A LOVE CRIME. Paul Bourget

death, first of

      Monsieur de Vaivre, then of his second wife and of their child, suddenly

      enriched the young household. Appointed the preceding year to a

      municipal post at Paris, the engineer found that he had realised a

      hundredfold the most ambitious hopes of his youth. His wife's fortune

      amounted to about nine hundred thousand francs, to the returns from

      which were added the ten thousand francs of his own salary and the small

      income which had been left by his father. But this competency, instead

      of blunting the young man's activity, stimulated it to the ambition of

      compensating in honour for the inequality of position between himself

      and his wife. He had, accordingly, gone back to mathematical labours

      with fresh ardour. Admission to the Institute shone on the horizon of

      his dreams, like a sort of final apotheosis to a destiny, the happiness

      of which he modestly referred to his father's wise maxim: "To keep to

      the high road."

      Add to this that a son had been born to him, in whom he already

      discerned a reflection of his own disposition, and it cannot fail to be

      understood how this man would congratulate himself daily for having

      taken life, as he had done, with complete submission to all the average

      conditions of the social class in which he had been born.

      Did these various reflections pass through the mind of the third

      individual--the man whom Alfred Chazel had called Armand, as he

      contemplated the conjugal tableau through the smoke from a Russian

      cigarette which he had just lighted--a liberty which revealed the extent

      of his intimacy with the family? The same contrast which separated

      Alfred from Helen separated him also from Armand. The latter looked at

      first younger than his age, though he too had passed his thirty-second

      year. If Alfred's carelessly-worn coat revealed rather the leanness and

      disproportion of his body, the frock of the Baron de Querne--such was

      Armand's family-name--fitted close to the shoulders and bust of a man,

      small but robust, and evidently devoted to fencing, riding, tennis, and

      all the sporting habits which the youths of the richer classes have

      contracted in imitation of the English, now that political

      careers--diplomacy, the Council of State, and the Audit Office--are

      denied them by their real or assumed opinions.

      The quiet jewellery with which the young baron was adorned, the delicacy

      of his hands and feet, and everything in his appearance, from his cravat

      and his collar to the curls in his dark hair, and to the turn of his

      moustache, drawn out over a somewhat contemptuous lip, disclosed that

      deep attention to the toilet which assumes the lengthened leisure of an

      idle life. But what preserved De Querne from the commonplaceness usual

      to men who are visibly occupied with the trifles of masculine fashion

      was a look, in a generally immovable face, of peculiar keenness and

      unrest. This look, which was not at all like that of a young man,

      contradicted the remainder of his person to the extent of imparting an

      appearance of strangeness to one who looked in this way, although a

      desire to evade remark, and to be above all things correct, evidently

      influenced his mode of dress.

      Just as Chazel seemed to have remained quite young at heart, in spite of

      the failure of constitution, so the other, if only in the expression of

      his eyes, which were very dark ones, appeared to have undergone a

      premature aging of soul and intellect, in spite of the energy maintained

      by his physical machine. The face was somewhat long and somewhat

      browned, like that of one in whom bile would prevail some day, the

      forehead without a wrinkle, the nose very refined; a slight dimple was

      impressed upon the square chin. It would have been impossible to assign

      any profession or even occupation to this man, and yet there was

      something superior in his nature which seemed irreconcilable with the

      emptiness of an absolutely idle life, as well, too, as lines of

      melancholy about the mouth which banished the idea of a life of nothing

      but pleasure.

      Meanwhile he continued to smoke with perfect calmness, showing every

      time that he rejected the smoke small, close teeth, the lower ones being

      set in an irregular fashion, which is, people say, a probable indication

      of fierceness. He watched Chazel kiss his wife on the temple, while

      _she_ lowered her eyelids without venturing to look at Armand; and yet,

      had the dark eyes of the young man been encountered by her own, she

      would not have surprised any trace of sorrow, but an indefinable

      blending of irony and curiosity.

      "Yes," said Alfred, replying thus to the mute reproach which Helen's

      countenance seemed to make to him, "it is bad form to love one's wife in

      public, but Armand will forgive me. Well, goodbye," he went on, holding

      out his hand to his friend, "I shall not be away for more than an hour.

      I shall find you here again, shall I not?"

      The young Baron and Madame Chazel thus remained alone. They were silent

      for a few minutes, both keeping the positions in which Alfred had left

      them, she standing, but this time with her eyes raised towards Armand,

      and the latter answering her look with a smile while he continued to

      wrap himself in a cloud of smoke. She breathed in the slight acridity of

      the smoke, half opening her fresh lips. The sound of carriage wheels

      became audible beneath the windows. It was the rolling of the cab that

      was taking Chazel away.

      Helen slowly advanced to the easy chair in which Armand was sitting;

      with a pretty gesture she took the cigarette and threw it into the fire,

      then knelt before the young man, encircled his head with her arms, and,

      seeking his lips, kissed him; it looked as though she wished to destroy

      immediately the painful impression which her husband's attitude might

      have left on the man she loved, and in a clear tone of voice, the

      liveliness of which discovered