The Complete Works: Short Stories, Novels, Plays, Poetry, Memoirs and more. Guy de Maupassant
but your legs, your muscles, your lungs, your whole body have not forgotten, and they say to the mind, when it wants to take them along the same route: ‘No, I won’t go; I have suffered too much there.’ And the mind yields to this refusal without disputing it, submitting to this mute language of the companions who carry it along.
“So then, we want fine pathways, which comes back to saying that I require the bits of ground belonging to that donkey of a Père Oriol. But patience! Ha! with reference to that point, Mas-Roussel has become the proprietor of his own chalet on the same conditions as Remusot. It is a trifling sacrifice for which he will amply indemnify us. Try, therefore, to find out exactly what are Cloche’s intentions.”
“He’ll do just the same thing as the others,” said the physician. “But there is something else, of which I have been thinking for the last few days, and which we have completely forgotten — it is the meteorological bulletin.”
“What meteorological bulletin?”
“In the big Parisian newspapers. It is indispensable, this is! It is necessary that the temperature of a thermal station should be better, less variable, more uniformly mild than that of the neighboring and rival stations. You subscribe to the meteorological bulletin in the leading organs of opinion, and I will send every evening by telegraph the atmospheric situation.
I will do it in such a way that the average arrived at when the year is at an end may be higher than the best mean temperatures of the surrounding stations. The first thing that meets our eyes when we open the big newspapers are the temperatures of Vichy, of Royat, of Mont Doré, of Chatel-Guyon, and other places during the summer season, and, during the winter season, the temperatures of Cannes, Mentone, Nice, Saint Raphael. It is necessary that the weather should always be hot and always fine in these places, in order that the Parisian might say: ‘Christi! how lucky the people are who go down there!’”
Andermatt exclaimed: “Upon my honor, you’re right. Why have I never thought of that? I will attend to it this very day. With regard to useful things, have you written to Professors Larenard and Pascalis? There are two men I would like very much to have here.”
“Unapproachable, my dear President — unless — unless they are satisfied of themselves after many trials that our waters are of a superior character. But, as far as they are concerned, you will accomplish nothing by persuasion — by anticipation.”
They passed by Paul and Gontran, who had come to take coffee after luncheon. Other bathers made their appearance, especially men, for the women, on rising from the table, always went up to their rooms for an hour or two. Petrus Martel was looking after his waiters, and crying out: “A kummel, a nip of brandy, a glass of aniseed cordial,” in the same rolling, deep voice which he would assume an hour later while conducting rehearsals, and giving the keynote to the young première.
Andermatt stopped a few moments for a short chat with the two young men; then he resumed his promenade by the side of the inspector.
Gontran, with legs crossed and folded arms, lolling in his chair, with the nape of his neck against the back of it, and his eyes and his cigar facing the sky, was puffing in a state of absolute contentment.
Suddenly, he asked: “‘Would you mind taking a turn, presently, in the valley of Sans-Souci? The girls will be there.”
Paul hesitated; then, after some reflection: “Yes, I am quite willing.” Then he added: “Is your affair progressing?”
“Egad, it is! Oh! I have a hold of her. She won’t escape me now.”
Gontran had, by this time, taken his friend into his confidence, and told him, day by day, how he was going on and how much ground he had gained. He even got him to be present, as a confederate, at his appointments, for he had managed to obtain appointments with Louise Oriol by a little bit of ingenuity.
After their promenade at the Puy de la Nugère, Christiane put an end to these excursions by not going out at all, and so rendered it more and more difficult for the lovers to meet. Her brother, put out at first by this attitude on her part, bethought him of some means of extricating himself from this predicament. Accustomed to Parisian morals, according to which women are regarded by men of his stamp as game, the chase of which is often no easy one, he had in former days made use of many artifices in order to gain access to those for whom he had conceived a passion. He knew better than anyone else how to make use of pimps, to discover those who were accommodating through interested motives, and to determine with a single glance the men or women who were disposed to aid him in his designs.
The unconscious support of Christiane having suddenly been withdrawn from him, he had looked about him for the requisite connecting link, the “pliant nature,” as he expressed it himself, whereby he could replace his sister; and his choice speedily fixed itself on Doctor Honorat’s wife. Many reasons pointed at her as a suitable person. In the first place, her husband, closely associated with the Oriols, had been for the past twenty years attending this family. He had been present at the birth of the children, had dined with them every Sunday, and had entertained them at his own table every Tuesday. His wife, a fat old woman of the lower-middle class, trying to pass as a lady, full of pretension, easy to overcome through her vanity, was sure to lend both hands to every desire of the Comte de Ravenel, whose brother-in-law owned the establishment of Mont Oriol.
Besides, Gontran, who was a good judge of a go-between, had satisfied himself that this woman was naturally well adapted for the part, by merely seeing her walking through the street.
“She has the physique,” was his reflection, “and when one has the physique for an employment, one has the soul required for it, too!”
Accordingly, he made his way into her abode, one day, after having accompanied her husband to his own door. He sat down, chatted, complimented the lady, and, when the dinner-bell rang, he said, as he rose up: “You have a very savory smell here. You cook better than they do at the hotel.”
Madame Honorat, swelling with pride, faltered: “Good heavens! if I might make so bold — if I might make so bold, Monsieur le Comte, as— “
“If you might make so bold as what, dear Madame?”
“As to ask you to share our humble meal.’’ “Faith — faith, I would say ‘yes.’”
The doctor, ill at ease, muttered: “But we have nothing, nothing — soup, a joint of beef, and a chicken, that’s all!”
Gontran laughed: “Thai’s quite enough for me. I accept the invitation.”
And he dined at the Honorat household. The fat woman rose up, went to take the dishes out of the servant-maid’s hands, in order that the latter might not spill the sauce over the tablecloth, and, in spite of her husband’s impatience, insisted on attending at table herself.
The Comte congratulated her on the excellence of the cooking, on the good house she kept, on her attention to the duties of hospitality, and he left her inflamed with enthusiasm.
He returned to leave his card, accepted a fresh invitation, and thenceforth made his way constantly to Madame Honorat’s house, to which the Oriol girls had paid visits frequently also for many years as neighbors and friends.
So then he spent hours there, in the midst of the three ladies, attentive to both sisters, but accentuating clearly, from day to day, his marked preference for Louise.
The jealousy that had sprung up between the girls since the time when he had begun to make love to Charlotte had assumed an aspect of spiteful hostility on the side of the elder girl and of disdain on the side of the younger. Louise, with her reserved air, imported into her reticences and her demure ways in Gontran’s society much more coquetry and encouragement than the other had formerly shown with all her free and joyous unconstraint. Charlotte, wounded to the quick, concealed through pride the pain that she endured, pretended not to see or hear anything of what was happening around her, and continued her visits to Madame Honorat’s house with a beautiful appearance of indifference to all these lovers’ meetings. She would not remain behind at her own abode lest people