Chapter 16

When Leonor arrived at Robinvast, Rose and her father were sitting in the garden, each of them reading a letter ... From time to time, Rose would raise her eyes and look at the trees; M. Des Boys between two sentences of his letter would examine his daughter. During this last fortnight, she had been pale, sad, out of humour; and her father, absent-minded, but affectionate, had grown anxious. What was going on between the recently engaged couple? But M. Des Boys would never have dared to question his daughter. He was waiting for a confidence, knowing quite well that it would never come; and on her side, Rose was unhappy at having to keep locked up in her heart the troubles that were suffocating her. These two people, shy and secretive towards one another, might have remained like this for years without deciding to speak the words which would have consoled them.

M. Des Boys had accordingly urged Leonor to come and finish his work.

“It will be a distraction for her,” he had thought, “and then, at bottom and in spite of my pledged word, I agree with my wife: Leonor would be a much more suitable husband. What! Can Hervart be making her unhappy already.”

The letter he was reading at this moment put the final touch to his anxiety. It was from Bouret and Leonor was much praised in it. Bouret went on:

“I have seen Hervart and have equally advised him to get married, but for different reasons. Though he is little younger than we are, he is probably nearer the end. We shall all, alas, see this end confronting us, if we live another fifteen years. Do you understand me? With prudence and diplomacy, Hervart can still drag on a long time, can even recapture brilliant moments; but he has played too much on the fine violin given him by nature. The strings will snap one after the other. As long as one remains a virtuoso, one can still astonish ears habituated to vulgar exercises; but all the same, a single string is very risky! I have therefore ordered him to marry and, above all, to be faithful to his wife. Fidelity will bring satiety, satiety will bring continence, and continence will perhaps be the true philter. A young wife is not so dangerous as one thinks for a man on the down grade. She is a favourable stimulant and, at the same time, a moderating element. In fine, Hervart may make a very good husband. In any case it’s an experiment that interests me. I should be quite capable—if it gives good results, that is, at least a fine child—of yielding myself to an old temptation. I would give up my practice and go and cultivate roses and camellias in some corner of your earthly Paradise, in the Saire Valley, where one sees palms among the willow-trees!”

“I had almost forgotten one important point in our hypothesis. The young wife must have a virtuous temperament, without coldness, but also without sensual curiosity; a good reproducing animal, apt in the pleasure of conceiving rather than in the pleasure of love-making; one of those who, after having been blushing brides, become loving mothers. If he falls on some rebellious woman he is lost. If the instrument which he has to tune and render sensitive gives out no sound or false notes he will lose courage and return to his old concerts. But if, by chance, his wife should reveal herself as a creature of voluptuousness, his perdition would be still more certain: Hervart would flare up like a faggot and nothing but a handful of ashes would be left. I am not speaking of the adultery which would, in these last two cases be inevitable. Sometimes it has the effect of re-establishing the balance in a dislocated household; there are excellent conjugal associations in which each party has his or her ideal down town, in a different quarter of the city. But this is a matter of sociology and doesn’t interest me. I remain in my domain, which is the human body, its functions, its anomalies. I may add that it is by their ignorance of it that the sociologists think of such nonsense as they do. They are still hard at work—the idiots!—reasoning about averages, they never come down to reality, to the individual. How it is despised, this human body of ours! And yet it is the only truth, the only beauty, just as it is the only ideal and the only poetry...”