第96章

There was but one remedy to be applied to my unbearable malady--that remedy which had already been successful in the case of my suspicions of my mother.I must at once proceed to place the real in opposition to the suggestions of imagination.I must seek the presence of the man whom I suspected, look him straight in the face, and see him as he was, not as my fancy, growing more feverish day by day, represented him.Then I should discern whether I had or had not been the sport of a delusion; and the sooner I resorted to this test the better, for my sufferings were terribly increased by solitude.

My head became confused; at last I ceased even to doubt.That which ought to have been only a faint indication, assumed to my mind the importance of an overwhelming proof.In the interest of my inquiry itself it was full time to resist this, if I were ever to pursue my inquiry farther, or else I should fall into the nervous state which I knew so well, and which rendered any kind of action in cold blood impossible to me.

I made up my mind to leave Compiegne, see my stepfather, and form my judgment of whether there was or was not anything in my suspicions upon the first effect produced on him by my sudden and unexpected appearance before him.I founded this hope on an argument which I had already used in the case of my mother, namely, that if M.Termonde had really been concerned in the assassination of my father, he had dreaded my aunt's penetration beyond all things.Their relations had been formal, with an undercurrent of enmity on her part which had assuredly not escaped a man so astute as he.If he were guilty, would he not have feared that my aunt would have confided her thoughts to me on her death-bed? The attitude that he should assume towards me, at and after our first interview, would be a proof, complete in proportion to its suddenness, and he must have no time for preparation.

I returned to Paris, therefore, without having informed even my valet of my intention, and proceeded almost immediately to my mother's hotel.

I rang the bell.

The door was opened, and the narrow court, the glass porch, the red carpet of the staircase, were before me.The concierge, who saluted me, was not he by whom I had fancied myself slighted in my childhood; but the old valet de chambre who opened the door to me was the same.His close-shaven face wore its former impassive expression, the look that used to convey to me such an impression of insult and insolence when I came home from school.What childish absurdity!

To my question the man replied that my mother was in, also H.

Termonde, and Madame Bernard, a friend of theirs.The latter name brought me back at once to the reality of the situation.Madame Bernard was a prettyish woman, very slight and very dark, with a "tip-tilted" nose, frizzy hair worn low upon her forehead, very white teeth which were continually shown by a constant smile, a short upper lip, and all the manners and ways of a woman of society well up to its latest gossip.I fell at once from my fancied height as an imaginary Grand Judiciary into the shallows of Parisian frivolity.I felt about to hear chatter upon the last new play, the latest suit for separation, the latest love affairs, and the newest bonnet.It was for this that I had eaten my heart out all these days!

The servant preceded me to the hall I knew so well, with its Oriental divan, its green plants, its strange furniture, its slightly faded carpet, its Meissonier on a draped easel, in the place formerly occupied by my father's portrait, its crowd of ornamental trifles, and the wide-spreading Japanese parasol open in the middle of the ceiling.The walls were hung with large pieces of Chinese stuff embroidered in black and white silk.My mother was half-reclining in an American rocking-chair, and shading her face from the fire with a hand-screen; Madame Bernard, who sat opposite to her, was holding her muff with one hand and gesticulating with the other; M.Termonde, in walking-dress, was standing with his back to the chimney, smoking a cigar, and warming the sole of one of his boots.

On my appearance, my mother uttered a little cry of glad surprise, and rose to welcome me.Madame Bernard instantly assumed the air with which a well-bred woman prepares to condole with a person of her acquaintance upon a bereavement.All these little details Iperceived in a moment, and also the shrug of M.Termonde's shoulders, the quick flutter of his eyelids, the rapidly-dismissed expression of disagreeable surprise which my sudden appearance called forth.But what then? Was it not the same with myself? Icould have sworn that at the same moment he experienced sensations exactly similar to those which were catching me at the chest and by the throat.What did this prove but that a current of antipathy existed between him and me? Was it a reason for the man's being a murderer? He was simply my stepfather, and a stepfather who did not like his stepson.

Matters had stood thus for years, and yet, after the week of miserable suspicion I had lived through, the quick look and shrug struck me strangely, even while I took his hand after I had kissed my mother and saluted Madame Bernard.His hand? No, only his finger tips as usual, and they trembled a little as I touched them.