I very nearly burst out laughing in her face, for
such a theatrical phrase appeared to me both ridiculous
and doubtful. So that respectable woman had always
been a passive, pliable, inert object, who never had
one moment of vibration, of tender emotion in her husband’s
arms, and I understood why, as I wasted at the clubs,
he escaped from her as soon as possible and made other
connections which cost him dear, but in which he found
at least some appearance of love.
Oh! to call that supreme bliss of possession, which
makes human beings divine and which transports them
far from everything, that despotic pain of virginity,
which guesses, which waits, which longs for those
mysterious, unknown, brief sufferings that contain
the germs of future pleasure, the only happiness of
which one never tires, a duty!
And that piece of advice, at the last moment, which
was as common-place and natural, and which I ought
to have expected, enervated me, and, in spite of myself,
plunged me into a state of perplexity, from which I
could not extricate myself. I remembered those
absurd stories which we hear among friends, after
a good dinner. What would be that last trial
of our love for her and for me, and could that love
which then was my whole life, come out of the ordeal
lessened or increased tenfold? And when I looked
at the couch on which Elaine, my adored Elaine, was
sitting, with her head half-hidden behind the feathers
of her fan, she whispered in a rather vexed voice:
“How cross you look, my dear Jacques? Is
the fact of your getting married the cause of it?
And you have such a mocking look on your face.
If the thought of it terrifies you too much, there
is still time to say no!”
And delighted, bewitched by her caressing looks, I
said in a low voice, almost into her small ear:
“I adore you; and these last moments that still
separate us from each other, seem centuries to me,
my dear Elaine!”
There were tiresome ceremonies yesterday, and to-day,
which I went through almost mechanically.
First, there is the yes before the mayor at the civil
ceremony,[11] like some everyday response in church,
which one is in a hurry to get over, and which has
almost the suggestion of an imperious law, to which
one is bound to submit, and of a state of bondage,
which will, perhaps, be very irksome, since the whole
of existence is made up of chances.
[Footnote 11: Civil marriages are obligatory
in France, though usually followed by the religious
rite.—TRANSLATOR.]
And then the service in church, with the decorated
altar, the voices of the choir, the solemn music of
the organ, the unctuous address of the old priest
who marks his periods, who seemed quite proud of having
prepared Elaine for confirmation, and then the procession
to the vestry, the shaking hands, and the greetings
of people whom you scarcely see, and whom you do,
or do not recognize.
