"I really think you must be mad, my dear, to go for a country
walk in such weather as this. You have had some very strange
notions for the last two months. You drag me to the seaside in
spite of myself, when you have never once had such a whim during
all the forty-four years that we have been married. You chose
Fecamp, which is a very dull town, without consulting me in the
matter, and now you are seized with such a rage for walking, you
who hardly ever stir out on foot, that you want to take a country
walk on the hottest day of the year. Ask d'Apreval to go with you,
as he is ready to gratify all your whims. As for me, I am going
back to have a nap."
Madame de Cadour turned to her old friend and said:
"Will you come with me, Monsieur d'Apreval?"
He bowed with a smile, and with all the gallantry of former
years:
"I will go wherever you go," he replied.
"Very well, then, go and get a sunstroke," Monsieur de Cadour
said; and he went back to the Hotel des Bains to lie down for an
hour or two.
As soon as they were alone, the old lady and her old companion
set off, and she said to him in a low voice, squeezing his
hand:
"At last! at last!"
"You are mad," he said in a whisper. "I assure you that you
are mad. Think of the risk you are running. If that man--"
She started.
"Oh! Henri, do not say that man, when you are speaking of
him."
"Very well," he said abruptly, "if our son guesses anything,
if he has any suspicions, he will have you, he will have us both in
his power. You have got on without seeing him for the last forty
years. What is the matter with you to-day?"
They had been going up the long street that leads from the sea
to the town, and now they turned to the right, to go to Etretat.
The white road stretched in front of him, then under a blaze of
brilliant sunshine, so they went on slowly in the burning heat. She
had taken her old friend's arm, and was looking straight in front
of her, with a fixed and haunted gaze, and at last she said:
"And so you have not seen him again, either?"
"No, never."
"Is it possible?"
"My dear friend, do not let us begin that discussion again. I
have a wife and children and you have a husband, so we both of us
have much to fear from other people's opinion."
She did not reply; she was thinking of her long past youth and
of many sad things that had occurred. How well she recalled all the
details of their early friendship, his smiles, the way he used to
linger, in order to watch her until she was indoors. What happy
days they were, the only really delicious days she had ever
enjoyed, and how quickly they were over!
And then--her discovery--of the penalty she paid! What
anguish!
Of that journey to the South, that long journey, her
sufferings, her constant terror, that secluded life in the small,
solitary house on the shores of the Mediterranean, at the bottom of
a garden, which she did not venture to leave. How well she
remembered those long days which she spent lying under an orange
tree, looking up at the round, red fruit, amid the green leaves.
How she used to long to go out, as far as the sea, whose fresh
breezes came to her over the wall, and whose small waves she could
hear lapping on the beach. She dreamed of its immense blue expanse
sparkling under the sun, with the white sails of the small vessels,
and a mountain on the horizon. But she did not dare to go outside
the gate. Suppose anybody had recognized her!
And those days of waiting, those last days of misery and
expectation! The impending suffering, and then that terrible night!
What misery she had endured, and what a night it was! How she had
groaned and screamed! She could still see the pale face of her
lover, who kissed her hand every moment, and the clean-shaven face
of the doctor and the nurse's white cap.
And what she felt when she heard the child's feeble cries,
that wail, that first effort of a human's voice!
And the next day! the next day! the only day of her life on
which she had seen and kissed her son; for, from that time, she had
never even caught a glimpse of him.
And what a long, void existence hers had been since then, with
the thought of that child always, always floating before her. She
had never seen her son, that little creature that had been part of
herself, even once since then; they had taken him from her, carried
him away, and had hidden him. All she knew was that he had been
brought up by some peasants in Normandy, that he had become a
peasant himself, had married well, and that his father, whose name
he did not know, had settled a handsome sum of money on him.
How often during the last forty years had she wished to go and
see him and to embrace him! She could not imagine to herself that
he had grown! She always thought of that small human atom which she
had held in her arms and pressed to her bosom for a day.
How often she had said to M. d'Apreval: "I cannot bear it any
longer; I must go and see him."
But he had always stopped her and kept her from going. She
would be unable to restrain and to master herself; their son would
guess it and take advantage of her, blackmail her; she would be
lost.
"What is he like?" she said.
"I do not know. I have not seen him again, either."
"Is it possible? To have a son and not to know him; to be
afraid of him and to reject him as if he were a disgrace! It is
horrible."
They went along the dusty road, overcome by the scorching sun,
and continually ascending that interminable hill.
"One might take it for a punishment," she continued; "I have
never had another child, and I could no longer resist the longing
to see him, which has possessed me for forty years. You men cannot
understand that. You must remember that I shall not live much
longer, and suppose I should never see him, never have seen him! .
. . Is it possible? How could I wait so long? I have thought about
him every day since, and what a terrible existence mine has been! I
have never awakened, never, do you understand, without my first
thoughts being of him, of my child. How is he? Oh, how guilty I
feel toward him! Ought one to fear what the world may say in a case
like this? I ought to have left everything to go after him, to
bring him up and to show my love for him. I should certainly have
been much happier, but I did not dare, I was a coward. How I have
suffered! Oh, how those poor, abandoned children must hate their
mothers!"
She stopped suddenly, for she was choked by her sobs. The
whole valley was deserted and silent in the dazzling light and the
overwhelming heat, and only the grasshoppers uttered their shrill,
continuous chirp among the sparse yellow grass on both sides of the
road.
"Sit down a little," he said.
She allowed herself to be led to the side of the ditch and
sank down with her face in her hands. Her white hair, which hung in
curls on both sides of her face, had become tangled. She wept,
overcome by profound grief, while he stood facing her, uneasy and
not knowing what to say, and he merely murmured: "Come, take
courage."
She got up.
"I will," she said, and wiping her eyes, she began to walk
again with the uncertain step of an elderly woman.
A little farther on the road passed beneath a clump of trees,
which hid a few houses, and they could distinguish the vibrating
and regular blows of a blacksmith's hammer on the anvil; and
presently they saw a wagon standing on the right side of the road
in front of a low cottage, and two men shoeing a horse under a
shed.
Monsieur d' Apreval went up to them.
"Where is Pierre Benedict's farm?" he asked.
