Thus, trailing Françoise and mentally filling all her days with concrete occupations, Honoré strove to suppress those gaps and shadows in which the evil spirits of jealousy and suspicion lay in ambush, pouncing on him every evening. He began to sleep again; his sufferings grew rarer, briefer, and if he then sent for her, a few moments of her presence calmed him for the entire night.
The soul may be trusted to the end. That which is so beautiful and attractive as these relations must be succeeded and supplanted only by what is more beautiful, and so on forever.
—RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The salon of Madame Seaune, née Princess de Galaise-Orlandes, whom we spoke about in the first part of this story under her Christian name, Françoise, remains one of the most sought-after salons in Paris. In a society in which the title of duchess would make her interchangeable with so many others, her nonaristocratic family name stands out like a beauty mark on a face; and in exchange for the title she lost when marrying Monsieur Seaune, she acquired the prestige of having voluntarily renounced the kind of glory that, for a noble imagination, exalts white peacocks, black swans, white violets, and captive queens.
Madame Seaune has entertained considerably this season and last, but her salon was closed during the three preceding years—the ones, that is, following the death of Honoré de Tenvres.
Honoré’s friends, delighted to see him gradually regaining his healthy appearance and his earlier cheerfulness, now kept finding him with Madame Seaune at all hours of the day, and so they attributed his revival to this affair, which they thought had started just recently.
It was a scant two months since Honoré’s complete recovery that he suffered the accident on the Avenue du Bois-de-Boulogne, where both his legs were broken by a runaway horse.
The accident took place on the first Tuesday in May; peritonitis declared itself the following Sunday. Honoré received the sacraments on Monday and was carried off at six o’clock that evening. However, from Tuesday, the day of the accident, to Monday evening, he alone believed he was doomed.
On that Tuesday, toward six P.M., after the first dressing of the injuries, he had asked his servants to leave him alone, but to bring up the calling cards of people inquiring about his health.
That very morning, at most eight hours earlier, he had been walking down the Avenue du Bois-de-Boulogne. He had, breath by breath, been inhaling and exhaling the air, a blend of breeze and sunshine; women were admiring his swiftly moving beauty, and in the depths of their eyes he had recognized a profound joy—for an instant he was lost sight of in the sheer turning of his capricious merriment, then effortlessly caught up with and quite rapidly outstripped among the steaming, galloping horses, then he savored the coolness of his hungry mouth, which was moistened by the sweet air; and the joy he recognized was the same profound joy that embellished life that morning, the life of the sun, of the shade, of the sky, of the stones, of the east wind, and of the trees, trees as majestic as men standing and as relaxed as women sleeping in their sparkling immobility.
At a certain point he had checked his watch, had doubled back, and then . . . then it had happened. Within an instant, the horse, which Honoré had not seen, had broken both his legs. In no way did that instant appear to have been inevitable.
At that same instant he might have been slightly further off, or slightly nearer, or the horse might have deviated, or, had it rained, he would have gone home earlier, or, had he not checked his watch, he would not have doubled back and he would have continued walking to the cascade. Yet that thing, which might so easily not have been, so easily that for a moment he could pretend it was only a dream—that thing was real, that thing was now part of his life, and not all his willpower could alter anything. He had two broken legs and a battered abdomen.
Oh, in itself the accident was not so extraordinary; he recalled that less than a week ago, during a dinner given by Dr. S., they had talked about C., who had been injured in the same manner by a runaway horse.
The doctor, when asked about C.’s condition, had said: “He’s in a bad way.” Honoré had pressed him, had questioned him about the injuries, and the doctor had replied with a self-important, pedantic, and melancholy air: “But it’s not just his injuries; it’s everything together; his sons are causing him problems; his circumstances are not what they used to be; the newspaper attacks have struck him to the quick.
I wish I were wrong, but he’s in a rotten state.” Since the doctor, having said that, felt that he himself, on the contrary, was in an excellent state, healthier, more intelligent, and more esteemed than ever; since Honoré knew that Françoise loved him more and more, that the world accepted their relationship and esteemed their happiness no less than Françoise’s greatness of character; and since, finally, Dr. S.’s wife, deeply agitated by her visions of C.’s wretched end and abandonment, cited reasons of hygiene for prohibiting herself and her children from thinking about sad events or attending funerals—given all these things, each diner repeated one final time: “That poor C., he’s in a bad state,” downed a final flute of Champagne, and the pleasure of drinking it made them feel that their own “state” was excellent.
But this was not the same thing at all. Honoré, now feeling overwhelmed by the thought of his misfortune, as he had often been by the thought of other people’s misfortunes, could no longer regain a foothold in himself. He felt the solid ground of good health caving in beneath him, the ground on which our loftiest resolutions flourish and our most gracious delights, just as oak trees and violets are rooted in the black, moist earth; and he kept stumbling about within himself.
In discussing C. at that dinner, which Honoré again recalled, the doctor had said: “When I ran into C. even before the accident and after the newspaper attacks, his face was sallow, his eyes were hollow, and he looked awful!” And the doctor had passed his hand, famous for its skill and beauty, across his full, rosy face, along his fine, well-groomed beard, and each diner had pleasurably imagined his own healthy look the way a landlord stops to gaze contentedly at his young, peaceable, and wealthy tenant. Now, peering at his reflection in the mirror, Honoré was terrified by his own “sallow face,” his “awful look.”
And instantly, he was horrified at the thought that the doctor would say the same thing about him as he had said about C., with the same indifference. Even people who would approach him full of pity would also rather quickly turn away from him as from a dangerous object; they would finally obey their protests of their good health, of their desire to be happy and to live.
Then his mind turned back to Françoise, and, his shoulders sagging, his head bowing in spite of himself, as if God’s commandment had been raised against him there, Honoré realized with an infinite and submissive sadness that he must give her up. With a sick man’s resignation he experienced the humility of his body, which, in its childlike feebleness, was bent by this tremendous grief, and he pitied himself when, as so often at the start of his life, he had tenderly seen himself as an infant, and now he felt like crying.
He heard a knocking at the door. The concierge was bringing the cards that Honoré had asked for. Honoré knew very well that people would inquire about his condition, for he was fully aware that his accident was serious; nevertheless, he had not expected so many cards, and he was terrified to see that there were so many callers who barely knew him and who would have put themselves out only for his wedding or for his funeral. It was an overflowing mountain of cards, and the concierge carried it gingerly to keep it from tumbling off the large tray.
But suddenly, when all those cards were within reach, the mountain looked very small, indeed ridiculously small, far smaller than the chair or the fireplace. And he was even more terrified that it was so small, and he felt so alone that, in order to take his mind off his loneliness, he began feverishly reading the names; one card, two cards, three cards—ah! He jumped and looked again: “Count François de Gouvres.”
Now Honoré would certainly have expected Monsieur de Gouvres to inquire about his condition, but he had not thought about the count for a long time, and all at once he recalled de Buivres’s words: “There was someone there tonight who had quite a fling with her—It was François de Gouvres. He says she’s quite hot-blooded! But it seems her body isn’t all that great, and he didn’t want to continue”; and feeling all the old suffering which in an instant resurfaced from the depths of his consciousness, he said to
