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

  At meal times she would often come in late, out of breath, flushed, and excited and, even before removing her veil, would say: ‘I’ve a special titbit today. Imagine, the Minister of Justice has just appointed two magistrates who were members of the bi-partisan commissions. We’re going to give him a dressing-down he won’t forget.’

  And they would give the minister a dressing-down, and another the following day and a third the day after that. The deputy Laroche-Mathieu, who dined at the Rue Fontaine every Tuesday, after the Comte de Vaudrec who began the week, would vigorously shake the hands of both husband and wife, making an excessive show of his delight. He kept saying: ‘What a campaign! How can we not succeed after this?’

  In fact, he fully expected to succeed in landing the portfolio for Foreign Affairs, on which he had long since set his sights.

  He was one of those political creatures of many faces, with no convictions, no great resources, no audacity, and no real attainments; a country lawyer, a handsome small-town gentleman, who maintained a crafty balance between the various political extremes, a sort of republican Jesuit and liberal champion of a dubious kind, such as spring up by the hundreds on the popular dunghill of universal suffrage.

  Thanks to his village machiavellianism his colleagues–all those misfits and losers who are elected deputy–considered that he was very able. He was sufficiently well groomed and well mannered, sufficiently familiar and agreeable to get ahead. He met with success in society, in the mixed, unsettled, and undiscriminating society of the senior civil servants of the day.

  People everywhere said of him: ‘Laroche will be a minister,’ and he too, with yet more conviction than everyone else, thought that Laroche would be a minister. He was one of the principal shareholders in old Walter’s newspaper, and his ally and associate in a number of financial deals.

  Du Roy supported him with confidence, and with vague expectations for the future. In any case, he was simply carrying on the work begun by Forestier, to whom Laroche-Mathieu had promised the Cross of the Legion of Honour when the triumphal day arrived. The honour would decorate the chest of Madeleine’s new husband, that was all. In a word, nothing had changed.

  Everyone was so well aware that nothing had changed, that Du Roy’s colleagues were constantly making a joke at his expense, which he was beginning to find annoying.

  They never called him anything but Forestier.

  As soon as he arrived at the paper someone would shout: ‘By the way, Forestier.’ He pretended not to hear, and looked in his pigeonhole for letters. The voice called again, louder: ‘Hey! Forestier!’ There would be smothered laughter.

  As Du Roy headed for the Director’s office, he would be stopped by the man who had called to him: ‘Oh! Excuse me, it’s you I want to speak to. It’s stupid, but I always confuse you with that poor Charles. It’s because your articles are so damned similar to his. Everyone makes the same mistake.’

  Du Roy made no reply, but raged inwardly, and secretly began to feel hatred for the dead man. Old Walter himself had declared, when they were all exclaiming over the glaring similarities of expression and thought between the new political editor’s articles and those of his predecessor: ‘Yes, it’s like Forestier, but a meatier, terser, more virile Forestier.’

  Another time, when Du Roy chanced to open the cupboard with the cup-and-ball collection, he had found those of his predecessor with a black band tied round the handle, while his own, the one he used when practising under the direction of Saint-Potin, bore a rose-pink ribbon. They had all been arranged, according to size, on the same shelf, and on a small card like those used in museums was written: ‘Former collection of Forestier & Co., now property of his successor Forestier-Du Roy, certified SGDG.* Guaranteed never to wear out; suitable in all circumstances, including travel.’

  He calmly shut the cupboard door again, saying, loudly enough to be heard: ‘There are always jealous idiots everywhere.’

  But his pride had been wounded, as well as his vanity, the writer’s sensitive pride and vanity, which produces that irritable touchiness–always ready to take offence–typical of both the reporter and the poet of genius.

  The word ‘Forestier’ grated on his ears; he was afraid of hearing it, and felt himself blush when he did so.

  This name was, for him, a bitter taunt, worse than a taunt, almost an insult. It cried out to him: ‘It’s your wife who’s doing your job just as she did the job of the other man. Without her you’d be nothing.’ He readily admitted that Forestier would have been nothing without Madeleine, but as for himself, come on!

  Then, when he was home again, the obsession persisted. Now it was the entire house that reminded him of the dead man, all the furniture, all the ornaments, everything he touched. In the beginning he had hardly thought about this; but the jokes played on him by his colleagues had created a kind of lesion in his soul, which countless trifles, hitherto unnoticed, were now infecting.

  He could no longer pick up an object without immediately imagining Charles’s hand on it. Everything he saw, everything he handled had formerly been used by him, was something he had bought, liked, and owned. And Georges was even beginning to be enraged by the thought of the former intimacies between his friend and his wife.

  At times he was filled with astonishment by this emotional revolt, he did not understand it, and would ask himself: ‘How the devil did this happen? I’m not jealous of Madeleine’s friends. I never worry about what she’s doing. She comes and goes as she chooses, and yet I’m infuriated by the memory of that boor, Charles!’

  Mentally he would add: ‘Basically, he was nothing but a moron; that must be what upsets me. I’m angry that Madeleine could have married such a fool.’ And he wondered again and again: ‘However did it happen that she could have been taken in for a single instant by an idiot like that!’

  And every day his resentment grew, fed by a thousand insignificant details that stung like pinpricks, constantly reminding him of the other man, prompted by something said by Madeleine, or by the manservant, or the chambermaid.

  One evening Du Roy, who had a sweet tooth, enquired: ‘Why do we never have a sweet course? You never order them.’

  The young woman replied cheerfully: ‘That’s right, I hadn’t thought. It’s because Charles loathed them…’

  Unable to stop himself, he interrupted her with an impatient gesture: ‘Oh! Really, that Charles is beginning to get to me. It’s Charles here, Charles there, Charles liked this, Charles liked that. Charles has snuffed it, so let him rest in peace.’

  Madeleine stared at her husband in stupefaction, unable to understand his sudden fury. Then, as she was a shrewd woman, she guessed something of what he was experiencing, this gradually corroding jealousy of the dead man, nourished at every turn by everything that recalled his existence. She may well have thought it childish, but she felt flattered, and did not reply.

  He was annoyed with himself that he had not been able to hide his irritation. After dinner that evening, as they were working on an article for the following day, his feet got tangled up in the footmuff. Unable to right it, he kicked it to one side, asking with a laugh:

  ‘So Charles’s feet were always cold, were they?’

  She laughed too, as she replied: ‘Oh! He was terrified of catching cold; his chest wasn’t strong.’

  Du Roy went on in a savage tone: ‘As he proved beyond a doubt.’ Then he added politely: ‘Fortunately for me.’ And he kissed his wife’s hand.

  But as they were going to bed he again asked, still obsessed by the same idea: ‘Did Charles wear a cotton nightcap to protect his ears from draughts?’

  She joined in the joke and answered: ‘No, a scarf tied round his forehead.’

  Georges shrugged and declared in the scornful voice of a superior being: ‘What a fool!’

  From then on, Charles became, for him, a constant topic of conversation. He talked about him at every turn, invariably calling him ‘that poor old Charles’ with an air of infinite pity. And
when he came home from the paper, where he had heard himself addressed, two or three times, by the name of Forestier, he took his revenge by heaping cruel jibes on the dead man even in his tomb. He recalled his faults, his silly habits, and his meannesses, enumerating them complacently, expatiating on them and exaggerating them, as though wanting to combat, in his wife’s heart, the influence of a rival he feared.

  He would say: ‘Hey, Made, do you remember the day when that blockhead Forestier tried to prove that fat men are more vigorous than thin ones?’

  Then he wanted to know a whole lot of intimate, very personal details about the dead man that the embarrassed young woman refused to relate.

  But he pressed her, insisting. ‘Come on, tell me. He must have been too funny for words, while he was at it?’

  Barely moving her lips, she murmured: ‘Oh, leave him alone, for heaven’s sake.’

  He went on: ‘No, do tell! I bet the bastard was hopeless in bed!’ And, invariably, he would conclude with: ‘What an oaf he was!’

  One night towards the end of June, as he was smoking a cigar at the window, the evening was so hot that he had the idea of going for a drive.

  He asked: ‘Made, my dear, would you like to go to the Bois?’

  ‘Why yes, I would.’

  They took an open cab, and drove down the Champs-Élysées, then the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne. The night was completely still, one of those scorching nights when the air of the overheated city feels, as it enters your lungs, like a blast from an oven. A huge number of amorous couples were being driven under the trees in an army of cabs. These cabs moved along one behind the other, never ending.

  Georges and Madeleine enjoyed watching all the intertwined couples passing in their carriages, the women in pale dresses, the men sombrely clad. A vast river of lovers was flowing towards the Bois beneath a starry, burning sky. There wasn’t a sound except for the muffled rumbling of wheels on the ground. Again and again they drove by, two creatures in every carriage, lying back silently on cushions and clasping one another tightly, lost in the delusion of their desire, trembling in anticipation of the approaching embrace. The warm darkness seemed full of kisses. A feeling of love hovering overhead, of ever-present animal desire, thickened the air, making it seem more stifling. All these couples intoxicated by the same thought, by the same passion, created a febrile aura around them. All these carriages heavy with love, over which caresses seemed to be hovering, gave off, as they passed by, a kind of sensual aroma, at once subtle and unsettling.

  Georges and Madeleine found themselves affected by this contagious tenderness. Without speaking, they gently clasped hands, a little oppressed by the heavy atmosphere and by the emotion they were feeling. As they reached the turning after the fortifications, they kissed, and she, somewhat embarrassed, stammered: ‘We’re being just as childish as when we were on the way to Rouen.’

  The great stream of carriages had divided up at the entrance to the woods. On the road by the lakes which the young people had taken, the carriages had spaced themselves out somewhat, but the dense darkness of the trees, the air freshened by the leaves and by the damp of the tiny creeks you could hear running under the boughs, a kind of coolness from the broad expanses of the star-studded night sky, gave the kisses of the passing couples a more intense charm, a more mysterious shadowiness.

  Georges whispered: ‘Oh! My little Made!’ as he clasped her tight.

  She said to him ‘Do you remember the forest near your home, how sinister it was? To me it seemed full of terrifying beasts, and that it went on and on for ever. But this, now, this is lovely. You can feel the wind caressing you, and I know perfectly well that Sèvres* is just the other side.’

  He replied: ‘Oh! In the forest back home, there was nothing but stags, foxes, roebuck, and wild boar, and the odd hut belonging to a forester.’

  That word* which his mouth had uttered, so like the dead man’s name, surprised him as much as if someone had shouted it to him from deep in the woods, and abruptly he fell silent, gripped once more by this strange, persistent disquiet, by this jealous, gnawing, unconquerable anger which for some time now had been poisoning his life.

  After a moment, he enquired: ‘Did you ever come here with Charles, in the evening?’

  She answered: ‘Oh yes, often.’

  And, suddenly, he felt a longing to return home, an agitated longing that struck him to the heart. But the image of Forestier had taken hold in his mind, possessing him, fastening upon him. He could think of nothing but him, talk of nothing but him.

  He asked, his tone disagreeable: ‘Tell me, Made?’

  ‘What is it, dear?’

  ‘Did you cheat on poor old Charles?’

  She murmured scornfully: ‘How silly you’re being, the way you’re forever harping on that.’

  But he would not let it alone.

  ‘Come on, dear, be honest, admit it! You made him a cuckold, didn’t you! Admit you made him a cuckold!’

  Shocked by this word, as are all women, she said nothing.

  Obstinately, he went on: ‘God, if ever anyone looked the part, then he did. Oh God, yes! Yes! It would make me split my sides to know old Forestier was a cuckold. Eh? Didn’t he look the perfect sucker?’

  He sensed that she was smiling, perhaps at some memory, and he repeated: ‘Come on, say it. What does it matter? On the contrary, it would be ever so funny if you admitted that you’d cheated on him, if you admitted that, to me.’

  And indeed he was quivering with the hope and wish that Charles, that hateful Charles, the dead man whom he detested, whom he execrated, might have been made a fool of in this shameful way. And yet… and yet, another, more ambiguous emotion was spurring on his urge to know. He said again: ‘Made, my little Made, I beg you, say it. He deserved it if anyone did. You’d have been very wrong not to do that to him. Come on, Made, admit it.’

  Perhaps she found his persistence amusing, now, for she was laughing, in short, staccato gasps. He had put his lips very close to his wife’s ear. ‘Come on… come on… admit it?’

  Suddenly she moved away from him, and curtly declared: ‘You really are silly. Questions like that don’t deserve an answer.’

  She had said this in such an odd tone of voice that her husband felt a cold shiver run through his veins, and, nonplussed and dismayed, he sat there a little out of breath, as if he had just suffered a nervous shock.

  Now the cab was driving beside the lake, into which the sky seemed to have scattered its stars. Two swans were very slowly gliding past, their vague outlines barely visible in the shadows. Georges shouted to the driver: ‘Turn back.’ And the cab turned around, passing the others, which moved on at a walking pace, their big lanterns shining like eyes in the darkness of the Bois.

  How strangely she had said that! ‘Was that an admission?’ Du Roy asked himself. And now this near-certainty that she had deceived her first husband made him seethe with rage. He felt like hitting her, strangling her, pulling out her hair!

  Oh! If only she had answered him: ‘But, darling, if I had wanted to deceive him, it would have been with you!’ How he would have kissed her, held her tight, adored her!

  He sat motionless, his arms crossed, gazing at the sky, his mind too agitated for further reflection. He could feel nothing but the ferment of that resentment and the growth of that fury smouldering in the heart of every male when faced with the capriciousness of female desire. For the first time, he knew the confused anguish of a suspicious husband. He was actually jealous, jealous on behalf of the dead man, on behalf of Forestier! Jealous in a strange and painful way, which included, all of a sudden, hatred of Madeleine. Since she had deceived the other one, how could he trust her himself?

  Then, little by little, a kind of calm came over him, and, bracing himself to bear his pain, he thought: ‘All women are whores, you have to use them, and not give them anything of yourself.’

  The bitterness in his heart was bringing words of scorn and loathing to his lips. But he did not give
them voice. He kept telling himself: ‘The world is to the strong. I must be strong. I must rise above everything.’

  The carriage was going faster. They passed the fortifications once again. Du Roy was gazing ahead at a reddish brightness in the sky, like the glow of a colossal forge; and he could hear an indistinct, immense, continuous humming, made up of countless different elements, a muffled sound that came both from near and far, a vague, tremendous throb of life, the sound of Paris breathing, on this summer night, like an exhausted colossus.

  Georges was thinking: ‘I’d be a real fool to get worked up over this. Everyone for himself. It’s boldness that wins the day. There’s nothing but selfishness. Selfishness in pursuit of ambition and money is better than selfishness over women and love.’ At the entrance to the city the Arc de Triomphe of the Étoile loomed up, standing on its two monstrous legs, a kind of misshapen giant which seemed about to march off down the wide avenue that lay before it.

  Once again Georges and Madeleine found themselves part of the procession of vehicles transporting the eternal couple, locked in a silent embrace, back to their home, to the long-desired bed. It was as if all of humanity was gliding along beside them, intoxicated with joy, pleasure, and happiness.

  The young woman, who had certainly sensed something of what was going on in her husband’s mind, asked in her gentle voice: ‘What are you thinking about, Georges dear? You haven’t said a word for the last half-hour.’

  He replied with a nasty grin: ‘I’m thinking about all those idiots kissing each other, and that really there’s other things to do in life.’

  She murmured: ‘Yes… but sometimes it’s nice.’

  ‘It’s nice… it’s nice… when there’s nothing better to do!’

  Georges’s thoughts, driven by a kind of malicious rage, were still bent on stripping life of its poetic dress. ‘I’d be a real fool to put myself out, to do without anything I want, to get upset, and worry, and fret my heart out, the way I’ve been doing the last few weeks.’ The image of Forestier came into his mind, without generating any anger. It seemed to him that they had just been reconciled, that they were friends again. He wanted to call out to him: ‘Hallo, old man.’