第78章

I remember little of the succeeding events.All was so trivial, so insignificant, between that first vision of horror and the vision of woe which came to me two years later, that, with one exception, I hardly recall the intervening time.

In 1864, my father died; in 1866, my mother married M.Jacques Termonde.The exceptional period of the interval was the only one during which my mother bestowed constant attention upon me.Before the fatal date my father was the only person who had cared for me;at a later period there was no one at all to do so.Our apartment in the Rue Tronchet became unbearable to us; there we could not escape from the remembrance of the terrible event, and we removed to a small hotel in the Boulevard de Latour-Maubourg.The house had belonged to a painter, and stood in a small garden which seemed larger than it was because other gardens adjoined it, and over-shadowed its boundary wall and greenery.The center of the house was a kind of hall, in the English style, which the former occupant had used as a studio; my mother made this her ordinary sitting-room.

Now, at this distance of time, I can understand my mother's character, and recognize that there was something about her, which, although it was very harmless, led her to exaggerate the outward expression of all her feelings.While she occupied herself in studying the attitudes by which her emotions were to be fittingly expressed, the sentiments themselves were fading away.For instance, she chose to condemn herself to voluntary exile and seclusion after her bereavement, receiving only a very few friends, of whom M.Jacques Termonde was one; but she very soon began to adorn herself and everything around her, with the fine and subtle tastefulness that was innate in her.

My mother was a very lovely woman; her beauty was of a refined and pensive order, her figure was tall and slender, her dark hair was very luxuriant and of remarkable length.No doubt it was to the Greek blood in her veins that she owed the classical lines of her profile, her full-lidded soft eyes, and the willowy grace of her form.Her maternal grandfather was a Greek merchant, of the name of Votronto, who had come from the Levant to Marcielles when the Ionian Islands were annexed to France.

Many times in after years I have recalled the strange contrast between her rare and refined beauty and my father's stolid sturdy form, and my own, and wondered whether the origin of many irreparable mistakes might not be traced to that contrast.But Idid not reason in those days; I was under the spell of the fair being who called me, "My son." I used to look at her with a kind of idolatry when she was seated at her piano in that elegant sanctum of hers, which she had hung with draped foreign stuffs, and decorated with tall green plants and various curious things, after a fashion entirely her own.For her sake, and in spite of my natural awkwardness and untidiness, I strove to keep myself very clean and neat in the more and more elaborate costumes which she made me wear, and also more and more did the terrible image of the murdered man fade away from that home, which, nevertheless, was provided and adorned by the fortune which he had earned for us and bequeathed to us.All the ways of modern life are so opposed to the tragic in events, so far removed from the savage realities of passion and bloodshed, that when such things intrude upon the decorous life of a family, they are put out of sight with all speed, and soon come to be looked upon as a bad dream, impossible to doubt, but difficult to realize.

Yes, our life had almost resumed its normal course when my mother's second marriage was announced to me.This time I accurately remember not only the period, but also the day and hour.

I was spending my holidays with my spinster aunt, my father's sister, who lived at Compiegne, in a house situated at the far end of the town.She had three servants, one of whom was my dear old Julie, who had left us because my mother could not get on with her.

My aunt Louise was a little woman of fifty, with countrified looks and manners; she had hardly ever consented to stay two whole days in Paris during my father's lifetime.Her almost invariable attire was a black silk gown made at home, with just a line of white at the neck and wrists, and she always wore a very long gold chain of ancient date, which was passed under the bodice of her gown and came out at the belt.To this chain her watch and a bunch of seals and charms were attached.Her cap, plainly trimmed with ribbon, was black like her dress, and the smooth bands of her hair, which was turning gray, framed a thoughtful brow and eyes so kind that she was pleasant to behold, although her nose was large and her mouth and chin were heavy.She had brought up my father in this same little town of Compiegne, and had given him, out of her fortune, all that she could spare from the simple needs of her frugal life, when he wished to marry Mdlle.de Slane, in order to induce my mother's family to listen to his suit.