to Bernard next morning. “He asked me this morning if you hadn’t come yesterday. He must have heard your voice, at the time when I thought he was unconscious.… He keeps his eyes shut, but he doesn’t sleep. He doesn’t speak. He often puts his hand to his forehead, as if it were aching. Whenever I speak to him he frowns; but if I go away, he calls me back and makes me sit beside him.… No, he isn’t in the studio. I have put him in the spare room next to mine, so that I can receive visitors without disturbing him.”

They went into it.

“I’ve come to enquire after you,” said Bernard very softly.

Olivier’s features brightened at the sound of his friend’s voice. It was almost a smile already.

“I was expecting you.”

“I’ll go away if I tire you.”

“Stay.”

But as he said the word, Olivier put his finger on his lips. He didn’t want to be spoken to. Bernard, who was going up for his
viva voce
in three days’ time, never moved without carrying in his pocket one of those manuals which contain a concentrated elixir of the bitter
stuff which is the subject matter of examinations. He sat down beside his bed and plunged into his reading. Olivier, his face turned to the wall, seemed to be asleep. Edouard had gone to his own room, which communicated with Olivier’s; the door between them had been left open, and from time to time he appeared at it. Every two hours he made Olivier drink a glass of milk, but only since that morning. During the whole of the preceding day, the patient had been unable to take any food.

A long time went by. Bernard rose to go. Olivier turned round, held out his hand, and with an attempt at a smile:

“You’ll come back to-morrow?”

At the last moment he called him back, signed to him to stoop down, as if he were afraid of not making himself heard, and whispered:

“Did you ever know such an idiot?”

Then, as though to forestall Bernard’s protest, put his finger again to his lips.

“No, no; I’ll explain later.”

The next morning Edouard received a letter from Laura, when Bernard came, he gave it to him to read:

My dear friend,

I am writing to you in a great hurry to try and prevent an absurd disaster. You will help me, I am sure, if only this letter reaches you in time.

Felix has just left for Paris, with the intention of going to see you. His idea is to get from you the explanation which I refuse to give him; he wants you to tell him the name of the person, whom he wishes to challenge. I have done all I can to stop him, but nothing has any effect and all I say merely serves to make him more determined. You are the only person who will perhaps be able to dissuade him. He has confidence in you and will, I hope, listen to you. Remember that he has never in his life held a pistol or a foil in his hands. The idea that he may risk his life for my sake
is intolerable to me; but—I hardly dare own it—I am really more afraid of his covering himself with ridicule.

Since I got back, Felix has been all that is attentive and tender and kind; but I cannot bring myself to show more love for him than I feel. He suffers from this; and I believe it is his desire to force my esteem, my admiration, that is making him take this step, which will no doubt appear to you unconsidered, but of which he thinks day and night, and which, since my return, has become an
idée fixe
with him. He has certainly forgiven me; but he bears … a mortal grudge.

Please, I beg of you, welcome him as affectionately as you would welcome myself; no proof of your friendship could touch me more. Forgive me for not having written to you sooner to tell you once more how grateful I am for all the care and kindness you lavished on me during our stay in Switzerland. The recollection of that time keeps me warm and helps me to bear my life.

Your ever anxious and ever confident friend      

L
AURA

“What do you mean to do?” asked Bernard, as he gave the letter back.

“What
can
I do?” replied Edouard, slightly irritated, not so much by Bernard’s question, as by the fact that he had already put it to himself. “If he comes, I will receive him to the best of my abilities. If he asks my advice, I will give him the best I can; and try to persuade him that the most sensible thing he can do is to keep quiet. People like poor Douviers are always wrong to put themselves forward. You’d think the same if you knew him, believe me. Laura, on the other hand, was cut out for a leading rôle. Each of us assumes the drama that suits his measure, and is allotted his share of tragedy. What can we do about it? Laura’s drama is to have married a super. There’s no help for that.”

“And Douviers’ drama is to have married someone who will always be his superior, do what he may,” rejoined Bernard.

“Do what he may …” echoed Edouard, “—and
do what Laura may. The admirable thing is that Laura, out of regret for her fault, out of repentance, wanted to humble herself before him; but he immediately prostrated himself lower still; so that all that each of them did merely served to make
him
smaller and
her
greater.”

“I pity him very much,” said Bernard. “But why won’t you allow that he too may become greater by prostrating himself?”

“Because he lacks the lyrical spirit,” said Edouard irrefutably.

“What
do
you mean?”

“He never forgets himself in what he feels, so that he never feels anything great. Don’t push me too hard. I have my own ideas; but they don’t lend themselves to the yard measure, and I don’t care to measure them. Paul-Ambroise is in the habit of saying that he refuses to take count of anything that can’t be put down in figures; I think he is playing on the words ‘take count’; for if that were the case, we should be obliged to leave God out of ‘the account.’ That of course is where he is tending and what he desires.… Well, for instance, I think I call
lyrical
the state of the man who consents to be vanquished by God.”

“Isn’t that exactly what the word
enthusiasm
means?”

“And perhaps the word
inspiration
. Yes, that is just what I mean: Douviers is a being who is incapable of inspiration. I admit that Paul-Ambroise is right when he considers inspiration as one of the most harmful things in art; and I am willing to believe that one can only be an artist on condition of mastering the lyrical state; but in order to master it, one must first of all experience it.”

“Don’t you think that this state of divine visitation can be physiologically explained by …”

“Much good that will do!” interrupted Edouard. “Such considerations as that, even if they are true, only
embarrass fools. No doubt there is no mystical movement that has not its corresponding material manifestation. What then? Mind, in order to bear its witness, cannot do without matter. Hence the mystery of the incarnation.”

“On the other hand, matter does admirably without mind.”

“Oh, ho! we don’t know about that!” said Edouard, laughing.

Bernard was very much amused to hear him talk in this way. As a rule Edouard was more reserved. The mood he was in to-day came from Olivier’s presence. Bernard understood it.

“He is talking to me as he would like already to be talking to him,” thought he. “It is Olivier who ought to be his secretary. As soon as Olivier is well again, I shall retire. My place is not here.”

He thought this without bitterness, entirely taken up as he now was by Sarah, with whom he had spent the preceding night and whom he was to see that night too.

“We’ve left Douviers a long way behind,” he said, laughing in his turn. “Will you tell him about Vincent?”

“Goodness no! What for?”

“Don’t you think it’s poisoning Douviers’ life not to know whom to suspect?”

“Perhaps you are right. But you must say that to Laura. I couldn’t tell him without betraying her.… Besides I don’t even know where he is.”

“Vincent?… Passavant must know.”

A ring at the door interrupted them. Madame Molinier had come to enquire for her son. Edouard joined her in the studio.

Visit from Pauline. I was a little puzzled how to let her know, and yet I could not keep her in ignorance of her son’s illness. I thought it useless to say anything about the incomprehensible attempt at suicide and spoke simply of a violent liver attack, which, as a matter of fact, remains the clearest result of the proceedings.

“I am reassured already by knowing Olivier is with you,” said Pauline. “I shouldn’t nurse him better myself, for I feel that you love him as much as I do.”

As she said these last words, she looked at me with an odd insistence. Did I imagine the meaning she seemed to put in her look? I was feeling what one is accustomed to call “a bad conscience” as regards Pauline, and was only able to stammer out something incoherent. I must also say that, sur-saturated as I have been with emotion for the last two days, I had entirely lost command of myself; my confusion must have been very apparent, for she added:

“Your blush is eloquent!… My poor dear friend, don’t expect reproaches from me. I should reproach you if you didn’t love him.… Can I see him?”

I took her in to Olivier. Bernard had left the room as he heard us coming.

“How beautiful he is!” she murmured, bending over the bed. Then, turning towards me: “You will kiss him from me. I am afraid of waking him.”

Pauline is decidedly an extraordinary woman. And to-day is not the first time that I have begun to think so.
But I could not have hoped that she would push comprehension so far. And yet it seemed to me that behind the cordiality of her words and the pleasantness she put into her voice, I could distinguish a touch of constraint (perhaps because of the effort I myself made to hide my embarrassment); and I remembered a sentence of our last conversation—a sentence which seemed to me full of wisdom even then, when I was not interested in finding it so: “I prefer granting with a good grace what I know I shan’t be able to prevent.” Evidently Pauline was striving after good grace; and, as if in response to my secret thoughts, she went on again, as soon as we were back in the studio:

“By not being shocked just now, I am afraid it is I who have shocked you. There are certain liberties of thought of which men would like to keep the monopoly. And yet I can’t pretend to have more reprobation for you than I feel. Life has not left me ignorant. I know what a precarious thing boys’ purity is, even when it has the appearance of being most intact. And besides, I don’t think that the youths who are chastest turn into the best husbands—nor even, unfortunately, the most faithful!” she added, smiling sadly. “And then their father’s example made me wish other virtues for my sons. But I am afraid of their taking to debauchery or to degrading liaisons. Olivier is easily led astray. You will have it at heart to keep him straight. I think you will be able to do him good. It only rests with you.… ”