thud as though some empty vessel, possibly a tin jug, had hit the floor with such vigour that it bounced. ‘Out!’
But Joséphine was already out. Even while the sick man struggled with his perplexities, she was being comforted.
Looking in through the door of a drawing room at the end of a long corridor, Adam saw the ladies sitting with their arms around each other. Which was Maupassant’s visitor? The high-coloured one in the grey mantle or the willowy girl whose face reflected an elusive radiance? Come to think of it, there was a shine to them both. Tears? Wintry light shed a chill on their embrace. They were – you could see – forming an alliance. For no reason on which he could have put a finger, Adam thought of his childhood, of smells of frosty earth, straw, fungus and steaming animals, and of dawdling home through glinty northern twilight – to be seized at last with scolding tenderness in brisk, protective arms. The longer that moment was put off, the better it was.
He felt a nip of loneliness.
Perhaps he was feeling frail? Dereliction hung like a miasma in the air! It could explain the doctor’s sloping off so early, the vicomte’s impetuosity and the ladies’ gall. Even Adam’s behaviour could be due to a contagion. He was amused to recognize the source of this thought in a debate which had been rambling on in the asylum kitchens where someone had raised the fear that people dealing with the mad risked going mad themselves.
‘Nonsense,’ the doctors had insisted when consulted about this. ‘Susceptible patients have to be kept isolated, but that’s not why. Hysterics can
mimic
epileptics. There’s no contagion.’
The staff, though, having often heard these same doctors offer mendacious comfort to the hopeless, were hard to convince. Anyway, what, they asked each other, about Monsieur de Maupassant? He had lately developed epileptic symptoms, hadn’t he? Those didn’t look like mimicry? Shuttling between worry and titillation, maids and menservants chewed over the question. Monsieur Guy’s case was of more interest than most because, thanks to what Monseigneur de Belcastel called the ‘forced education of the poor’, several were keen readers; those who couldn’t read could listen, and all enjoyed chatting about the shocking Monsieur Guy and his stories in the drowsy hour after supper over a glass of
gros rouge
or calvados.
‘Just how long,’ chambermaids challenged each other, ‘would
you
have resisted the seducer in Monsieur Guy’s novel,
Bel-Ami
? How hard would he have had to try with you?’
‘How hard or how long?’
Titters touched off shy bursts of teasing. Just like drawing room folk.
Well, why not? After all, Hachette’s railway-station stalls sold Monsieur Guy’s books.
Oh?
Yes indeed! His vogue was wide! He had caught a mood. It was canny and in tune with the times. Reading of how the brazen
Bel-Ami
used love to leapfrog past his betters wasn’t just fun. No, because the city was full of men like that who would walk across your face to get what they wanted. The book showed the dangers of hope. And most readers nowadays greeted that with a shrug: especially the hope of people bettering themselves! Before, whenever the barricades went up, expectancy had blazed – then choked. Like an unriddled stove! That had provided people with a ‘forced education’ all right! Maybe not the sort the monsignor meant, but it explained why the kitchen made a receptive audience when Tassart agreed to read from his master’s work and defended its scepticism and taste for scandal. Tassart himself might not have chosen to reveal that taste, but, once the press did, he grasped the nettle.
The
maison de santé
was a gossip-shop, so Adam knew just which questions had been put to the valet. One was about a flayed and withered human hand which his master was said to own, but when a maid asked if he had it here, she was told to pipe down. And what about the
macchabées
– corpses – he
But Joséphine was already out. Even while the sick man struggled with his perplexities, she was being comforted.
Looking in through the door of a drawing room at the end of a long corridor, Adam saw the ladies sitting with their arms around each other. Which was Maupassant’s visitor? The high-coloured one in the grey mantle or the willowy girl whose face reflected an elusive radiance? Come to think of it, there was a shine to them both. Tears? Wintry light shed a chill on their embrace. They were – you could see – forming an alliance. For no reason on which he could have put a finger, Adam thought of his childhood, of smells of frosty earth, straw, fungus and steaming animals, and of dawdling home through glinty northern twilight – to be seized at last with scolding tenderness in brisk, protective arms. The longer that moment was put off, the better it was.
He felt a nip of loneliness.
Perhaps he was feeling frail? Dereliction hung like a miasma in the air! It could explain the doctor’s sloping off so early, the vicomte’s impetuosity and the ladies’ gall. Even Adam’s behaviour could be due to a contagion. He was amused to recognize the source of this thought in a debate which had been rambling on in the asylum kitchens where someone had raised the fear that people dealing with the mad risked going mad themselves.
‘Nonsense,’ the doctors had insisted when consulted about this. ‘Susceptible patients have to be kept isolated, but that’s not why. Hysterics can
mimic
epileptics. There’s no contagion.’
The staff, though, having often heard these same doctors offer mendacious comfort to the hopeless, were hard to convince. Anyway, what, they asked each other, about Monsieur de Maupassant? He had lately developed epileptic symptoms, hadn’t he? Those didn’t look like mimicry? Shuttling between worry and titillation, maids and menservants chewed over the question. Monsieur Guy’s case was of more interest than most because, thanks to what Monseigneur de Belcastel called the ‘forced education of the poor’, several were keen readers; those who couldn’t read could listen, and all enjoyed chatting about the shocking Monsieur Guy and his stories in the drowsy hour after supper over a glass of
gros rouge
or calvados.
‘Just how long,’ chambermaids challenged each other, ‘would
you
have resisted the seducer in Monsieur Guy’s novel,
Bel-Ami
? How hard would he have had to try with you?’
‘How hard or how long?’
Titters touched off shy bursts of teasing. Just like drawing room folk.
Well, why not? After all, Hachette’s railway-station stalls sold Monsieur Guy’s books.
Oh?
Yes indeed! His vogue was wide! He had caught a mood. It was canny and in tune with the times. Reading of how the brazen
Bel-Ami
used love to leapfrog past his betters wasn’t just fun. No, because the city was full of men like that who would walk across your face to get what they wanted. The book showed the dangers of hope. And most readers nowadays greeted that with a shrug: especially the hope of people bettering themselves! Before, whenever the barricades went up, expectancy had blazed – then choked. Like an unriddled stove! That had provided people with a ‘forced education’ all right! Maybe not the sort the monsignor meant, but it explained why the kitchen made a receptive audience when Tassart agreed to read from his master’s work and defended its scepticism and taste for scandal. Tassart himself might not have chosen to reveal that taste, but, once the press did, he grasped the nettle.
The
maison de santé
was a gossip-shop, so Adam knew just which questions had been put to the valet. One was about a flayed and withered human hand which his master was said to own, but when a maid asked if he had it here, she was told to pipe down. And what about the
macchabées
– corpses – he
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