Part 32 (1/2)
There was a movement by his side, and he felt, close to his flesh, the burning flesh of Veronica; she was awake and looking at him with a smile.
She felt no remorse; she was proud and happy, and her eyes burning with pleasure and want of sleep were fixed on her new lover with restless curiosity.
[PLATE IV: MATER SAEVA CUPIDINUM. ...he sprang out of bed, surfeited with disgust.... And she rose also, and ran off to her room, laughing like a madcap, and carrying her dress and petticoats under her arm.]
[Ill.u.s.tration]
Doubtless she was saying to herself: ”Is it really possible? Am I then in bed with this handsome priest? Is my dream then realised?”
And to a.s.sure herself that she was not dreaming, that she was really in the Cure of Althausen's bed, she spoke to him in mincing tones:
--You say nothing, my handsome master. You seem to be dejected. What! you are not tired out already?
And she put out her hand to give him a caress. But he sprang out of bed, surfeited with disgust.
--Ah, true, she said, happiness makes us forgetful. I was forgetting your Ma.s.s.
And she rose also, and ran off to her room, laughing like a madcap, and carrying her dress and petticoats under her arm.
LV.
IN THE FOOT-PATH.
”'Tis the comer blest where G.o.d's creatures dwell, The wild birds' haunt and the dragon-fly's home, Where the queen-bee flies when she leaves her cell, Where Spring in the verdant glades doth roam.”
CAMILLE DELTHIL (_Les Rustiques_).
”Abomination of abomination!” murmured Marcel, and he went out in haste; he would not remain another minute in that cursed house. It seemed to him that the walls of his room reeked of debauchery, and that everything there was impregnated with the odour of foul orgies.
He went out of the village, unconscious of his road, like a hunted criminal; he tried to escape from himself, for that harsh officer, remorse, had laid vigorous hold of his conscience. Be followed at random the foot-paths, lined by gardens by which he had pa.s.sed so many times with placid brow and a clean heart; he walked on, he walked on, with bare head, and blank and haggard eyes, thinking of nothing but his crime, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, not oven the bell which summoned him to his morning Ma.s.s, as it cheerfully filled the air with its silver notes.
The morning was as bright as the face of a bride. May was shedding its perfumes and flowers on the paths, and displaying everywhere its marvellous adornments of universal life,--labour and love. The children were already tumbling about in the foot-paths, the birds were warbling in the hawthorn hedges, and in the moist gra.s.s the gra.s.shopper was saluting the rising sun.
And he, in the midst of all this joy and all this life, was walking on with his head filled with vague ideas of suicide. A few peasants pa.s.sed near him and sainted him: he saw them not; he saw not the children who stopped still and gazed in bewilderment at his strange appearance: he saw not Suzanne who was approaching at the end of the path.
She was only a few paces away when he raised his head, and all his blood rushed to his heart. Vision blessed and cursed at the same time. She, she there, at the vary moment of the consummation of his shame. She before him when he had just dug an abyss between them. What should he say? Would she not read on his troubled face the shameful secret of the drama within? Was not his crime written on his sullied brow in indelible soars? He would have wished the earth to open under his feet.
Meanwhile she advanced blus.h.i.+ng, perhaps as greatly agitated as himself.
And from the smile on her rosy lips, from the brightness of her dark eyes, from the gram of her carriage, from the chaste swelling of her bosom, from the folds of her dress which, blown by the morning breeze, revealed the harmonious outlines of her fairy leg, from all those inexpressible maiden charms, there breathed forth that _something_, for which there is no name in the language of men, but which accelerates the beating of the heart, which pours into the veins an unknown fluid, and bids us murmur low to the stranger who pa.s.ses by, and whom perhaps we may never see again: ”My life is thine, is thine!”
Mysterious sensation, which, in the golden days of youth, we have all experienced once at least with ravis.h.i.+ng delight.
And everything seemed to say to Marcel: ”Fool! If thou hadst wished it, we were thine. The delights of paradise were thine, and thou hast preferred the impurities of h.e.l.l!”
Oh, if he had been able, if he had dared, he would have cast himself at this maiden's feet, he would have kissed her knees, he would have grovelled on the ground and cried with tears: ”Pardon! pardon! Fate has caused it all. Almighty G.o.d will never pardon me, but it is thou whom I implore, and what matters it, if thou, thou dost pardon me.”