tarts to get into their compartment; but, no less than their sham otter-skins and the self-conscious appearance of their young men, the names Lucienne and Germaine kept the new Rachel alive for a moment longer. For a moment Robert imagined a Place Pigalle existence with unknown associates, sordid pick-ups, afternoons spent in simple pleasures, in that Paris in which the sunny brightness of the streets from the Boulevard de Clichy onwards did not seem the same as the solar radiance in which he himself strolled with his mistress, for love, and suffering that is inseparable from it, have, like intoxication, the power to differentiate things for us. It was almost another Paris in the heart of Paris itself that he suspected; his liaison appeared to him like the exploration of a strange life, for if when with him Rachel was somewhat similar to himself, it was nevertheless a part of her real life that she lived with him, indeed the most precious part in view of his reckless expenditure on her, the part that made her so greatly envied by her friends and would enable her one day to retire to the country or to establish herself in the leading theatres, when she had made her pile. Robert longed to ask her who Lucienne and Germaine were, what they would have said to her if she had joined them in their compartment, how they would all have spent a day which would perhaps have ended, as a supreme diversion, after the pleasures of the skating-rink, at the Olympia Tavern, if Robert and I had not been there. For a moment the purlieus of the Olympia, which until then had seemed to him deadly dull, stirred his curiosity and anguish, and the sunshine of this spring day beating down on the Rue Caumartin where, possibly, if she had not known Robert, Rachel might have gone that afternoon and have earned a louis, filled him with a vague longing. But what would be the use of plying Rachel with questions when he already knew that her answer would be merely silence, or a lie, or something extremely painful for him to hear, which would yet explain nothing. The porters were shutting the doors; we hurriedly climbed into a first-class carriage; Rachel’s magnificent pearls reminded Robert that she was a woman of great price; he caressed her, restored her to her place in his heart where he could contemplate her, interiorised, as he had always done hitherto—save during this brief instant in which he had seen her in the Place Pigalle of an Impressionist painter—and the train moved off.
It was true that she was “literary.” She never stopped talking to me about books, Art Nouveau and Tolstoyism, except to rebuke Saint-Loup for drinking too much wine:
“Ah! if you could live with me for a year, we’d see a fine change. I should keep you on water and you’d be much better for it.”
“Right you are. Let’s go away.”
“But you know quite well I have a great deal of work to do” (for she took her dramatic art very seriously). “Besides, what would your family say?”
And she began to abuse his family to me in terms which seemed to me highly justified, and with which Saint-Loup, while disobeying Rachel in the matter of champagne, entirely concurred. I, who was so afraid of the effect of wine on him, and felt the good influence of his mistress, was quite prepared to advise him to let his family go hang. Tears sprang to the young woman’s eyes when I was rash enough to mention Dreyfus.
“The poor martyr!” she almost sobbed; “it will be the death of him in that dreadful place.”
“Don’t upset yourself, Zézette, he’ll come back, he’ll be acquitted all right, they’ll admit they made a mistake.”
“But long before then he’ll be dead! Ah well, at least his children will bear a stainless name. But just think of the agony he must be going through: that’s what I can’t stand! And would you believe that Robert’s mother, a pious woman, says that he ought to be left on Devil’s Island even if he’s innocent. Isn’t that appalling?”
“Yes, it’s absolutely true, she does say that,” Robert assured me. “She’s my mother, I can’t contradict her, but it’s quite clear she hasn’t got a sensitive nature