He was in mourning for one he was not allowed to mourn, unable to acknowledge his sorrow, for the one whose death had devastated him belonged in name and in memory to another. He, perhaps, suffered more than any other, and yet he was forced to smile, to listen to the anecdotes which were bandied back and forth – and even to tell them himself, sparing neither implications nor insinuations nor perfidies, because he wished to keep his secret.
He mourned, but he shed his tears within his throat and not upon his cheeks. Like one of Dante’s damned, he drank from a poisonous and inexhaustible river of misery. Twice or thrice, intending to contrive a delicate and discreet grimace of surprise, he felt his face become contorted, and his gorge rise – and it required a superhuman effort, born of love, to prevent sobs from bursting forth to stain the solemn ceremony with scandal and ridicule.
The subdued company followed the coffined corpse along a desolate little path bordered with appropriately dismal firs. One by one they passed into the cemetery, and the conversation dwindled away, hushed like the noises of a forest at the approach of a storm, or the murmur of a flock at the door of the abattoir. Disquiet imposed silence by gradual degrees as the members of the crowd entered the house of the dead, each oppressed by the fearful awareness that one day he would enter such a place and not leave it.
In spite of his inner anguish, he sustained his pretence of indifference throughout. He pretended attentively to read the vain inscriptions imposed upon the insensibility of the marble slabs. The aspirations graven there revolted him by their frankness and their hypocrisy. The doctrine of the eternal survival of souls could not stir in him any leavening of desire; he did not believe in it, and he did not want to.
When all the formalities were complete, the assembled throng, delivered from their solemnity, made their way back up the staircase. Once outside, he took care to present himself, as propriety and amity demanded, to the husband of the deceased, the marquis de V –. He clasped the old man’s hand, and proffered some conventional banalities:
“I have been waiting for you, my friend,” said Monsieur de V –. “You are the one who must give me your arm and escort me home. Come, I beg of you, save me from all these tiresome people.”
Making a vague gesture of farewell, M. de V – withdrew with the companion in sorrow to whose care he had chosen to confide himself.
“Let us go,” the old marquis continued. “Lend me your support, I beg of you. I am broken. I feel as if I were a hundred years old! All that remained to me of my strength and my life has been nailed up in a coffin. I suppose you think that it should have been she who buried me, she who should have closed my eyes and consoled my cold temples with a last kiss, like a dutiful daughter? Ah, my friend! You at least are with me – say that you will not abandon me! You are not so rotten. I know that you cannot do it, for I am the only one to whom you are permitted to speak of her, the only one in whose company you will be able to mourn her. There is nothing I do not know, you see; not only have I supported everything that has come to pass, but I have engineered it, and mark my words: my wife’s adultery has been the salvation of my marriage!
“When I took her for my wife six years ago I was already no more than the shadow of a man. I knew that I was quite impotent to provide her with the expected pleasures of marriage, and thus I condemned her to a kind of hideous and humiliating widowhood – humiliating because, in her ignorance, she might believe herself scorned; hideous because, although I could not take full possession of the virgin who had been delivered unto me, I was not incapable of lust, or of such amusements which an old man might derive from an innocent and docile creature. However, once I was wed, and at the threshold of the nuptial chamber, I became ashamed of the abjection of my desires. I went in to my wife, and took abundant sensual pleasure simply from momentarily caressing her soft and beautiful blonde hair, as a mother might have fondled her daughter. She was undoubtedly surprised – and more astonished still later on, when she came to understand the intimate secret with which I could not acquaint her. That acquaintance she received from you – and I could tell you the day on which it happened, perhaps even the hour, if you have by any chance forgotten them! You must remember the tenderness of the welcome I gave you on that particular day, and you must remember your embarrassment, your lies and your blushes? Children, children! Admit that you were afraid, and acknowledge that at the same time, you enjoyed the most delicious sensations!
“I was so little the dupe, my dear friend, that I would arrange your rendezvous myself, always taking good care to provide you with advance notice of my absences and my returns. Sometimes, in order to maintain the intensity of your love and desire, I thwarted your planned meetings by remaining for an entire week within the house, without stirring from my bed – requiring by my simulated illness the constant attendance of the unhappy Antoinette. Oh, I have been so very paternal, and you ought now to recognise the fact. Without my ruses, you might easily have tired of one another at the end of three months, and without my foresight, you would not have found that charming hunting-lodge on the far side of the estate, to which everyone believed that I retired on certain afternoons, and where I permitted you such tranquil intervals on so many beautiful summer nights!
“My duty as a husband was to afford my wife the most elementary pleasures of life; being incapable of doing so myself, I delegated the task to one who seemed to me worthy of the role. You have filled that role admirably. She loved you until the very last, unknowingly whispering your name in the agony of her delirium.
“You both conducted yourselves honourably. Your discretion was perfect, and I am certain that the Marquise de V – died with an unsullied reputation as a heroic and faithful spouse. Yes, heroic – because she always presented a cheerful face to me, yielded to my will, and catered to the idiosyncrasies of an old man. And faithful – because only one man ever kissed her lips.”
We arrived at Monsieur de V – ’s home, and immediately went up to the marquise’s room.
“I repeat,” Monsieur de V – continued, “that I could do nothing more for her than an indulgent father. I have lost a daughter; it is you who mourns your wife.
“What the world might think of me, if this curious adventure became known, I can readily imagine. They would despise me. If that is what you are thinking yourself, I do not blame you. What does it matter to me? I have always regarded myself as a liberated man – liberated from prejudice and from duties of omission. There are men who have risen through the ranks of society by the strict observance of social convention; as for me, I have descended.
“That degree of conventional immorality which an honest fool would discover in my conduct I myself take leave to adjudge a high and absolute morality – and I am able, proudly and painfully, to embrace in the privacy of my dead wife’s room the man who I myself appointed as her lover.
“Mourn, mourn, my friend! Rejoice in all the delicious afflictions of grief! Mourn the loss of one whom you are not allowed to mourn, anywhere but here.
“Take what you will of her jewels, her lacework, her shoes, her dresses. Among her dresses, there is but one lacking: her wedding-dress; the one which she wore the day she was given to you. That one is buried with her; she wears it in her tomb!”