A LOVE CRIME. Paul Bourget

exaltation of a

      provincial. "I am the first Parisian who has paid her attentions," he

      had said again to himself, and as she possessed charming gracefulness of

      gesture, so sweet an expression of countenance and such an air of

      complete refinement and nobility about her entire personality, he had

      taken a pleasure in completing her education in elegance, thinking to

      himself that she would be a delightful mistress.

      But for many days she had refused really to become his mistress, and her

      resistance had made him obstinate. He had become bent upon overcoming

      her, recollecting the officer and telling himself that the officer had

      not been the only one. A few skilful conversations with Alfred had

      taught him that at one time Varades had really been a constant guest at

      the house; was he not the same year's student at the École

      Polytechnique as Alfred himself? Armand had lost his doubts, and in

      Helen's refusals to be his, he had seen nothing but coquetry. Now, in

      this respect like all men who hold the strange ethics of seducers,

      Querne considered coquetry in a women a justification for the worst

      behaviour. At last the long siege was about to issue in the coveted

      result. Madame Chazel had granted him an appointment for the following

      day. Twenty-four hours more and he would have a new mistress, as

      desirable and as pretty as those whose memory was the most flattering to

      the pride of his recollection. Why then did he, instead of being happy,

      feel so deeply melancholy. Was it remorse for the treason to his friend?

      His friend? Was Alfred really his friend? Yes, that was understood

      between themselves, as well as in the eyes of others. But a friend is a

      man who knows you and whom you know, to whom you show your heart and who

      shows you his. Would he ever bring the tale of one of his hopes, his

      joys, his sadnesses, to the calculating machine that bore the name of

      Chazel? Had the latter ever confided a secret to him? So much the

      better, too, for the ideas of this worthy schoolboy who seemed to look

      upon life as the prolongation of a college task, must be silly enough.

      It was their college life that continued to link them together, and the

      recollections of their childhood. Their childhood? Turning down the Rue

      Royale and arriving at the Champs Élysées, Armand suddenly recalled

      the ranks of Vanaboste's school, on Thursdays, as they walked three and

      three under the superintendence of a poor wretch of an usher who strove

      to hide himself among the groups of people, so as to seem a passer-by

      like the rest and not a watch-dog charged with the duty of looking after

      a flock of schoolboys.

      And what a flock it was! The majority had pale complexions, hollow eyes,

      an enervated exhaustion of the whole being that spoke of secret

      excesses. How much ignominy and baseness was there in that community,

      the eldest in which were nineteen years of age and the youngest eight!

      Within the walls of their prison, as within the walls of the great

      Lycée to which they repaired twice a day, nothing was thought of but

      the infamous amours existing between the elder boys and their juniors.

      Of these unnatural loves, some were partly sensual, and had for their

      theatre all the deserted corners in the house, from the dormitories to

      the infirmary. And of the French youth confined within similar colleges,

      how many were participators in this lewdness, while the rest defiled

      their imaginations, although they repelled it! Among these college boys

      there were also elevated and chaste connexions. The perusal of a certain

      eclogue of Virgil's, a dialogue of Plato's, and a few of Shakespeare's

      sonnets had excited the more literary of them, and Alfred Chazel, being

      then in the third class, had one day received a piece of poetry written

      by a sixth-form boy, beginning with the following astonishing line,

      which had made them laugh like mad creatures:

      "Alfred, my pale Alfred, my love, my sweet."

      "Ah! what a horrible, horrible, place!" thought the young man, as he

      recalled this blending of turpitude and puerility.

      Alfred and he had belonged to the small number of those who had remained

      untouched by the infection. But to him at least, all the advantage due

      to this disgust was that it had led him when quite young to the pursuit

      of women, and his initiation into natural pleasure had been effected in

      the most degraded prostitution.

      "And these are the youthful recollections that I should respect," said

      Armand to himself. "What duty do I owe him because we were galley slaves

      together?"

      No, a hundred times no, it was not on Alfred's account that he felt so

      melancholy as he hastened his steps and, this time with semi-brutality,

      repulsed the love-beggars who accosted him with their unvarying phrases.

      Ah! he knew this unconquerable melancholy only too well. Only too often

      had it visited him, gnawing him in the diseased portion of his heart,

      from the time that the income of thirty thousand francs coming to him at

      his majority had permitted him to live according to his fancy; and this

      fancy had immediately taken the direction of sentimental experiences.

      Such melancholy, sharp and severe, he had experienced, even when quite a

      youth, every time that he had found himself on the eve of a first

      love-meeting with a new mistress, even though she had been the most

      coveted. It was like an anguish-stricken apprehension--a dull, dim agony

      of soul.

      At first he had attributed this strange phenomenon alternately to

      physical timidity, to remorse at his own unworthiness of the feelings

      that he might inspire, and to hankerings after purity. Now he knew the

      true explanation of these momentary sorrows, these keener crises of the

      great sorrow which formed the gloomy background of his life. It was,

      alas! the more present and palpable certainty of his impotence to love.

      At this very moment he was asking himself:

      "Am