“Why do you not love me any longer? Why
do you make me so unhappy? What have I done to
you, Jacques?”
She was at my mercy, she was undergoing the influence
of the charm of one of those moonlight nights which
unbrace women’s nerves, make them languid, and
leave them without a will and without strength, and
I thought that she was going to tell me everything
and to confess everything to me, and I had to master
myself, not to kiss her on her sweet coaxing lips,
but I only replied coldly:
“Do you not know, Elaine?... Did you not
think that sooner or later I should discover everything
that you have been trying to hide from me?”
She sat up in terror, and repeated as if she were
in a profound stupor:
“What have I been trying to hide from you?”
I had said too much, and was bound to go on to the
end and to finish, even though I repented of it ever
afterwards, and amidst the noise of the carriage I
said in a hoarse voice:
“Is it not your fault if I have become estranged
from you, shall not I be the only one to be unhappy,
I who loved you so dearly, who believed in you, and
whom you have deceived, and condemned to take another
man’s mistress?”
Elaine closed my mouth with my fingers, and panting,
with dilated eyes and with such a pale face that I
thought she was going to faint, she said hoarsely:
“Be quiet, be quiet, you are frightening me,...
frightening me as if you were a madman....”
Those words froze me, and I shivered as if some phantoms
were appearing among the trees and showing me the
place that had been marked out for me by Destiny,
and I felt inclined to jump from the carriage and to
run to the river, which was calling to me yonder in
a maternal voice, and inviting me to an eternal sleep,
eternal repose, but Elaine called out to the coachman:
“We will go home, Firmin; drive as fast as you
can!”
We did not exchange another word, and during the whole
drive Elaine sobbed convulsively, though she tried
to hide the sound with her pocket handkerchief, and
I understood that it was all finished and that I
had killed our love....
Yes, all was finished and stupidly finished, without
the decisive explanation, in which I should find strength
to escape from a hateful yoke, and to repudiate the
woman who had allured me with false caresses, and
who no longer ought to bear my name.
It was either that, or else, who knows, the happiness,
the peace, the love which was not troubled by any
evil afterthoughts, that absolute love that I dreamt
of between Elaine and myself when I asked for her
hand, and which I was still continually dreaming of
with the despair of a condemned soul far from Paradise,
and from which I was suffering, and which would kill
me.
She prevented me from speaking; with her trembling
hand she checked that flow of frenzied words which
were about to come from my pained heart, those terrible
accusations which an imperious, resistless force incited
me to utter, and those terrified words which escaped
from her pale lips, froze me again, and penetrated
to my marrow as if they had been some piercing wind.
