Since he had been in love with her, he said, he had walked so lightly and was supported by such joy that his feet did not touch the earth. He had only one fear, which was that he might be dreaming, and might awake unknown to her. Doubtless he was only dreaming. And what a dream! He was like one intoxicated7 and singing. He had not his reason, happily. Absent, he saw her continually. “Yes, I see you near me; I see your lashes8 shading eyes the gray of which is more delicious than all the blue of the sky and the flowers; your lips, which have the taste of a marvellous fruit; your cheeks, where laughter puts two adorable dimples; I see you beautiful and desired, but fleeing and gliding9 away; and when I open my arms, you have gone; and I see you afar on the long, long beach, not taller than a fairy, in your pink gown, under your parasol. Oh, so small! — small as you were one day when I saw you from the height of the Campanile in the square at Florence. And I say to myself, as I said that day: ‘A bit of grass would suffice to hide her from me, yet she is for me the infinite of joy and of pain.’”
He complained of the torments10 of absence. And he mingled11 with his complaints the smiles of fortunate love. He threatened jokingly to surprise her at Dinard. “Do not be afraid. They will not recognize me. I shall be disguised as a vender12 of plaster images. It will not be a lie. Dressed in gray tunic13 and trousers, my beard and face covered with white dust, I shall ring the bell of the Montessuy villa14. You may recognize me, Therese, by the statuettes on the plank15 placed on my head. They will all be cupids. There will be faithful Love, jealous Love, tender Love, vivid Love; there will be many vivid Loves. And I shall shout in the rude and sonorous16 language of the artisans of Pisa or of Florence: ‘Tutti gli Amori per la Signora Teersinal!”
The last page of this letter was tender and grave. There were pious17 effusions in it which reminded Therese of the prayer-books she read when a child. “I love you, and I love everything in you: the earth that carries you, on which you weigh so lightly, and which you embellish18; the light that allows me to see you; the air you breathe. I like the bent19 tree of my yard because you have seen it. I have walked tonight on the avenue where I met you one winter night. I have culled20 a branch of the boxwood at which you looked. In this city, where you are not, I see only you.”
He said at the end of his letter that he was to dine out. In the absence of Madame Fusellier, who had gone to the country, he should go to a wine-shop of the Rue21 Royale where he was known. And there, in the indistinct crowd, he should be alone with her.
Therese, made languid by the softness of invisible caresses22, closed her eyes and threw back her head on the armchair. When she heard the noise of the carriage coming near the house, she opened the second letter. As soon as she saw the altered handwriting of it, the lines precipitate23 and uneven24, the distracted look of the address, she was troubled.
Its obscure beginning indicated sudden anguish25 and black suspicion: “Therese, Therese, why did you give yourself to me if you were not giving yourself to me wholly? How does it serve me that you have deceived me, now that I know what I did not wish to know?”
She stopped; a veil came over her eyes. She thought:
“We were so happy a moment ago. What has happened? And I was so pleased at his joy, when it had already gone; it would be better not to write, since letters show only vanished sentiments and effaced26 ideas.”
She read further. And seeing that he was full of jealousy27, she felt discouraged.
“If I have not proved to him that I love him with all my strength, that I love him with all there is in me, how am I ever to persuade him of it?”
And she was impatient to discover the cause of his folly28. Jacques told it. While taking breakfast in the Rue Royale he had met a former companion who had just returned from the seaside. They had talked together; chance made that man speak of the Countess Martin, whom he knew. And at once, interrupting the narration29, Jacques exclaimed: “Therese, Therese, why did you lie to me, since I was sure to learn some day that of which I alone was ignorant? But the error is mine more than yours. The letter which you put into the San Michele post-box, your meeting at the Florence station, would have enlightened me if I had not obstinately30 retained my illusions and disdained31 evidence.
“I did not know; I wished to remain ignorant. I did not ask you anything, from fear that you might not be able to continue to lie; I was prudent32; and it has happened that an idiot suddenly, brutally33, at a restaurant table, has opened my eyes and forced me to know. Oh, now that I know, now that I can not doubt, it seems to me that to doubt would be delicious! He gave the name — the name which I heard at Fiesole from Miss Bell, and he added: ‘Everybody knows about that.’
“So you loved him. You love him still! He is near you, doubtless. He goes every year to the Dinard races. I have been told so. I see him. I see everything. If you knew the images that worry me, you would say, ‘He is mad,’ and you would take pity on me. Oh, how I should like to forget you and everything! But I can not. You know very well I can not forget you except with you. I see you incessantly34 with him. It is torture. I thought I was unfortunate that night on the banks of the Arno. But I did not know then what it is to suffer. To-day I know.”
As she finished reading that letter, Therese thought: “A word thrown haphazard35 has placed him in that condition, a word has made him despairing and mad.” She tried to think who might be the wretched fellow who could have talked in that way. She suspected two or three young men whom Le Menil had introduced to her once, warning her not to trust them. And with one of the white and cold fits of anger she had inherited from her father she said to herself: “I must know who he is.” In the meanwhile what was she to do? Her lover in despair, mad, ill, she could not run to him, embrace him, and throw herself on him with such an abandonment that he would feel how entirely36 she was his, and be forced to believe in her. Should she write? How much better it would be to go to him, to fall upon his heart and say to him: “Dare to believe I am not yours only!” But she could only write. She had hardly begun her letter when she heard voices and laughter in the garden. Therese went down, tranquil37 and smiling; her large straw hat threw on her face a transparent38 shadow wherein her gray eyes shone.
“How beautiful she is!” exclaimed Princess Seniavine. “What a pity it is we never see her! In the morning she is promenading39 in the alleys41 of Saint Malo, in the afternoon she is closeted in her room. She runs away from us.”
The coach turned around the large circle of the beach at the foot of the villas42 and gardens on the hillside. And they saw at the left the ramparts and the steeple of St. Malo rise from the blue sea. Then the coach went into a road bordered by hedges, along which walked Dinard women, erect43 under their wide headdresses.
“Unfortunately,” said Madame Raymond, seated on the box by Montessuy’s side, “old costumes are dying out. The fault is with the railways.”
“It is true,” said Montessuy, “that if it were not for the railways the peasants would still wear their picturesque44 costumes of other times. But we should not see them.”
“What does it matter?” replied Madame Raymond. “We could imagine them.”
“But,” asked the Princess Seniavine, “do you ever see interesting things? I never do.”
Madame Raymond, who had taken from her husband’s books a vague tint45 of philosophy, declared that things were nothing, and that the idea was everything.
Without looking at Madame Berthier-d’Eyzelles, seated at her right, the Countess Martin murmured:
“Oh, yes, people see only their ideas; they follow only their ideas. They go along, blind and deaf. One can not stop them.”
“But, my dear,” said Count Martin, placed in front of her, by the Princess’s side, “without leading ideas one would go haphazard. Have you read, Montessuy, the speech delivered by Loyer at the unveiling of the Cadet-Gassicourt statue? The beginning is remarkable46. Loyer is not lacking in political sense.”
The carriage, having traversed the fields bordered with willows47, went up a hill and advanced on a vast, wooded plateau. For a long time it skirted the walls of the park.
“Is it the Guerric?” asked the Princess Seniavine.
Suddenly, between two stone pillars surmounted48 by lions, appeared the closed gate. At the end of a long alley40 stood the gray stones of a castle.
“Yes,” said Montessuy, “it is the Guerric.”
And, addressing Therese:
“You knew the Marquis de Re? At sixty-five he had retained his strength and his youth. He set the fashion and was loved. Young men copied his frockcoat, his monocle, his gestures, his exquisite49 insolence50, his amusing fads51. Suddenly he abandoned society, closed his house, sold his stable, ceased to show himself. Do you remember, Therese, his sudden disappearance52? You had been married a short time. He called on you often. One fine day people learned that he had quitted Paris. This is the place where he had come in winter. People tried to find a reason for his sudden retreat; some thought he had run away under the influence of sorrow or humiliation53, or from fear that the world might see him grow old. He was afraid of old age more than of anything else. For seven years he has lived in retirement54 from society; he has not gone out of the castle once. He receives at the Guerric two or three old men who were his companions in youth. This gate is opened for them only. Since his retirement no one has seen him; no one ever will see him. He shows the same care to conceal55 himself that he had formerly56 to show himself. He has not suffered from his decline. He exists in a sort of living death.”
And Therese, recalling the amiable57 old man who had wished to finish gloriously with her his life of gallantry, turned her head and looked at the Guerric lifting its four towers above the gray summits of oaks.
On their return she said she had a headache and that she would not take dinner. She locked herself in her room and drew from her jewel casket the lamentable58 letter. She read over the last page.
“The thought that you belong to another burns me. And then, I did not wish that man to be the one.”
It was a fixed59 idea. He had written three times on the same leaf these words: “I did not wish that man to be the one.”
She, too, had only one idea: not to lose him. Not to lose him, she would have said anything, she would have done anything. She went to her table and wrote, under the spur of a tender, and plaintive60 violence, a letter wherein she repeated like a groan61: “I love you, I love you! I never have loved any one but you. You are alone, alone — do you hear? — in my mind, in me. Do not think of what that wretched man said. Listen to me! I never loved any one, I swear, any one, before you.”
As she was writing, the soft sigh of the sea accompanied her own sigh. She wished to say, she believed she was saying, real things; and all that she was saying was true of the truth of her love. She heard the heavy step of her father on the stairway. She hid her letter and opened the door. Montessuy asked her whether she felt better.
“I came,” he said, “to say good-night to you, and to ask you something. It is probable that I shall meet Le Menil at the races. He goes there every year. If I meet him, darling, would you have any objection to my inviting62 him to come here for a few days? Your husband thinks he would be agreeable company for you. We might give him the blue room.”
“As you wish. But I should prefer that you keep the blue room for Paul Vence, who wishes to come. It is possible, too, that Choulette may come without warning. It is his habit. We shall see him some morning ringing like a beggar at the gate. You know my husband is mistaken when he thinks Le Menil pleases me. And then I must go to Paris next week for two or three days.”
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1
promontories
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| n.岬，隆起，海角( promontory的名词复数 ) | |
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relished
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| v.欣赏( relish的过去式和过去分词 )；从…获得乐趣；渴望 | |
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furtive
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| adj.鬼鬼崇崇的，偷偷摸摸的 | |
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exhaled
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| v.呼出，发散出( exhale的过去式和过去分词 )；吐出（肺中的空气、烟等），呼气 | |
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aroma
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| n.香气，芬芳，芳香 | |
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simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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intoxicated
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| 喝醉的，极其兴奋的 | |
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lashes
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| n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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gliding
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| v. 滑翔 adj. 滑动的 | |
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torments
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| （肉体或精神上的）折磨，痛苦( torment的名词复数 )； 造成痛苦的事物[人] | |
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mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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vender
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| n.小贩 | |
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tunic
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| n.束腰外衣 | |
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villa
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| n.别墅，城郊小屋 | |
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plank
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| n.板条，木板，政策要点，政纲条目 | |
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sonorous
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| adj.响亮的，回响的；adv.圆润低沉地；感人地；n.感人，堂皇 | |
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pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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embellish
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| v.装饰，布置；给…添加细节，润饰 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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culled
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| v.挑选，剔除( cull的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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rue
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| n.懊悔，芸香，后悔；v.后悔，悲伤，懊悔 | |
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caresses
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| 爱抚，抚摸( caress的名词复数 ) | |
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precipitate
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| adj.突如其来的；vt.使突然发生；n.沉淀物 | |
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uneven
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| adj.不平坦的，不规则的，不均匀的 | |
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anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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effaced
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| v.擦掉( efface的过去式和过去分词 )；抹去；超越；使黯然失色 | |
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jealousy
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| n.妒忌，嫉妒，猜忌 | |
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folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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narration
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| n.讲述，叙述；故事；记叙体 | |
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obstinately
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| ad.固执地，顽固地 | |
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disdained
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| 鄙视( disdain的过去式和过去分词 )； 不屑于做，不愿意做 | |
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prudent
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| adj.谨慎的，有远见的，精打细算的 | |
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brutally
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| adv.残忍地，野蛮地，冷酷无情地 | |
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incessantly
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| ad.不停地 | |
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haphazard
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| adj.无计划的，随意的，杂乱无章的 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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tranquil
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| adj. 安静的, 宁静的, 稳定的, 不变的 | |
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transparent
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| adj.明显的，无疑的；透明的 | |
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promenading
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| v.兜风( promenade的现在分词 ) | |
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40
alley
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| n.小巷，胡同；小径，小路 | |
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alleys
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| 胡同，小巷( alley的名词复数 )； 小径 | |
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villas
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| 别墅，公馆( villa的名词复数 )； （城郊）住宅 | |
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43
erect
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| n./v.树立，建立，使竖立；adj.直立的，垂直的 | |
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44
picturesque
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| adj.美丽如画的，（语言）生动的，绘声绘色的 | |
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45
tint
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| n.淡色，浅色；染发剂；vt.着以淡淡的颜色 | |
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46
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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willows
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| n.柳树( willow的名词复数 )；柳木 | |
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48
surmounted
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| 战胜( surmount的过去式和过去分词 )； 克服（困难）； 居于…之上； 在…顶上 | |
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49
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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50
insolence
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| n.傲慢；无礼；厚颜；傲慢的态度 | |
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51
fads
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| n.一时的流行，一时的风尚( fad的名词复数 ) | |
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52
disappearance
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| n.消失，消散，失踪 | |
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53
humiliation
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| n.羞辱 | |
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retirement
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| n.退休，退职 | |
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conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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56
formerly
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| adv.从前，以前 | |
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57
amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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58
lamentable
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| adj.令人惋惜的，悔恨的 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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plaintive
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| adj.可怜的，伤心的 | |
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61
groan
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| vi./n.呻吟，抱怨；(发出)呻吟般的声音 | |
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inviting
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| adj.诱人的，引人注目的 | |
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