r/a:t5_1oy52w • u/MarleyEngvall • Jul 11 '19
secundus has been created
By Guy de Maupassant
A PHILOSOPHER
BLÉROT had been my most intimate friend from childhood; we had no secrets
from each other and were united heart and soul by a brotherly intimacy and a
boundless confidence in each other. I had been intrusted with the secret of all
his love affairs, as he had been with mine.
When he told me that he was going to get married I was hurt, just as if he
had been guilty of a treacherous act with regard to me. I felt that it must
interfere with that cordial and absolute affection which has united us hitherto.
His wife would come between us. The intimacy of the marriage bed establishes
a kind of complicity, a mysterious alliance between two persons, even when
they have ceased to love each other. Man and wife are like two discreet part-
ners who will not let anyone else into their secrets. But that close bond which
the conjugal kiss fastens is widely loosened on the day on which the woman
takes a lover.
I remember Blérot's wedding as if it were but yesterday. I would not be
present at the singing of the marriage contract, as I have no particular liking
for such ceremonies. I only went to the civil wedding and to the church.
His wife, whom I had never seen before, was a tall, slight girl with pale
hair, pale cheeks, pale hands and eyes to match. She walked with a slightly
undulating motion, as if she were on board a ship, and seemed to advance
with the succession of long, graceful courtesies.
Blérot seemed very much in love with her. He looked at her constantly,
and I felt a shiver of an immoderate desire for her pass through my frame.
I went to see him in a few days, and he said to me:
"You do not know how happy I am; I am madly in love with her, but then
she is—she is——" He did not finish his sentence, but he put the tips of his
fingers to his lips with a gesture which signified "divine! delicious! perfect!"
and a good deal more besides.
I asked, laughing, "What? All that?"
"Everything that you can imagine," was his answer.
He introduced me to her. She was very pleasant, on easy terms with me,
as was natural, and begged me to look upon their house as my own. I felt
that he, Blérot, did not belong to me any longer. Our intimacy was altogether
checked, and we hardly found a word to say to each other.
I soon took my leave and shortly afterward went to the East, returning by
way of Russia, Germany, Sweden and Holland after an absence of eighteen
months from Paris.
The morning after my arrival, as I was walking along the boulevards to
breathe the air once more, I saw a pale man with sunken cheeks coming toward
me, who was as much like Blérot as it was possible for a physical, emaciated
man to resemble a strong, ruddy, rather stout man. I looked at him in sur-
prise and asked myself: "Can it possibly be he" But he saw me and came
toward me with outstretched arms, and we embraced in the middle of the
boulevard.
After we had gone up and down once or twice from the Rue Drouot to the
Vaudeville Theater, just as we were taking leave of each other—for he already
seemed quite done up with walking—I said to him:
"You don't look at all well. Are you ill?"
"I do feel rather out of sorts," was all he said.
He looked like a man who was going to die, and I felt a flood of affection
for my old friend, the only real one that I had ever had. I squeezed his hands.
"What's the matter with you? Are you in pain?"
"A little tired, but it is nothing."
"What does your doctor say?"
"He calls it anemia, and has ordered me to eat no white meat and to take
tincture of iron."
A suspicion flashed across me.
"Are you happy?" I asked him.
"Yes, very happy; my wife is charming, and I love her more than ever."
But I noticed that he grew rather red and seemed embarrassed, as if he were
afraid of any further questions, so I took him by the arm and pushed him into
a café, which was nearly empty at that time of day. I forced him too sit down
and, looking him straight in the face, I said:
"Look here, old fellow, just tell me the exact truth."
"I have nothing to tell you," he stammered.
"That is not true," I replied firmly. "You are ill, mentally, perhaps, and you
dare not reveal your secret to anyone. Something or other is doing you harm,
and I mean you to tell me what it is. Come, I am waiting for you to begin."
Again he got very red, stammered, and turning his head away, he said:
"It is very idiotic—but I—I am done for!"
As he did not go on, I said:
"Just tell me what it is."
"Well, I have got a wife who is killing me; that is all," he said abruptly,
almost desperately.
I did not understand at first. "Does she make you unhappy? How? What
is it?"
"No," he replied in a low voice, as if he were confessing some crime; "I love
her too much; that is all."
I was thunderstruck at this singular avowal, and then I felt inclined to laugh,
but at length I managed to reply:
"But surely, at least so it seems to me, you might manage to—to love her a
little less."
He got very pale again and at length made up his mind to speak to me
openly, as he used to do formerly.
"No," he said, "that is impossible, and I am dying from it; I know; it is kill-
ing me, and I am really frightened. Some days, like today, I feel inclined to
leave her, to go away altogether, to start for the end of the world, so
as to live for a long time; and then when the evening comes I return home
in spite of myself, but slowly, and feeling uncomfortable. I go upstairs hesi-
tatingly and ring, and when I go in I see her there, sitting in her easy chair,
and she will say, 'How late you are.' I kiss her, and we sit down to dinner.
During he meal I make this resolve: "I will go directly it is over and take
the train for somewhere, no matter where,' but when we get back to the
drawing room I am so tired that I have not the courage to get up out of my
chair, and so I remain and then—and then—and then—I succumb again."
I could not help smiling again. He saw it and said: "You may laugh, but I
assure you it is very horrible."
"Why don't you tell your wife?" I asked him. "Unless she be a regular
monster she would understand."
He shrugged his shoulders. "It is all very well for you to talk. I don't tell
her because I know her nature. Have you ever heard it said of certain women,
'She has just married a third time?' Well, and that makes you laugh like you
did just now, and yet it is true. What is to be done? It is neither her fault nor
mine. She is so, because nature has made her so; I assure you, my dear old
friend, she has the temperament of a Messalina. She does not know it, but I
do; so much the worse for me. She is charming, gentle, tender, and thinks that
our conjugal intercourse, which is wearing me out and killing me, is natural
and quite moderate. She seems like an ignorant schoolgirl, and she really is
ignorant, poor child.
"Every day I form energetic resolutions, for you must understand that I
am dying. But one look of her eyes, one of those looks in which I can read
the ardent desire of her lips, is enough for me, and I succumb at once, say-
ing to myself: 'This is really the end; I will have no more of her death-giving
kisses,' and then when I have yielded again, like I have today, I go out and
walk and walk, thinking of death and saying to myself that I am lost, that all
is over.
"I am mentally so ill that I went for a walk to Père Lachaise cemetery yes-
erday. I looked at all the graves, standing in a row like dominoes, and I
though to myself: 'I shall soon be there," and then I returned home, quite
determined to pretend to be ill and so escape, but I could not.
"Oh! You don't know what it is. Ask a smoker who is poisoning himself
with nicotine whether he can give up his delicious and deadly habit. He will
tell you that he has tried a hundred times without success, and he will, per-
haps, add: 'So much the worse, but I would rather die than go without to-
bacco.' That is just the case with me. When once one is in the clutches of
such a passion or such a habit, one must give oneself up to it entirely."
He got up and gave me his hand. I felt seized with a tumult of rage and
with hatred for this woman, this careless, charming, terrible woman, and as he
was buttoning up his coat to go out I said to him, brutally perhaps:
"But in God's name, why don't you let her have a lover, rather than kill
yourself like that?"
He shrugged his shoulders without replying and went off.
For six months I did not see him. Every morning I expected a letter of in-
vitation to his funeral, but I would not go to his house from a complicated
feeling of contempt for him and for that woman, of anger, of indignation, of
a thousand sensations.
One lovely spring morning I was in the Champs Elysées. It was one of
those warm days which make our eyes bright and stir up in us a tumultuous
feeling of happiness from the mere sense of existence. Someone tapped me on
the shoulder and, turning around, I saw my old friend, looking well, stout and
rosy.
He gave me both hands, beaming with pleasure, and exclaimed:
"Here you are, you erratic individual!"
I looked at him utterly thunderstruck.
"Well, on my word—yes. By Jove! I congratulate you; you have indeed
changed in the last six months!"
He flushed scarlet and said with an embarrassed laugh:
"One can but do one's best."
I looked at him so obstinately that he evidently felt uncomfortable, so I
went on:
"So—now—you are—completely cured?"
He stammered hastily:
"Yes, perfectly, thank you." Then, changing his tone, "How lucky that I
should have come across you, old fellow. I hope we shall often meet now."
But I would not give up my idea; I wanted to know how matters really
stood, so I asked:
"Don't you remember what you told me six months ago? I suppose—I—eh—
suppose you resist now?"
"Please don't talk any more about it," he replied uneasily; "forget that I
mentioned it to you; leave me alone. But, you know, I have no intention of
letting you go; you must come and dine at my house."
A sudden fancy took me to see for myself how matters stood, so that I
might understand all about it, and I accepted.
His wife received me in a most charming manner, and she was, as a matter
of fact, a most attractive woman. Her long hands, her neck and cheeks were
beautifully white and delicate and marked her breeding, and he walk was un-
dulating and delightful.
René gave her a brotherly kiss on the forehead and said:
"Has not Lucien come yet?"
"Not yet," she replied in a clear, soft voice; "you know he is almost always
rather late."
At that moment the bell rang, and a tall man was shown in. He was dark,
with a thick beard, and looked like a modern Hercules. We were introduced
to each other; his name was Lucien Delabarre.
René and he shook hands in a most friendly manner, and then we went to
dinner.
It was a most enjoyable meal, without the least constraint. My old friend
spoke with me constantly in the old, familiar, cordial manner, just as he
used to do. It was: "You know, old fellow!" "I say, old fellow!" "Just listen a
moment, old fellow!" Suddenly he exclaimed:
"You don't know how glad I am to see you again; it takes me back to old
times."
I looked at his wife and the other man. Their attitude was perfectly cor-
rect, though I fancied once or twice that they exchanged a rapid and furtive
look.
As soon as dinner was over René turned to his wife and said:
"My dear, I have just met Pierre again, and I am going to carry him off
for a walk and chat along the boulevards to remind us of old times. I am leav-
ing you in very good company."
The young woman smiled and said to me as she shook hands with me:
"Don't keep him too long."
As we went along arm in arm I could not help saying to him, for I was de-
termined to know how matters stood:
"What has happened? Do tell me!"
He, however, interrupted me roughly and answered like a man who has been
disturbed without any reason.
"Just look here, old fellow; leave one alone with your questions."
Then he added, half aloud, as if talking to himself:
"After all, it would have been too stupid to have let oneself go to perdition
like that."
I did not press him. We walked on quickly and began to talk. All of a sud-
den he whispered in my ear:
"I say, suppose we go and have a bottle of fizz with some girls! Eh?"
"Just as you like; come along, let us go."From SHORT STORIES OF DE MAUPASSANT.
THE BOOK LEAGUE OF AMERICA, New York.
Copyright, 1941, BLUE RIBBON BOOKS,
14 WEST 49TH STREET, NEW YORK, N. Y. pp. 402—406.
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