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Bel Ami (A Ladies' Man)

by Guy de Maupassant · English · Gutenberg #33928 · 620,175 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Bel Ami (A Ladies' Man)

Author: Guy de Maupassant


        
Release date: October 13, 2010 [eBook #33928]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33928

Credits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BEL AMI (A LADIES' MAN) ***




Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan and the Online
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                                BEL AMI

                     The Works of Guy de Maupassant

                               VOLUME VI


NATIONAL LIBRARY COMPANY
NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY
BIGELOW, SMITH & CO.




BEL AMI

(A LADIES' MAN)




I


When the cashier had given him the change out of his five francpiece,
George Duroy left the restaurant.

As he had a good carriage, both naturally and from his military
training, he drew himself up, twirled his moustache, and threw upon the
lingering customers a rapid and sweeping glance--one of those glances
which take in everything within their range like a casting net.

The women looked up at him in turn--three little work-girls, a
middle-aged music mistress, disheveled, untidy, and wearing a bonnet
always dusty and a dress always awry; and two shopkeepers' wives dining
with their husbands--all regular customers at this slap-bang
establishment.

When he was on the pavement outside, he stood still for a moment, asking
himself what he should do. It was the 28th of June, and he had just
three francs forty centimes in his pocket to carry him to the end of the
month. This meant the option of two dinners without lunch or two lunches
without dinner. He reflected that as the earlier repasts cost twenty
sous apiece, and the latter thirty, he would, if he were content with
the lunches, be one franc twenty centimes to the good, which would
further represent two snacks of bread and sausage and two bocks of beer
on the boulevards. This latter item was his greatest extravagance and
his chief pleasure of a night; and he began to descend the Rue
Notre-Dame de Lorette.

He walked as in the days when he had worn a hussar uniform, his chest
thrown out and his legs slightly apart, as if he had just left the
saddle, pushing his way through the crowded street, and shouldering folk
to avoid having to step aside. He wore his somewhat shabby hat on one
side, and brought his heels smartly down on the pavement. He seemed ever
ready to defy somebody or something, the passers-by, the houses, the
whole city, retaining all the swagger of a dashing cavalry-man in civil
life.

Although wearing a sixty-franc suit, he was not devoid of a certain
somewhat loud elegance. Tall, well-built, fair, with a curly moustache
twisted up at the ends, bright blue eyes with small pupils, and
reddish-brown hair curling naturally and parted in the middle, he bore a
strong resemblance to the dare-devil of popular romances.

It was one of those summer evenings on which air seems to be lacking in
Paris. The city, hot as an oven, seemed to swelter in the stifling
night. The sewers breathed out their poisonous breath through their
granite mouths, and the underground kitchens gave forth to the street
through their windows the stench of dishwater and stale sauces.

The doorkeepers in their shirtsleeves sat astride straw-bottomed chairs
within the carriage entrances to the houses, smoking their pipes, and
the pedestrians walked with flagging steps, head bare, and hat in hand.


When George Duroy reached the boulevards he paused again, undecided as
to what he should do. He now thought of going on to the Champs Elysees
and the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne to seek a little fresh air under the
trees, but another wish also assailed him, a desire for a love affair.

What shape would it take? He did not know, but he had been awaiting it
for three months, night and day. Occasionally, thanks to his good looks
and gallant bearing, he gleaned a few crumbs of love here and there, but
he was always hoping for something further and better.

With empty pockets and hot blood, he kindled at the contact of the
prowlers who murmur at street corners: "Will you come home with me,
dear?" but he dared not follow them, not being able to pay them, and,
besides, he was awaiting something else, less venally vulgar kisses.

He liked, however, the localities in which women of the town
swarm--their balls, their cafes, and their streets. He liked to rub
shoulders with them, speak to them, chaff them, inhale their strong
perfumes, feel himself near them. They were women at any rate, women
made for love. He did not despise them with the innate contempt of a
well-born man.

He turned towards the Madeleine, following the flux of the crowd which
flowed along overcome by the heat. The chief cafes, filled with
customers, were overflowing on to the pavement, and displayed their
drinking public under the dazzling glare of their lit-up facias. In
front of them, on little tables, square or round, were glasses holding
fluids of every shade, red, yellow, green, brown, and inside the
decanters glittered the large transparent cylinders of ice, serving to
cool the bright, clear water. Duroy had slackened his pace, a longing to
drink parched his throat.


A hot thirst, a summer evening's thirst assailed him, and he fancied the
delightful sensation of cool drinks flowing across his palate. But if he
only drank two bocks of beer in the evening, farewell to the slender
supper of the morrow, and he was only too well acquainted with the hours
of short commons at the end of the month.

He said to himself: "I must hold out till ten o'clock, and then I'll
have my bock at the American cafe. Confound it, how thirsty I am
though." And he scanned the men seated at the tables drinking, all the
people who could quench their thirst as much as they pleased. He went
on, passing in front of the cafes with a sprightly swaggering air, and
guessing at a glance from their dress and bearing how much money each
customer ought to have about him. Wrath against these men quietly
sitting there rose up within him. If their pockets were rummaged, gold,
silver, and coppers would be found in them. On an average each one must
have at least two louis. There were certainly a hundred to a cafe, a
hundred times two louis is four thousand francs. He murmured "the
swine," as he walked gracefully past them. If he could have had hold of
one of them at a nice dark corner he would have twisted his neck without
scruple, as he used to do the country-folk's fowls on field-days.

And he recalled his two years in Africa and the way in which he used to
pillage the Arabs when stationed at little out-posts in the south. A
bright and cruel smile flitted across his lips at the recollection of an
escapade which had cost the lives of three men of the Ouled-Alane
tribe, and had furnished him and his comrades with a score of fowls, a
couple of sheep, some gold, and food for laughter for six months.

The culprits had never been found, and, what is more, they had hardly
been looked for, the Arab being looked upon as somewhat in the light of
the natural prey of the soldier.

In Paris it was another thing. One could not plunder prettily, sword by
side and revolver in hand, far from civil authority. He felt in his
heart all the instincts of a sub-officer let loose in a conquered
country. He certainly regretted his two years in the desert. What a pity
he had not stopped there. But, then, he had hoped something better in
returning home. And now--ah! yes, it was very nice now, was it not?

He clicked his tongue as if to verify the parched state of his palate.

The crowd swept past him slowly, and he kept thinking. "Set of hogs--all
these idiots have money in their waistcoat pockets." He pushed against
people and softly whistled a lively tune. Gentlemen whom he thus elbowed
turned grumbling, and women murmured: "What a brute!"

He passed the Vaudeville Theater and stopped before the American cafe,
asking himself whether he should not take his bock, so greatly did
thirst torture him. Before making up his mind, he glanced at the
illuminated clock. It was a quarter past nine. He knew himself that as
soon as the glassful of beer was before him he would gulp it down. What
would he do then up to eleven o'clock?

He passed on. "I will go as far as the Madeleine," he said, "and walk
back slowly."

As he reached the corner of the Palace de l'Opera, he passed a stout
young fellow, whose face he vaguely recollected having seen somewhere.
He began to follow him, turning over his recollections and repeating to
himself half-aloud: "Where the deuce did I know that joker?"

He searched without being able to recollect, and then all at once, by a
strange phenomenon of memory, the same man appeared to him thinner,
younger, and clad in a hussar uniform. He exclaimed aloud: "What,
Forestier!" and stepping out he tapped the other on the shoulder. The
promenader turned round and looked at him, and then said: "What is it,
sir?"

Duroy broke into a laugh. "Don't you know me?" said he.

"No."

"George Duroy, of the 6th Hussars."

Forestier held out his hands, exclaiming: "What, old fellow! How are
you?"

"Very well, and you?"

"Oh, not very brilliant! Just fancy, I have a chest in brown paper now.
I cough six months out of twelve, through a cold I caught at Bougival
the year of my return to Paris, four years ago."

And Forestier, taking his old comrade's arm, spoke to him of his
illness, related the consultations, opinions, and advice of the doctors,
and the difficulty of following this advice in his position. He was told
to spend the winter in the South, but how could he? He was married, and
a journalist in a good position.

"I am political editor of the _Vie Francaise_. I write the proceedings
in the Senate for the _Salut_, and from time to time literary criticisms
for the _Planete_. That is so. I have made my way."

Duroy looked at him with surprise. He was greatly changed, matured. He
had now the manner, bearing, and dress of a man in a good position and
sure of himself, and the stomach of a man who dines well. Formerly he
had been thin, slight, supple, heedless, brawling, noisy, and always
ready for a spree. In three years Paris had turned him into someone
quite different, stout and serious, and with some white hairs about his
temples, though he was not more than twenty-seven.

Forestier asked: "Where are you going?"

Duroy answered: "Nowhere; I am just taking a stroll before turning in."

"Well, will you come with me to the _Vie Francaise_, where I have some
proofs to correct, and then we will take a bock together?"

"All right."

They began to walk on, arm-in-arm, with that easy familiarity existing
between school-fellows and men in the same regiment.

"What are you doing in Paris?" asked Forestier.

Duroy shrugged his shoulders. "Simply starving. As soon as I finished my
term of service I came here--to make a fortune, or rather for the sake
of living in Paris; and for six months I have been a clerk in the
offices of the Northern Railway at fifteen hundred francs a year,
nothing more."

Forestier murmured: "Hang it, that's not much!"

"I should think not. But how can I get out of it? I am alone; I don't
know anyone; I can get no one to recommend me. It is not goodwill that
is lacking, but means."

His comrade scanned him from head to foot, like a practical man
examining a subject, and then said, in a tone of conviction: "You see,
my boy, everything depends upon assurance here. A clever fellow can more
easily become a minister than an under-secretary. One must obtrude one's
self on people; not ask things of them. But how the deuce is it that you
could not get hold of anything better than a clerk's berth on the
Northern Railway?"

Duroy replied: "I looked about everywhere, but could not find anything.
But I have something in view just now; I have been offered a
riding-master's place at Pellerin's. There I shall get three thousand
francs at the lowest."

Forestier stopped short. "Don't do that; it is stupid, when you ought to
be earning ten thousand francs. You would nip your future in the bud. In
your office, at any rate, you are hidden; no one knows you; you can
emerge from it if you are strong enough to make your way. But once a
riding-master, and it is all over. It is as if you were head-waiter at a
place where all Paris goes to dine. When once you have given riding
lessons to people in society or to their children, they will never be
able to look upon you as an equal."

He remained silent for a few moments, evidently reflecting, and then
asked:

"Have you a bachelor's degree?"

"No; I failed to pass twice."

"That is no matter, as long as you studied for it. If anyone mentions
Cicero or Tiberius, you know pretty well what they are talking about?"

"Yes; pretty well."

"Good; no one knows any more, with the exception of a score of idiots
who have taken the trouble. It is not difficult to pass for being well
informed; the great thing is not to be caught in some blunder. You can
maneuver, avoid the difficulty, turn the obstacle, and floor others by
means of a dictionary. Men are all as stupid as geese and ignorant as
donkeys."

He spoke like a self-possessed blade who knows what life is, and smiled
as he watched the crowd go by. But all at once he began to cough, and
stopped again until the fit was over, adding, in a tone of
discouragement: "Isn't it aggravating not to be able to get rid of this
cough? And we are in the middle of summer. Oh! this winter I shall go
and get cured at Mentone. Health before everything."

They halted on the Boulevard Poissoniere before a large glass door, on
the inner side of which an open newspaper was pasted. Three passers-by
had stopped and were reading it.

Above the door, stretched in large letters of flame, outlined by gas
jets, the inscription _La Vie Francaise_. The pedestrians passing into
the light shed by these three dazzling words suddenly appeared as
visible as in broad daylight, then disappeared again into darkness.

Forestier pushed the door open, saying, "Come in." Duroy entered,
ascended an ornate yet dirty staircase, visible from the street, passed
through an ante-room where two messengers bowed to his companion, and
reached a kind of waiting-room, shabby and dusty, upholstered in dirty
green Utrecht velvet, covered with spots and stains, and worn in places
as if mice had been gnawing it.

"Sit down," said Forestier. "I will be back in five minutes."

And he disappeared through one of the three doors opening into the room.

A strange, special, indescribable odor, the odor of a newspaper office,
floated in the air of the room. Duroy remained motionless, slightly
intimidated, above all surprised. From time to time folk passed
hurriedly before him, coming in at one door and going out at another
before he had time to look at them.

They were now young lads, with an appearance of haste, holding in their
hand a sheet of paper which fluttered from the hurry of their progress;
now compositors, whose white blouses, spotted with ink, revealed a clean
shirt collar and cloth trousers like those of men of fashion, and who
carefully carried strips of printed paper, fresh proofs damp from the
press. Sometimes a gentleman entered rather too elegantly attired, his
waist too tightly pinched by his frock-coat, his leg too well set off by
the cut of his trousers, his foot squeezed into a shoe too pointed at
the toe, some fashionable reporter bringing in the echoes of the

evening.

Others, too, arrived, serious, important-looking men, wearing tall hats
with flat brims, as if this shape distinguished them from the rest of
mankind.

Forestier reappeared holding the arm of a tall, thin fellow, between
thirty and forty years of age, in evening dress, very dark, with his
moustache ends stiffened in sharp points, and an insolent and
self-satisfied bearing.

Forestier said to him: "Good night, dear master."

The other shook hands with him, saying: "Good night, my dear fellow,"
and went downstairs whistling, with his cane under his arm.

Duroy asked: "Who is that?"

"Jacques Rival, you know, the celebrated descriptive writer, the
duellist. He has just been correcting his proofs. Garin, Montel, and he
are the three best descriptive writers, for facts and points, we have in
Paris. He gets thirty thousand francs a year here for two articles a
week."

As they were leaving they met a short, stout man, with long hair and
untidy appearance, who was puffing as he came up the stairs.

Forestier bowed low to him. "Norbert de Varenne," said he, "the poet;
the author of '_Les Soleils Morts_'; another who gets long prices. Every
tale he writes for us costs three hundred francs, and the longest do not
run to two hundred lines. But let us turn into the Neapolitan _cafe_, I
am beginning to choke with thirst."

As soon as they were seated at a table in the _cafe_, Forestier called
for two bocks, and drank off his own at a single draught, while Duroy
sipped his beer in slow mouthfuls, tasting it and relishing it like
something rare and precious.

His companion was silent, and seemed to be reflecting. Suddenly he
exclaimed: "Why don't you try journalism?"

The other looked at him in surprise, and then said: "But, you know, I
have never written anything."

"Bah! everyone must begin. I could give you a job to hunt up information
for me--to make calls and inquiries. You would have to start with two
hundred and fifty francs a month and your cab hire. Shall I speak to the
manager about it?"

"Certainly!"

"Very well, then, come and dine with me to-morrow. I shall only have
five or six people--the governor, Monsieur Walter and his wife, Jacques
Rival, and Norbert de Varenne, whom you have just seen, and a lady, a
friend of my wife. Is it settled?"

Duroy hesitated, blushing and perplexed. At length he murmured: "You
see, I have no clothes."

Forestier was astounded. "You have no dress clothes? Hang it all, they
are indispensable, though. In Paris one would be better off without a
bed than without a dress suit."

Then, suddenly feeling in his waistcoat pocket, he drew out some gold,
took two louis, placed them in front of his old comrade, and said in a
cordial and familiar tone: "You will pay me back when you can. Hire or
arrange to pay by installments for the clothes you want, whichever you
like, but come and dine with me to-morrow, half-past seven, number
seventeen Rue Fontaine."

Duroy, confused, picked up the money, stammering: "You are too good; I
am very much obliged to you; you may be sure I shall not forget."

The other interrupted him. "All right. Another bock, eh? Waiter, two
bocks."

Then, when they had drunk them, the journalist said: "Will you stroll
about a bit for an hour?"

"Certainly."

And they set out again in the direction of the Madeleine.

"What shall we, do?" said Forestier. "They say that in Paris a lounger
can always find something to amuse him, but it is not true. I, when I
want to lounge about of an evening, never know where to go. A drive
round the Bois de Boulogne is only amusing with a woman, and one has not
always one to hand; the _cafe_ concerts may please my chemist and his
wife, but not me. Then what is there to do? Nothing. There ought to be a
summer garden like the Parc Monceau, open at night, where one would hear
very good music while sipping cool drinks under the trees. It should not
be a pleasure resort, but a lounging place, with a high price for
entrance in order to attract the fine ladies. One ought to be able to
stroll along well-graveled walks lit up by electric light, and to sit
down when one wished to hear the music near or at a distance. We had
about the sort of thing formerly at Musard's, but with a smack of the
low-class dancing-room, and too much dance music, not enough space, not
enough shade, not enough gloom. It would want a very fine garden and a
very extensive one. It would be delightful. Where shall we go?"

Duroy, rather perplexed, did not know what to say; at length he made up
his mind. "I have never been in the Folies Bergere. I should not mind
taking a look round there," he said.

"The Folies Bergere," exclaimed his companion, "the deuce; we shall
roast there as in an oven. But, very well, then, it is always funny
there."

And they turned on their heels to make their way to the Rue du Faubourg
Montmartre.

The lit-up front of the establishment threw a bright light into the four
streets which met in front of it. A string of cabs were waiting for the
close of the performance.

Forestier was walking in when Duroy checked him.

"You are passing the pay-box," said he.

"I never pay," was the reply, in a tone of importance.

When he approached the check-takers they bowed, and one of them held out
his hand. The journalist asked: "Have you a good box?"

"Certainly, Monsieur Forestier."

He took the ticket held out to him, pushed the padded door with its
leather borders, and they found themselves in the auditorium.

Tobacco smoke slightly veiled like a faint mist the stage and the
further side of the theater. Rising incessantly in thin white spirals
from the cigars and pipes, this light fog ascended to the ceiling, and
there, accumulating, formed under the dome above the crowded gallery a
cloudy sky.

In the broad corridor leading to the circular promenade a group of women
were awaiting new-comers in front of one of the bars, at which sat
enthroned three painted and faded vendors of love and liquor.

The tall mirrors behind them reflected their backs and the faces of
passers-by.

Forestier pushed his way through the groups, advancing quickly with the
air of a man entitled to consideration.

He went up to a box-keeper. "Box seventeen," said he.

"This way, sir."

And they were shut up in a little open box draped with red, and holding
four chairs of the same color, so near to one another that one could
scarcely slip between them. The two friends sat down. To the right, as
to the left, following a long curved line, the two ends of which joined
the proscenium, a row of similar cribs held people seated in like
fashion, with only their heads and chests visible.

On the stage, three young fellows in fleshings, one tall, one of middle
size, and one small, were executing feats in turn upon a trapeze.

The tall one first advanced with short, quick steps, smiling and waving
his hand as though wafting a kiss.

The muscles of his arms and legs stood out under his tights. He expanded
his chest to take off the effect of his too prominent stomach, and his
face resembled that of a barber's block, for a careful parting divided
his locks equally on the center of the skull. He gained the trapeze by a
graceful bound, and, hanging by the hands, whirled round it like a wheel
at full speed, or, with stiff arms and straightened body, held himself
out horizontally in space.

Then he jumped down, saluted the audience again with a smile amidst the
applause of the stalls, and went and leaned against the scenery, showing
off the muscles of his legs at every step.

The second, shorter and more squarely built, advanced in turn, and went
through the same performance, which the third also recommenced amidst
most marked expressions of approval from the public.

But Duroy scarcely noticed the performance, and, with head averted, kept
his eyes on the promenade behind him, full of men and prostitutes.

Said Forestier to him: "Look at the stalls; nothing but middle-class
folk with their wives and children, good noodlepates who come to see
the show. In the boxes, men about town, some artistes, some girls, good
second-raters; and behind us, the strangest mixture in Paris. Who are
these men? Watch them. There is something of everything, of every
profession, and every caste; but blackguardism predominates. There are
clerks of all kinds--bankers' clerks, government clerks, shopmen,
reporters, ponces, officers in plain clothes, swells in evening dress,
who have dined out, and have dropped in here on their way from the Opera
to the Theatre des Italiens; and then again, too, quite a crowd of
suspicious folk who defy analysis. As to the women, only one type, the
girl who sups at the American _cafe_, the girl at one or two louis who
looks out for foreigners at five louis, and lets her regular customers
know when she is disengaged. We have known them for the last ten years;
we see them every evening all the year round in the same places, except
when they are making a hygienic sojourn at Saint Lazare or at Lourcine."

Duroy no longer heard him. One of these women was leaning against their
box and looking at him. She was a stout brunette, her skin whitened with
paint, her black eyes lengthened at the corners with pencil and shaded
by enormous and artificial eyebrows. Her too exuberant bosom stretched
the dark silk of her dress almost to bursting; and her painted lips, red
as a fresh wound, gave her an aspect bestial, ardent, unnatural, but
which, nevertheless, aroused desire.

She beckoned with her head one of the friends who was passing, a blonde
with red hair, and stout, like herself, and said to her, in a voice loud
enough to be heard: "There is a pretty fellow; if he would like to have
me for ten louis I should not say no."

Forestier turned and tapped Duroy on the knee, with a smile. "That is
meant for you; you are a success, my dear fellow. I congratulate you."

The ex-sub-officer blushed, and mechanically fingered the two pieces of
gold in his waistcoat pocket.

The curtain had dropped, and the orchestra was now playing a waltz.

Duroy said: "Suppose we take a turn round the promenade."

"Just as you like."

They left their box, and were at once swept away by the throng of
promenaders. Pushed, pressed, squeezed, shaken, they went on, having
before their eyes a crowd of hats. The girls, in pairs, passed amidst
this crowd of men, traversing it with facility, gliding between elbows,
chests, and backs as if quite at home, perfectly at their ease, like
fish in water, amidst this masculine flood.

Duroy, charmed, let himself be swept along, drinking in with
intoxication the air vitiated by tobacco, the odor of humanity, and the
perfumes of the hussies. But Forestier sweated, puffed, and coughed.

"Let us go into the garden," said he.

And turning to the left, they entered a kind of covered garden, cooled
by two large and ugly fountains. Men and women were drinking at zinc
tables placed beneath evergreen trees growing in boxes.

"Another bock, eh?" said Forestier.

"Willingly."

They sat down and watched the passing throng.

From time to time a woman would stop and ask, with stereotyped smile:
"Are you going to stand me anything?"

And as Forestier answered: "A glass of water from the fountain," she
would turn away, muttering: "Go on, you duffer."

But the stout brunette, who had been leaning, just before, against the
box occupied by the two comrades, reappeared, walking proudly arm-in-arm
with the stout blonde. They were really a fine pair of women, well
matched.

She smiled on perceiving Duroy, as though their eyes had already told
secrets, and, taking a chair, sat down quietly in face of him, and
making her friend sit down, too, gave the order in a clear voice:
"Waiter, two grenadines!"

Forestier, rather surprised, said: "You make yourself at home."

She replied: "It is your friend that captivates me. He is really a
pretty fellow. I believe that I could make a fool of myself for his
sake."

Duroy, intimidated, could find nothing to say. He twisted his curly
moustache, smiling in a silly fashion. The waiter brought the drinks,
which the women drank off at a draught; then they rose, and the
brunette, with a friendly nod of the head, and a tap on the arm with her
fan, said to Duroy: "Thanks, dear, you are not very talkative."

And they went off swaying their trains.

Forestier laughed. "I say, old fellow, you are very successful with the
women. You must look after it. It may lead to something." He was silent
for a moment, and then continued in the dreamy tone of men who think
aloud: "It is through them, too, that one gets on quickest."

And as Duroy still smiled without replying, he asked: "Are you going to
stop any longer? I have had enough of it. I am going home."

The other murmured: "Yes, I shall stay a little longer. It is not late."

Forestier rose. "Well, good-night, then. Till to-morrow. Don't forget.
Seventeen Rue Fontaine, at half-past seven."

"That is settled. Till to-morrow. Thanks."

They shook hands, and the journalist walked away.

As soon as he had disappeared Duroy felt himself free, and again he
joyfully felt the two pieces of gold in his pocket; then rising, he
began to traverse the crowd, which he followed with his eyes.

He soon caught sight of the two women, the blonde and the brunette, who
were still making their way, with their proud bearing of beggars,
through the throng of men.

He went straight up to them, and when he was quite close he no longer
dared to do anything.

The brunette said: "Have you found your tongue again?"

He stammered "By Jove!" without being able to say anything else.

The three stood together, checking the movement, the current of which
swept round them.

All at once she asked: "Will you come home with me?"

And he, quivering with desire, answered roughly: "Yes, but I have only a
louis in my pocket."

She smiled indifferently. "It is all the same to me,"' and took his arm
in token of possession.

As they went out he thought that with the other louis he could easily
hire a suit of dress clothes for the next evening.




II


"Monsieur Forestier, if you please?"

"Third floor, the door on the left," the concierge had replied, in a
voice the amiable tone of which betokened a certain consideration for
the tenant, and George Duroy ascended the stairs.

He felt somewhat abashed, awkward, and ill at ease. He was wearing a
dress suit for the first time in his life, and was uneasy about the
general effect of his toilet. He felt it was altogether defective, from
his boots, which were not of patent leather, though neat, for he was
naturally smart about his foot-gear, to his shirt, which he had bought
that very morning for four franc fifty centimes at the Masgasin du
Louvre, and the limp front of which was already rumpled. His everyday
shirts were all more or less damaged, so that he had not been able to
make use of even the least worn of them.

His trousers, rather too loose, set off his leg badly, seeming to flap
about the calf with that creased appearance which second-hand clothes
present. The coat alone did not look bad, being by chance almost a
perfect fit.

He was slowly ascending the stairs with beating heart and anxious mind,
tortured above all by the fear of appearing ridiculous, when suddenly he
saw in front of him a gentleman in full dress looking at him. They were
so close to one another that Duroy took a step back and then remained
stupefied; it was himself, reflected by a tall mirror on the first-floor
landing. A thrill of pleasure shot through him to find himself so much
more presentable than he had imagined.

Only having a small shaving-glass in his room, he had not been able to
see himself all at once, and as he had only an imperfect glimpse of the
various items of his improvised toilet, he had mentally exaggerated its
imperfections, and harped to himself on the idea of appearing grotesque.

But on suddenly coming upon his reflection in the mirror, he had not
even recognized himself; he had taken himself for someone else, for a
gentleman whom at the first glance he had thought very well dressed and
fashionable looking. And now, looking at himself carefully, he
recognized that really the general effect was satisfactory.

He studied himself as actors do when learning their parts. He smiled,
held out his hand, made gestures, expressed sentiments of astonishment,
pleasure, and approbation, and essayed smiles and glances, with a view
of displaying his gallantry towards the ladies, and making them
understand that they were admired and desired.

A door opened somewhere. He was afraid of being caught, and hurried
upstairs, filled with the fear of having been seen grimacing thus by one
of his friend's guests.

On reaching the second story he noticed another mirror, and slackened
his pace to view himself in it as he went by. His bearing seemed to him
really graceful. He walked well. And now he was filled with an unbounded
confidence in himself. Certainly he must be successful with such an
appearance, his wish to succeed, his native resolution, and his
independence of mind. He wanted to run, to jump, as he ascended the last
flight of stairs. He stopped in front of the third mirror, twirled his
moustache as he had a trick of doing, took off his hat to run his
fingers through his hair, and muttered half-aloud as he often did: "What
a capital notion." Then raising his hand to the bell handle, he rang.

The door opened almost at once, and he found himself face to face with a
man-servant out of livery, serious, clean-shaven, and so perfect in his
get-up that Duroy became uneasy again without understanding the reason
of his vague emotion, due, perhaps, to an unwitting comparison of the
cut of their respective garments. The man-servant, who had
patent-leather shoes, asked, as he took the overcoat which Duroy had
carried on his arm, to avoid exposing the stains on it: "Whom shall I
announce?"

And he announced the name through a door with a looped-back draping
leading into a drawing-room.

But Duroy, suddenly losing his assurance, felt himself breathless and
paralyzed by terror. He was about to take his first step in the world he
had looked forward to and longed for. He advanced, nevertheless. A fair
young woman, quite alone, was standing awaiting him in a large room,
well lit up and full of plants as a greenhouse.

He stopped short, quite disconcerted. Who was this lady who was smiling
at him? Then he remembered that Forestier was married, and the thought
that this pretty and elegant blonde must be his friend's wife completed
his alarm.

He stammered: "Madame, I am--"

She held out her hand, saying: "I know, sir; Charles has told me of your
meeting last evening, and I am very pleased that he had the idea of
asking you to dine with us to-day."

He blushed up to his ears, not knowing what to say, and felt himself
examined from head to foot, reckoned up, and judged.

He longed to excuse himself, to invent some pretext for explaining the
deficiencies of his toilet, but he could not think of one, and did not
dare touch on this difficult subject.

He sat down on an armchair she pointed out to him, and as he felt the
soft and springy velvet-covered seat yield beneath his weight, as he
felt himself, as it were, supported and clasped by the padded back and
arms, it seemed to him that he was entering upon a new and enchanting
life, that he was taking possession of something delightful, that he was
becoming somebody, that he was saved, and he looked at Madame Forestier,
whose eyes had not quitted him.

She was attired in a dress of pale blue cashmere, which set off the
outline of her slender waist and full bust. Her arms and neck issued
from a cloud of white lace, with which the bodice and short sleeves were
trimmed, and her fair hair, dressed high, left a fringe of tiny curls at
the nape of her neck.

Duroy recovered his assurance beneath her glance, which reminded him,
without his knowing why, of that of the girl met overnight at the Folies
Bergere. She had gray eyes, of a bluish gray, which imparted to them a
strange expression; a thin nose, full lips, a rather fleshy chin, and
irregular but inviting features, full of archness and charm. It was one
of those faces, every trait of which reveals a special grace, and seems
to have its meaning--every movement to say or to hide something. After a
brief silence she asked: "Have you been long in Paris?"

He replied slowly, recovering his self-possession: "A few months only,
Madame. I have a berth in one of the railway companies, but Forestier
holds out the hope that I may, thanks to him, enter journalism."

She smiled more plainly and kindly, and murmured, lowering her voice:
"Yes, I know."

The bell had rung again. The servant announced "Madame de Marelle."

This was a little brunette, who entered briskly, and seemed to be
outlined--modeled, as it were--from head to foot in a dark dress made
quite plainly. A red rose placed in her black hair caught the eye at
once, and seemed to stamp her physiognomy, accentuate her character, and
strike the sharp and lively note needed.

A little girl in short frocks followed her.

Madame Forestier darted forward, exclaiming: "Good evening, Clotilde."

"Good evening, Madeleine." They kissed one another, and then the child
offered her forehead, with the assurance of a grown-up person, saying:
"Good evening, cousin."

Madame Forestier kissed her, and then introduced them, saying: "Monsieur
George Duroy, an old friend of Charles; Madame de Marelle, my friend,
and in some degree my relation." She added: "You know we have no
ceremonious affectation here. You quite understand, eh?"

The young man bowed.

The door opened again, and a short, stout gentleman appeared, having on
his arm a tall, handsome woman, much younger than himself, and of
distinguished appearance and grave bearing. They were Monsieur Walter, a
Jew from the South of France, deputy, financier, capitalist, and manager
of the _Vie Francaise_, and his wife, the daughter of Monsieur
Basile-Ravalau, the banker.

Then came, one immediately after the other, Jacques Rival, very
elegantly got up, and Norbert de Varenne, whose coat collar shone
somewhat from the friction of the long locks falling on his shoulders
and scattering over them a few specks of white scurf. His badly-tied
cravat looked as if it had already done duty. He advanced with the air
and graces of an old beau, and taking Madame Forestier's hand, printed a
kiss on her wrist. As he bent forward his long hair spread like water
over her bare arm.

Forestier entered in his turn, offering excuses for being late. He had
been detained at the office of the paper by the Morel affair. Monsieur
Morel, a Radical deputy, had just addressed a question to the Ministry
respecting a vote of credit for the colonization of Algeria.

The servant announced: "Dinner is served, Madame," and they passed into
the dining-room.

Duroy found himself seated between Madame de Marelle and her daughter.
He again felt ill at ease, being afraid of making some mistake in the
conventional handling of forks, spoons, and glasses. There were four of
these, one of a faint blue tint. What could be meant to be drunk out of
that?

Nothing was said while the soup was being consumed, and then Norbert de
Varenne asked: "Have you read the Gauthier case? What a funny business
it is."

After a discussion on this case of adultery, complicated with
blackmailing, followed. They did not speak of it as the events recorded
in newspapers are spoken of in private families, but as a disease is
spoken of among doctors, or vegetables among market gardeners. They were
neither shocked nor astonished at the facts, but sought out their hidden
and secret motives with professional curiosity, and an utter
indifference for the crime itself. They sought to clearly explain the
origin of certain acts, to determine all the cerebral phenomena which
had given birth to the drama, the scientific result due to an especial
condition of mind. The women, too, were interested in this
investigation. And other recent events were examined, commented upon,
turned so as to show every side of them, and weighed correctly, with the
practical glance, and from the especial standpoint of dealers in news,
and vendors of the drama of life at so much a line, just as articles
destined for sale are examined, turned over, and weighed by tradesmen.

Then it was a question of a duel, and Jacques Rival spoke. This was his
business; no one else could handle it.

Duroy dared not put in a word. He glanced from time to time at his
neighbor, whose full bosom captivated him. A diamond, suspended by a
thread of gold, dangled from her ear like a drop of water that had
rolled down it. From time to time she made an observation which always
brought a smile to her hearers' lips. She had a quaint, pleasant wit,
that of an experienced tomboy who views things with indifference and
judges them with frivolous and benevolent skepticism.

Duroy sought in vain for some compliment to pay her, and, not finding
one, occupied himself with her daughter, filling her glass, holding her
plate, and helping her. The child, graver than her mother, thanked him
in a serious tone and with a slight bow, saying: "You are very good,
sir," and listened to her elders with an air of reflection.

The dinner was very good, and everyone was enraptured. Monsieur Walter
ate like an ogre, hardly spoke, and glanced obliquely under his glasses
at the dishes offered to him. Norbert de Varenne kept him company, and
from time to time let drops of gravy fall on his shirt front. Forestier,
silent and serious, watched everything, exchanging glances of
intelligence with his wife, like confederates engaged together on a
difficult task which is going on swimmingly.

Faces grew red, and voices rose, as from time to time the man-servant
murmured in the guests' ears: "Corton or Chateau-Laroze."

Duroy had found the Corton to his liking, and let his glass be filled
every time. A delicious liveliness stole over him, a warm cheerfulness,
that mounted from the stomach to the head, flowed through his limbs and
penetrated him throughout. He felt himself wrapped in perfect comfort of
life and thought, body and soul.

A longing to speak assailed him, to bring himself into notice, to be
appreciated like these men, whose slightest words were relished.

But the conversation, which had been going on unchecked, linking ideas
one to another, jumping from one topic to another at a chance word, a
mere trifle, and skimming over a thousand matters, turned again on the
great question put by Monsieur Morel in the Chamber respecting the
colonization of Algeria.

Monsieur Walter, between two courses, made a few jests, for his wit was
skeptical and broad. Forestier recited his next day's leader. Jacques
Rival insisted on a military government with land grants to all officers
after thirty years of colonial service.

"By this plan," he said, "you will create an energetic class of
colonists, who will have already learned to love and understand the
country, and will be acquainted with its language, and with all those
grave local questions against which new-comers invariably run their
heads."

Norbert de Varenne interrupted him with: "Yes; they will be acquainted
with everything except agriculture. They will speak Arabic, but they
will be ignorant how beet-root is planted out and wheat sown. They will
be good at fencing, but very shaky as regards manures. On the contrary,
this new land should be thrown entirely open to everyone. Intelligent
men will achieve a position there; the others will go under. It is the
social law."

A brief silence followed, and the listeners smiled at one another.

George Duroy opened his mouth, and said, feeling as much surprised at
the sound of his own voice as if he had never heard himself speak: "What
is most lacking there is good land. The really fertile estates cost as
much as in France, and are bought up as investments by rich Parisians.
The real colonists, the poor fellows who leave home for lack of bread,
are forced into the desert, where nothing will grow for want of water."

Everyone looked at him, and he felt himself blushing.

Monsieur Walter asked: "Do you know Algeria, sir?"

George replied: "Yes, sir; I was there nearly two years and a half, and
I was quartered in all three provinces."

Suddenly unmindful of the Morel question, Norbert de Varenne
interrogated him respecting a detail of manners and customs of which he
had been informed by an officer. It was with respect to the Mzab, that
strange little Arab republic sprung up in the midst of the Sahara, in
the driest part of that burning region.

Duroy had twice visited the Mzab, and he narrated some of the customs of
this singular country, where drops of water are valued as gold; where
every inhabitant is bound to discharge all public duties; and where
commercial honesty is carried further than among civilized nations.

He spoke with a certain raciness excited by the wine and the desire to
please, and told regimental yarns, incidents of Arab life and military
adventure. He even hit on some telling phrases to depict these bare and
yellow lands, eternally laid waste by the devouring fire of the sun.

All the women had their eyes turned upon him, and Madame Walter said, in
her deliberate tones: "You could make a charming series of articles out
of your recollections."

Then Walter looked at the young fellow over the glasses of his
spectacles, as was his custom when he wanted to see anyone's face
distinctly. He looked at the dishes underneath them.

Forestier seized the opportunity. "My dear sir, I had already spoken to
you about Monsieur George Duroy, asking you to let me have him for my
assistant in gleaning political topics. Since Marambot left us, I have
no one to send in quest of urgent and confidential information, and the
paper suffers from it."

Daddy Walter became serious, and pushed his spectacles upon his
forehead, in order to look Duroy well in the face. Then he said: "It is
true that Monsieur Duroy has evidently an original turn of thought. If
he will come and have a chat with us to-morrow at three o'clock, we will
settle the matter." Then, after a short silence, turning right round
towards George, he added: "But write us a little fancy series of
articles on Algeria at once. Relate your experiences, and mix up the
colonization question with them as you did just now. They are facts,
genuine facts, and I am sure they will greatly please our readers. But
be quick. I must have the first article to-morrow or the day after,
while the subject is being discussed in the Chamber, in order to catch
the public."

Madame Walter added, with that serious grace which characterized
everything she did, and which lent an air of favor to her words: "And
you have a charming title, 'Recollections of a Chasseur d'Afrique.' Is
it not so, Monsieur Norbert?"

The old poet, who had worn renown late in life, feared and hated
new-comers. He replied dryly: "Yes, excellent, provided that the keynote
be followed, for that is the great difficulty; the exact note, what in
music is called the pitch."

Madame Forestier cast on Duroy a smiling and protective glance, the
glance of a connoisseur, which seemed to say: "Yes, you will get on."
Madame de Marelle had turned towards him several times, and the diamond
in her ear quivered incessantly as though the drop of water was about to
fall.

The little girl remained quiet and serious, her head bent over her
plate.

But the servant passed round the table, filling the blue glasses with
Johannisberg, and Forestier proposed a toast, drinking with a bow to
Monsieur Walter: "Prosperity to the _Vie Francaise_."

Everyone bowed towards the proprietor, who smiled, and Duroy,
intoxicated with success, emptied his glass at a draught. He would have
emptied a whole barrel after the same fashion; it seemed to him that he
could have eaten a bullock or strangled a lion. He felt a superhuman
strength in his limbs, unconquerable resolution and unbounded hope in
his mind. He was now at home among these people; he had just taken his
position, won his place. His glance rested on their faces with a
new-born assurance, and he ventured for the first time to address his
neighbor. "You have the prettiest earrings I have ever seen, Madame."

She turned towards him with a smile. "It was an idea of my own to have
the diamonds hung like that, just at the end of a thread. They really
look like dew-drops, do they not?"

He murmured, ashamed of his own daring, and afraid of making a fool of
himself:

"It is charming; but the ear, too, helps to set it off."

She thanked him with a look, one of those woman's looks that go straight
to the heart. And as he turned his head he again met Madame Forestier's
eye, always kindly, but now he thought sparkling with a livelier mirth,
an archness, an encouragement.

All the men were now talking at once with gesticulations and raised
voices. They were discussing the great project of the metropolitan
railway. The subject was not exhausted till dessert was finished,
everyone having a deal to say about the slowness of the methods of
communication in Paris, the inconvenience of the tramway, the delays of
omnibus traveling, and the rudeness of cabmen.

Then they left the dining-room to take coffee. Duroy, in jest, offered
his arm to the little girl. She gravely thanked him, and rose on tiptoe
in order to rest her hand on it.

On returning to the drawing-room he again experienced the sensation of
entering a greenhouse. In each of the four corners of the room tall
palms unfolded their elegantly shaped leaves, rising to the ceiling, and
there spreading fountain-wise.

On each side of the fireplace were india-rubber plants like round
columns, with their dark green leaves tapering one above the other; and
on the piano two unknown shrubs covered with flowers, those of one all
crimson and those of the other all white, had the appearance of
artificial plants, looking too beautiful to be real.

The air was cool, and laden with a soft, vague perfume that could
scarcely be defined. The young fellow, now more himself, considered the
room more attentively. It was not large; nothing attracted attention
with the exception of the shrubs, no bright color struck one, but one
felt at one's ease in it; one felt soothed and refreshed, and, as it
were, caressed by one's surroundings. The walls were covered with an
old-fashioned stuff of faded violet, spotted with little flowers in
yellow silk about the size of flies. Hangings of grayish-blue cloth,
embroidered here and there with crimson poppies, draped the doorways,
and the chairs of all shapes and sizes, scattered about the room,
lounging chairs, easy chairs, ottomans, and stools, were upholstered in
Louise Seize silk or Utrecht velvet, with a crimson pattern on a
cream-colored ground.

"Do you take coffee, Monsieur Duroy?" and Madame Forestier held out a
cup towards him with that smile which never left her lips.

"Thank you, Madame." He took the cup, and as he bent forward to take a
lump of sugar from the sugar-basin carried by the little girl, Madame
Forestier said to him in a low voice: "Pay attention to Madame Walter."

Then she drew back before he had time to answer a word.

He first drank off his coffee, which he was afraid of dropping onto the
carpet; then, his mind more at ease, he sought for some excuse to
approach the wife of his new governor, and begin a conversation. All at
once he noticed that she was holding an empty cup in her hand, and as
she was at some distance from a table, did not know where to put it. He
darted forward with, "Allow me, Madame?"

"Thank you, sir."

He took away the cup and then returned.

"If you knew, Madame," he began, "the happy hours the _Vie Francaise_
helped me to pass when I was away in the desert. It is really the only
paper that is readable out of France, for it is more literary, wittier,
and less monotonous than the others. There is something of everything in
it."

She smiled with amiable indifference, and answered, seriously:

"Monsieur Walter has had a great deal of trouble to create a type of
newspaper supplying the want of the day."

And they began to chat. He had an easy flow of commonplace conversation,
a charm in his voice and look, and an irresistible seductiveness about
his moustache. It curled coquettishly about his lips, reddish brown,
with a paler tint about the ends. They chatted about Paris, its suburbs,
the banks of the Seine, watering places, summer amusements, all the
current topics on which one can prate to infinity without wearying
oneself.

Then as Monsieur Norbert de Varenne approached with a liqueur glass in
his hand, Duroy discreetly withdrew.

Madame de Marelle, who had been speaking with Madame Forestier, summoned
him.

"Well, sir," she said, abruptly, "so you want to try your hand at
journalism?"

He spoke vaguely of his prospects, and there recommenced with her the
conversation he had just had with Madame Walter, but as he was now a
better master of his subject, he showed his superiority in it, repeating
as his own the things he had just heard. And he continually looked his
companion in the eyes, as though to give deep meaning to what he was
saying.

She, in her turn, related anecdotes with the easy flow of spirits of a
woman who knows she is witty, and is always seeking to appear so, and
becoming familiar, she laid her hand from time to time on his arm, and
lowered her voice to make trifling remarks which thus assumed a
character of intimacy. He was inwardly excited by her contact. He would
have liked to have shown his devotion for her on the spot, to have
defended her, shown her what he was worth, and his delay in his replies
to her showed the preoccupation of his mind.

But suddenly, without any reason, Madame de Marelle called, "Laurine!"
and the little girl came.

"Sit down here, child; you will catch cold near the window."

Duroy was seized with a wild longing to kiss the child. It was as though
some part of the kiss would reach the mother.

He asked in a gallant, and at the same time fatherly, tone: "Will you
allow me to kiss you, Mademoiselle?"

The child looked up at him in surprise.

"Answer, my dear," said Madame de Marelle, laughingly.

"Yes, sir, this time; but it will not do always."

Duroy, sitting down, lifted Laurine onto his knees and brushed the fine
curly hair above her forehead with his lips.

Her mother was surprised. "What! she has not run away; it is astounding.
Usually she will only let ladies kiss her. You are irresistible,
Monsieur Duroy."

He blushed without answering, and gently jogged the little girl on his
knee.

Madame Forestier drew near, and exclaimed, with astonishment: "What,
Laurine tamed! What a miracle!"

Jacques Rival also came up, cigar in mouth, and Duroy rose to take
leave, afraid of spoiling, by some unlucky remark, the work done, his
task of conquest begun.

He bowed, softly pressed the little outstretched hands of the women, and
then heartily shook those of the men. He noted that the hand of Jacques
Rival, warm and dry, answered cordially to his grip; that of Norbert de
Varenne, damp and cold, slipped through his fingers; that of Daddy
Walter, cold and flabby, was without expression or energy; and that of
Forestier was plump and moist. His friend said to him in a low tone,
"To-morrow, at three o'clock; do not forget."

"Oh! no; don't be afraid of that."

When he found himself once more on the stairs he felt a longing to run
down them, so great was his joy, and he darted forward, going down two
steps at a time, but suddenly he caught sight in a large mirror on the
second-floor landing of a gentleman in a hurry, who was advancing
briskly to meet him, and he stopped short, ashamed, as if he had been
caught tripping. Then he looked at himself in the glass for some time,
astonished at being really such a handsome fellow, smiled complacently,
and taking leave of his reflection, bowed low to it as one bows to a
personage of importance.




III


When George Duroy found himself in the street he hesitated as to what he
should do. He wanted to run, to dream, to walk about thinking of the
future as he breathed the soft night air, but the thought of the series
of articles asked for by Daddy Walter haunted him, and he decided to go
home at once and set to work.

He walked along quickly, reached the outer boulevards, and followed
their line as far as the Rue Boursault, where he dwelt. The house, six
stories high, was inhabited by a score of small households,
trades-people or workmen, and he experienced a sickening sensation of
disgust, a longing to leave the place and live like well-to-do people in
a clean dwelling, as he ascended the stairs, lighting himself with wax
matches on his way up the dirty steps, littered with bits of paper,
cigarette ends, and scraps of kitchen refuse. A stagnant stench of
cooking, cesspools and humanity, a close smell of dirt and old walls,
which no rush of air could have driven out of the building, filled it
from top to bottom.

The young fellow's room, on the fifth floor, looked into a kind of
abyss, the huge cutting of the Western Railway just above the outlet by
the tunnel of the Batignolles station. Duroy opened his window and
leaned against the rusty iron cross-bar.

Below him, at the bottom of the dark hole, three motionless red lights
resembled the eyes of huge wild animals, and further on a glimpse could
be caught of others, and others again still further. Every moment
whistles, prolonged or brief, pierced the silence of the night, some
near at hand, others scarcely discernible, coming from a distance from
the direction of Asnieres. Their modulations were akin to those of the
human voice. One of them came nearer and nearer, with its plaintive
appeal growing louder and louder every moment, and soon a big yellow
light appeared advancing with a loud noise, and Duroy watched the
string of railway carriages swallowed up by the tunnel.

Then he said to himself: "Come, let's go to work."

He placed his light upon the table, but at the moment of commencing he
found that he had only a quire of letter paper in the place. More the
pity, but he would make use of it by opening out each sheet to its full
extent. He dipped his pen in ink, and wrote at the head of the page, in
his best hand, "Recollections of a Chasseur d'Afrique."

Then he tried to frame the opening sentence. He remained with his head
on his hands and his eyes fixed on the white sheet spread out before
him. What should he say? He could no longer recall anything of what he
had been relating a little while back; not an anecdote, not a fact,
nothing.

All at once the thought struck him: "I must begin with my departure."

And he wrote: "It was in 1874, about the middle of May, when France, in
her exhaustion, was reposing after the catastrophe of the terrible
year."

He stopped short, not knowing how to lead up to what should follow--his
embarkation, his voyage, his first impressions.

After ten minutes' reflection, he resolved to put off the introductory
slip till to-morrow, and to set to work at once to describe Algiers.

And he traced on his paper the words: "Algiers is a white city," without
being able to state anything further. He recalled in his mind the pretty
white city flowing down in a cascade of flat-roofed dwellings from the
summit of its hills to the sea, but he could no longer find a word to
express what he had seen and felt.

After a violent effort, he added: "It is partly inhabited by Arabs."

Then he threw down his pen and rose from his chair.

On his little iron bedstead, hollowed in the center by the pressure of
his body, he saw his everyday garments cast down there, empty, worn,
limp, ugly as the clothing at the morgue. On a straw-bottomed chair his
tall hat, his only one, brim uppermost, seemed to be awaiting an alms.

The wall paper, gray with blue bouquets, showed as many stains as
flowers, old suspicious-looking stains, the origin of which could not be
defined; crushed insects or drops of oil; finger tips smeared with
pomatum or soapy water scattered while washing. It smacked of shabby,
genteel poverty, the poverty of a Paris lodging-house. Anger rose within
him at the wretchedness of his mode of living. He said to himself that
he must get out of it at once; that he must finish with this irksome
existence the very next day.

A frantic desire of working having suddenly seized on him again, he sat
down once more at the table, and began anew to seek for phrases to
describe the strange and charming physiognomy of Algiers, that ante-room

of vast and mysterious Africa; the Africa of wandering Arabs and unknown
tribes of negroes; that unexplored Africa of which we are sometimes
shown in public gardens the improbable-looking animals seemingly made to
figure in fairy tales; the ostriches, those exaggerated fowls; the
gazelles, those divine goats; the surprising and grotesque giraffes; the
grave-looking camels, the monstrous hippopotomi, the shapeless
rhinosceri, and the gorillas, those frightful-looking brothers of
mankind.

He vaguely felt ideas occurring to him; he might perhaps have uttered
them, but he could not put them into writing. And his impotence
exasperated him, he got up again, his hands damp with perspiration, and
his temples throbbing.

His eyes falling on his washing bill, brought up that evening by the
concierge, he was suddenly seized with wild despair. All his joy
vanishing in a twinkling, with his confidence in himself and his faith
in the future. It was all up; he could not do anything, he would never
be anybody; he felt played out, incapable, good for nothing, damned.

And he went and leaned out of the window again, just as a train issued
from the tunnel with a loud and violent noise. It was going away, afar
off, across the fields and plains towards the sea. And the recollection
of his parents stirred in Duroy's breast. It would pass near them, that
train, within a few leagues of their house. He saw it again, the little
house at the entrance to the village of Canteleu, on the summit of the
slope overlooking Rouen and the immense valley of the Seine.

His father and mother kept a little inn, a place where the tradesfolk of
the suburbs of Rouen came out to lunch on Sunday at the sign of the
Belle Vue. They had wanted to make a gentleman of their son, and had
sent him to college. Having finished his studies, and been plowed for
his bachelor's degree, he had entered on his military service with the
intention of becoming an officer, a colonel, a general. But, disgusted
with military life long before the completion of his five years' term
of service, he had dreamed of making a fortune at Paris.

He came there at the expiration of his term of service, despite the
entreaties of his father and mother, whose visions having evaporated,
wanted now to have him at home with them. In his turn he hoped to
achieve a future; he foresaw a triumph by means as yet vaguely defined
in his mind, but which he felt sure he could scheme out and further.

He had had some successful love affairs in the regiment, some easy
conquests, and even some adventures in a better class of society, having
seduced a tax collector's daughter, who wanted to leave her home for his
sake, and a lawyer's wife, who had tried to drown herself in despair at
being abandoned.

His comrades used to say of him: "He is a sharp fellow, a deep one to
get out of a scrape, a chap who knows which side his bread is buttered,"
and he had promised himself to act up to this character.

His conscience, Norman by birth, worn by the daily dealings of garrison
life, rendered elastic by the examples of pillaging in Africa, illicit
commissions, shaky dodges; spurred, too, by the notions of honor current
in the army, military bravadoes, patriotic sentiments, the fine-sounding
tales current among sub-officers, and the vain glory of the profession
of arms, had become a kind of box of tricks in which something of
everything was to be found.

But the wish to succeed reigned sovereign in it.

He had, without noticing it, began to dream again as he did every
evening. He pictured to himself some splendid love adventure which
should bring about all at once the realization of his hopes. He married
the daughter of some banker or nobleman met with in the street, and
captivated at the first glance.

The shrill whistle of a locomotive which, issuing from the tunnel like a
big rabbit bolting out of its hole, and tearing at full speed along the
rails towards the machine shed where it was to take its rest, awoke him
from his dream.

Then, repossessed by the vague and joyful hope which ever haunted his
mind, he wafted a kiss into the night, a kiss of love addressed to the
vision of the woman he was awaiting, a kiss of desire addressed to the
fortune he coveted. Then he closed his window and began to undress,
murmuring:

"I shall feel in a better mood for it to-morrow. My thoughts are not
clear to-night. Perhaps, too, I have had just a little too much to
drink. One can't work well under those circumstances."

He got into bed, blew out his light, and went off to sleep almost
immediately.

He awoke early, as one awakes on mornings of hope and trouble, and
jumping out of bed, opened his window to drink a cup of fresh air, as he
phrased it.

The houses of the Rue de Rome opposite, on the other side of the broad
railway cutting, glittering in the rays of the rising sun, seemed to be
painted with white light. Afar off on the right a glimpse was caught of
the slopes of Argenteuil, the hills of Sannois, and the windmills of
Orgemont through a light bluish mist; like a floating and transparent
veil cast onto the horizon.

Duroy remained for some minutes gazing at the distant country side, and
he murmured: "It would be devilish nice out there a day like this." Then
he bethought himself that he must set to work, and that at once, and
also send his concierge's lad, at a cost of ten sous, to the office to
say that he was ill.

He sat down at his table, dipped his pen in the ink, leaned his forehead
on his hand, and sought for ideas. All in vain, nothing came.

He was not discouraged, however. He thought, "Bah! I am not accustomed
to it. It is a trade to be learned like all other trades. I must have
some help the first time. I will go and find Forestier, who will give me
a start for my article in ten minutes."

And he dressed himself.

When he got into the street he came to the conclusion that it was still
too early to present himself at the residence of his friend, who must be
a late sleeper. He therefore walked slowly along beneath the trees of
the outer boulevards. It was not yet nine o'clock when he reached the
Parc Monceau, fresh from its morning watering. Sitting down upon a bench
he began to dream again. A well-dressed young man was walking up and
down at a short distance, awaiting a woman, no doubt. Yes, she appeared,
close veiled and quick stepping, and taking his arm, after a brief clasp
of the hand, they walked away together.

A riotous need of love broke out in Duroy's heart, a need of amours at
once distinguished and delicate. He rose and resumed his journey,
thinking of Forestier. What luck the fellow had!

He reached the door at the moment his friend was coming out of it. "You
here at this time of day. What do you want of me?"

Duroy, taken aback at meeting him thus, just as he was starting off,
stammered: "You see, you see, I can't manage to write my article; you
know the article Monsieur Walter asked me to write on Algeria. It is
not very surprising, considering that I have never written anything.
Practice is needed for that, as for everything else. I shall get used to
it very quickly, I am sure, but I do not know how to set about
beginning. I have plenty of ideas, but I cannot manage to express them."

He stopped, hesitatingly, and Forestier smiled somewhat slyly, saying:
"I know what it is."

Duroy went on: "Yes, it must happen to everyone at the beginning. Well,
I came, I came to ask you for a lift. In ten minutes you can give me a
start, you can show me how to shape it. It will be a good lesson in
style you will give me, and really without you I do not see how I can
get on with it."

Forestier still smiled, and tapping his old comrade on the arm, said:
"Go in and see my wife; she will settle your business quite as well as I
could. I have trained her for that kind of work. I, myself, have not
time this morning, or I would willingly have done it for you."

Duroy suddenly abashed, hesitated, feeling afraid.

"But I cannot call on her at this time of the day."

"Oh, yes; she is up. You will find her in my study arranging some notes
for me."

Duroy refused to go upstairs, saying: "No, I can't think of such a
thing."

Forestier took him by the shoulders, twisted him round on his heels, and
pushing him towards the staircase, said: "Go along, you great donkey,
when I tell you to. You are not going to oblige me to go up these
flights of stairs again to introduce you and explain the fix you are
in."

Then Duroy made up his mind. "Thanks, then, I will go up," he said. "I
shall tell her that you forced me, positively forced me to come and see
her."

"All right. She won't scratch your eyes out. Above all, do not forget
our appointment for three o'clock."

"Oh! don't be afraid about that."

Forestier hastened off, and Duroy began to ascend the stairs slowly,
step by step, thinking over what he should say, and feeling uneasy as to
his probable reception.

The man servant, wearing a blue apron, and holding a broom in his hand,
opened the door to him.

"Master is not at home," he said, without waiting to be spoken to.

Duroy persisted.

"Ask Madame Forestier," said he, "whether she will receive me, and tell
her that I have come from her husband, whom I met in the street."

Then he waited while the man went away, returned, and opening the door
on the right, said: "Madame will see you, sir."

She was seated in an office armchair in a small room, the walls of which
were wholly hidden by books carefully ranged on shelves of black wood.
The bindings, of various tints, red, yellow, green, violet, and blue,
gave some color and liveliness to those monotonous lines of volumes.

She turned round, still smiling. She was wrapped in a white dressing
gown, trimmed with lace, and as she held out her hand, displayed her
bare arm in its wide sleeve.

"Already?" said she, and then added: "That is not meant for a reproach,
but a simple question."

"Oh, madame, I did not want to come up, but your husband, whom I met at
the bottom of the house, obliged me to. I am so confused that I dare not
tell you what brings me."

She pointed to a chair, saying: "Sit down and tell me about it."

She was twirling a goose-quill between her fingers, and in front of her
was a half-written page, interrupted by the young fellow's arrival. She
seemed quite at home at this work table, as much at her ease as if in
her drawing-room, engaged on everyday tasks. A faint perfume emanated
from her dressing gown, the fresh perfume of a recent toilet. Duroy
sought to divine, fancied he could trace, the outline of her plump,
youthful figure through the soft material enveloping it.

She went on, as he did not reply: "Well, come tell me what is it."

He murmured, hesitatingly: "Well, you see--but I really dare not--I was
working last night very late and quite early this morning on the article
upon Algeria, upon which Monsieur Walter asked me to write, and I could
not get on with it--I tore up all my attempts. I am not accustomed to
this kind of work, and I came to ask Forestier to help me this once--"

She interrupted him, laughing heartily. "And he told you to come and see
me? That is a nice thing."

"Yes, madame. He said that you will get me out of my difficulty better
than himself, but I did not dare, I did not wish to--you understand."

She rose, saying: "It will be delightful to work in collaboration with
you like that. I am charmed at the notion. Come, sit down in my place,
for they know my hand-writing at the office. And we will knock you off
an article; oh, but a good one."

He sat down, took a pen, spread a sheet of paper before him, and waited.

Madame Forestier, standing by, watched him make these preparations, then
took a cigarette from the mantel-shelf, and lit it.

"I cannot work without smoking," said she. "Come, what are you going to
say?"

He lifted his head towards her with astonishment.

"But that is just what I don't know, since it is that I came to see you
about."

She replied: "Oh, I will put it in order for you. I will make the sauce,
but then I want the materials of the dish."

He remained embarrassed before her. At length he said, hesitatingly: "I
should like to relate my journey, then, from the beginning."

Then she sat down before him on the other side of the table, and looking
him in the eyes:

"Well, tell it me first; for myself alone, you understand, slowly and
without forgetting anything, and I will select what is to be used of
it."

But as he did not know where to commence, she began to question him as a
priest would have done in the confessional, putting precise questions
which recalled to him forgotten details, people encountered and faces
merely caught sight of.

When she had made him speak thus for about a quarter of an hour, she
suddenly interrupted him with: "Now we will begin. In the first place,
we will imagine that you are narrating your impressions to a friend,
which will allow you to write a lot of tom-foolery, to make remarks of
all kinds, to be natural and funny if we can. Begin:

"'My Dear Henry,--You want to know what Algeria is like, and you shall.
I will send you, having nothing else to do in a little cabin of dried
mud which serves me as a habitation, a kind of journal of my life, day
by day, and hour by hour. It will be a little lively at times, more is
the pity, but you are not obliged to show it to your lady friends.'"

She paused to re-light her cigarette, which had gone out, and the faint
creaking of the quill on the paper stopped, too.

"Let us continue," said she.

"Algeria is a great French country on the frontiers of the great unknown
countries called the Desert, the Sahara, central Africa, etc., etc.

"Algiers is the door, the pretty white door of this strange continent.

"But it is first necessary to get to it, which is not a rosy job for
everyone. I am, you know, an excellent horseman, since I break in the
colonel's horses; but a man may be a very good rider and a very bad
sailor. That is my case.

"You remember Surgeon-Major Simbretras, whom we used to call Old
Ipecacuanha, and how, when we thought ourselves ripe for a twenty-four
hours' stay in the infirmary, that blessed sojourning place, we used to
go up before him.

"How he used to sit in his chair, with his fat legs in his red trousers,
wide apart, his hands on his knees, and his elbows stuck, rolling his
great eyes and gnawing his white moustache.

"You remember his favorite mode of treatment: 'This man's stomach is
out of order. Give him a dose of emetic number three, according to my
prescription, and then twelve hours off duty, and he will be all right.'

"It was a sovereign remedy that emetic--sovereign and irresistible. One
swallowed it because one had to. Then when one had undergone the effects
of Old Ipecacuanha's prescription, one enjoyed twelve well-earned hours'
rest.

"Well, my dear fellow, to reach Africa, it is necessary to undergo for
forty hours the effects of another kind of irresistible emetic,
according to the prescription of the Compagnie Transatlantique."

She rubbed her hands, delighted with the idea.

She got up and walked about, after having lit another cigarette, and
dictated as she puffed out little whiffs of smoke, which, issuing at
first through a little round hole in the midst of her compressed lips,
slowly evaporated, leaving in the air faint gray lines, a kind of
transparent mist, like a spider's web. Sometimes with her open hand she
would brush these light traces aside; at others she would cut them
asunder with her forefinger, and then watch with serious attention the
two halves of the almost impenetrable vapor slowly disappear.

Duroy, with his eyes, followed all her gestures, her attitudes, the
movements of her form and features--busied with this vague pastime which
did not preoccupy her thoughts.

She now imagined the incidents of the journey, sketched traveling
companions invented by herself, and a love affair with the wife of a
captain of infantry on her way to join her husband.

Then, sitting down again, she questioned Duroy on the topography of
Algeria, of which she was absolutely ignorant. In ten minutes she knew
as much about it as he did, and she dictated a little chapter of
political and colonial geography to coach the reader up in such matters
and prepare him to understand the serious questions which were to be
brought forward in the following articles. She continued by a trip into
the provinces of Oran, a fantastic trip, in which it was, above all, a
question of women, Moorish, Jewish, and Spanish.

"That is what interests most," she said.

She wound up by a sojourn at Saida, at the foot of the great tablelands;
and by a pretty little intrigue between the sub-officer, George Duroy,
and a Spanish work-girl employed at the _alfa_ factory at Ain el Hadjar.
She described their rendezvous at night amidst the bare, stony hills,
with jackals, hyenas, and Arab dogs yelling, barking and howling among
the rocks.

And she gleefully uttered the words: "To be continued." Then rising, she
added: "That is how one writes an article, my dear sir. Sign it, if you
please."

He hesitated.

"But sign it, I tell you."

Then he began to laugh, and wrote at the bottom of the page, "George
Duroy."

She went on smoking as she walked up and down; and he still kept looking
at her, unable to find anything to say to thank her, happy to be with
her, filled with gratitude, and with the sensual pleasure of this
new-born intimacy. It seemed to him that everything surrounding him was
part of her, everything down to the walls covered with books. The
chairs, the furniture, the air in which the perfume of tobacco was
floating, had something special, nice, sweet, and charming, which
emanated from her.

Suddenly she asked: "What do you think of my friend, Madame de Marelle?"

He was surprised, and answered: "I think--I think--her very charming."

"Is it not so?"

"Yes, certainly."

He longed to add: "But not so much as yourself," but dared not.

She resumed: "And if you only knew how funny, original, and intelligent
she is. She is a Bohemian--a true Bohemian. That is why her husband
scarcely cares for her. He only sees her defects, and does not
appreciate her good qualities."

Duroy felt stupefied at learning that Madame de Marelle was married, and
yet it was only natural that she should be.

He said: "Oh, she is married, then! And what is her husband?"

Madame Forestier gently shrugged her shoulders, and raised her eyebrows,
with a gesture of incomprehensible meaning.

"Oh! he is an inspector on the Northern Railway. He spends eight days
out of the month in Paris. What his wife calls 'obligatory service,' or
'weekly duty,' or 'holy week.' When you know her better you will see how
nice and bright she is. Go and call on her one of these days."

Duroy no longer thought of leaving. It seemed to him that he was going
to stop for ever; that he was at home.

But the door opened noiselessly, and a tall gentleman entered without
being announced. He stopped short on seeing a stranger. Madame Forestier
seemed troubled for a moment; then she said in natural tones, though a
slight rosy flush had risen to her cheeks:

"Come in, my dear sir. I must introduce one of Charles' old friends,
Monsieur George Duroy, a future journalist." Then in another tone, she
added: "Our best and most intimate friend, the Count de Vaudrec."

The two men bowed, looking each other in the eyes, and Duroy at once
took his leave.

There was no attempt to detain him. He stammered a few thanks, grasped
the outstretched hand of Madame Forestier, bowed again to the new-comer,
who preserved the cold, grave air of a man of position, and went out
quite disturbed, as if he had made a fool of himself.

On finding himself once more in the street, he felt sad and uneasy,
haunted by the vague idea of some hidden vexation. He walked on, asking
himself whence came this sudden melancholy. He could not tell, but the
stern face of the Count de Vaudrec, already somewhat aged, with gray
hair, and the calmly insolent look of a very wealthy man, constantly
recurred to his recollection. He noted that the arrival of this unknown,
breaking off a charming _tete-a-tete_, had produced in him that chilly,
despairing sensation that a word overheard, a trifle noticed, the least
thing suffices sometimes to bring about. It seemed to him, too, that
this man, without his being able to guess why, had been displeased at
finding him there.

He had nothing more to do till three o'clock, and it was not yet noon.
He had still six francs fifty centimes in his pocket, and he went and
lunched at a Bouillon Duval. Then he prowled about the boulevard, and
as three o'clock struck, ascended the staircase, in itself an
advertisement, of the _Vie Francaise_.

The messengers-in-waiting were seated with folded arms on a bench, while
at a kind of desk a doorkeeper was sorting the correspondence that had
just arrived. The entire get-up of the place, intended to impress
visitors, was perfect. Everyone had the appearance, bearing, dignity,
and smartness suitable to the ante-room of a large newspaper.

"Monsieur Walter, if you please?" inquired Duroy.

"The manager is engaged, sir," replied the doorkeeper. "Will you take a
seat, sir?" and he indicated the waiting-room, already full of people.

There were men grave, important-looking, and decorated; and men without
visible linen, whose frock-coats, buttoned up to the chin, bore upon the
breast stains recalling the outlines of continents and seas on
geographical maps. There were three women among them. One of them was
pretty, smiling, and decked out, and had the air of a gay woman; her
neighbor, with a wrinkled, tragic countenance, decked out also, but in
more severe fashion, had about her something worn and artificial which
old actresses generally have; a kind of false youth, like a scent of
stale love. The third woman, in mourning, sat in a corner, with the air
of a desolate widow. Duroy thought that she had come to ask for charity.

However, no one was ushered into the room beyond, and more than twenty
minutes had elapsed.

Duroy was seized with an idea, and going back to the doorkeeper, said:
"Monsieur Walter made an appointment for me to call on him here at three
o'clock. At all events, see whether my friend, Monsieur Forestier, is
here."

He was at once ushered along a lengthy passage, which brought him to a
large room where four gentlemen were writing at a large green-covered
table.

Forestier standing before the fireplace was smoking a cigarette and
playing at cup and ball. He was very clever at this, and kept spiking
the huge ball of yellow boxwood on the wooden point. He was counting
"Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five."

"Twenty-six," said Duroy.

His friend raised his eyes without interrupting the regular movement of
his arm, saying: "Oh! here you are, then. Yesterday I landed the ball
fifty-seven times right off. There is only Saint-Potin who can beat me
at it among those here. Have you seen the governor? There is nothing
funnier than to see that old tubby Norbert playing at cup and ball. He
opens his mouth as if he was going to swallow the ball every time."

One of the others turned round towards him, saying: "I say, Forestier, I
know of one for sale, a beauty in West Indian wood; it is said to have
belonged to the Queen of Spain. They want sixty francs for it. Not
dear."

Forestier asked: "Where does it hang out?"

And as he had missed his thirty-seventh shot, he opened a cupboard in
which Duroy saw a score of magnificent cups and balls, arranged and
numbered like a collection of art objects. Then having put back the one
he had been using in its usual place, he repeated: "Where does this gem
hang out?"

The journalist replied: "At a box-office keeper's of the Vaudeville. I
will bring it you to-morrow, if you like."

"All right. If it is really a good one I will take it; one can never
have too many." Then turning to Duroy he added: "Come with me. I will
take you in to see the governor; otherwise you might be getting mouldy
here till seven in the evening."

They re-crossed the waiting-room, in which the same people were waiting
in the same order. As soon as Forestier appeared the young woman and the
old actress, rising quickly, came up to him. He took them aside one
after the other into the bay of the window, and although they took care
to talk in low tones, Duroy noticed that they were on familiar terms.

Then, having passed through two padded doors, they entered the manager's
room. The conference which had been going on for an hour or so was
nothing more than a game at ecarte with some of the gentlemen with the
flat brimmed hats whom Duroy had noticed the night before.

Monsieur Walter dealt and played with concentrated attention and crafty
movements, while his adversary threw down, picked up, and handled the
light bits of colored pasteboard with the swiftness, skill, and grace of
a practiced player. Norbert de Varenne, seated in the managerial
armchair, was writing an article. Jacques Rival, stretched at full
length on a couch, was smoking a cigar with his eyes closed.

The room smelled close, with that blended odor of leather-covered
furniture, stale tobacco, and printing-ink peculiar to editors' rooms
and familiar to all journalists. Upon the black wood table, inlaid with
brass, lay an incredible pile of papers, letters, cards, newspapers,
magazines, bills, and printed matter of every description.

Forestier shook hands with the punters standing behind the card players,
and without saying a word watched the progress of the game; then, as
soon as Daddy Walter had won, he said: "Here is my friend, Duroy."

The manager glanced sharply at the young fellow over the glasses of his
spectacles, and said:

"Have you brought my article? It would go very well to-day with the
Morel debate."

Duroy took the sheets of paper folded in four from his pocket, saying:
"Here it is sir."

The manager seemed pleased, and remarked, with a smile: "Very good, very
good. You are a man of your word. You must look through this for me,
Forestier."

But Forestier hastened to reply: "It is not worth while, Monsieur
Walter. I did it with him to give him a lesson in the tricks of the
trade. It is very well done."

And the manager, who was gathering up the cards dealt by a tall, thin
gentleman, a deputy belonging to the Left Center, remarked with
indifference: "All right, then."

Forestier, however, did not let him begin the new game, but stooping,
murmured in his ear: "You know you promised me to take on Duroy to
replace Marambot. Shall I engage him on the same terms?"

"Yes, certainly."

Taking his friend's arm, the journalist led him away, while Monsieur
Walter resumed the game.

Norbert de Varenne had not lifted his head; he did not appear to have
seen or recognized Duroy. Jacques Rival, on the contrary, had taken his
hand with the marked and demonstrative energy of a comrade who may be
reckoned upon in the case of any little difficulty.

They passed through the waiting-room again, and as everyone looked at
them, Forestier said to the youngest of the women, in a tone loud enough
to be heard by the rest: "The manager will see you directly. He is just
now engaged with two members of the Budget Committee."

Then he passed swiftly on, with an air of hurry and importance, as
though about to draft at once an article of the utmost weight.

As soon as they were back in the reporters' room Forestier at once took
up his cup and ball, and as he began to play with it again, said to
Duroy, breaking his sentences in order to count: "You will come here
every day at three o'clock, and I will tell you the places you are to go
to, either during the day or in the evening, or the next morning--one--I
will give you, first of all, a letter of introduction to the head of the
First Department of the Prefecture of Police--two--who will put you in
communication with one of his clerks. You will settle with him about all
the important information--three--from the Prefecture, official and
quasi-official information, you know. In all matters of detail you will
apply to Saint-Potin, who is up in the work--four--You can see him
by-and-by, or to-morrow. You must, above all, cultivate the knack of
dragging information out of men I send you to see--five--and to get in
everywhere, in spite of closed doors--six--You will have for this a
salary of two hundred francs a month, with two sous a line for the
paragraphs you glean--seven--and two sous a line for all articles
written by you to order on different subjects--eight."

Then he gave himself up entirely to his occupation, and went on slowly
counting: "Nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen." He missed the
fourteenth, and swore, "Damn that thirteen, it always brings me bad
luck. I shall die on the thirteenth of some month, I am certain."

One of his colleagues who had finished his work also took a cup and ball
from the cupboard. He was a little man, who looked like a boy, although
he was really five-and-thirty. Several other journalists having come in,
went one after the other and got out the toy belonging to each of them.
Soon there were six standing side by side, with their backs to the wall,
swinging into the air, with even and regular motion, the balls of red,
yellow, and black, according to the wood they were made of. And a match
having begun, the two who were still working got up to act as umpires.
Forestier won by eleven points. Then the little man, with the juvenile
aspect, who had lost, rang for the messenger, and gave the order, "Nine
bocks." And they began to play again pending the arrival of these
refreshments.

Duroy drank a glass of beer with his new comrades, and then said to his
friend: "What am I to do now?"

"I have nothing for you to-day. You can go if you want to."

"And our--our--article, will it go in to-night?"

"Yes, but do not bother yourself about it; I will correct the proofs.
Write the continuation for to-morrow, and come here at three o'clock,
the same as to-day."

Duroy having shaken hands with everyone, without even knowing their
names, went down the magnificent staircase with a light heart and high
spirits.




IV


George Duroy slept badly, so excited was he by the wish to see his
article in print. He was up as soon as it was daylight, and was prowling
about the streets long before the hour at which the porters from the
newspaper offices run with their papers from kiosque to kiosque. He went
on to the Saint Lazare terminus, knowing that the _Vie Francaise_ would
be delivered there before it reached his own district. As he was still
too early, he wandered up and down on the footpath.

He witnessed the arrival of the newspaper vendor who opened her glass
shop, and then saw a man bearing on his head a pile of papers. He rushed
forward. There were the _Figaro_, the _Gil Blas_, the _Gaulois_, the
_Evenement_, and two or three morning journals, but the _Vie Francaise_
was not among them. Fear seized him. Suppose the "Recollections of a
Chasseur d'Afrique" had been kept over for the next day, or that by
chance they had not at the last moment seemed suitable to Daddy Walter.

Turning back to the kiosque, he saw that the paper was on sale without
his having seen it brought there. He darted forward, unfolded it, after
having thrown down the three sous, and ran through the headings of the
articles on the first page. Nothing. His heart began to beat, and he
experienced strong emotion on reading at the foot of a column in large
letters, "George Duroy." It was in; what happiness!

He began to walk along unconsciously, the paper in his hand and his hat
on one side of his head, with a longing to stop the passers-by in order
to say to them: "Buy this, buy this, there is an article by me in it."
He would have liked to have bellowed with all the power of his lungs,
like some vendors of papers at night on the boulevards, "Read the _Vie
Francaise_; read George Duroy's article, 'Recollections of a Chasseur
d'Afrique.'" And suddenly he felt a wish to read this article himself,
read it in a public place, a _cafe_, in sight of all. He looked about
for some establishment already filled with customers. He had to walk in
search of one for some time. He sat down at last in front of a kind of
wine shop, where several customers were already installed, and asked for
a glass of rum, as he would have asked for one of absinthe, without
thinking of the time. Then he cried: "Waiter, bring me the _Vie
Francaise_."

A man in a white apron stepped up, saying: "We have not got it, sir; we
only take in the _Rappel_, the _Siecle_, the _Lanierne_, and the _Petit
Parisien_."

"What a den!" exclaimed Duroy, in a tone of anger and disgust. "Here, go
and buy it for me."

The waiter hastened to do so, and brought back the paper. Duroy began to
read his article, and several times said aloud: "Very good, very well
put," to attract the attention of his neighbors, and inspire them with
the wish to know what there was in this sheet. Then, on going away, he
left it on the table. The master of the place, noticing this, called him
back, saying: "Sir, sir, you are forgetting your paper."

And Duroy replied: "I will leave it to you. I have finished with it.
There is a very interesting article in it this morning."

He did not indicate the article, but he noticed as he went away one of
his neighbors take the _Vie Francaise_ up from the table on which he had
left it.

He thought: "What shall I do now?" And he decided to go to his office,
take his month's salary, and tender his resignation. He felt a thrill of
anticipatory pleasure at the thought of the faces that would be pulled
up by the chief of his room and his colleagues. The notion of the
bewilderment of the chief above all charmed him.

He walked slowly, so as not to get there too early, the cashier's office
not opening before ten o'clock.

His office was a large, gloomy room, in which gas had to be kept burning
almost all day long in winter. It looked into a narrow court-yard, with
other offices on the further side of it. There were eight clerks there,
besides a sub-chief hidden behind a screen in one corner.

Duroy first went to get the hundred and eighteen francs twenty-five
centimes enclosed in a yellow envelope, and placed in the drawer of the
clerk entrusted with such payments, and then, with a conquering air,
entered the large room in which he had already spent so many days.

As soon as he came in the sub-chief, Monsieur Potel, called out to him:
"Ah! it is you, Monsieur Duroy? The chief has already asked for you
several times. You know that he will not allow anyone to plead illness
two days running without a doctor's certificate."

Duroy, who was standing in the middle of the room preparing his
sensational effect, replied in a loud voice:


"I don't care a damn whether he does or not."

There was a movement of stupefaction among the clerks, and Monsieur
Potel's features showed affrightedly over the screen which shut him up
as in a box. He barricaded himself behind it for fear of draughts, for
he was rheumatic, but had pierced a couple of holes through the paper to
keep an eye on his staff. A pin might have been heard to fall. At length
the sub-chief said, hesitatingly: "You said?"

"I said that I don't care a damn about it. I have only called to-day to
tender my resignation. I am engaged on the staff of the _Vie Francaise_
at five hundred francs a month, and extra pay for all I write. Indeed, I
made my _debut_ this morning."

He had promised himself to spin out his enjoyment, but had not been able
to resist the temptation of letting it all out at once.

The effect, too, was overwhelming. No one stirred.

Duroy went on: "I will go and inform Monsieur Perthuis, and then come
and wish you good-bye."

And he went out in search of the chief, who exclaimed, on seeing him:
"Ah, here you are. You know that I won't have--"

His late subordinate cut him short with: "It's not worth while yelling
like that."

Monsieur Perthuis, a stout man, as red as a turkey cock, was choked with
bewilderment.

Duroy continued: "I have had enough of this crib. I made my _debut_ this
morning in journalism, where I am assured of a very good position. I
have the honor to bid you good-day." And he went out. He was avenged.

As he promised, he went and shook hands with his old colleagues, who
scarcely dared to speak to him, for fear of compromising themselves, for
they had overheard his conversation with the chief, the door having
remained open.

He found himself in the street again, with his salary in his pocket. He
stood himself a substantial breakfast at a good but cheap restaurant he
was acquainted with, and having again purchased the _Vie Francaise_, and
left it on the table, went into several shops, where he bought some
trifles, solely for the sake of ordering them to be sent home, and
giving his name: "George Duroy," with the addition, "I am the editor of
the _Vie Francaise_."

Then he gave the name of the street and the number, taking care to add:
"Leave it with the doorkeeper."

As he had still some time to spare he went into the shop of a
lithographer, who executed visiting cards at a moment's notice before
the eyes of passers-by, and had a hundred, bearing his new occupation
under his name, printed off while he waited.

Then he went to the office of the paper.

Forestier received him loftily, as one receives a subordinate. "Ah! here
you are. Good. I have several things for you to attend to. Just wait ten
minutes. I will just finish what I am about."

And he went on with a letter he was writing.

At the other end of the large table a fat, bald little man, with a very
pale, puffy face, and a white and shining head, was writing, with his
nose on the paper owing to extreme shortsightedness. Forestier said to
him: "I say, Saint-Potin, when are you going to interview those
people?"

"At four o'clock."

"Will you take young Duroy here with you, and let him into the way of
doing it?"

"All right."

Then turning to his friend, Forestier added: "Have you brought the
continuation of the Algerian article? The opening this morning was very
successful."

Duroy, taken aback, stammered: "No. I thought I should have time this
afternoon. I had heaps of things to do. I was not able."

The other shrugged his shoulders with a dissatisfied air. "If you are
not more exact than that you will spoil your future. Daddy Walter was
reckoning on your copy. I will tell him it will be ready to-morrow. If
you think you are to be paid for doing nothing you are mistaken."

Then, after a short silence, he added: "One must strike the iron while
it is hot, or the deuce is in it."

Saint-Potin rose, saying: "I am ready."

Then Forestier, leaning back in his chair, assumed a serious attitude in
order to give his instructions, and turning to Duroy, said: "This is
what it is. Within the last two days the Chinese General, Li Theng Fao,
has arrived at the Hotel Continental, and the Rajah Taposahib Ramaderao
Pali at the Hotel Bristol. You will go and interview them." Turning to
Saint-Potin, he continued: "Don't forget the main points I told you of.
Ask the General and the Rajah their opinion upon the action of England
in the East, their ideas upon her system of colonization and domination,
and their hopes respecting the intervention of Europe, and especially of
France." He was silent for a moment, and then added in a theatrical
aside: "It will be most interesting to our readers to learn at the same
time what is thought in China and India upon these matters which so
forcibly occupy public attention at this moment." He continued, for the
benefit of Duroy: "Watch how Saint-Potin sets to work; he is a capital
reporter; and try to learn the trick of pumping a man in five minutes."

Then he gravely resumed his writing, with the evident intention of
defining their relative positions, and putting his old comrade and
present colleague in his proper place.

As soon as they had crossed the threshold Saint-Potin began to laugh,
and said to Duroy: "There's a fluffer for you. He tried to fluff even
us. One would really think he took us for his readers."

They reached the boulevard, and the reporter observed: "Will you have a
drink?"

"Certainly. It is awfully hot."

They turned into a _cafe_ and ordered cooling drinks. Saint-Potin began
to talk. He talked about the paper and everyone connected with it with
an abundance of astonishing details.

"The governor? A regular Jew? And you know, nothing can alter a Jew.
What a breed!" And he instanced some astounding traits of avariciousness
peculiar to the children of Israel, economies of ten centimes, petty
bargaining, shameful reductions asked for and obtained, all the ways of
a usurer and pawnbroker.

"And yet with all this, a good fellow who believes in nothing and does
everyone. His paper, which is Governmental, Catholic, Liberal,
Republican, Orleanist, pay your money and take your choice, was only
started to help him in his speculations on the Bourse, and bolster up
his other schemes. At that game he is very clever, and nets millions
through companies without four sous of genuine capital."

He went on, addressing Duroy as "My dear fellow."

"And he says things worthy of Balzac, the old shark. Fancy, the other
day I was in his room with that old tub Norbert, and that Don Quixote
Rival, when Montelin, our business manager, came in with his morocco
bill-case, that bill-case that everyone in Paris knows, under his arm.
Walter raised his head and asked: 'What news?' Montelin answered simply:
'I have just paid the sixteen thousand francs we owed the paper maker.'
The governor gave a jump, an astonishing jump. 'What do you mean?' said
he. 'I have just paid Monsieur Privas,' replied Montelin. 'But you are
mad.' 'Why?' 'Why--why--why--' he took off his spectacles and wiped
them. Then he smiled with that queer smile that flits across his fat
cheeks whenever he is going to say something deep or smart, and went on
in a mocking and derisive tone, 'Why? Because we could have obtained a
reduction of from four to five thousand francs.' Montelin replied, in
astonishment: 'But, sir, all the accounts were correct, checked by me
and passed by yourself.' Then the governor, quite serious again,
observed: 'What a fool you are. Don't you know, Monsieur Montelin, that
one should always let one's debts mount up, in order to offer a
composition?'"

And Saint-Potin added, with a knowing shake of his head, "Eh! isn't that
worthy of Balzac?"

Duroy had not read Balzac, but he replied, "By Jove! yes."

Then the reporter spoke of Madame Walter, an old goose; of Norbert de
Varenne, an old failure; of Rival, a copy of Fervacques. Next he came
to Forestier. "As to him, he has been lucky in marrying his wife, that
is all."

Duroy asked: "What is his wife, really?"

Saint-Potin rubbed his hands. "Oh! a deep one, a smart woman. She was
the mistress of an old rake named Vaudrec, the Count de Vaudrec, who
gave her a dowry and married her off."

Duroy suddenly felt a cold shiver run through him, a tingling of the
nerves, a longing to smack this gabbler on the face. But he merely
interrupted him by asking:

"And your name is Saint-Potin?"

The other replied, simply enough:

"No, my name is Thomas. It is in the office that they have nicknamed me
Saint-Potin."

Duroy, as he paid for the drinks, observed: "But it seems to me that
time is getting on, and that we have two noble foreigners to call on."

Saint-Potin began to laugh. "You are still green. So you fancy I am
going to ask the Chinese and the Hindoo what they think of England? As
if I did not know better than themselves what they ought to think in
order to please the readers of the _Vie Francaise_. I have already
interviewed five hundred of these Chinese, Persians, Hindoos, Chilians,
Japanese, and others. They all reply the same, according to me. I have
only to take my article on the last comer and copy it word for word.
What has to be changed, though, is their appearance, their name, their
title, their age, and their suite. Oh! on that point it does not do to
make a mistake, for I should be snapped up sharp by the _Figaro_ or the
_Gaulois_. But on these matters the hall porters at the Hotel Bristol
and the Hotel Continental will put me right in five minutes. We will
smoke a cigar as we walk there. Five francs cab hire to charge to the
paper. That is how one sets about it, my dear fellow, when one is
practically inclined."

"It must be worth something decent to be a reporter under these
circumstances," said Duroy.

The journalist replied mysteriously: "Yes, but nothing pays so well as
paragraphs, on account of the veiled advertisements."

They had got up and were passing down the boulevards towards the
Madeleine. Saint-Potin suddenly observed to his companion: "You know if
you have anything else to do, I shall not need you in any way."

Duroy shook hands and left him. The notion of the article to be written
that evening worried him, and he began to think. He stored his mind with
ideas, reflections, opinions, and anecdotes as he walked along, and went
as far as the end of the Avenue des Champs Elysees, where only a few
strollers were to be seen, the heat having caused Paris to be evacuated.

Having dined at a wine shop near the Arc de Triomphe, he walked slowly
home along the outer boulevards and sat down at his table to work. But
as soon as he had the sheet of blank paper before his eyes, all the
materials that he had accumulated fled from his mind as though his brain
had evaporated. He tried to seize on fragments of his recollections and
to retain them, but they escaped him as fast as he laid hold of them, or
else they rushed on him altogether pell-mell, and he did not know how to
clothe and present them, nor which one to begin with.

After an hour of attempts and five sheets of paper blackened by opening
phrases that had no continuation, he said to himself: "I am not yet
well enough up in the business. I must have another lesson." And all at
once the prospect of another morning's work with Madame Forestier, the
hope of another long and intimate _tete-a-tete_ so cordial and so
pleasant, made him quiver with desire. He went to bed in a hurry, almost
afraid now of setting to work again and succeeding all at once.

He did not get up the next day till somewhat late, putting off and
tasting in advance the pleasure of this visit.

It was past ten when he rang his friend's bell.

The man-servant replied: "Master is engaged at his work."

Duroy had not thought that the husband might be at home. He insisted,
however, saying: "Tell him that I have called on a matter requiring
immediate attention."

After waiting five minutes he was shown into the study in which he had
passed such a pleasant morning. In the chair he had occupied Forestier
was now seated writing, in a dressing-gown and slippers and with a
little Scotch bonnet on his head, while his wife in the same white gown
leant against the mantelpiece and dictated, cigarette in mouth.

Duroy, halting on the threshold, murmured: "I really beg your pardon; I
am afraid I am disturbing you."

His friend, turning his face towards him--an angry face, too--growled:
"What is it you want now? Be quick; we are pressed for time."

The intruder, taken back, stammered: "It is nothing; I beg your
pardon."

But Forestier, growing angry, exclaimed: "Come, hang it all, don't waste
time about it; you have not forced your way in just for the sake of
wishing us good-morning, I suppose?"

Then Duroy, greatly perturbed, made up his mind. "No--you see--the fact
is--I can't quite manage my article--and you were--so--so kind last
time--that I hoped--that I ventured to come--"

Forestier cut him short. "You have a pretty cheek. So you think I am
going to do your work, and that all you have to do is to call on the
cashier at the end of the month to draw your screw? No, that is too
good."

The young woman went on smoking without saying a word, smiling with a
vague smile, which seemed like an amiable mask, concealing the irony of
her thoughts.

Duroy, colored up, stammered: "Excuse me--I fancied--I thought--" then
suddenly, and in a clear voice, he went on: "I beg your pardon a
thousand times, Madame, while again thanking you most sincerely for the
charming article you produced for me yesterday." He bowed, remarked to
Charles: "I shall be at the office at three," and went out.

He walked home rapidly, grumbling: "Well, I will do it all alone, and
they shall see--"

Scarcely had he got in than, excited by anger, he began to write. He
continued the adventure began by Madame Forestier, heaping up details of
catch-penny romance, surprising incidents, and inflated descriptions,
with the style of a schoolboy and the phraseology of the barrack-room.
Within an hour he had finished an article which was a chaos of nonsense,
and took it with every assurance to the _Vie Francaise_.

The first person he met was Saint-Potin, who, grasping his hand with the
energy of an accomplice, said: "You have read my interview with the
Chinese and the Hindoo? Isn't it funny? It has amused everyone. And I
did not even get a glimpse of them."

Duroy, who had not read anything, at once took up the paper and ran his
eye over a long article headed: "India and China," while the reporter
pointed out the most interesting passages.

Forestier came in puffing, in a hurry, with a busy air, saying:

"Good; I want both of you."

And he mentioned a number of items of political information that would
have to be obtained that very afternoon.

Duroy held out his article.

"Here is the continuation about Algeria."

"Very good; hand it over; and I will give it to the governor."

That was all.

Saint-Potin led away his new colleague, and when they were in the
passage, he said to him: "Have you seen the cashier?"

"No; why?"

"Why? To draw your money. You see you should always draw a month in
advance. One never knows what may happen."

"But--I ask for nothing better."

"I will introduce you to the cashier. He will make no difficulty about
it. They pay up well here."

Duroy went and drew his two hundred francs, with twenty-eight more for
his article of the day before, which, added to what remained of his
salary from the railway company, gave him three hundred and forty
francs in his pocket. He had never owned such a sum, and thought himself
possessed of wealth for an indefinite period.

Saint-Potin then took him to have a gossip in the offices of four or
five rival papers, hoping that the news he was entrusted to obtain had
already been gleaned by others, and that he should be able to draw it
out of them--thanks to the flow and artfulness of his conversation.

When evening had come, Duroy, who had nothing more to do, thought of
going again to the Folies Bergeres, and putting a bold face on, he went
up to the box office.

"I am George Duroy, on the staff of the _Vie Francaise_. I came here the
other day with Monsieur Forestier, who promised me to see about my being
put on the free list; I do not know whether he has thought of it."

The list was referred to. His name was not entered.

However, the box office-keeper, a very affable man, at once said: "Pray,
go in all the same, sir, and write yourself to the manager, who, I am
sure, will pay attention to your letter."

He went in and almost immediately met Rachel, the woman he had gone off
with the first evening. She came up to him, saying: "Good evening,
ducky. Are you quite well?"

"Very well, thanks--and you?"

"I am all right. Do you know, I have dreamed of you twice since last
time?"

Duroy smiled, feeling flattered. "Ah! and what does that mean?"

"It means that you pleased me, you old dear, and that we will begin
again whenever you please."

"To-day, if you like."

"Yes, I am quite willing."

"Good, but--" He hesitated, a little ashamed of what he was going to do.
"The fact is that this time I have not a penny; I have just come from
the club, where I have dropped everything."

She looked him full in the eyes, scenting a lie with the instinct and
habit of a girl accustomed to the tricks and bargainings of men, and
remarked: "Bosh! That is not a nice sort of thing to try on me."

He smiled in an embarrassed way. "If you will take ten francs, it is all
I have left."

She murmured, with the disinterestedness of a courtesan gratifying a
fancy: "What you please, my lady; I only want you."

And lifting her charming eyes towards the young man's moustache, she
took his arm and leant lovingly upon it.

"Let us go and have a grenadine first of all," she remarked. "And then
we will take a stroll together. I should like to go to the opera like
this, with you, to show you off. And we will go home early, eh?"

       *       *       *       *       *

He lay late at this girl's place. It was broad day when he left, and the
notion occurred to him to buy the _Vie Francaise_. He opened the paper
with feverish hand. His article was not there, and he stood on the
footpath, anxiously running his eye down the printed columns with the
hope of at length finding what he was in search of. A weight suddenly
oppressed his heart, for after the fatigue of a night of love, this
vexation came upon him with the weight of a disaster.

He reached home and went to sleep in his clothes on the bed.

Entering the office some hours later, he went on to see Monsieur Walter.

"I was surprised at not seeing my second article on Algeria in the paper
this morning, sir," said he.

The manager raised his head, and replied in a dry tone: "I gave it to
your friend Forestier, and asked him to read it through. He did not
think it up to the mark; you must rewrite it."

Duroy, in a rage, went out without saying a word, and abruptly entering
his old comrade's room, said:

"Why didn't you let my article go in this morning?"

The journalist was smoking a cigarette with his back almost on the seat
of his armchair and his feet on the table, his heels soiling an article
already commenced. He said slowly, in a bored and distant voice, as
though speaking from the depths of a hole: "The governor thought it
poor, and told me to give it back to you to do over again. There it is."
And he pointed out the slips flattened out under a paperweight.

Duroy, abashed, could find nothing to say in reply, and as he was
putting his prose into his pocket, Forestier went on: "To-day you must
first of all go to the Prefecture." And he proceeded to give a list of
business errands and items of news to be attended to.

Duroy went off without having been able to find the cutting remark he
wanted to. He brought back his article the next day. It was returned to
him again. Having rewritten it a third time, and finding it still
refused, he understood that he was trying to go ahead too fast, and
that Forestier's hand alone could help him on his way. He did not
therefore say anything more about the "Recollections of a Chasseur
d'Afrique," promising himself to be supple and cunning since it was
needful, and while awaiting something better to zealously discharge his
duties as a reporter.


He learned to know the way behind the scenes in theatrical and political
life; the waiting-rooms of statesmen and the lobby of the Chamber of
Deputies; the important countenances of permanent secretaries, and the
grim looks of sleepy ushers. He had continual relations with ministers,
doorkeepers, generals, police agents, princes, bullies, courtesans,
ambassadors, bishops, panders, adventurers, men of fashion,
card-sharpers, cab drivers, waiters, and many others, having become the
interested yet indifferent friend of all these; confounding them
together in his estimation, measuring them with the same measure,
judging them with the same eye, though having to see them every day at
every hour, without any transition, and to speak with them all on the

same business of his own. He compared himself to a man who had to drink
off samples of every kind of wine one after the other, and who would
soon be unable to tell Chateau Margaux from Argenteuil.

He became in a short time a remarkable reporter, certain of his
information, artful, swift, subtle, a real find for the paper, as was
observed by Daddy Walter, who knew what newspaper men were. However, as
he got only centimes a line in addition to his monthly screw of two
hundred francs, and as life on the boulevards and in _cafes_ and
restaurants is costly, he never had a halfpenny, and was disgusted with
his poverty. There is some knack to be got hold of, he thought, seeing
some of his fellows with their pockets full of money without ever being
able to understand what secret methods they could make use of to procure
this abundance. He enviously suspected unknown and suspicious
transactions, services rendered, a whole system of contraband accepted
and agreed to. But it was necessary that he should penetrate the
mystery, enter into the tacit partnership, make himself one with the
comrades who were sharing without him.

And he often thought of an evening, as he watched the trains go by from
his window, of the steps he ought to take.




V


Two months had gone by, September was at hand, and the rapid fortune
which Duroy had hoped for seemed to him slow in coming. He was, above
all, uneasy at the mediocrity of his position, and did not see by what
path he could scale the heights on the summit of which one finds
respect, power, and money. He felt shut up in the mediocre calling of a
reporter, so walled in as to be unable to get out of it. He was
appreciated, but estimated in accordance with his position. Even
Forestier, to whom he rendered a thousand services, no longer invited
him to dinner, and treated him in every way as an inferior, though still
accosting him as a friend.

From time to time, it is true, Duroy, seizing an opportunity, got in a
short article, and having acquired through his paragraphs a mastery over
his pen, and a tact which was lacking to him when he wrote his second
article on Algeria, no longer ran any risk of having his descriptive
efforts refused. But from this to writing leaders according to his
fancy, or dealing with political questions with authority, there was as
great a difference as driving in the Bois de Boulogne as a coachman, and
as the owner of an equipage. That which humiliated him above everything
was to see the door of society closed to him, to have no equal relations
with it, not to be able to penetrate into the intimacy of its women,
although several well-known actresses had occasionally received him with
an interested familiarity.

He knew, moreover, from experience that all the sex, ladies or
actresses, felt a singular attraction towards him, an instantaneous
sympathy, and he experienced the impatience of a hobbled horse at not
knowing those whom his future may depend on.

He had often thought of calling on Madame Forestier, but the
recollection of their last meeting checked and humiliated him; and
besides, he was awaiting an invitation to do so from her husband. Then
the recollection of Madame de Marelle occurred to him, and recalling
that she had asked him to come and see her, he called one afternoon when
he had nothing to do.

"I am always at home till three o'clock," she had said.

He rang at the bell of her residence, a fourth floor in the Rue de
Verneuil, at half-past two.

At the sound of the bell a servant opened the door, an untidy girl, who
tied her cap strings as she replied: "Yes, Madame is at home, but I
don't know whether she is up."

And she pushed open the drawing-room door, which was ajar. Duroy went
in. The room was fairly large, scantily furnished and neglected looking.
The chairs, worn and old, were arranged along the walls, as placed by
the servant, for there was nothing to reveal the tasty care of the woman
who loves her home. Four indifferent pictures, representing a boat on a
stream, a ship at sea, a mill on a plain, and a wood-cutter in a wood,
hung in the center of the four walls by cords of unequal length, and all
four on one side. It could be divined that they had been dangling thus
askew ever so long before indifferent eyes.


Duroy sat down immediately. He waited a long time. Then a door opened,
and Madame de Marelle hastened in, wearing a Japanese morning gown of
rose-colored silk embroidered with yellow landscapes, blue flowers, and
white birds.

"Fancy! I was still in bed!" she exclaimed. "How good of you to come and
see me! I had made up my mind that you had forgotten me."

She held out both her hands with a delighted air, and Duroy, whom the
commonplace appearance of the room had put at his ease, kissed one, as

he had seen Norbert de Varenne do.

She begged him to sit down, and then scanning him from head to foot,
said: "How you have altered! You have improved in looks. Paris has done
you good. Come, tell me the news."

And they began to gossip at once, as if they had been old acquaintances,
feeling an instantaneous familiarity spring up between them; feeling one
of those mutual currents of confidence, intimacy, and affection, which,
in five minutes, make two beings of the same breed and character good
friends.

Suddenly, Madame de Marelle exclaimed in astonishment: "It is funny how
I get on with you. It seems to me as though I had known you for ten
years. We shall become good friends, no doubt. Would you like it?"

He answered: "Certainly," with a smile which said still more.

He thought her very tempting in her soft and bright-hued gown, less
refined and delicate than the other in her white one, but more exciting
and spicy. When he was beside Madame Forestier, with her continual and
gracious smile which attracted and checked at the same time; which
seemed to say: "You please me," and also "Take care," and of which the
real meaning was never clear, he felt above all the wish to lie down at
her feet, or to kiss the lace bordering of her bodice, and slowly inhale
the warm and perfumed atmosphere that must issue from it. With Madame de
Marelle he felt within him a more definite, a more brutal desire--a
desire that made his fingers quiver in presence of the rounded outlines
of the light silk.

She went on talking, scattering in each phrase that ready wit of which
she had acquired the habit just as a workman acquires the knack needed
to accomplish a task reputed difficult, and at which other folk are
astonished. He listened, thinking: "All this is worth remembering. A man
could write charming articles of Paris gossip by getting her to chat
over the events of the day."

Some one tapped softly, very softly, at the door by which she had
entered, and she called out: "You can come in, pet."

Her little girl made her appearance, walked straight up to Duroy, and
held out her hand to him. The astonished mother murmured: "But this is a
complete conquest. I no longer recognize her."

The young fellow, having kissed the child, made her sit down beside him,
and with a serious manner asked her pleasant questions as to what she
had been doing since they last met. She replied, in her little
flute-like voice, with her grave and grown-up air.

The clock struck three, and the journalist arose.


"Come often," said Madame de Marelle, "and we will chat as we have done
to-day; it will always give me pleasure. But how is it one no longer
sees you at the Forestiers?" He replied: "Oh! for no reason. I have been
very busy. I hope to meet you there again one of these days."

He went out, his heart full of hope, though without knowing why.

He did not speak to Forestier of this visit. But he retained the
recollection of it the following days, and more than the recollection--a
sensation of the unreal yet persistent presence of this woman. It seemed
to him that he had carried away something of her, the reflection of her
form in his eyes, and the smack of her moral self in his heart. He
remained under the haunted influence of her image, as it happens
sometimes when we have passed pleasant hours with some one.

He paid a second visit a few days later.

The maid ushered him into the drawing-room, and Laurine at once
appeared. She held out no longer her hand, but her forehead, and said:
"Mamma has told me to request you to wait for her. She will be a
quarter-of-an-hour, because she is not dressed yet. I will keep you
company."

Duroy, who was amused by the ceremonious manners of the little girl,
replied: "Certainly, Mademoiselle. I shall be delighted to pass a
quarter-of-an-hour with you, but I warn you that for my part I am not at
all serious, and that I play all day long, so I suggest a game at
touch."

The girl was astonished; then she smiled as a woman would have done at
this idea, which shocked her a little as well as astonished her, and
murmured: "Rooms are not meant to be played in."

He said: "It is all the same to me. I play everywhere. Come, catch me."

And he began to go round the table, exciting her to pursue him, while
she came after him, smiling with a species of polite condescension, and
sometimes extending her hand to touch him, but without ever giving way
so far as to run. He stopped, stooped down, and when she drew near with
her little hesitating steps, sprung up in the air like a
jack-in-the-box, and then bounded with a single stride to the other end
of the dining-room. She thought it funny, ended by laughing, and
becoming aroused, began to trot after him, giving little gleeful yet
timid cries when she thought she had him. He shifted the chairs and used
them as obstacles, forcing her to go round and round one of them for a
minute at a time, and then leaving that one to seize upon another.
Laurine ran now, giving herself wholly up to the charm of this new game,
and with flushed face, rushed forward with the bound of a delighted
child at each of the flights, the tricks, the feints of her companion.
Suddenly, just as she thought she had got him, he seized her in his
arms, and lifting her to the ceiling, exclaimed: "Touch."

The delighted girl wriggled her legs to escape, and laughed with all her
heart.

Madame de Marelle came in at that moment, and was amazed. "What,
Laurine, Laurine, playing! You are a sorcerer, sir."

He put down the little girl, kissed her mother's hand, and they sat down
with the child between them. They began to chat, but Laurine, usually so
silent, kept talking all the while, and had to be sent to her room. She
obeyed without a word, but with tears in her eyes.

As soon as they were alone, Madame de Marelle lowered her voice. "You do
not know, but I have a grand scheme, and I have thought of you. This is
it. As I dine every week at the Forestiers, I return their hospitality
from time to time at some restaurant. I do not like to entertain company
at home, my household is not arranged for that, and besides, I do not
understand anything about domestic affairs, anything about the kitchen,
anything at all. I like to live anyhow. So I entertain them now and then
at a restaurant, but it is not very lively when there are only three,
and my own acquaintances scarcely go well with them. I tell you all this
in order to explain a somewhat irregular invitation. You understand, do
you not, that I want you to make one of us on Saturday at the Cafe
Riche, at half-past seven. You know the place?"

He accepted with pleasure, and she went on: "There will be only us four.
These little outings are very amusing to us women who are not accustomed
to them."

She was wearing a dark brown dress, which showed off the lines of her
waist, her hips, her bosom, and her arm in a coquettishly provocative
way. Duroy felt confusedly astonished at the lack of harmony between
this carefully refined elegance and her evident carelessness as regarded
her dwelling. All that clothed her body, all that closely and directly
touched her flesh was fine and delicate, but that which surrounded her
did not matter to her.

He left her, retaining, as before, the sense of her continued presence
in species of hallucination of the senses. And he awaited the day of the
dinner with growing impatience.

Having hired, for the second time, a dress suit--his funds not yet
allowing him to buy one--he arrived first at the rendezvous, a few
minutes before the time. He was ushered up to the second story, and into
a small private dining-room hung with red and white, its single window
opening into the boulevard. A square table, laid for four, displaying
its white cloth, so shining that it seemed to be varnished, and the
glasses and the silver glittered brightly in the light of the twelve
candles of two tall candelabra. Without was a broad patch of light
green, due to the leaves of a tree lit up by the bright light from the
dining-rooms.

Duroy sat down in a low armchair, upholstered in red to match the
hangings on the walls. The worn springs yielding beneath him caused him
to feel as though sinking into a hole. He heard throughout the huge
house a confused murmur, the murmur of a large restaurant, made up of
the clattering of glass and silver, the hurried steps of the waiters,
deadened by the carpets in the passages, and the opening of doors
letting out the sound of voices from the numerous private rooms in which
people were dining. Forestier came in and shook hands with him, with a
cordial familiarity which he never displayed at the offices of the _Vie
Francaise_.

"The ladies are coming together," said he; "these little dinners are
very pleasant."

Then he glanced at the table, turned a gas jet that was feebly burning
completely off, closed one sash of the window on account of the draught,
and chose a sheltered place for himself, with a remark: "I must be
careful; I have been better for a month, and now I am queer again these
last few days. I must have caught cold on Tuesday, coming out of the
theater."

The door was opened, and, followed by a waiter, the two ladies appeared,
veiled, muffled, reserved, with that charmingly mysterious bearing they
assume in such places, where the surroundings are suspicious.

As Duroy bowed to Madame Forestier she scolded him for not having come
to see her again; then she added with a smile, in the direction of her
friend: "I know what it is; you prefer Madame de Marelle, you can find
time to visit her."

They sat down to table, and the waiter having handed the wine card to
Forestier, Madame de Marelle exclaimed: "Give these gentlemen whatever
they like, but for us iced champagne, the best, sweet champagne,
mind--nothing else." And the man having withdrawn, she added with an
excited laugh: "I am going to get tipsy this evening; we will have a
spree--a regular spree."

Forestier, who did not seem to have heard, said: "Would you mind the
window being closed? My chest has been rather queer the last few days."

"No, not at all."

He pushed too the sash left open, and returned to his place with a
reassured and tranquil countenance. His wife said nothing. Seemingly
lost in thought, and with her eyes lowered towards the table, she smiled

at the glasses with that vague smile which seemed always to promise and
never to grant.

The Ostend oysters were brought in, tiny and plump like little ears
enclosed in shells, and melting between the tongue and the palate like
salt bon-bons. Then, after the soup, was served a trout as rose-tinted
as a young girl, and the guests began to talk.

They spoke at first of a current scandal; the story of a lady of
position, surprised by one of her husband's friends supping in a private
room with a foreign prince. Forestier laughed a great deal at the
adventure; the two ladies declared that the indiscreet gossip was
nothing less than a blackguard and a coward. Duroy was of their opinion,
and loudly proclaimed that it is the duty of a man in these matters,
whether he be actor, confidant, or simple spectator, to be silent as the
grave. He added: "How full life would be of pleasant things if we could
reckon upon the absolute discretion of one another. That which often,
almost always, checks women is the fear of the secret being revealed.
Come, is it not true?" he continued. "How many are there who would yield
to a sudden desire, the caprice of an hour, a passing fancy, did they
not fear to pay for a short-lived and fleeting pleasure by an
irremediable scandal and painful tears?"

He spoke with catching conviction, as though pleading a cause, his own
cause, as though he had said: "It is not with me that one would have to
dread such dangers. Try me and see."

They both looked at him approvingly, holding that he spoke rightly and
justly, confessing by their friendly silence that their flexible
morality as Parisians would not have held out long before the certainty
of secrecy. And Forestier, leaning back in his place on the divan, one
leg bent under him, and his napkin thrust into his waistcoat, suddenly
said with the satisfied laugh of a skeptic: "The deuce! yes, they would
all go in for it if they were certain of silence. Poor husbands!"

And they began to talk of love. Without admitting it to be eternal,
Duroy understood it as lasting, creating a bond, a tender friendship, a
confidence. The union of the senses was only a seal to the union of
hearts. But he was angry at the outrageous jealousies, melodramatic
scenes, and unpleasantness which almost always accompany ruptures.

When he ceased speaking, Madame de Marelle replied: "Yes, it is the only
pleasant thing in life, and we often spoil it by preposterous
unreasonableness."

Madame Forestier, who was toying with her knife, added: "Yes--yes--it is
pleasant to be loved."

And she seemed to be carrying her dream further, to be thinking things
that she dared not give words to.

As the first _entree_ was slow in coming, they sipped from time to time
a mouthful of champagne, and nibbled bits of crust. And the idea of
love, entering into them, slowly intoxicated their souls, as the bright
wine, rolling drop by drop down their throats, fired their blood and
perturbed their minds.

The waiter brought in some lamb cutlets, delicate and tender, upon a
thick bed of asparagus tips.

"Ah! this is good," exclaimed Forestier; and they ate slowly, savoring
the delicate meat and vegetables as smooth as cream.

Duroy resumed: "For my part, when I love a woman everything else in the
world disappears." He said this in a tone of conviction.

Madame Forestier murmured, with her let-me-alone air:

"There is no happiness comparable to that of the first hand-clasp, when
the one asks, 'Do you love me?' and the other replies, 'Yes.'"

Madame de Marelle, who had just tossed a fresh glass of champagne off at
a draught, said gayly, as she put down her glass: "For my part, I am not
so Platonic."

And all began to smile with kindling eyes at these words.

Forestier, stretched out in his seat on the divan, opened his arms,
rested them on the cushions, and said in a serious tone: "This frankness
does you honor, and proves that you are a practical woman. But may one
ask you what is the opinion of Monsieur de Marelle?"

She shrugged her shoulders slightly, with infinite and prolonged
disdain; and then in a decided tone remarked: "Monsieur de Marelle has
no opinions on this point. He only has--abstentions."

And the conversation, descending from the elevated theories, concerning
love, strayed into the flowery garden of polished blackguardism. It was
the moment of clever double meanings; veils raised by words, as
petticoats are lifted by the wind; tricks of language; clever disguised
audacities; sentences which reveal nude images in covered phrases; which
cause the vision of all that may not be said to flit rapidly before the
eye and the mind, and allow the well-bred people the enjoyment of a
kind of subtle and mysterious love, a species of impure mental contact,
due to the simultaneous evocation of secret, shameful, and longed-for
pleasures. The roast, consisting of partridges flanked by quails, had
been served; then a dish of green peas, and then a terrine of foie gras,
accompanied by a curly-leaved salad, filling a salad bowl as though with
green foam. They had partaken of all these things without tasting them,
without knowing, solely taken up by what they were talking of, plunged
as it were in a bath of love.

The two ladies were now going it strongly in their remarks. Madame de
Marelle, with a native audacity which resembled a direct provocation,
and Madame Forestier with a charming reserve, a modesty in her tone,
voice, smile, and bearing that underlined while seeming to soften the
bold remarks falling from her lips. Forestier, leaning quite back on the
cushions, laughed, drank and ate without leaving off, and sometimes
threw in a word so risque or so crude that the ladies, somewhat shocked
by its appearance, and for appearance sake, put on a little air of
embarrassment that lasted two or three seconds. When he had given vent
to something a little too coarse, he added: "You are going ahead nicely,
my children. If you go on like that you will end by making fools of
yourselves."

Dessert came, and then coffee; and the liquors poured a yet warmer dose
of commotion into the excited minds.

As she had announced on sitting down to table, Madame de Marelle was
intoxicated, and acknowledged it in the lively and graceful rabble of a
woman emphasizing, in order to amuse her guests, a very real
commencement of drunkenness.

Madame Forestier was silent now, perhaps out of prudence, and Duroy,
feeling himself too much excited not to be in danger of compromising
himself, maintained a prudent reserve.

Cigarettes were lit, and all at once Forestier began to cough. It was a
terrible fit, that seemed to tear his chest, and with red face and
forehead damp with perspiration, he choked behind his napkin. When the
fit was over he growled angrily: "These feeds are very bad for me; they
are ridiculous." All his good humor had vanished before his terror of
the illness that haunted his thoughts. "Let us go home," said he.

Madame de Marelle rang for the waiter, and asked for the bill. It was
brought almost immediately. She tried to read it, but the figures danced
before her eyes, and she passed it to Duroy, saying: "Here, pay for me;
I can't see, I am too tipsy."

And at the same time she threw him her purse. The bill amounted to one
hundred and thirty francs. Duroy checked it, and then handed over two
notes and received back the change, saying in a low tone: "What shall I
give the waiter?"

"What you like; I do not know."

He put five francs on the salver, and handed back the purse, saying:
"Shall I see you to your door?"

"Certainly. I am incapable of finding my way home."

They shook hands with the Forestiers, and Duroy found himself alone with
Madame de Marelle in a cab. He felt her close to him, so close, in this
dark box, suddenly lit up for a moment by the lamps on the sidewalk. He
felt through his sleeve the warmth of her shoulder, and he could find
nothing to say to her, absolutely nothing, his mind being paralyzed by
the imperative desire to seize her in his arms.

"If I dared to, what would she do?" he thought. The recollection of all
the things uttered during dinner emboldened him, but the fear of scandal
restrained him at the same time.

Nor did she say anything either, but remained motionless in her corner.
He would have thought that she was asleep if he had not seen her eyes
glitter every time that a ray of light entered the carriage.

"What was she thinking?" He felt that he must not speak, that a word, a
single word, breaking this silence would destroy his chance; yet courage
failed him, the courage needed for abrupt and brutal action. All at once
he felt her foot move. She had made a movement, a quick, nervous
movement of impatience, perhaps of appeal. This almost imperceptible
gesture caused a thrill to run through him from head to foot, and he
threw himself upon her, seeking her mouth with his lips, her form with
his hands.

But the cab having shortly stopped before the house in which she
resided, Duroy, surprised, had no time to seek passionate phrases to
thank her, and express his grateful love. However, stunned by what had
taken place, she did not rise, she did not stir. Then he was afraid that
the driver might suspect something, and got out first to help her to
alight.

At length she got out of the cab, staggering and without saying a word.
He rang the bell, and as the door opened, said, tremblingly: "When shall
I see you again?"

She murmured so softly that he scarcely heard it: "Come and lunch with
me to-morrow." And she disappeared in the entry, pushed to the heavy
door, which closed with a noise like that of a cannon. He gave the
driver five francs, and began to walk along with rapid and triumphant
steps, and heart overflowing with joy.

He had won at last--a married woman, a lady. How easy and unexpected it
had all been. He had fancied up till then that to assail and conquer one
of these so greatly longed-for beings, infinite pains, interminable
expectations, a skillful siege carried on by means of gallant
attentions, words of love, sighs, and gifts were needed. And, lo!
suddenly, at the faintest attack, the first whom he had encountered had
yielded to him so quickly that he was stupefied at it.

"She was tipsy," he thought; "to-morrow it will be another story. She
will meet me with tears." This notion disturbed him, but he added:
"Well, so much the worse. Now I have her, I mean to keep her."

He was somewhat agitated the next day as he ascended Madame de Marelle's
staircase. How would she receive him? And suppose she would not receive
him at all? Suppose she had forbidden them to admit him? Suppose she had
said--but, no, she could not have said anything without letting the
whole truth be guessed. So he was master of the situation.

The little servant opened the door. She wore her usual expression. He
felt reassured, as if he had anticipated her displaying a troubled
countenance, and asked: "Is your mistress quite well?"

She replied: "Oh! yes, sir, the same as usual," and showed him into the
drawing-room.

He went straight to the chimney-glass to ascertain the state of his hair
and his toilet, and was arranging his necktie before it, when he saw in
it the young woman watching him as she stood at the door leading from
her room. He pretended not to have noticed her, and the pair looked at
one another for a few moments in the glass, observing and watching
before finding themselves face to face. He turned round. She had not
moved, and seemed to be waiting. He darted forward, stammering: "My
darling! my darling!"


She opened her arms and fell upon his breast; then having lifted her
head towards him, their lips met in a long kiss.

He thought: "It is easier than I should have imagined. It is all going
on very well."

And their lips separating, he smiled without saying a word, while
striving to throw a world of love into his looks. She, too, smiled, with
that smile by which women show their desire, their consent, their wish
to yield themselves, and murmured: "We are alone. I have sent Laurine to
lunch with one of her young friends."

He sighed as he kissed her. "Thanks, I will worship you."

Then she took his arm, as if he had been her husband, to go to the sofa,
on which they sat down side by side. He wanted to start a clever and
attractive chat, but not being able to do so to his liking, stammered:
"Then you are not too angry with me?"

She put her hand on his mouth, saying "Be quiet."

They sat in silence, looking into one another's eyes, with burning
fingers interlaced.

"How I did long for you!" said he.

She repeated: "Be quiet."

They heard the servant arranging the table in the adjoining
dining-room, and he rose, saying: "I must not remain so close to you. I
shall lose my head."

The door opened, and the servant announced that lunch was ready. Duroy
gravely offered his arm.

They lunched face to face, looking at one another and constantly
smiling, solely taken up by themselves, and enveloped in the sweet
enchantment of a growing love. They ate, without knowing what. He felt a
foot, a little foot, straying under the table. He took it between his
own and kept it there, squeezing it with all his might. The servant came
and went, bringing and taking away the dishes with a careless air,
without seeming to notice anything.

When they had finished they returned to the drawing-room, and resumed
their place on the sofa, side by side. Little by little he pressed up
against her, striving to take her in his arms. But she calmly repulsed
him, saying: "Take care; someone may come in."

He murmured: "When can I see you quite alone, to tell you how I love
you?"

She leant over towards him and whispered: "I will come and pay you a
visit one of these days."

He felt himself redden. "You know--you know--my place is very small."

She smiled: "That does not matter. It is you I shall call to see, and
not your rooms."

Then he pressed her to know when she would come. She named a day in the
latter half of the week. He begged of her to advance the date in broken
sentences, playing with and squeezing her hands, with glittering eyes,
and flushed face, heated and torn by desire, that imperious desire which
follows _tete-a-tete_ repasts. She was amazed to see him implore her
with such ardor, and yielded a day from time to time. But he kept
repeating: "To-morrow, only say to-morrow."

She consented at length. "Yes, to-morrow; at five o'clock."

He gave a long sigh of joy, and they then chatted almost quietly with an
air of intimacy, as though they had known one another twenty years. The
sound of the door bell made them start, and with a bound they separated
to a distance. She murmured: "It must be Laurine."

The child made her appearance, stopped short in amazement, and then ran
to Duroy, clapping her hands with pleasure at seeing him, and
exclaiming: "Ah! pretty boy."

Madame de Marelle began to laugh. "What! Pretty boy! Laurine has
baptized you. It's a nice little nickname for you, and I will call you
Pretty-boy, too."

He had taken the little girl on his knee, and he had to play with her at
all the games he had taught her. He rose to take his leave at twenty
minutes to three to go to the office of the paper, and on the staircase,
through the half-closed door, he still whispered: "To-morrow, at five."

She answered "Yes," with a smile, and disappeared.

As soon as he had got through his day's work, he speculated how he
should arrange his room to receive his mistress, and hide as far as
possible the poverty of the place. He was struck by the idea of pinning

a lot of Japanese trifles on the walls, and he bought for five francs
quite a collection of little fans and screens, with which he hid the
most obvious of the marks on the wall paper. He pasted on the window
panes transparent pictures representing boats floating down rivers,
flocks of birds flying across rosy skies, multi-colored ladies on
balconies, and processions of little black men over plains covered with
snow. His room, just big enough to sleep and sit down in, soon looked
like the inside of a Chinese lantern. He thought the effect
satisfactory, and passed the evening in pasting on the ceiling birds
that he had cut from the colored sheets remaining over. Then he went to
bed, lulled by the whistle of the trains.

He went home early the next day, carrying a paper bag of cakes and a
bottle of Madeira, purchased at the grocer's. He had to go out again to
buy two plates and two glasses, and arranged this collation on his
dressing-table, the dirty wood of which was covered by a napkin, the jug
and basin being hidden away beneath it.

Then he waited.

She came at about a quarter-past five; and, attracted by the bright
colors of the pictures, exclaimed: "Dear me, yours is a nice place. But
there are a lot of people about on the staircase."

He had clasped her in his arms, and was eagerly kissing the hair between
her forehead and her bonnet through her veil.

An hour and a half later he escorted her back to the cab-stand in the
Rue de Rome. When she was in the carriage he murmured: "Tuesday at the
same time?"

She replied: "Tuesday at the same time." And as it had grown dark, she
drew his head into the carriage and kissed him on the lips. Then the
driver, having whipped up his beast, she exclaimed: "Good-bye,
Pretty-boy," and the old vehicle started at the weary trot of its old
white horse.

For three weeks Duroy received Madame de Marelle in this way every two
or three days, now in the evening and now in the morning. While he was
expecting her one afternoon, a loud uproar on the stairs drew him to the
door. A child was crying. A man's angry voice shouted: "What is that
little devil howling about now?" The yelling and exasperated voice of a
woman replied: "It is that dirty hussy who comes to see the
penny-a-liner upstairs; she has upset Nicholas on the landing. As if
dabs like that, who pay no attention to children on the staircase,
should be allowed here."

Duroy drew back, distracted, for he could hear the rapid rustling of
skirts and a hurried step ascending from the story just beneath him.
There was soon a knock at the door, which he had reclosed. He opened it,
and Madame de Marelle rushed into the room, terrified and breathless,
stammering: "Did you hear?"

He pretended to know nothing. "No; what?"

"How they have insulted me."

"Who? Who?"

"The blackguards who live down below."

"But, surely not; what does it all mean, tell me?"

She began to sob, without being able to utter a word. He had to take off
her bonnet, undo her dress, lay her on the bed, moisten her forehead
with a wet towel. She was choking, and then when her emotion was
somewhat abated, all her wrathful indignation broke out. She wanted him
to go down at once, to thrash them, to kill them.

He repeated: "But they are only work-people, low creatures. Just
remember that it would lead to a police court, that you might be
recognized, arrested, ruined. One cannot lower one's self to have
anything to do with such people."

She passed on to another idea. "What shall we do now? For my part, I
cannot come here again."

He replied: "It is very simple; I will move."

She murmured: "Yes, but that will take some time." Then all at once she
framed a plan, and reassured, added softly: "No, listen, I know what to
do; let me act, do not trouble yourself about anything. I will send you
a telegram to-morrow morning."

She smiled now, delighted with her plan, which she would not reveal, and
indulged in a thousand follies. She was very agitated, however, as she
went downstairs, leaning with all her weight on her lover's arm, her
legs trembled so beneath her. They did not meet anyone, though.

As he usually got up late, he was still in bed the next day, when, about
eleven o'clock, the telegraph messenger brought him the promised
telegram. He opened it and read:

"Meet me at five; 127, Rue de Constantinople. Rooms hired by Madame
Duroy.--Clo."

At five o'clock to the minute he entered the doorkeeper's lodge of a
large furnished house, and asked: "It is here that Madame Duroy has
taken rooms, is it not?"

"Yes, sir."

"Will you show me to them, if you please."

The man, doubtless used to delicate situations in which prudence is
necessary, looked him straight in the eyes, and then, selecting one of
the long range of keys, said: "You are Monsieur Duroy?"

"Yes, certainly."

The man opened the door of a small suite of rooms on the ground floor in
front of the lodge. The sitting-room, with a tolerably fresh wall-paper
of floral design, and a carpet so thin that the boards of the floor
could be felt through it, had mahogany furniture, upholstered in green
rep with a yellow pattern. The bedroom was so small that the bed
three-parts filled it. It occupied the further end, stretching from one
wall to the other--the large bed of a furnished lodging-house, shrouded
in heavy blue curtains also of rep, and covered with an eider-down quilt
of red silk stained with suspicious-looking spots.

Duroy, uneasy and displeased, thought: "This place will cost, Lord knows
how much. I shall have to borrow again. It is idiotic what she has
done."

The door opened, and Clotilde came in like a whirlwind, with
outstretched arms and rustling skirts. She was delighted. "Isn't it
nice, eh, isn't it nice? And on the ground floor, too; no stairs to go
up. One could get in and out of the windows without the doorkeeper
seeing one. How we will love one another here!"

He kissed her coldly, not daring to put the question that rose to his
lips. She had placed a large parcel on the little round table in the
middle of the room. She opened it, and took out a cake of soap, a bottle
of scent, a sponge, a box of hairpins, a buttonhook, and a small pair of
curling tongs to set right her fringe, which she got out of curl every
time. And she played at moving in, seeking a place for everything, and
derived great amusement from it.

She kept on chattering as she opened the drawers. "I must bring a little
linen, so as to be able to make a change if necessary. It will be very
convenient. If I get wet, for instance, while I am out, I can run in
here to dry myself. We shall each have one key, beside the one left with
the doorkeeper in case we forget it. I have taken the place for three
months, in your name, of course, since I could not give my own."

Then he said: "You will let me know when the rent is to be paid."

She replied, simply: "But it is paid, dear."

"Then I owe it to you."

"No, no, my dear; it does not concern you at all; this is a little fancy
of my own."

He seemed annoyed: "Oh, no, indeed; I can't allow that."

She came to him in a supplicating way, and placing her hands on his
shoulders, said: "I beg of you, George; it will give me so much pleasure
to feel that our little nest here is mine--all my own. You cannot be
annoyed at that. How can you? I wanted to contribute that much towards
our loves. Say you agree, Georgy; say you agree."

She implored him with looks, lips, the whole of her being. He held out,
refusing with an irritated air, and then he yielded, thinking that,
after all, it was fair. And when she had gone, he murmured, rubbing his
hands, and without seeking in the depths of his heart whence the opinion
came on that occasion: "She is very nice."

He received, a few days later, another telegram running thus: "My
husband returns to-night, after six weeks' inspection, so we shall have
a week off. What a bore, darling.--Clo."

Duroy felt astounded. He had really lost all idea of her being married.
But here was a man whose face he would have liked to see just once, in
order to know him. He patiently awaited the husband's departure, but he
passed two evenings at the Folies Bergere, which wound up with Rachel.

Then one morning came a fresh telegram: "To-day at five.--Clo."

They both arrived at the meeting-place before the time. She threw
herself into his arms with an outburst of passion, and kissed him all
over the face, and then said: "If you like, when we have loved one
another a great deal, you shall take me to dinner somewhere. I have kept

myself disengaged."

It was at the beginning of the month, and although his salary was long
since drawn in advance, and he lived from day to day upon money gleaned
on every side, Duroy happened to be in funds, and was pleased at the
opportunity of spending something upon her, so he replied: "Yes,
darling, wherever you like."

They started off, therefore, at about seven, and gained the outer
boulevards. She leaned closely against him, and whispered in his ear:
"If you only knew how pleased I am to walk out on your arm; how I love
to feel you beside me."

He said: "Would you like to go to Pere Lathuile's?"

"Oh, no, it is too swell. I should like something funny, out of the way!
a restaurant that shopmen and work-girls go to. I adore dining at a
country inn. Oh! if we only had been able to go into the country."

As he knew nothing of the kind in the neighborhood, they wandered along
the boulevard, and ended by going into a wine-shop where there was a
dining-room. She had seen through the window two bareheaded girls
seated at tables with two soldiers. Three cab-drivers were dining at the
further end of the long and narrow room, and an individual impossible to
classify under any calling was smoking, stretched on a chair, with his
legs stuck out in front of him, his hands in the waist-band of his
trousers, and his head thrown back over the top bar. His jacket was a
museum of stains, and in his swollen pockets could be noted the neck of
a bottle, a piece of bread, a parcel wrapped up in a newspaper, and a
dangling piece of string. He had thick, tangled, curly hair, gray with
scurf, and his cap was on the floor under his chair.

The entrance of Clotilde created a sensation, due to the elegance of her
toilet. The couples ceased whispering together, the three cab-drivers
left off arguing, and the man who was smoking, having taken his pipe
from his mouth and spat in front of him, turned his head slightly to
look.

Madame de Marelle murmured: "It is very nice; we shall be very
comfortable here. Another time I will dress like a work-girl." And she
sat down, without embarrassment or disgust, before the wooden table,
polished by the fat of dishes, washed by spilt liquors, and cleaned by a
wisp of the waiter's napkin. Duroy, somewhat ill at ease, and slightly
ashamed, sought a peg to hang his tall hat on. Not finding one, he put
it on a chair.

They had a ragout, a slice of melon, and a salad. Clotilde repeated: "I
delight in this. I have low tastes. I like this better than the Cafe
Anglais." Then she added: "If you want to give me complete enjoyment,
you will take me to a dancing place. I know a very funny one close by
called the Reine Blanche."

Duroy, surprised at this, asked: "Whoever took you there?"

He looked at her and saw her blush, somewhat disturbed, as though this
sudden question had aroused within her some delicate recollections.
After one of these feminine hesitations, so short that they can scarcely
be guessed, she replied: "A friend of mine," and then, after a brief
silence, added, "who is dead." And she cast down her eyes with a very
natural sadness.

Duroy, for the first time, thought of all that he did not know as
regarded the past life of this woman. Certainly she already had lovers,
but of what kind, in what class of society? A vague jealousy, a species
of enmity awoke within him; an enmity against all that he did not know,
all that had not belonged to him. He looked at her, irritated at the
mystery wrapped up within that pretty, silent head, which was thinking,
perhaps, at that very moment, of the other, the others, regretfully. How
he would have liked to have looked into her recollections--to have known
all.

She repeated: "Will you take me to the Reine Blanche? That will be a
perfect treat."

He thought: "What matters the past? I am very foolish to bother about
it," and smilingly replied: "Certainly, darling."

When they were in the street she resumed, in that low and mysterious
tone in which confidences are made: "I dared not ask you this until now,
but you cannot imagine how I love these escapades in places ladies do
not go to. During the carnival I will dress up as a schoolboy. I make
such a capital boy."

When they entered the ball-room she clung close to him, gazing with
delighted eyes on the girls and the bullies, and from time to time, as
though to reassure herself as regards any possible danger, saying, as
she noticed some serious and motionless municipal guard: "That is a
strong-looking fellow." In a quarter of an hour she had had enough of it
and he escorted her home.

Then began quite a series of excursions in all the queer places where
the common people amuse themselves, and Duroy discovered in his mistress
quite a liking for this vagabondage of students bent on a spree. She
came to their meeting-place in a cotton frock and with a servant's
cap--a theatrical servant's cap--on her head; and despite the elegant
and studied simplicity of her toilet, retained her rings, her bracelets,
and her diamond earrings, saying, when he begged her to remove them:
"Bah! they will think they are paste."

She thought she was admirably disguised, and although she was really
only concealed after the fashion of an ostrich, she went into the most
ill-famed drinking places. She wanted Duroy to dress himself like a
workman, but he resisted, and retained his correct attire, without even
consenting to exchange his tall hat for one of soft felt. She was
consoled for this obstinacy on his part by the reflection that she would
be taken for a chambermaid engaged in a love affair with a gentleman,
and thought this delightful. In this guise they went into popular
wine-shops, and sat down on rickety chairs at old wooden tables in
smoke-filled rooms. A cloud of strong tobacco smoke, with which still
blended the smell of fish fried at dinner time, filled the room; men in
blouses shouted at one another as they tossed off nips of spirits; and
the astonished waiter would stare at this strange couple as he placed
before them two cherry brandies. She--trembling, fearsome, yet
charmed--began to sip the red liquid, looking round her with uneasy and
kindling eye. Each cherry swallowed gave her the sensation of a sin
committed, each drop of burning liquor flowing down her throat gave her

the pleasure of a naughty and forbidden joy.

Then she would say, "Let us go," and they would leave. She would pass
rapidly, with bent head and the short steps of an actress leaving the
stage, among the drinkers, who, with their elbows on the tables, watched
her go by with suspicious and dissatisfied glances; and when she had
crossed the threshold would give a deep sigh, as if she had just escaped
some terrible danger.

Sometimes she asked Duroy, with a shudder: "If I were insulted in these
places, what would you do?"

He would answer, with a swaggering air: "Take your part, by Jove!"

And she would clasp his arm with happiness, with, perhaps, a vague wish
to be insulted and defended, to see men fight on her account, even such
men as those, with her lover.

But these excursions taking place two or three times a week began to
weary Duroy, who had great difficulty, besides, for some time past, in
procuring the ten francs necessary for the cake and the drinks. He now
lived very hardly and with more difficulty than when he was a clerk in
the Northern Railway; for having spent lavishly during his first month
of journalism, in the constant hope of gaining large sums of money in a
day or two, he had exhausted all his resources and all means of
procuring money. A very simple method, that of borrowing from the
cashier, was very soon exhausted; and he already owed the paper four
months' salary, besides six hundred francs advanced on his lineage
account. He owed, besides, a hundred francs to Forestier, three hundred
to Jacques Rival, who was free-handed with his money; and he was also
eaten up by a number of small debts of from five francs to twenty.
Saint-Potin, consulted as to the means of raising another hundred
francs, had discovered no expedient, although a man of inventive mind,
and Duroy was exasperated at this poverty, of which he was more sensible
now than formerly, since he had more wants. A sullen rage against
everyone smouldered within him, with an ever-increasing irritation,

which manifested itself at every moment on the most futile pretexts. He
sometimes asked himself how he could have spent an average of a thousand
francs a month, without any excess and the gratification of any
extravagant fancy, and he found that, by adding a lunch at eight
francs to a dinner at twelve, partaken of in some large cafe on the
boulevards, he at once came to a louis, which, added to ten francs
pocket-money--that pocket-money that melts away, one does not know
how--makes a total of thirty francs. But thirty francs a day is nine
hundred francs at the end of the month. And he did not reckon in the
cost of clothes, boots, linen, washing, etc.

So on the 14th December he found himself without a sou in his pocket,
and without a notion in his mind how to get any money. He went, as he
had often done of old, without lunch, and passed the afternoon working
at the newspaper office, angry and preoccupied. About four o'clock he
received a telegram from his mistress, running: "Shall we dine together,
and have a lark afterwards?"

He at once replied: "Cannot dine." Then he reflected that he would be
very stupid to deprive himself of the pleasant moments she might afford
him, and added: "But will wait at nine at our place." And having sent
one of the messengers with this, to save the cost of a telegram, he
began to reflect what he should do to procure himself a dinner.

At seven o'clock he had not yet hit upon anything and a terrible hunger
assailed him. Then he had recourse to the stratagem of a despairing man.
He let all his colleagues depart, one after the other, and when he was
alone rang sharply. Monsieur Walter's messenger, left in charge of the
offices, came in. Duroy was standing feeling in his pockets, and said in
an abrupt voice: "Foucart, I have left my purse at home, and I have to
go and dine at the Luxembourg. Lend me fifty sous for my cab."

The man took three francs from his waistcoat pocket and said: "Do you
want any more, sir?"

"No, no, that will be enough. Thanks."

And having seized on the coins, Duroy ran downstairs and dined at a
slap-bank, to which he drifted on his days of poverty.

At nine o'clock he was awaiting his mistress, with his feet on the
fender, in the little sitting-room. She came in, lively and animated,
brisked up by the keen air of the street. "If you like," said she, "we
will first go for a stroll, and then come home here at eleven. The
weather is splendid for walking."

He replied, in a grumbling tone: "Why go out? We are very comfortable
here."

She said, without taking off her bonnet: "If you knew, the moonlight is
beautiful. It is splendid walking about to-night."

"Perhaps so, but I do not care for walking about!"

He had said this in an angry fashion. She was struck and hurt by it, and
asked: "What is the matter with you? Why do you go on in this way? I
should like to go for a stroll, and I don't see how that can vex you."

He got up in a rage. "It does not vex me. It is a bother, that is all."

She was one of those sort of women whom resistance irritates and
impoliteness exasperates, and she said disdainfully and with angry calm:
"I am not accustomed to be spoken to like that. I will go alone, then.
Good-bye."

He understood that it was serious, and darting towards her, seized her
hands and kissed them, saying: "Forgive me, darling, forgive me. I am
very nervous this evening, very irritable. I have had vexations and
annoyances, you know--matters of business."

She replied, somewhat softened, but not calmed down: "That does not
concern me, and I will not bear the consequences of your ill-temper."

He took her in his arms, and drew her towards the couch.

"Listen, darling, I did not want to hurt you; I was not thinking of what
I was saying."

He had forced her to sit down, and, kneeling before her, went on: "Have
you forgiven me? Tell me you have forgiven me?"

She murmured, coldly: "Very well, but do not do so again;" and rising,
she added: "Now let us go for a stroll."

He had remained at her feet, with his arms clasped about her hips, and
stammered: "Stay here, I beg of you. Grant me this much. I should so
like to keep you here this evening all to myself, here by the fire. Say
yes, I beg of you, say yes."

She answered plainly and firmly: "No, I want to go out, and I am not
going to give way to your fancies."

He persisted. "I beg of you, I have a reason, a very serious reason."

She said again: "No; and if you won't go out with me, I shall go.
Good-bye."

She had freed herself with a jerk, and gained the door. He ran towards
her, and clasped her in his arms, crying:

"Listen, Clo, my little Clo; listen, grant me this much."

She shook her head without replying, avoiding his kisses, and striving
to escape from his grasp and go.


He stammered: "Clo, my little Clo, I have a reason."

She stopped, and looking him full in the face, said: "You are lying.
What is it?"

He blushed not knowing what to say, and she went on in an indignant
tone: "You see very well that you are lying, you low brute." And with an
angry gesture and tears in her eyes, she escaped him.

He again caught her by the shoulders, and, in despair, ready to
acknowledge anything in order to avoid a rupture, he said, in a
despairing tone: "I have not a son. That's what it all means." She
stopped short, and looking into his eyes to read the truth in them,
said: "You say?"

He had flushed to the roots of his hair. "I say that I have not a sou.
Do you understand? Not twenty sous, not ten, not enough to pay for a
glass of cassis in the cafe we may go into. You force me to confess what
I am ashamed of. It was, however, impossible for me to go out with you,
and when we were seated with refreshments in front of us to tell you
quietly that I could not pay for them."

She was still looking him in the face. "It is true, then?"

In a moment he had turned out all his pockets, those of his trousers,
coat, and waistcoat, and murmured: "There, are you satisfied now?"

Suddenly opening her arms, in an outburst of passion, she threw them
around his neck, crying: "Oh, my poor darling, my poor darling, if I had
only known. How did it happen?"

She made him sit down, and sat down herself on his knees; then, with her
arm round his neck, kissing him every moment on his moustache, his
mouth, his eyes, she obliged him to tell her how this misfortune had
come about.

He invented a touching story. He had been obliged to come to the
assistance of his father, who found himself in difficulties. He had not
only handed over to him all his savings, but had even incurred heavy
debts on his behalf. He added: "I shall be pinched to the last degree
for at least six months, for I have exhausted all my resources. So much
the worse; there are crises in every life. Money, after all, is not
worth troubling about."

She whispered: "I will lend you some; will you let me?"

He answered, with dignity: "You are very kind, pet; but do not think of
that, I beg of you. You would hurt my feelings."

She was silent, and then clasping him in her arms, murmured: "You will
never know how much I love you."

It was one of their most pleasant evenings.

As she was leaving, she remarked, smilingly: "How nice it is when one is
in your position to find money you had forgotten in your pocket--a coin
that had worked its way between the stuff and the lining."

He replied, in a tone of conviction: "Ah, yes, that it is."

She insisted on walking home, under the pretense that the moon was
beautiful and went into ecstasies over it. It was a cold, still night at
the beginning of winter. Pedestrians and horses went by quickly, spurred
by a sharp frost. Heels rang on the pavement. As she left him she said:
"Shall we meet again the day after to-morrow?"

"Certainly."

"At the same time?"

"The same time."

"Good-bye, dearest." And they kissed lovingly.

Then he walked home swiftly, asking himself what plan he could hit on
the morrow to get out of his difficulty. But as he opened the door of
his room, and fumbled in his waistcoat pocket for a match, he was
stupefied to find a coin under his fingers. As soon as he had a light he
hastened to examine it. It was a louis. He thought he must be mad. He
turned it over and over, seeking by what miracle it could have found
its way there. It could not, however, have fallen from heaven into his
pocket.

Then all at once he guessed, and an angry indignation awoke within him.
His mistress had spoken of money slipping into the lining, and being
found in times of poverty. It was she who had tendered him this alms.
How shameful! He swore: "Ah! I'll talk to her the day after to-morrow.
She shall have a nice time over it."

And he went to bed, his heart filled with anger and humiliation.

He woke late. He was hungry. He tried to go to sleep again, in order not
to get up till two o'clock, and then said to himself: "That will not
forward matters. I must end by finding some money." Then he went out,
hoping that an idea might occur to him in the street. It did not; but at
every restaurant he passed a longing to eat made his mouth water. As by
noon he had failed to hit on any plan, he suddenly made up his mind: "I
will lunch out of Clotilde's twenty francs. That won't hinder me from
paying them back to-morrow."

He, therefore, lunched for two francs fifty centimes. On reaching the
office he also gave three francs to the messenger, saying: "Here,
Foucart, here is the money you lent me last night for my cab."

He worked till seven o'clock. Then he went and dined taking another
three francs. The two evening bocks brought the expenditure of the day
up to nine francs thirty centimes. But as he could not re-establish a
credit or create fresh resources in twenty-four hours, he borrowed
another six francs fifty centimes the next day from the twenty he was
going to return that very evening, so that he came to keep his
appointment with just four francs twenty centimes in his pocket.

He was in a deuce of a temper, and promised himself that he would pretty
soon explain things. He would say to his mistress: "You know, I found
the twenty francs you slipped into my pocket the other day. I cannot
give them back to you now, because my situation is unaltered, and I have
not had time to occupy myself with money matters. But I will give them
to you the next time we meet."

She arrived, loving, eager, full of alarm. How would he receive her? She
kissed him persistently to avoid an explanation at the outset.

He said to himself: "It will be time enough to enter on the matter
by-and-by. I will find an opportunity of doing so."

He did not find the opportunity, and said nothing, shirking before the
difficulty of opening this delicate subject. She did not speak of going
out, and was in every way charming. They separated about midnight, after
making an appointment for the Wednesday of the following week, for
Madame de Marelle was engaged to dine out several days in succession.

The next day, as Duroy, on paying for his breakfast, felt for the four
coins that ought to be remaining to him, he perceived that they were
five, and one of them a gold one. At the outset he thought that he had
received it by mistake in his change the day before, then he understood
it, and his heart throbbed with humiliation at this persistent charity.
How he now regretted not having said anything! If he had spoken
energetically this would not have happened.

For four days he made efforts, as numerous as they were fruitless, to
raise five louis, and spent Clotilde's second one. She managed, although
he had said to her savagely, "Don't play that joke of the other
evening's again, or I shall get angry," to slip another twenty francs
into his trouser pockets the first time they met. When he found them he
swore bitterly, and transferred them to his waistcoat to have them under
his hand, for he had not a rap. He appeased his conscience by this
argument: "I will give it all back to her in a lump. After all, it is
only borrowed money."

At length the cashier of the paper agreed, on his desperate appeals, to
let him have five francs daily. It was just enough to live upon, but not
enough to repay sixty francs with. But as Clotilde was again seized by
her passion for nocturnal excursions in all the suspicious localities in
Paris, he ended by not being unbearably annoyed to find a yellow boy in
one of his pockets, once even in his boot, and another time in his
watch-case, after their adventurous excursions. Since she had wishes
which he could not for the moment gratify himself, was it not natural
that she should pay for them rather than go without them? He kept an
account, too, of all he received in this way, in order to return it to
her some day.

One evening she said to him: "Would you believe that I have never been
to the Folies-Bergere? Will you take me there?"

He hesitated a moment, afraid of meeting Rachel. Then he thought: "Bah!
I am not married, after all. If that girl sees me she will understand
the state of things, and will not speak to me. Besides, we will have a
box."

Another reason helped his decision. He was well pleased of this
opportunity of offering Madame de Marelle a box at the theater without
its costing anything. It was a kind of compensation.

He left her in the cab while he got the order for the box, in order that
she might not see it offered him, and then came to fetch her. They went
in, and were received with bows by the acting manager. An immense crowd
filled the lounge, and they had great difficulty in making their way
through the swarm of men and women. At length they reached the box and
settled themselves in it, shut in between the motionless orchestra and
the eddy of the gallery. But Madame de Marelle rarely glanced at the
stage. Wholly taken up with the women promenading behind her back, she
constantly turned round to look at them, with a longing to touch them,
to feel their bodices, their skirts, their hair, to know what these
creatures were made of.

Suddenly she said: "There is a stout, dark girl who keeps watching us
all the time. I thought just now that she was going to speak to us. Did
you notice her?"

He answered: "No, you must be mistaken." But he had already noticed her
for some time back. It was Rachel who was prowling about in their
neighborhood, with anger in her eyes and hard words upon her lips.

Duroy had brushed against her in making his way through the crowd, and
she had whispered, "Good evening," with a wink which signified, "I
understand." But he had not replied to this mark of attention for fear
of being seen by his mistress, and he had passed on coldly, with haughty
look and disdainful lip. The woman, whom unconscious jealousy already
assailed, turned back, brushed against him again, and said in louder
tones: "Good evening, George." He had not answered even then. Then she
made up her mind to be recognized and bowed to, and she kept continually
passing in the rear of the box, awaiting a favorable moment.

As soon as she saw that Madame de Marelle was looking at her she touched
Duroy's shoulder, saying: "Good evening, are you quite well?"

He did not turn round, and she went on: "What, have you grown deaf since
Thursday?" He did not reply, affecting a contempt which would not allow
him to compromise himself even by a word with this slut.

She began to laugh an angry laugh, and said: "So you are dumb, then?
Perhaps the lady has bitten your tongue off?"

He made an angry movement, and exclaimed, in an exasperated tone: "What
do you mean by speaking to me? Be off, or I will have you locked up."

Then, with fiery eye and swelling bosom, she screeched out: "So that's
it, is it? Ah! you lout. When a man sleeps with a woman the least he can
do is to nod to her. It is no reason because you are with someone else
that you should cut me to-day. If you had only nodded to me when I
passed you just now, I should have left you alone. But you wanted to do
the grand. I'll pay you out! Ah, so you won't say good evening when you
meet me!"

She would have gone on for a long time, but Madame de Marelle had opened
the door of the box and fled through the crowd, blindly seeking the way
out. Duroy started off in her rear and strove to catch her up, while
Rachel, seeing them flee, yelled triumphantly: "Stop her, she has stolen
my sweetheart."

People began to laugh. Two gentlemen for fun seized the fugitive by the
shoulders and sought to bring her back, trying, too, to kiss her. But
Duroy, having caught her up, freed her forcibly and led her away into
the street. She jumped into an empty cab standing at the door. He jumped
in after her, and when the driver asked, "Where to, sir?" replied,
"Wherever you like."

The cab slowly moved off, jolting over the paving stones. Clotilde,
seized by a kind of hysterical attack, sat choking and gasping with her
hands covering her face, and Duroy neither knew what to do nor what to
say. At last, as he heard her sobbing, he stammered out: "Clo, my dear
little Clo, just listen, let me explain. It is not my fault. I used to
know that woman, some time ago, you know--"

She suddenly took her hands from her face, and overcome by the wrath of
a loving and deceitful woman, a furious wrath that enabled her to
recover her speech, she pantingly jerked out, in rapid and broken
sentences: "Oh!--you wretch--you wretch--what a scoundrel you are--can
it be possible? How shameful--O Lord--how shameful!" Then, getting
angrier and angrier as her ideas grew clearer and arguments suggested
themselves to her, she went on: "It was with my money you paid her,
wasn't it? And I was giving him money--for that creature. Oh, the
scoundrel!" She seemed for a few minutes to be seeking some stronger
expression that would not come, and then all at once she spat out, as it
were, the words: "Oh! you swine--you swine--you swine--you paid her
with my money--you swine--you swine!" She could not think of anything
else, and kept repeating, "You swine, you swine!"

Suddenly she leant out of the window, and catching the driver by the
sleeve, cried, "Stop," and opening the door, sprang out.

George wanted to follow, but she cried, "I won't have you get out," in
such loud tones that the passers-by began to gather about her, and Duroy
did not move for fear of a scandal. She took her purse from her pocket
and looked for some change by the light of the cab lantern, then taking
two francs fifty centimes she put them in the driver's hand, saying, in
ringing tones: "There is your fare--I pay you, now take this blackguard
to the Rue Boursault, Batignolles."

Mirth was aroused in the group surrounding her. A gentleman said: "Well
done, little woman," and a young rapscallion standing close to the cab
thrust his head into the open door and sang out, in shrill tones,
"Good-night, lovey!" Then the cab started off again, followed by a burst
of laughter.




VI


George Duroy woke up chapfallen the next morning.

He dressed himself slowly, and then sat down at his window and began to
reflect. He felt a kind of aching sensation all over, just as though he
had received a drubbing over night. At last the necessity of finding
some money spurred him up, and he went first to Forestier.

His friend received him in his study with his feet on the fender.

"What has brought you out so early?" said he.

"A very serious matter, a debt of honor."

"At play?"

He hesitated a moment, and then said: "At play."

"Heavy?"

"Five hundred francs."

He only owed two hundred and eighty.

Forestier, skeptical on the point, inquired: "Whom do you owe it to?"

Duroy could not answer right off. "To--to--a Monsieur de Carleville."

"Ah! and where does he live?"

"At--at--"

Forestier began to laugh. "Number ought, Nowhere Street, eh? I know that
gentleman, my dear fellow. If you want twenty francs, I have still that
much at your service, but no more."

Duroy took the offered louis. Then he went from door to door among the
people he knew, and wound up by having collected at about five o'clock
the sum of eighty francs. And he still needed two hundred more; he made
up his mind, and keeping for himself what he had thus gleaned, murmured:
"Bah! I am not going to put myself out for that cat. I will pay her when
I can."

For a fortnight he lived regularly, economically, and chastely, his mind
filled with energetic resolves. Then he was seized with a strong longing
for love. It seemed to him that several years had passed since he last
clasped a woman in his arms, and like the sailor who goes wild on seeing
land, every passing petticoat made him quiver. So he went one evening
to the Folies Bergere in the hope of finding Rachel. He caught sight of
her indeed, directly he entered, for she scarcely went elsewhere, and
went up to her smiling with outstretched hand. But she merely looked him
down from head to foot, saying: "What do you want with me?"

He tried to laugh it off with, "Come, don't be stuck-up."

She turned on her heels, saying: "I don't associate with ponces."

She had picked out the bitterest insult. He felt the blood rush to his
face, and went home alone.

Forestier, ill, weak, always coughing, led him a hard life at the paper,
and seemed to rack his brain to find him tiresome jobs. One day, even,
in a moment of nervous irritation, and after a long fit of coughing, as
Duroy had not brought him a piece of information he wanted, he growled
out: "Confound it! you are a bigger fool than I thought."

The other almost struck him, but restrained himself, and went away
muttering: "I'll manage to pay you out some day." An idea shot through
his mind, and he added: "I will make a cuckold of you, old fellow!" And
he took himself off, rubbing his hands, delighted at this project.

He resolved to set about it the very next day. He paid Madame Forestier
a visit as a reconnaissance. He found her lying at full length on a
couch, reading a book. She held out her hand without rising, merely
turning her head, and said: "Good-day, Pretty-boy!"

He felt as though he had received a blow. "Why do you call me that?" he
said.

She replied, with a smile: "I saw Madame de Marelle the other day, and
learned how you had been baptized at her place."

He felt reassured by her amiable air. Besides, what was there for him to
be afraid of?

She resumed: "You spoil her. As to me, people come to see me when they
think of it--the thirty-second of the month, or something like it."

He sat down near her, and regarded her with a new species of curiosity,
the curiosity of the amateur who is bargain-hunting. She was charming, a
soft and tender blonde, made for caresses, and he thought: "She is
better than the other, certainly." He did not doubt his success, it
seemed to him that he had only to stretch out his hand and take her, as
one gathers a fruit.

He said, resolutely: "I did not come to see you, because it was better
so."

She asked, without understanding: "What? Why?"

"No, not at all."

"Because I am in love with you; oh! only a little, and I do not want to
be head over ears."

She seemed neither astonished, nor shocked, nor flattered; she went on
smiling the same indifferent smile, and replied with the same
tranquillity: "Oh! you can come all the same. No one is in love with me
long."

He was surprised, more by the tone than by the words, and asked: "Why
not?"

"Because it is useless. I let this be understood at once. If you had
told me of your fear before, I should have reassured you, and invited
you, on the contrary, to come as often as possible."

He exclaimed, in a pathetic tone: "Can we command our feelings?"

She turned towards him: "My dear friend, for me a man in love is struck
off the list of the living. He becomes idiotic, and not only idiotic,
but dangerous. I cease all intimate relations with people who are in
love with me, or who pretend to be so--because they bore me, in the
first place; and, secondly, because they are as much objects of
suspicion to me as a mad dog, which may have a fit of biting. I
therefore put them into a kind of moral quarantine until their illness
is over. Do not forget this. I know very well that in your case love is
only a species of appetite, while with me it would be, on the contrary,
a kind of--of--of communion of souls, which does not enter into a man's
religion. You understand its letter, and its spirit. But look me well in
the face." She no longer smiled. Her face was calm and cold, and she
continued, emphatically: "I will never, never be your mistress; you
understand. It is therefore absolutely useless, it would even be
hurtful, for you to persist in this desire. And now that the operation
is over, will you agree to be friends--good friends--real friends, I
mean, without any mental reservation."

He had understood that any attempt would be useless in face of this
irrevocable sentence. He made up his mind at once, frankly, and,
delighted at being able to secure this ally in the battle of life, held
out both hands, saying: "I am yours, madame, as you will."

She read the sincerity of his intention in his voice, and gave him her
hands. He kissed them both, one after the other, and then said simply,
as he raised his head: "Ah, if I had found a woman like you, how gladly
I would have married her."

She was touched this time--soothed by this phrase, as women are by the
compliments which reach their hearts, and she gave him one of those
rapid and grateful looks which make us their slaves. Then, as he could
find no change of subject to renew the conversation, she said softly,
laying her finger on his arm: "And I am going to play my part of a
friend at once. You are clumsy." She hesitated a moment, and then asked:
"May I speak plainly?"

"Yes."

"Quite plainly?"

"Quite."

"Well, go and see Madame Walter, who greatly appreciates you, and do
your best to please her. You will find a place there for your
compliments, although she is virtuous, you understand me, perfectly
virtuous. Oh! there is no hope of--of poaching there, either. You may
find something better, though, by showing yourself. I know that you
still hold an inferior position on the paper. But do not be afraid, they
receive all their staff with the same kindness. Go there--believe me."

He said, with a smile: "Thanks, you are an angel, a guardian angel."

They spoke of one thing and another. He stayed for some time, wishing to
prove that he took pleasure in being with her, and on leaving, remarked:
"It is understood, then, that we are friends?"

"It is."

As he had noted the effect of the compliment he had paid her shortly
before, he seconded it by adding: "And if ever you become a widow, I
enter the lists."

Then he hurried away, so as not to give her time to get angry.

A visit to Madame Walter was rather awkward for Duroy, for he had not
been authorized to call, and he did not want to commit a blunder. The
governor displayed some good will towards him, appreciated his services,
and employed him by preference on difficult jobs, so why should he not
profit by this favor to enter the house? One day, then, having risen
early, he went to the market while the morning sales were in progress,
and for ten francs obtained a score of splendid pears. Having carefully
packed them in a hamper to make it appear that they had come from a
distance, he left them with the doorkeeper at Madame Walter's with his
card, on which he had written: "George Duroy begs Madame Walter to
accept a little fruit which he received this morning from Normandy."

He found the next morning, among his letters at the office, an envelope
in reply, containing the card of Madame Walter, who "thanked Monsieur
George Duroy, and was at home every Saturday."

On the following Saturday he called. Monsieur Walter occupied, on the
Boulevard Malesherbes, a double house, which belonged to him, and of
which a part was let off, in the economical way of practical people. A
single doorkeeper, quartered between the two carriage entrances, opened
the door for both landlord and tenant, and imparted to each of the
entrances an air of wealth by his get-up like a beadle, his big calves
in white stockings, and his coat with gilt buttons and scarlet facings.
The reception-rooms were on the first floor, preceded by an ante-room
hung with tapestry, and shut in by curtains over the doorways. Two
footmen were dozing on benches. One of them took Duroy's overcoat and
the other relieved him of his cane, opened the door, advanced a few
steps in front of the visitor, and then drawing aside, let him pass,
calling out his name, into an empty room.

The young fellow, somewhat embarrassed, looked round on all sides when
he perceived in a glass some people sitting down who seemed very far
off. He was at sea at first as to the direction in which they were, the
mirror having deceived his eyes. Then he passed through two empty
drawing-rooms and reached a small boudoir hung with blue silk, where
four ladies were chatting round a table bearing cups of tea. Despite the
assurance he had acquired in course of his Parisian life, and above all
in his career as a reporter, which constantly brought him into contact
with important personages, Duroy felt somewhat intimidated by the get-up
of the entrance and the passage through the deserted drawing-room. He
stammered: "Madame, I have ventured," as his eyes sought the mistress of
the house.

She held out her hand, which he took with a bow, and having remarked:
"You are very kind sir, to call and see me," she pointed to a chair, in
seeking to sit down in which he almost fell, having thought it much
higher.

They had become silent. One of the ladies began to talk again. It was a
question of the frost, which was becoming sharper, though not enough,
however, to check the epidemic of typhoid fever, nor to allow skating.
Every one gave her opinion on this advent of frost in Paris, then they
expressed their preference for the different seasons with all the
trivial reasons that lie about in people's minds like dust in rooms. The
faint noise made by a door caused Duroy to turn his head, and he saw in
a glass a stout lady approaching. As soon as she made her appearance in
the boudoir one of the other visitors rose, shook hands and left, and
the young fellow followed her black back glittering with jet through the
drawing-rooms with his eyes. When the agitation due to this change had
subsided they spoke without transition of the Morocco question and the
war in the East and also of the difficulties of England in South Africa.
These ladies discussed these matters from memory, as if they had been
reciting passages from a fashionable play, frequently rehearsed.

A fresh arrival took place, that of a little curly-headed blonde, which
brought about the departure of a tall, thin lady of middle age. They now
spoke of the chance Monsieur Linet had of getting into the
Academie-Francaise. The new-comer formerly believed that he would be
beaten by Monsieur Cabanon-Lebas, the author of the fine dramatic
adaption of Don Quixote in verse.

"You know it is to be played at the Odeon next winter?"

"Really, I shall certainly go and see such a very excellent literary
effort."

Madame Walter answered gracefully with calm indifference, without ever
hesitating as to what she should say, her mind being always made up
beforehand. But she saw that night was coming on, and rang for the
lamps, while listening to the conversation that trickled on like a
stream of honey, and thinking that she had forgotten to call on the
stationer about the invitation cards for her next dinner. She was a
little too stout, though still beautiful, at the dangerous age when the
general break-up is at hand. She preserved herself by dint of care,
hygienic precautions, and salves for the skin. She seemed discreet in
all matters; moderate and reasonable; one of those women whose mind is
correctly laid out like a French garden. One walks through it with
surprise, but experiencing a certain charm. She had keen, discreet, and
sound sense, that stood her instead of fancy, generosity, and affection,
together with a calm kindness for everybody and everything.

She noted that Duroy had not said anything, that he had not been spoken
to, and that he seemed slightly ill at ease; and as the ladies had not
yet quitted the Academy, that favorite subject always occupying them
some time, she said: "And you who should be better informed than any
one, Monsieur Duroy, who is your favorite?"

He replied unhesitatingly: "In this matter, madame, I should never
consider the merit, always disputable, of the candidates, but their age
and their state of health. I should not ask about their credentials, but
their disease. I should not seek to learn whether they have made a
metrical translation of Lope de Vega, but I should take care to obtain
information as to the state of their liver, their heart, their lungs,
and their spinal marrow. For me a good hypertrophy, a good aneurism, and
above all, a good beginning of locomotor ataxy, would be a hundred times
more valuable than forty volumes of disgressions on the idea of
patriotism as embodied in barbaric poetry."

An astonished silence followed this opinion, and Madame Walter asked
with a smile: "But why?"

He replied: "Because I never seek aught else than the pleasure that any
one can give the ladies. But, Madame, the Academy only has any real
interest for you when an Academician dies. The more of them die the
happier you must be. But in order that they may die quickly they must be
elected sick and old." As they still remained somewhat surprised, he
continued. "Besides, I am like you, and I like to read of the death of
an Academician. I at once ask myself: 'Who will replace him?' And I draw
up my list. It is a game, a very pretty little game that is played in
all Parisian salons at each decease of one of the Immortals, the game of
'Death and the Forty Fogies.'"

The ladies, still slightly disconcerted, began however, to smile, so
true were his remarks. He concluded, as he rose: "It is you who really
elect them, ladies, and you only elect them to see them die. Choose them
old, therefore, very old; as old as possible, and do not trouble
yourselves about anything else."

He then retired very gracefully. As soon as he was gone, one of the
ladies said: "He is very funny, that young fellow. Who is he?"

Madame Walter replied: "One of the staff of our paper, who does not do
much yet; but I feel sure that he will get on."

Duroy strode gayly down the Boulevard Malesherbes, content with his
exit, and murmuring: "A capital start."

He made it up with Rachel that evening.

The following week two things happened to him. He was appointed chief
reporter and invited to dinner at Madame Walter's. He saw at once a
connection between these things. The _Vie Francaise_ was before
everything a financial paper, the head of it being a financier, to whom
the press and the position of a deputy served as levers. Making use of
every cordiality as a weapon, he had always worked under the smiling
mask of a good fellow; but he only employed men whom he had sounded,
tried, and proved; whom he knew to be crafty, bold, and supple. Duroy,
appointed chief of the reporting staff, seemed to him a valuable fellow.

This duty had been filled up till then by the chief sub-editor, Monsieur
Boisrenard, an old journalist, as correct, punctual, and scrupulous as a
clerk. In course of thirty years he had been sub-editor of eleven
different papers, without in any way modifying his way of thinking or
acting. He passed from one office to another as one changes one's
restaurant, scarcely noticing that the cookery was not quite the same.
Political and religious opinions were foreign to him. He was devoted to
his paper, whatever it might be, well up in his work, and valuable from
his experience. He worked like a blind man who sees nothing, like a deaf
man who hears nothing, and like a dumb man who never speaks of anything.
He had, however, a strong instinct of professional loyalty, and would
not stoop to aught he did not think honest and right from the special
point of view of his business.

Monsieur Walter, who thoroughly appreciated him, had however, often
wished for another man to whom to entrust the "Echoe

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