departed. They had long desired to remain unburdened by children, and now they eagerly longed to have a child, and none came, though Claire, the wife, was as yet but six-and-thirty. Her husband, the once gay, handsome musketeer, was already turning gray and losing his eyesight — to such a degree, indeed, that he could scarcely see well enough to continue his profession as a fan-painter.
When Madame Angelin went to Paris she often called on Constance, to whom, before long, she confided all her worries. She had been in a doctor’s hands for three years, but all to no avail, and now during the last six months she had been consulting a person in the Rue de Miromesnil, a certain Madame Bourdieu, said she.
Constance at first made light of her friend’s statements, and in part declined to believe her. But when she found herself alone she felt disquieted by what she had heard. Perhaps she would have treated the matter as mere idle tittle-tattle, if she had not already regretted that she herself had no second child. On the day when the unhappy Morange had lost his only daughter, and had remained stricken down, utterly alone in life, she had experienced a vague feeling of anguish. Since that supreme loss the wretched accountant had been living on in a state of imbecile stupefaction, simply discharging his duties in a mechanical sort of way from force of habit. Scarcely speaking, but showing great gentleness of manner, he lived as one who was stranded, fated to remain forever at Beauchene’s works, where his salary had now risen to eight thousand francs a year. It was not known what he did with this amount, which was considerable for a man who led such a narrow regular life, free from expenses and fancies outside his home — that flat which was much too big for him, but which he had, nevertheless, obstinately retained, shutting himself up therein, and leading a most misanthropic life in fierce solitude.
It was his grievous prostration which had at one moment quite upset and affected Constance, so that she had even sobbed with the desolate man — she whose tears flowed so seldom! No doubt a thought that she might have had other children than Maurice came back to her in certain bitter hours of unconscious self-examination, when from the depths of her being, in which feelings of motherliness awakened, there rose vague fear, sudden dread, such as she had never known before.
Yet Maurice, her son, after a delicate youth which had necessitated great care, was now a handsome fellow of nineteen, still somewhat pale, but vigorous in appearance. He had completed his studies in a fairly satisfactory manner, and was already helping his father in the management of the works. And his adoring mother had never set higher hopes upon his head. She already pictured him as the master of that great establishment, whose prosperity he would yet increase, thereby rising to royal wealth and power.
Constance’s worship for that only son, tomorrow’s hero; increased the more since his father day by day declined in her estimation, till she regarded him in fact with naught but contempt and disgust. It was a logical downfall, which she could not stop, and the successive phases of which she herself fatally precipitated. At the outset she had overlooked his infidelity; then from a spirit of duty and to save him from irreparable folly she had sought to retain him near her; and finally, failing in her endeavor, she had begun to feel loathing and disgust. He was now two-and-forty, he drank too much, he ate too much, he smoked too much. He was growing corpulent and scant of breath, with hanging lips and heavy eyelids; he no longer took care of his person as formerly, but went about slipshod, and indulged in the coarsest pleasantries. But it was more particularly away from his home that he sank into degradation, indulging in the low debauchery which had ever attracted him. Every now and again he disappeared from the house and slept elsewhere; then he concocted such ridiculous falsehoods that he could not be believed, or else did not take the trouble to lie at all. Constance, who felt powerless to influence him, ended by allowing him complete freedom.
The worst was, that the dissolute life he led grievously affected the business. He who had been such a great and energetic worker had lost both mental and bodily vigor; he could no longer plan remunerative strokes of business; he no longer had the strength to undertake important contracts. He lingered in bed in the morning, and remained for three or four days without once going round the works, letting disorder and waste accumulate there, so that his once triumphal stocktakings now year by year showed a falling-off. And what an end it was for that egotist, that enjoyer, so gayly and noisily active, who had always professed that money — capital increased tenfold by the labor of others — was the only desirable source of power, and whom excess of money and excess of enjoyment now cast with appropriate irony to slow ruin, the final paralysis of the impotent.
But a supreme blow was to fall on Constance and fill her with horror of her husband. Some anonymous letters, the low, treacherous revenge of a dismissed servant, apprised her of Beauchene’s former intrigue with Norine, that workgirl who had given birth to a boy, spirited away none knew whither. Though ten years had elapsed since that occurrence, Constance could not think of it without a feeling of revolt. Whither had that child been sent? Was he still alive? What ignominious existence was he leading? She was vaguely jealous of the boy. The thought that her husband had two sons and she but one was painful to her, now that all her motherly nature was aroused. But she devoted herself yet more ardently to her fondly loved Maurice; she made a demigod of him, and for his sake even sacrificed her just rancor. She indeed came to the conclusion that he must not suffer from his father’s indignity, and so it was for him that, with extraordinary strength of will, she ever preserved a proud demeanor, feigning that she was ignorant of everything, never addressing a reproach to her husband, but remaining, in the presence of others, the same respectful wife as formerly. And even when they were alone together she kept silence and avoided explanations and quarrels. Never even thinking of the possibility of revenge, she seemed, in the presence of her husband’s profligacy, to attach herself more firmly to her home, clinging to her son, and protected by him from thought of evil as much as by her own sternness of heart and principles. And thus sorely wounded, full of repugnance but hiding her contempt, she awaited the triumph of that son who would purify and save the house, feeling the greatest faith in his strength, and quite surprised and anxious whenever, all at once, without reasonable cause, a little quiver from the unknown brought her a chill, affecting her heart as with remorse for some long-past fault which she no longer remembered.
That little quiver came back while she listened to all that Madame Angelin confided to her. And at last she became quite interested in her friend’s case, and offered to accompany her some day when she might be calling on Madame Bourdieu. In the end they arranged to meet one Thursday afternoon for the purpose of going together to the Rue de Miromesnil.
As it happened, that same Thursday, about two o’clock, Mathieu, who had come to Paris to see about a threshing-machine at Beauchene’s works, was quietly walking along the Rue La Boetie when he met Cecile Moineaud, who was carrying a little parcel carefully tied round with string. She was now nearly twenty-one, but had remained slim, pale, and weak, since passing through the hands of Dr. Gaude. Mathieu had taken a great liking to her during the few months she had spent as a servant at Chantebled; and later, knowing what had befallen her at the hospital, he had regarded her with deep compassion. He had busied himself to find her easy work, and a friend of his had given her some cardboard boxes to paste together, the only employment that did not tire her thin weak hands. So childish had she remained that one would have taken her for a young girl suddenly arrested in her growth. Yet her slender fingers were skilful, and she contrived to earn some two francs a day in making the little boxes. And as she suffered greatly at her parents’ home, tortured by her brutal surroundings there, and robbed of her earnings week by week, her dream was to secure a home of her own, to find a little money that would enable her to install herself in a room where she might live in peace and quietness. It had occurred to Mathieu to give her a pleasant surprise some day by supplying her with the small sum she needed.
“Where are you running so fast?” he gayly asked her.
The meeting seemed to take her aback, and she answered in an evasive, embarrassed way: “I am going to the Rue de Miromesnil for a call I have to make.”
Noticing his kindly air, however, she soon told him the truth. Her sister, that poor creature Norine,
