Comedy of Marriage and Other Tales. Guy de Maupassant

SCENE I.

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      Mme. de Sallus in her drawing-room, seated in a corner by the fireplace. Enter Jacques de RANDOL noiselessly; glances to see that no one is looking, and kisses Mme. de Sallus quickly upon her hair. She starts; utters a faint cry, and turns upon him.

      MME. DE SALLUS

      Oh! How imprudent you are!

      JACQUES DE RANDOL

      Don't be afraid; no one saw me.

      MME. DE SALLUS

      But the servants!

      JACQUES DE RANDOL

      Oh, they are in the outer hall.

      MME. DE SALLUS

      How is that? No one announced you

      JACQUES DE RANDOL

      No, they simply opened the door for me.

      MME. DE SALLUS

      But what will they think?

      JACQUES DE RANDOL

      Well, they will doubtless think that I don't count.

      MME. DE SALLUS

      But I will not permit it. I must have you announced in future. It does not look well.

      JACQUES DE RANDOL [laughs]

      Perhaps they will even go so far as to announce your husband—

      MME. DE SALLUS

      Jacques, this jesting is out of place.

      JACQUES DE RANDOL

      Forgive me. [Sits.] Are you waiting for anybody?

      MME. DE SALLUS

      Yes—probably. You know that I always receive when I am at home.

      JACQUES DE RANDOL

      I know that I always have the pleasure of seeing you for about five minutes—just enough time to ask you how you feel, and then some one else comes in—some one in love with you, of course—who impatiently awaits my departure.

      MME. DE SALLUS [smiles]

      Well, what can I do? I am not your wife, so how can it be otherwise?

      JACQUES DE RANDOL

      Ah! If you only were my wife!

      MME. DE SALLUS

      If I were your wife?

      JACQUES DE RANDOL

      I would snatch you away for five or six months, far from this horrible town, and keep you all to myself.

      MME. DE SALLUS

      You would soon have enough of me.

      JACQUES DE RANDOL

      No, no!

      MME. DE SALLUS

      Yes, yes!

      JACQUES DE RANDOL

      Do you know that it is absolute torture to love a woman like you?

      MME. DE SALLUS [bridles]

      And why?

      JACQUES DE RANDOL

      Because I covet you as the starving covet the food they see behind the glassy barriers of a restaurant.

      MME. DE SALLUS

      Oh, Jacques!

      JACQUES DE RANDOL

      I tell you it is true! A woman of the world belongs to the world; that is to say, to everyone except the man to whom she gives herself. He can see her with open doors for a quarter of an hour every three days—not oftener, because of servants. In exceptional cases, with a thousand precautions, with a thousand fears, with a thousand subterfuges, she visits him once or twice a month, perhaps, in a furnished room. Then she has just a quarter of an hour to give him, because she has just left Madame X in order to visit Madame Z, where she has told her coachman to take her. If he complains, she will not come again, because it is impossible for her to get rid of her coachman. So, you see, the coachman, and the footman, and Madame Z, and Madame X, and all the others, who visit her house as they would a museum—a museum that never closes—all the he's and all the she's who eat up her leisure minute by minute and second by second, to whom she owes her time as an employee owes his time to the State, simply because she belongs to the world—all these persons are like the transparent and impassable glass: they keep you from my love.

      MME. DE SALLUS

      [dryly]

      You seem upset to-day.

      JACQUES DE RANDOL

      No, no, but I hunger to be alone with you. You are mine, are you not? Or, I should say, I am yours. Isn't it true? I spend my life in looking for opportunities to meet you. Our love is made up of chance meetings, of casual bows, of stolen looks, of slight touches—nothing more. We meet on the avenue in the morning—a bow; we meet at your house, or at that of some other acquaintance—twenty words; we dine somewhere at the same table, too far from each other to talk, and I dare not even look at you because of hostile eyes. Is that love? We are simply acquaintances.

      MME. DE SALLUS

      Then you would like to carry me off?

      JACQUES DE RANDOL

      Unhappily, I cannot.

      MME. DE SALLUS

      Then what?

      JACQUES DE RANDOL

      I do not know. I only know this life is wearing me out.

      MME. DE SALLUS

      It is just because there are so many obstacles in the way of your love that it does not fade.

      JACQUES DE RANDOL

      Oh! Madeline, can you say that?

      MME. DE SALLUS [softening]

      Believe me, dear, if your love has to endure these hardships, it is because it is not lawful love.

      JACQUES