Part 39 (2/2)
The old Cure threw himself into his arm-chair with his head back, in order to contemplate her with admiration. She went and came, clearing the table, and he followed her movements with the eye of a connoisseur, estimating the value of an article.
He smiled sanctimoniously, and the smile and attention, which the bashful Veronica noticed, made her blush and cast her eyes modestly down.
-Eh! Eh! he seemed to say, here is a girl who is still fit to adorn a bed.
When the servant had left the room, he rose, drew the screen between the table and the door, and then came and sat down again facing Marcel.
--I don't understand, he said, why a man should go and search away from home, amid perils and obstacles, for a pleasure which he can obtain comfortably, quietly, with no fear or disquietude, at his own fire-side.
--To what are you pleased to allude?
--There is a girl, Ridoux continued, who certainly has merit, and I am convinced that many younger ones are not worth as much as she. She is there, in your hands, at your door, in your home; ready, I am sure, to satisfy all your requirements. Avail yourself of her willingness? No? Make use of this blessing which you possess? Again, no. You throw it aside to run after phantoms. Alas, all the men of your age are the same: like the dog in the fable, they let go their prey to seize the shadow. You are like the fool, who spends his life in vainly following fortune to the four quarters of the world, and who, when he returns to his hearth wearied, worn-out and aged, finds it sitting at his door. But he is too late to be able to enjoy it.
That girl is really very well: handsome, fresh, very well-preserved, with a decent and respectable appearance. Why then do you disdain her? Why? Tell me. Because she is a few years older than you? But that is just what you young priests require. You require women of that age: matrons with more sense than yourselves. She is staid, she is ripe, she is experienced, a mistress of love's science, and above all, she has a great quality, an inestimable quality, she is cautious and will never compromise you.
--Uncle, I implore you.
--Let me finish.
Another thing which is very valuable. She is full of little attentions for her master. Ah, you are not aware with what tender solicitude, with what kindness, with what jealous affection an old mistress surrounds you. She fears more for your health than for her own, she is acquainted with your tastes and knows how to antic.i.p.ate them, she satisfies all your desires, and lends herself to all your fancies.
--What a conversation! If anyone heard us....
--Be easy. I have drawn the screen.
The young mistress is fickle, egotistical, capricious; she exacts adoration, and most frequently loves you for a whim and for want of occupation.
The old one devotes herself entirely to you and does not ask you (sublime self-denial!), that you should love her, but only that you should let her love you. Balzac extolled the women of thirty; that was because he had not tasted those of forty. Ah! the women of forty!
They are the only women who are of value to the priest, my friend. You have had the good fortune to meet one here, and instead of profiting by it, of thinking yourself fortunate, of thanking heaven and piously and devoutly enjoying the good which G.o.d grants you, you cast it away, you disdain, you despise it; and why? For some giddy little thing who will bring upon you every kind of vexation and unpleasantness. _Dixi_. You can speak now.
Marcel made no reply. With his elbows resting on the table and his head in his hands, he stared at his uncle.
He asked himself if he was really awake, if it was really his adopted father, the mentor of his childhood, the wise and virtuous Cure of St.
Nicholas, who was talking to him so.
He knew the worthy man's somewhat eccentric character, his coa.r.s.e witticisms in bad taste, but he never could have believed that he would have stated such theories before him with a cynisism like that. He quite understood that a man might commit faults, he even excused _in petto_ certain crimes, and he excused them the more willingly because he himself had been guilty of them; but he did not understand how a man could dare to talk about them.
He was rather of that cla.s.s of persons who are modest in words, but not in deeds, who are offended at the talk, while they delight in the acts. We hear them utter cries of horror and indignation at the slightest equivocal word, we see them stop their ears at the recital of a racy tale, chastely cover their face before the figure of the Callipygean Venus, treating Moliere as obscene and Rabelais as debauched; yet, out of sight, sheltered by the curtains of the alcove, they love to strip in silence some lascivious Maritorne, and cautiously abandon themselves to disgusting orgies with Phrynes whom they chance to encounter.
Therefore the Cure of Althausen was offended and indignant at his uncle's cynicism, who had so crudely broached the chapter about the love of middle-aged women to him, who the evening before had abandoned himself to all the furies of a long-repressed pa.s.sion, in the arms of a debauched old maid-servant.
At the same he felt that his brain was confused and that he was gradually losing the exact idea of things. The wine he had drunk was more than he was accustomed to; it was rising to his head and he was becoming intoxicated.
--Well, said Ridoux, you give me no answer and you stare at me like an earthen-ware dog.
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