Bel-Ami (Oxford World's Classics) Read online

  ‘I myself, now, see it so close to me that I often feel like stretching out my arms to push it away. It covers the earth and fills the void. I find it everywhere. Tiny creatures run over on the road, falling leaves, a white hair noticed in a friend’s beard; these things fill my heart with despair and cry out to me: “It’s here!” For me it spoils everything I do, everything I see, what I eat and what I drink, everything I love, moonlight, sunrise, the open sea, the lovely rivers, and the summer night air, which is so sweet to breathe!’

  He was walking slowly along, a little out of breath, dreaming aloud, forgetting, almost, that someone was listening.

  He went on: ‘And no one ever comes back again, ever… Casts of statues can be kept, and moulds that go on producing identical objects; but my body, my face, my thoughts, my desires will never return. And yet there’ll be millions, billions of individuals born who will all have, within the space of a few centimetres, a nose, eyes, a forehead, cheeks, and a mouth as I have, and also a soul as I have, without my self ever returning, without anything recognizable as part of me reappearing in those innumerable, different beings–different in indefinable ways, yet all approximately similar.

  ‘What can we depend on? To whom should we cry out in our anguish? What can we believe in? All the religions are stupid, with their puerile morality and selfish, monstrously imbecilic promises.

  ‘Only death is certain.’

  He stopped, grasped Duroy by his overcoat lapels, and, in a slow voice, said: ‘Think about all this, young man, think about it for days, for months, and for years, and you’ll see life differently. So try to free yourself of everything that confines you, make that supreme effort, while you are still living, to dissociate yourself from your body, your concerns, your thoughts, and all of mankind, and look elsewhere; then you’ll understand how unimportant are the quarrels of the Romantics and the Naturalists, and the debate on the budget.’

  He began to walk again, faster.

  ‘But you’ll also feel the terrible anguish of despair. You’ll flounder about, bewildered, drowning in uncertainty. You’ll call for help in every direction, and no one will answer you. You’ll stretch up your arms, you’ll cry out to be helped, loved, consoled, saved! And no one will come.

  ‘Why do we suffer like this? Probably because we were born to live more in our material bodies and less in our minds; but by dint of thinking, a disproportion has arisen between the state of our overdeveloped intelligence and the immutable conditions of this life. Look at the average man: unless dreadful disasters befall him, he’s content, he doesn’t suffer from this general unhappiness. Nor are animals conscious of it.’

  He stopped again, thought for a few seconds, then went on, his manner weary and resigned: ‘As for me, I’m a lost soul. I’ve neither father, nor mother, nor brother, nor sister, nor wife, nor children, nor God.’ He added, after a silence: ‘I’ve nothing but poetry.’

  Then, looking up at the sky, where the pallid face of the full moon was shining, he declaimed:

  ‘In the sombre void, to this dark mystery

  Where floats a pallid star, I seek the verbal key.’

  They were coming up to the Pont de la Concorde, which they crossed in silence, then they walked along beside the Palais-Bourbon.* Norbert de Varenne began speaking again: ‘Get married, my friend, you don’t know what it means to live alone, at my age. Nowadays being alone fills me with appalling anguish; being alone at home, by the fire, in the evening. It seems to me then that I’m alone on the earth, dreadfully alone, but surrounded by indeterminate dangers, by unknown, terrible things; and the wall which divides me from my neighbour, whom I do not know, separates me from him by as great a distance as that which separates me from the stars I see through my window. A kind of fever comes over me, a fever of pain and fear, and the silence of the walls terrifies me. It is so profound, so sad, the silence of the room in which you live alone. It isn’t just a silence of the body, but a silence of the soul, and, when a piece of furniture creaks, a shiver runs through your whole body, for in that dismal place you expect to hear no sound.’

  He fell silent once more, then added: ‘Really, though, when you’re old, it would be good to have children!’

  They had reached a point about half-way along the Rue de Bourgogne.* The poet stopped in front of a tall house, rang the bell, shook Duroy’s hand and said to him: ‘Forget all this senile rambling, young man, and live the way the young should live; goodbye!’

  And he vanished into the darkness of the passage.

  Duroy set off again, his heart heavy. He felt as if he had just been shown some pit full of bones, a hole into which he was inevitably destined one day to fall. He murmured: ‘My God, it can’t be much fun, being him. I’m damned if I’d care to have a ring-side seat, to watch what goes on in his head!’

  But, having stopped to give way to a perfumed woman who emerged from a cab and went into her house, he breathed deeply and greedily, inhaling the scent of verbena and iris wafted on the air. Suddenly, hope and joy set his lungs and heart pounding; and the memory of Mme de Marelle, whom he was to see again the following day, flooded his being from head to foot.

  Everything was smiling at him, life was welcoming him warmly. How good it was, to see your hopes fulfilled!

  He fell asleep with his head spinning, and rose early to take a walk in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, before going to his rendezvous. The wind had changed, and the weather had moderated during the night; it was warm and sunny, like a day in April. All the regulars of the Bois were out that morning, enticed by the clear, soft sky. Duroy walked slowly, drinking in the gentle air, as delicious as a spring delicacy. He passed the Arc de Triomphe of the Étoile and turned into the enormous avenue, on the opposite side from the riders. He watched them as they trotted or galloped past, both men and women, the wealthy of the world, but now he felt scarcely any envy. He knew nearly all of them by name, knew the amounts of their fortunes and the secret stories of their lives, for his job had turned him into a kind of register of Parisian celebrities and scandals.

  Women riders went by, their slender waists tightly encased in dark cloth, with that indefinable air of arrogance and unapproachability typical of so many horsewomen; and Duroy entertained himself reciting in a low voice, the way litanies are recited in church, the names, titles, and qualities of the lovers they had had or were said to have had; and sometimes, even, instead of saying: ‘Baron de Tanquelet, Prince de la Tour-Enguerrand,’ he would murmur: ‘Of the lesbian persuasion, Louise Michot, of the Vaudeville, Rose Marquetin, of the Opéra.’

  He found this a highly amusing game, revelling in the excitement of, and somehow consoled by, the sense of putting on record the eternal and deep-seated infamy of man underlying outwardly respectable appearances.

  Then he said, out loud: ‘Bunch of hypocrites!’ and looked around to spot the riders about whom the worst stories were circulating. He saw many who were suspected of cheating at cards, for whom at all events gambling clubs were a major source of income, the only source, and obviously a questionable one. Others, very prominent men, were widely known to live solely on their wife’s income; yet others on the income of their mistress, so people said. Many had settled their debts (an honourable act) without anyone ever being able to guess where they had found the necessary money (a highly suspicious mystery). He saw financiers whose immense fortunes had originated in theft, and who were received everywhere, in the most noble houses, and other men so respected that trades people doffed their hats to them as they went by, yet whose shameless speculation in the principal state-controlled companies was an open book to anyone familiar with the shady side of what went on.

  They were all haughty in demeanour, with arrogant mouths and insolent eyes, whether they favoured side-whiskers or moustaches. Still laughing, Duroy said again: ‘What a filthy lot, they’re all scoundrels, all crooks!’

  But a carriage passed him, an open, low, charming vehicle pulled at a fast trot by two svelte greys with flying manes a
nd tails, and driven by a young, petite blonde, a well-known courtesan with two grooms seated behind her. Duroy halted, feeling an urge to raise his hat to and applaud this upstart paramour who was obviously flaunting, in a place and at a time that were the preserve of hypocritical aristocrats, the showy luxury she had earned in bed. Perhaps he felt, vaguely, that they had something in common, a natural bond, that they were of the same breed, that they were basically the same, and that his success would be achieved by methods equally bold.

  He returned more slowly, his heart glowing with satisfaction, and arrived a little ahead of time at his former mistress’s door.

  She offered him her lips on greeting him, as if they had never been estranged, even forgetting, for a few seconds, the sensible caution with which, in her own home, she avoided his arms. Then she said to him, as she kissed the curly ends of his moustache: ‘You can’t imagine what an annoying thing has happened, my darling. I was looking forward to a real honeymoon, and now here’s my husband turned up, I’m stuck with him for six weeks, he’s taken some leave. But I don’t want to spend six weeks without seeing you, especially after our little quarrel, so here’s what I’ve fixed up. You must come to dinner on Monday, I’ve already told him about you. I’ll introduce you.’

  Duroy hesitated, somewhat at a loss; until then he had never found himself in the presence of a man whose wife was his mistress. He feared that something might betray him, a little awkwardness, a look, anything. He stammered: ‘No, I’d rather not meet your husband.’ Greatly surprised, she insisted, standing before him with wide-open, artless eyes. ‘But why? What a funny thing! This goes on all the time, it does really! I’d never have thought you such a fool, never.’

  He was hurt. ‘All right, fine, I’ll come for dinner on Monday’

  She added: ‘So that it will seem quite natural, I’ll ask the Forestiers. Although I don’t find it any fun, having people to dinner here.’

  Until Monday arrived, Duroy hardly thought about this meeting; but as he climbed up Mme de Marelle’s stairs, he felt strangely uneasy, not that he was averse to shaking the husband’s hand, to drinking his wine and eating his bread, but he was afraid of something, without knowing what.

  He was shown into the drawing-room, and, as usual, he waited. Then the door of the room opened, and he saw a tall, white-bearded man, serious and gentlemanly in appearance and wearing a decoration, approach him with punctilious politeness: ‘My wife has often spoken to me of you, Monsieur, and I am delighted to make your acquaintance.’

  Duroy walked forward, trying to give to his features an expression of real cordiality, and shook his host’s outstretched hand with exaggerated energy. Then, having taken a seat, he could think of nothing to say to him.

  M. de Marelle replaced a piece of wood on the fire, and enquired: ‘Have you been in journalism long?’

  Duroy replied: ‘Just a few months.’

  ‘Ah! You’ve got ahead fast.’

  ‘Yes, quite fast;’ and he began talking at random, without paying too much attention to what he was saying, trotting out all the banalities employed by people who do not know one another. He was feeling more relaxed now, and beginning to think the situation extremely entertaining. He gazed at M. de Marelle’s serious, respectable face, his lips twitching with an urge to laugh, and thinking: ‘I’m sleeping with your wife, old chap, I’m having her.’ And he was filled with a very private, vicious satisfaction, the joy of a successful thief who is not suspected, a duplicitous, delicious pleasure. Quite suddenly he wanted to become this man’s friend, to gain his trust, to persuade him to confide his secrets to him.

  Hurrying into the room, Mme de Marelle gave them a smiling, inscrutable glance, then went up to Duroy who, in the presence of the husband, did not dare kiss her hand in his usual way.

  She was composed and cheerful, like someone who could deal with any situation, whose instinctive, artless duplicity made her see this meeting as natural and straightforward. Laurine appeared, and came over to Georges more sedately than usual to offer her brow for a kiss, for she was intimidated by the presence of her father. Her mother said to her: ‘So, today you’re no longer calling him Bel-Ami.’ The child blushed, as if someone had committed a serious indiscretion, revealed something that should not be mentioned, a private, slightly guilty secret of her heart.

  When the Forestiers arrived, they were all alarmed by the state of Charles’s health. He had grown dreadfully thin and pale in the course of one week, and he coughed incessantly. Moreover he told them that, on strict orders from the doctor, they were leaving for Cannes the following Thursday.

  They went home early, and Duroy remarked, shaking his head: ‘I think he’s in a really bad way. He’ll never make old bones.’ Mme de Marelle serenely agreed: ‘Oh! He’s done for. And he was so lucky, to find a wife like his.’

  Duroy enquired: ‘She helps him a lot?’

  ‘Actually, she does everything. She knows everything that’s going on, she knows everybody without seeming to see anybody; she gets what she wants, in the way she wants, when she wants. Oh! She hasn’t her equal for subtlety, shrewdness, and cunning. She’d be a treasure for a man who wants to succeed.’

  Georges went on: ‘She’ll marry again very soon, I imagine?’

  Mme de Marelle replied: ‘Oh, I wouldn’t even be surprised if she had someone in mind… a deputy… unless… he didn’t care for the idea… because there might perhaps be… serious moral… obstacles. Well, there you are. I really don’t know.’

  M. de Marelle muttered, with contained impatience: ‘You’re always hinting at all sorts of things I don’t like. We shouldn’t involve ourselves in other people’s business. We should follow our own conscience. That ought to be a rule for everybody.’

  Duroy left, feeling uneasy, his mind full of vague plans.

  The following day he paid a visit to the Forestiers, and found them finishing their packing. Charles, lying stretched out on a sofa, was breathing with exaggerated difficulty and kept repeating: ‘I should have left a month ago’; then he gave Duroy a lot of advice about the paper, although everything had been discussed and agreed with M. Walter.

  When Georges left, he shook his friend’s hands vigorously: ‘Well, old chap, see you soon!’ But as Mme Forestier was seeing him to the door, he said to her earnestly: ‘You haven’t forgotten our agreement? We’re friends and allies, aren’t we? So, if you need me, no matter what for, don’t hesitate. A wire or a letter, and I’ll come.’

  She murmured: ‘Thank you, I won’t forget.’ Her eyes thanked him too, in a more meaningful and tender way.

  As Duroy was going down the stairs, he met M. de Vaudrec climbing slowly up; he had seen him at Mme Forestier’s once before. The count looked sad–might it be because of this departure?

  Anxious to appear socially adept, the journalist greeted him with alacrity. The other man returned his bow politely, but with a certain haughtiness.

  The Forestiers left on Thursday evening.

  CHAPTER 7

  The disappearance of Charles increased Duroy’s importance on the editorial staff of La Vie française. He put his name to some leading articles, while still continuing to sign his gossip column, for the Director wanted each of them to be responsible for his own copy. He was involved in a few controversies from which he extricated himself cleverly; and his regular dealings with statesmen gradually prepared him to become, in his turn, a skilful and shrewd political sub-editor.

  On the whole horizon he could see only one cloud. This was caused by an insignificant and irreverent publication that attacked him constantly, or rather attacked, through him, the editor responsible for the gossip column in La Vie française, or M. Walter’s ‘surprises,’ as the anonymous editor of this paper, La Plume,* liked to call it. Every day brought nasty digs, acid comments, insinuations of every kind.

  One day Jacques Rival remarked to Duroy: ‘You’re very patient.’

  The other man stammered: ‘What can I do, there’s no direct attack.’
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  However, when he entered the reporters’ room one afternoon, Boisrenard handed him the latest issue of La Plume.

  ‘Here, there’s another nasty crack at you.’

  ‘Oh! What about?’

  ‘Nothing really, the arrest of some Mme Aubert by an officer of the vice squad.’

  Georges took the paper he was handed and read, under the title ‘Duroy enjoys himself’:*

  ‘The distinguished reporter of La Vie française informs us today that Mme Aubert, whose arrest by an agent of the hateful vice squad we reported, exists only in our imagination. Now the person in question lives at 18 rue de l’Écureuil, in Montmartre. We understand only too well, however, the advantage or advantages that the agents of the Walter Bank may find in supporting the agents of the Police, who condone their transactions. As for the reporter concerned, he would do better to give us one of those sensational news flashes he alone can provide: reports of deaths denied the following day, news of battles that never took place, reports of momentous statements by sovereigns who have said nothing, in a word all the news that helps swell Walter’s profits, or even one of those little indiscretions about parties given by ladies in the public eye, or about the excellence of certain products that are such a valuable “resource” to some of our colleagues.’

  The young man was nonplussed rather than infuriated, realizing only that this article contained something extremely disagreeable for him personally.

  Boisrenard went on: ‘Who gave you this news item?’

  Duroy reflected, but could no longer recall. Suddenly, however, he remembered: ‘Oh, yes, it was Saint-Potin.’

  Then, rereading the paragraph in La Plume, he abruptly turned scarlet, outraged at the accusation of venality.

  He exclaimed: ‘What! They’re saying I’m paid to…’ Boisrenard interrupted him: ‘Yes, they are. It’s most annoying for you. The boss is extremely sensitive on that subject. With a gossip column it could happen so easily…’