He conquered his shame and answered. “Yes, I do.” But with that his desire had expired. “Some other time,” he said.
“Next time,” she corrected. “Tomorrow.”
She rose. “Oh, how late! I shan't be able to go to the canteen.”
The short winter afternoon had faded into a gray cold twilight. They hurried out into the street to find a cab for her.
Barral was waiting at her home. Aunt Louise was there too and maintained the silence of intense indignation. Her mother began to scold at once. Barral, however, was so relieved from his worry that he could only say: “Thank God, you're safe. Thank God.”
“Where were you?” her mother asked. “You have made everyone miserable; the whole house is upset on account of you.”
“Just strolling around,” she said carelessly, and went off to her room.
After dinner she sat alone with Barral.
“I was so worried,” he confessed. “I thought a German bomb had hit you and I determined to wreak a bloody vengeance on those Huns.”
She smiled. “Good Barral.” And for the second time in their long courtship, she laid her hand on his. Deeply moved, he clasped it and spoke in a trembling, earnest voice:
“Darling, what did you think of my letter? Did you think I was bold?”
“Why, no,” she said hesitatingly. He mistook the meaning of her embarrassment. “Why should I?”
“Then dare I? Dare I?” he cried.
“Why, Barral!” she exclaimed.
“Will you please ⦠I mean, may Iâ¦kiss you?”
She smiled again. She felt so immensely superior to him. “Of course you may,” she said gently.
He took her head between his hands and looked her in the face. “My dearest Sophie,” he said in a choking voice. She was interested to know what could happen. He laid the mildest kiss ever on those sweet lips whose virginal purity he feared to soil. Nothing had happened. No bird sang a deafening song in her ears. Her body did not grow tense nor threaten to dissolve. Nothing. His kiss was reminiscent of the milk diluted with sweet warm water which her nurse used to give her to drink at night.
He went home and wrote her the most impassioned letter he had ever penned. He poured out his whole heart into it. He asked her pardon a thousand times, confessed to a dozen schoolboy peccadilloes which made his lips unfit to touch her pure mouth. Would she, could she ever forgive him for having concealed his miserable past from her? He swore, by high heaven, that ever since he had laid eyes on her two years ago, he had been clean as a newborn baby and would ever remain so.
She threw his letter unopened in her bureau drawer.
As her joy in her new love grew, and each time she went to Bertrand's room her body experienced some new exultation, she ceased to care whether anyone knew. More than that, she wanted to flaunt her love before other people. “Look!” she wanted to cry. “Look what happens to me when my lover holds me in his arms!” She felt at times as if she would like nothing better than to invite everybody into Bertrand's chamber, undress before them and ask: “Do you find me pretty? Look then, for all this beauty I give to him. See how he holds, kisses me, caresses every part of my body? Is there anyone else in the world who has such a lover?”
The men at the canteen were not long in discovering her secret. They said to each other: “She was ready to be made. I don't understand why we left it to that young snot, Bertrand. Any one of us could have ousted that sky-blue popinjay, de Montfort.”
They grew bolder and cracked remarks which were far from innuendoes. She laughed and that heartened them. She was a good girl, that Sophie de Blumenberg, even if her father was a millionaire. “She's of our kind,” they concluded and smiled at each other. Goodwill and jollity reigned in the canteen when she was there.
Barral, however, was long in understanding what he certainly did not want to understand. He had, of course, noticed how of late Sophie's eyes sparkled and then veiled as if in a fever. He had noticed that never before had she been so bewitchingly beautiful. He had noticed that she had grown chubbier, had filled out. But he set this down to the natural attainment of maturity. And when he understood, it was too late to do anything. The siege was over, armistice was declared, France must cede Alsace and Lorraine and pay billions of indemnity. And then came the revolution and the declaration of the Paris Commune, and Barral had undertaken a delicate task, that of spying, which prevented him from any violent action in his personal affairs.
Chapter Thirteen
W
riting as he did, when the cataclysms through which Paris was passing were at their height and fresh in everybody's mind, Galliez makes little attempt to fill in the historical events of the moment. I have been at some pains to remedy this omission, for our day has forgotten these matters. Moreover, it seems to me that the temper of the period has a great importance in this tale. Galliez, too, now and then lets fall a hint that the atmosphere of the times played a not inconsiderable share in these strange events. Though sometimes he inclines to the very opposite, that is, he intimates that the times were an infection spread abroad by Bertrand, and by others like him.
He says: “I now recognized a meaning in my aunt's, Mme Didier's, wish, expressed in her will, that I study for the priesthood. Was it the germ of religious belief thus sowed in me that protected me from Bertrand? I do not know. But this much I have observed. Few people have come in contact with him without suffering.
“I have often wondered if several such monsters might not, by geometrical progression, infect whole nations in a few days. Like that walking, stalking image of cholera in Eugéne Sue's romance. Yes, this would explain so much that is inexplicable in history.”
So it would, and certainly Paris seemed to be infected, though the cause is more easily traced to the horrors of war than to werewolves. The bitter winter, with multitudes starving, with babies dying like flies, with shells bursting in all directions, was an experience likely to weaken many characters. The city was full of hate and suspicion. A man of a too Germanic name or of a too Germanic cast of countenance was likely to suffer for what was scarcely his fault. Every strange house was peopled with spies. Poor people who took to sewers for warmth and refuge from a wintry night might wake rudely to find themselves vehemently suspected of planting bombs to blow up the city.
An old woman, about to commit an indiscretion ordinarily beyond her years, hung her torn skirt before her window to dim the light of her candle and guard herself against betrayal. But the strange configuration of light, as seen from the outside, collected a crowd on the street, who saw in this mixture of dots and dashes where the light came through the torn garment a secret code, a signal to admit the Prussians to Paris. Instead of keeping her shame a secret, the poor woman found her room invaded and her sin the latest joke of the street.
One dark night during the bombing a distant light in the east, evidently a signal lamp hung on some tall structure, caused a mob to chase clear across Paris. In vain an amateur astronomer attempted to convince them that they were chasing a planet of the solar system, only distantly interested in mundane matters through the bond of gravity.
Once, upon the report of a patriotic amateur spy, a squad proceeded to the apartment house at No. 3 Place du Théâtre Français, armed with warrants of search and arrest. This was a serious business. It was said that at certain times a black and white flag was to be seen hanging from the fourth floor. The squad returned rather shamefaced. The black and white flag was really blue and white and hung from the window of the Consulate of Honduras.
But if sometimes these suspicions ended in laughter, more often they terminated in corpses.
Still, all things must have an end. Louis Adolphe Thiers became chief executive, the armistice was signed, the peace treaty was ratified and the Germans made their brief triumphal march through Paris. The long siege was at last over. The heart of Paris bounded. Profiteers who had too long held on to their stocks of food were caught now by the raising of the siege, and hastily threw their produce on the market, flooding the stalls. Prices tumbled. There was a hint of spring in the air. Life was a delight.
But the pall of hate and suspicion would not lift. Mobs smashed the shops and cafés that had remained open to trade with the Germans. There was talk that the government had betrayed the city. The National Guardsmen, nearly four hundred thousand strong, complained that treachery had prevented them from being properly employed. And they did not want to be demobilized. Demobilization meant starvation.
But the new government evinced itself as stupidly reactionary. The moratorium on debts which had saved the poor during the war was to be lifted. For now that the national enemy no longer threatened, it was time to put the poor back in the harness, and the momentary spell of making them think that French economic slavery was to be preferred to German economic slavery was no longer to be continued.
However, the popular notion that the Thiers politicians had betrayed their country to Prussia was erroneous. It was decidedly not true. A real politician, and these were real politicians, never betrays his country to an outsider. He betrays it to himself. He is the enemy within.
Bismarck had proposedto disarm the National Guard by offering a loaf of bread for every rifle. His offer was refused by Favre, who later regretted it. For the National Guard refused to disband, refused to begin again the weary business of looking for work at reduced pay, long hours and no future. They demonstrated before the Hôtel de Ville. They threw up barricades. They shot a couple of generals. The Thiers government fled to Versailles, gathered its forces and returned to give the city its second siege. Paris had the Commune. It wasn't what the people were after. But the people are always like that. Like a righteous man raising his axe to scotch a snake and gashing his shin instead. That is a picture to be found on almost every page of history.
The Russians have made a national holiday of March 18th, when the Commune was formed. But they are worshiping a legend, though it is true that the Commune was a mistake from which a new generation of revolutionaries was to learn a lot. The Commune was a proletarian government, yes, but so is a hobo camp. The Commune was never anything but the gnashing of teeth of men annoyed at their impotence and failure. Among these men were many lovers of mankind, many old workers in the field, men who had spent much of their lives in prison for their political opinions, men who went here to their martyrdom, but there were also many incompetents, opportunists, personally ambitious, and more traitors than most governments have had to wrestle with.
Aymar, like most old Republicans, particularly those who had taken part in the revolution of 1848, was offered a post in the Commune government. He declined several and finally accepted a minor post involving few duties and no pay, under Courbet, the painter, who had been appointed Director of Fine Arts by the Republic, and continued as such under the Commune. Aymar was glad to renew an acquaintance which went back to the days of Balzac in the brasserie of the rue Hautefeuille.
A fissure, however, had split him apart from most of his old associates. He did not see eye to eye with them on the question of religion, as formerly. He was as anxious as ever to divorce the priesthood from politics, education and industry, but he could no longer find in the phrase: Religion is just a superstition, the forceful argument he had once thought it. But on this matter he kept his mouth shut. It was not a safe thing to speak, as Aymar had more than one opportunity to discover. For example, during the Piepus affair.
Aymar accompanied Courbet one day shortly after the insurrection to the magnificent hôtel which the Baron de Blumenberg inhabited at the Place Saint-Georges. They found the palace almost emptied of its famous collection of objets d'art. Courbet's fame rather than his frankly boorish demeanor entitled him to be received by the baron himself, who apologized for the appearance of the house. They were leaving for a summer vacation in the country, he said. The stocky, jovial genius took his pipe from his mouth and guffawed. A lot of people were finding it convenient to take their summer vacations early, he remarked. As yet the way out of Paris was free and many, aware of what was coming, were taking refuge before the storm burst.
Courbet's visit was one connected with his position as President of the Society of Artists, and as Director of Arts. He was concerned with the safety, from the fury of the mob, of the art work in the house of Adolph Thiers nearby, and that in the houses of other famous collectors. In the back of his mind was the thought that all collections of art should pass into the safekeeping of the State. In particular he wished to enrich the collection in the Louvre.
It was upon this occasion that Aymar Galliez was introduced to and first saw a certain Mlle Sophie de Blumenberg, a ravishing beauty of about seventeen.
In his script, Aymar Galliez recalls this visit only briefly in connection with its subsequent importance. It would, therefore, be well for the reader to linger here a moment in the company of the author and take a closer look at the Blumenberg ménage.
The Baron de Blumenberg was one of the most prominent citizens of Paris. His patronage of art, his charity, his lavish hospitality concealed with a pretty varnish the nefarious manner by which he had accumulated his millions. His generous right hand was extended in such a friendly gesture to the people of Paris, rich and poor alike, that the actions of his left hand went unnoticed.
True, the pamphleteers had found him out. He was the target for their naïve but biting wit. They exaggerated his paunch, which infuriated him. It is said that Courbet allowed himself to be bribed to treat that paunch leniently in a portrait he was commissioned to make.
*
The baron was greatly pleased to see high-priced artists depict him more as he wished he looked. He was that childish in his emotions. But in concocting a wily business scheme, in putting through a contract in which one harmless-looking clause, buried deep in the writ, meant a million to his privy purse, for that there was no better brain in Paris.