The novelist uttered those words with a feverish energy which was caused by the terrible strain he was making upon his conscience.  But Gorka’s laugh had terrified him so much the more as at the same instant the jealous lover’s disengaged hand was voluntarily or involuntarily extended toward the weapon which gleamed upon the couch.  The vision of an immediate catastrophe, this time inevitable, rose before Julien.  His lips had spoken, as his arm would have been out stretched, by an irresistible instinct, to save several lives, and he had made the false statement, the first and no doubt the last in his life, without reflecting.  He had no sooner uttered it than he experienced such an excess of anger that he would at that moment almost have preferred not to be believed.  It would indeed have been a comfort to him if his visitor had replied by one of those insulting negations which permit one man to strike another, so great was his irritation.  On the contrary, he saw the face of Madame Steno’s lover turned toward him with an expression of gratitude upon it.  Boleslas’s lips quivered, his hands were clasped, two large tears gushed from his burning eyes and rolled down his cheeks.  When he was able to speak, he moaned: 

“Ah, my friend, how much good you have done me!  From what a nightmare you have relieved me.  Ah!  Now I am saved!  I believe you, I believe you.  You are intimate with them.  You see them every day.  If there had been anything between them you would know it.  You would have heard it talked of.  Ah!  Thanks!  Give me your hand that I may press it.  Forget all I said to you just now, the slander I uttered in a moment of delirium.  I know very well it was untrue.  And now, let me embrace you as I would if you had really saved me from drowning.  Ah, my friend, my only friend!”

And he rushed up to clasp to his bosom the novelist, who replied with the words uttered at the beginning of this conversation:  “Calm yourself, I beseech you, calm yourself!” and repeating to himself, brave and loyal man that he was:  “I could not act differently, but it is hard!”

     ETEXT editor’s bookmarks: 

     Follow their thoughts instead of heeding objects
     Has as much sense as the handle of a basket
     Mediocre sensibility
     No flies enter a closed mouth
     Pitiful checker-board of life
     Scarcely a shade of gentle condescension
     That you can aid them in leading better lives? 
     The forests have taught man liberty
     There is an intelligent man, who never questions his ideas
     Thinking it better not to lie on minor points
     Too prudent to risk or gain much
     Walked at the rapid pace characteristic of monomaniacs

COSMOPOLIS

By Paul Bourget

BOOK 2.

CHAPTER IV