All day long I have been distracted, nervous, extremely agitated. Never did the house weigh more heavily upon me; never did the long corridors seem more dismal, more icily silent; never have I so much detested the crabbed face and shrill voice of Madame. Impossible to work. I have had with Madame a very violent scene, in consequence of which I really thought that I should be obliged to go.
And I ask myself what I am going to do during these six days, without Joseph. I dread the ennui of being alone, at meals, with Marianne.
I really need somebody to talk to.
As a rule, as soon as it comes night, Marianne, under the influence of drink, falls into a state of complete stupefaction.
Her brain becomes torpid; her tongue becomes thick; her lips hang and shine like the worn brink of an old well; and she is sad, sad to the point of weeping.
I can get nothing out of her but little plaints, little cries, something like the puling of a child. Nevertheless, last night, less drunk than usual, she confided to me, amid never-ending groans, that she is afraid she is in trouble.
Well, that caps the climax! My first impulse is to laugh. But soon I feel a keen sorrow,—something like the cutting of a lash in the pit of my stomach.
Suppose it were through Joseph?
I remember that, on the day of my arrival here, I at once suspected them. But since then nothing has happened to justify this stupid suspicion. On the contrary. No, no, it is impossible. It cannot be. I ask:
"You are sure, Marianne?"
"Sure?
No," she says; "I am only afraid."
"And through whom?"
She hesitates to answer; then, suddenly, with a sort of pride, she declares:
"Through Monsieur."
This time I came near bursting with laughter.
Marianne, mistaking my laugh for one of admiration, begins to laugh, too.
"Yes, yes, through Monsieur," she repeats.
"I am going to see Madame Gouin to-morrow."
I feel a real pity for this poor woman whose brain is so dark and whose ideas are so obscure. Oh! how melancholy and lamentable she is!
And what is going to happen to her now?
An extraordinary thing,—love has given her no radiance, no grace. She has not that halo of light with which voluptuousness surrounds the ugliest faces. She has remained the same,—heavy, flabby, lumpy.
I left her with a somewhat heavy heart. Now I laugh no more; I will never laugh at Marianne again, and the pity that I feel for her turns into a real and almost painful emotion.
But I feel that my emotion especially concerns myself.
On returning to my room, I am seized with a sort of shame and great discouragement.
One should never reflect upon love.
How sad love is at bottom!
And what does it leave behind?
Ridicule, bitterness, or nothing at all. What remains to me now of Monsieur Jean, whose photograph is on parade on the mantel, in its red plush frame?
Nothing, except my disappointment at having loved a vain and heartless imbecile. Can I really have loved this insipid beauty, with his white and unhealthy face, his regulation black mutton-chops, and his hair parted down the middle?
This photograph irritates me. I can no longer have continually before me those two stupid eyes that look at me with the unchangeable look of an insolent and servile flunky.
Oh! no, let it go to keep company with the others, at the bottom of my trunk, pending the time when I shall make of my more and more detested past a fire of joy and ashes. _____
And I think of Joseph. Where is he at the present moment?
What is he doing?
Is he even thinking of me?
Undoubtedly he is in the little cafe.
He is looking, discussing, measuring; he is picturing to himself the effect that I shall produce at the bar, before the mirror, amid the dazzling of the glasses and the multi-colored bottles.
I wish that I knew Cherbourg, its streets, its squares, its harbor, that I might represent Joseph to myself going and coming, conquering the city as he has conquered me.
I turn and turn again in my bed, a little feverish.
My thought goes from the forest of Raillon to Cherbourg, from the body of Claire to the little cafe.
And, after a painful period of insomnia, I finally go off to sleep with the stern and severe image of Joseph before my eyes, the motionless image of Joseph outlining itself in the distance against a dark and choppy background, traversed by white masts and red yards. _____
To-day, Sunday, I paid a visit in the afternoon to Joseph's room.
The two dogs follow me eagerly. They seem to be asking me where Joseph is. A little iron bed, a large cupboard, a sort of low commode, a table, two chairs, all in white-wood, and a porte-manteau, which a green lustring curtain, running on a rod, protects from the dust,—these constitute the furnishings.
Though the room is not luxurious, it is extremely orderly and clean.
It has something of the rigidity and austerity of a monk's cell in a convent.
On the white-washed walls, between the portraits of Deroulede and General Mercier, holy pictures unframed,—Virgins, an Adoration of the Magi, a Massacre of the Innocents, a view of Paradise. Above the bed a large crucifix of dark wood, serving as a holy-water basin, and barred with a branch of consecrated box.
It is not very delicate, to be sure, but I could not resist my violent desire to search everywhere, in the hope, vague though it were, of discovering some of Joseph's secrets. Nothing is mysterious in this room, nothing is hidden.
It is the naked chamber of a man who has no secrets, whose life is pure, exempt from complications and events. The keys are in the furniture and in the cupboards; not a drawer is locked.
On the table some packages of seeds and a book,
"The Good Gardener."