登陆注册
4279900000017

第17章

Not finding any great love in her husband, Virginie had set to work to create it. Having by degrees learned to esteem and care for his wife, the time that his happiness had taken to germinate was to Joseph Lebas a guarantee of its durability. Hence, when Augustine plaintively set forth her painful position, she had to face the deluge of commonplace morality which the traditions of the Rue Saint-Denis furnished to her sister.

"The mischief is done, wife," said Joseph Lebas; "we must try to give our sister good advice." Then the clever tradesman ponderously analyzed the resources which law and custom might offer Augustine as a means of escape at this crisis; he ticketed every argument, so to speak, and arranged them in their degrees of weight under various categories, as though they were articles of merchandise of different qualities; then he put them in the scale, weighed them, and ended by showing the necessity for his sister-in-law's taking violent steps which could not satisfy the love she still had for her husband; and, indeed, the feeling had revived in all its strength when she heard Joseph Lebas speak of legal proceedings. Augustine thanked them, and returned home even more undecided than she had been before consulting them. She now ventured to go to the house in the Rue du Colombier, intending to confide her troubles to her father and mother; for she was like a sick man who, in his desperate plight, tries every prescription, and even puts faith in old wives' remedies.

The old people received their daughter with an effusiveness that touched her deeply. Her visit brought them some little change, and that to them was worth a fortune. For the last four years they had gone their way like navigators without a goal or a compass. Sitting by the chimney corner, they would talk over their disasters under the old law of /maximum/, of their great investments in cloth, of the way they had weathered bankruptcies, and, above all, the famous failure of Lecocq, Monsieur Guillaume's battle of Marengo. Then, when they had exhausted the tale of lawsuits, they recapitulated the sum total of their most profitable stock-takings, and told each other old stories of the Saint-Denis quarter. At two o'clock old Guillaume went to cast an eye on the business at the Cat and Racket; on his way back he called at all the shops, formerly the rivals of his own, where the young proprietors hoped to inveigle the old draper into some risky discount, which, as was his wont, he never refused point-blank. Two good Normandy horses were dying of their own fat in the stables of the big house; Madame Guillaume never used them but to drag her on Sundays to high Mass at the parish church. Three times a week the worthy couple kept open house. By the influence of his son-in-law Sommervieux, Monsieur Guillaume had been named a member of the consulting board for the clothing of the Army. Since her husband had stood so high in office, Madame Guillaume had decided that she must receive; her rooms were so crammed with gold and silver ornaments, and furniture, tasteless but of undoubted value, that the simplest room in the house looked like a chapel. Economy and expense seemed to be struggling for the upper hand in every accessory. It was as though Monsieur Guillaume had looked to a good investment, even in the purchase of a candlestick. In the midst of this bazaar, where splendor revealed the owner's want of occupation, Sommervieux's famous picture filled the place of honor, and in it Monsieur and Madame Guillaume found their chief consolation, turning their eyes, harnessed with eye-glasses, twenty times a day on this presentment of their past life, to them so active and amusing. The appearance of this mansion and these rooms, where everything had an aroma of staleness and mediocrity, the spectacle offered by these two beings, cast away, as it were, on a rock far from the world and the ideas which are life, startled Augustine; she could here contemplate the sequel of the scene of which the first part had struck her at the house of Lebas--a life of stir without movement, a mechanical and instinctive existence like that of the beaver; and then she felt an indefinable pride in her troubles, as she reflected that they had their source in eighteen months of such happiness as, in her eyes, was worth a thousand lives like this; its vacuity seemed to her horrible. However, she concealed this not very charitable feeling, and displayed for her parents her newly-acquired accomplishments of mind, and the ingratiating tenderness that love had revealed to her, disposing them to listen to her matrimonial grievances. Old people have a weakness for this kind of confidence.

Madame Guillaume wanted to know the most trivial details of that alien life, which to her seemed almost fabulous. The travels of Baron da la Houtan, which she began again and again and never finished, told her nothing more unheard-of concerning the Canadian savages.

"What, child, your husband shuts himself into a room with naked women!

And you are so simple as to believe that he draws them?"As she uttered this exclamation, the grandmother laid her spectacles on a little work-table, shook her skirts, and clasped her hands on her knees, raised by a foot-warmer, her favorite pedestal.

"But, mother, all artists are obliged to have models.""He took good care not to tell us that when he asked leave to marry you. If I had known it, I would never had given my daughter to a man who followed such a trade. Religion forbids such horrors; they are immoral. And at what time of night do you say he comes home?""At one o'clock--two----"

The old folks looked at each other in utter amazement.

"Then he gambles?" said Monsieur Guillaume. "In my day only gamblers stayed out so late."Augustine made a face that scorned the accusation.

同类推荐
  • MOLL FLANDERS

    MOLL FLANDERS

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 登裴秀才迪小台

    登裴秀才迪小台

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 天仙道程宝则

    天仙道程宝则

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 太上灵宝净明天尊说御强经

    太上灵宝净明天尊说御强经

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 新增才子九云记

    新增才子九云记

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
热门推荐
  • 夫子撩妹日常

    夫子撩妹日常

    司马玥顶着脑残郡主的名声在异世混得风生水起,连庙堂之高江湖之远都顺利的闯了一遍。可身边这个撩妹高手是怎么回事?说好的高贵冷艳夫子呢?读书就读书你撩我为毛?!再撩我,再撩我,我就把你吃掉!
  • The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither

    The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 逆天魔妃:帝尊,放肆撩

    逆天魔妃:帝尊,放肆撩

    太监了,内容还无脑又白痴,别看!!!!!!!
  • 天地武剑道

    天地武剑道

    小湖如镜面,倒映一圆月。湖面白月光,蕴含一世界。
  • A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN

    A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 宠妻如命:boss骗婚大作战

    宠妻如命:boss骗婚大作战

    (本书已完结!)第一次骗婚是天真,第二次骗婚是假孕,第三次骗婚是孩子。自古以来都是女人拿孩子来要挟,唯独他叶存钦买通把脉的老中医,把媳妇三番两次骗回家。豪门嫁豪门,理所应当,但这只是个开始。说好的盛世宠爱,承诺下的唯你不娶,到头来都是他报复的垫脚石,真相袭来,这是一场居心叵测的婚姻……一场你追我赶的骗婚大作战,莫念熙发誓:“叶存钦的话,一个标点符号都不能相信。”
  • 雪球专刊第078期:股灾启示录

    雪球专刊第078期:股灾启示录

    股灾过后,余震不断。本轮股灾发生时散户有哪些难忘的经历?广大股民从本次股灾中可以吸取哪些经验教训?请看本期《股灾启示录》!
  • 道德真经章句训颂

    道德真经章句训颂

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 顶级甜妻:腹黑老公请滚粗

    顶级甜妻:腹黑老公请滚粗

    由于亲人的背叛她被他猎捕,在她以为这只是一场豪门游戏时,她却撞开了一个封锁的大门。他如恶魔一般堵住她的退路,“看,你们真的很像。”相似的容貌,截然相反的性格,她惊愕彷徨,他嗜血一般执迷的看着她,带着一股执念宣布,“从此你就是她,永远陪伴在我身边。”她以为她可以永远冷静的知道他是她的棋子,可沦陷的时候从来都不由自己。最后,她对着他沉痛的眼睛说,“我爱你,带着所有的勇气,我恨你,带着所有消失的爱意!”他却说,“我爱你,带上我终生的悔意。”
  • 妖帝的偏执小宝贝

    妖帝的偏执小宝贝

    她是妖界的女帝妖王雪月,随随便便修炼便能超过其他仙妖魔佛,从而仙妖魔佛流传着一个传说,传说妖界妖王身上有一种宝贝,使用者可成为天地之间的主宰。惹得其他神妖魔佛的嫉妒和贪婪。她是水蓝星H国普普通通的一个孤儿,却因意外雪月附身在同名同姓的孤儿。当她成为异世界最顶级的存在时,当她在各个时空的经历中遇到了他。她还会像妖界时的那个冷血妖帝?第一次写小说,有什么不好的请说出来。但是不接受任何辱骂。希望大家能文明解决。