“But what, monsieur, is this great law of living?”
Florian for a moment stayed silent. He could see yonder the little tree from the East, already budding in the spring. He was remembering how, a quarter of a century ago, another boy had asked just this question just here. And living seemed to Florian a quite futile business. Men’s trials and flounderings got them nowhither. A wheel turned, that was all. Too large to be thought about, a wheel turned, without haste and irresistibly. Men clung a while, like insects, to that wheel. The wheel had come full circle. Now it was not Florian but Florian’s son who was asking of his father, “What is this great law of living?” And no response was possible except the old, evasive and cowardly answer. So Florian gave it. One must be logical, and voice what logic taught.
“Thou shalt not offend against the notions of thy neighbor,” Florian replied,—“or not, at least, too often or too openly. I do not say, mark you, my son, but that in private, and with the exercise of discretion, one may cultivate one’s faculties.”
“Yes, but, monsieur, I do not see—”
“No,” Florian conceded, with a smiling toward his tall son which was friendly but a little sad, “no, naturally you do not. How should you, infamous seducer of the peasantry, when this is a law which no young person anywhere is able to believe ? Yet it is certain, dear child, that if you openly offend against these notions you will be crushed: and it is certain that if you honor them,—with, I am presupposing, a suitable appreciation of the charms of privacy and sympathetic companions,—then all things are permitted, and nobody will really bother about your discreet pursuing of your desires. A wise man will avoid, though, for his comfort’s health, all over-high and over-earnest desires. … This is the knowledge, Gaston, which every father longs to communicate to his son, without caring to confess that his own life has been such as to permit the acquiring of this knowledge.”
And the boy shook his head. “I understand your words. But your meaning, monsieur, I do not see. … ”
PART THREE
THE END OF LEAN WISDOM
“Ne point aller chercher ce qu’on fait dans la lime,
Et vous mesler un peu de ce qu’on fait chez vous,
Ou nous voyons aller tout sans-dessus-dessous.”
21. Of Melior Married
NOW Florian returned to Bellegarde to face the disillusion appointed for every husband in passing from infatuation to paternity. His disenchanted princess now was hardly recognizable. Her face was like dough, her nose seemed oddly swollen; under and about the blood-shot eyes were repulsive yellow splotches. As for the bloated body, he could not bear to look at it. He was shaken with hot and sick disgust when he saw this really perfectly dreadful looking creature.
Perhaps, though, Florian reflected, he saw her through emotions which exaggerated every blemish unfairly. He knew all other pregnant women had seemed to him unattractive rather than actually loathsome. But here, here was the prize he had so long and fervently desired, the prize to gain which he had sacrificed those dearest to him in this world, and had parted with the comforting assurances of religion. … For, Melior, then, had flawless and unequalled beauty. So he had bought, at an exceedingly stiff price, this shining superficies, to learn almost immediately thereafter that she possessed not one other desirable quality. And now Melior had not even the thin mask of loveliness. Worse still, the beauty which he had worshipped since boyhood now existed nowhere. To purchase an hour or two of really not very remarkable entertainment, he had himself destroyed this beauty. ...
“My love,” said Florian, “now if only I were a conceited person, I would dare to hope that the long months since I last saw you have passed as drearily with you as with me.”
He kissed her tenderly. Even the woman’s breath was now unpleasant. It seemed to Florian that nothing was being spared him.
“Yes, that sort of talk is all very well,” replied Melior, fretfully. “But I do think that at a time when I have every right to expect particular attention and care, you might at least have made an effort to get home sooner, and not leave everything upon my shoulders, especially with all the neighbors everywhere pretending, whenever I come into the room, that they were not talking about your having killed your brother—”
“Yes, yes, a most regrettable affair! But what, sweetheart, has been going amiss at Bellegarde?”
“That is a pretty question for you to ask, with me in my condition, with all these other worries on top of it, about your friend Orleans. Because, knowing you as well as I do, Florian, and not being able to feel as you do that a prime minister is no more than a house fly or a flea,—and seeing quite well, too, how little you consider what my feelings naturally would be if they cut off your head—”
“Ah, but let us take one thing at a time, and for the present leave my head where it is. Do you mean that you have been unwell, my pet?”
“Have you no eyes in the head you keep talking about just to keep me upset! But I do not wonder you prefer not to look at me, now I am such a fright, and that is you men all over. Still, you might at least have the decency to remember who is responsible for it, and that much I must say.”
“But, dearest, I have both the eyes about which you inquire, and in those doubtless partial orbs you happen not to look a fright. So I cannot quite follow you. No, let us be logical! There is a slight pallor, to be sure— But, no! No, dear Melior, upon the whole, I never saw you looking lovelier, and I wonder of what you are talking.”
“I mean, you fool, that I am sick and miserable because now almost any day I am going to have a baby.”
Florian was honestly shocked. He could remember no precedent among his mistresses of anybody’s having put this news so bluntly: and when he recalled the behavior of his first wife in precisely these circumstances, he could not but feel that women were deteriorating. A wife endowed with proper sensibility would have hidden her face upon his shoulder, just as Carola had done, and would in this posture have whispered her awed surmise that Heaven was shortly to consign them a little cherub. But this big-bellied vixen appeared to have no sensibilities. “You fool, now almost any day I am going to have a baby!” was neither a loving nor a dignified way of announcing the nearness of his freedom.
But Florian’s plump face was transfigured, as he knelt before his Melior, and very reverently lifted to his lips her hand. He slipped a cushion under his knee, made himself comfortable, and, kneeling still, went on to speak of his bliss and of his love for her and of how sacred in his eyes appeared the marks of her condition. She listened: he could see that Melior was pleased; and he in consequence continued his gallant romanticizing.
For Florian really wanted to be pleasant to the woman; and was resolved politely to ignore even this last disillusionment, and to condone as far as was humanly possible, the lack of consideration through which this dreadful creature had now added to stupidity and garrulity even physical ugliness.
But while Florian was talking he could see, too, that the central diamond in the charmed ring that Melior wore was to-day quite black, like an onyx, so that he took care to keep it covered with his hand all the while he was talking about his adoration. Here was an appalling omen, a portent, virtually, of open conflict between Florian and his patron saint. The central stone of this ring had become as black and as bright and as inimical looking as though, he reflected, one of the small eyes of Marie-Claire Cazaio stared thence. This was a depressing sight: and it seemed to Florian quite vexingly illogical that the ring should change in this fashion when, after all, he was planning no harm against Melior.