Mont Oriol or A Romance of Auvergne

When they got back, just as Gontran was stepping out of the Ark to go up to the Casino, Bretigny accompanied him, and stopping on the first steps, said:

"Listen, my friend! What you're doing is not right, and I've promised your sister to speak to you about it."

"To speak about what?"

"About the way you have been acting during the last few days."

Gontran had resumed his impertinent air.

"Acting? Toward whom?"

"Toward this girl whom you are meanly jilting."

"Do you think so?"

"Yes, I do think so – and I am right in thinking so."

"Bah! you are becoming very scrupulous on the subject of jilting."

"Ah, my friend, 'tis not a question of a loose woman here, but of a young girl."

"I know that perfectly; therefore, I have not seduced her. The difference is very marked."

They went on walking together side by side. Gontran's demeanor exasperated Paul, who replied:

"If I were not your friend, I would say some very severe things to you."

"And for my part I would not permit you to say them."

"Look here, listen to me, my friend! This young girl excites my pity. She was weeping a little while ago."

"Bah! she was weeping! Why, that's a compliment to me!"

"Come, don't trifle! What do you mean to do?"

"I? Nothing!"

"Just consider! You have gone so far with her that you have compromised her. The other day you told your sister and me that you were thinking of marrying her."

Gontran stopped in his walk, and in that mocking tone through which a menace showed itself:

"My sister and you would do better not to bother yourselves about other people's love affairs. I told you that this girl pleases me well enough, and that if I happened to marry her, I would be doing a wise and reasonable act. That's all. Now it turns out that to-day I like the elder girl better. I have changed my mind. That's a thing that happens to everyone."

Then, looking him full in the face: "What is it that you do yourself when you cease to care about a woman? Do you look after her?"

Paul Bretigny, astonished, sought to penetrate the profound meaning, the hidden sense, of these words. A little feverishness also mounted into his brain. He said in a violent tone:

"I tell you again this is not a question of a hussy or a married woman, but of a young girl whom you have deceived, if not by promises, at least by your advances. That is not, mark you, the part of a man of honor! – or of an honest man!"

Gontran, pale, his voice quivering, interrupted him: "Hold your tongue! You have already said too much – and I have listened to too much of this. In my turn, if I were not your friend I – I might show you that I have a short temper. Another word, and there is an end of everything between us forever!"

Then, slowly weighing his words, and flinging them in Paul's face, he said: "I have no explanations to offer you – I might rather have to demand them from you. There is a certain kind of indelicacy of which it is not the part of a man of honor or of an honest man to be guilty – which might take many forms – from which friendship ought to keep certain people – and which love does not excuse."

All of a sudden, changing his tone, and almost jesting, he added:

"As for this little Charlotte, if she excites your pity, and if you like her, take her, and marry her. Marriage is often a solution of difficult cases. It is a solution, and a stronghold, in which one may barricade himself against desperate obstacles. She is pretty and rich! It would be very desirable for you to finish with an accident like this! – it would be amusing for us to marry here, the same day, for I certainly will marry the elder one. I tell it to you as a secret, and don't repeat it as yet. Now don't forget that you have less right than anyone else yourself ever to talk about integrity in matters of sentiment, and scruples of affection. And now go and look after your own affairs. I am going to look after mine. Good night!"

And suddenly turning off in another direction, he went down toward the village. Paul Bretigny, with doubts in his mind and uneasiness in his heart, returned with lingering steps to the hotel of Mont Oriol.

He tried to understand thoroughly, to recall each word, in order to determine its meaning, and he was amazed at the secret byways, shameful and unfit to be spoken of, which may be hidden in certain souls.

When Christiane asked him: "What reply did you get from Gontran?"

He faltered: "My God! he – he prefers the elder, just now. I believe he even intends to marry her – and in answer to my rather sharp reproaches he shut my mouth by allusions that are – disquieting to both of us."

Christiane sank into a chair, murmuring: "Oh! my God! my God!"

But, as Gontran had just come in, for the bell had rung for dinner, he kissed her gaily on the forehead, asking: "Well, little sister, how do you feel now? You are not too tired?"

Then he pressed Paul's hand, and, turning toward Andermatt, who had come in after him:

"I say, pearl of brothers-in-law, of husbands, and of friends, can you tell me exactly what an old ass dead on a road is worth?"

CHAPTER XII.

A Betrothal

Andermatt and Doctor Latonne were walking in front of the Casino on a terrace adorned with vases made of imitation marble.

"He no longer salutes me," the doctor was saying, referring to his brother-physician Bonnefille. "He is over there in his pit, like a wild-boar. I believe he would poison our springs, if he could!"

Andermatt, with his hands behind his back and his hat – a small round hat of gray felt – thrown back over his neck, so as to let the baldness above his forehead be seen, was deeply plunged in thought. At length he said:

"Oh! in three months the Company will have knuckled under. We might buy it over at ten thousand francs. It is that wretched Bonnefille who is exciting them against me, and who makes them fancy that I will give way. But he is mistaken."

The new inspector returned: "You are aware that they have shut up their Casino since yesterday. They have no one any longer."

"Yes, I am aware of it; but we have not enough of people here ourselves. They stick in too much at the hotels; and people get bored in the hotels, my dear fellow. It is necessary to amuse the bathers, to distract them, to make them think the season too short. Those staying at our Mont Oriol hotel come every evening, because they are quite near, but the others hesitate and remain in their abodes. It is a question of routes – nothing else. Success always depends on certain imperceptible causes which we ought to know how to discover. It is necessary that the routes leading to a place of recreation should be a source of recreation in themselves, the commencement of the pleasure which one will be enjoying presently.

"The ways which lead to this place are bad, stony, hard; they cause fatigue. When a route which goes to any place, to which one has a vague desire of paying a visit, is pleasant, wide, and full of shade in the daytime, easy and not too steep at night, one selects it naturally in preference to others. If you knew how the body preserves the recollection of a thousand things which the mind has not taken the trouble to retain! I believe this is how the memory of animals is constructed. Have you felt too hot when repairing to such a place? Have you tired your feet on badly broken stones? Have you found an ascent too rough, even while you were thinking of something else? If so, you will experience invincible repugnance to revisiting that spot. You were chatting with a friend; you took no notice of the slight annoyances of the journey; you were looking at nothing, remarking notice; but your legs, your muscles, your lungs, your whole body have not forgotten, and they say to the mind, when it wants to take them along the same route: 'No, I won't go; I have suffered too much there.' And the mind yields to this refusal without disputing it, submitting to this mute language of the companions who carry it along.

"So then, we want fine pathways, which comes back to saying that I require the bits of ground belonging to that donkey of a Père Oriol. But patience! Ha! with reference to that point, Mas-Roussel has become the proprietor of his own chalet on the same conditions as Remusot. It is a trifling sacrifice for which he will amply indemnify us. Try, therefore, to find out exactly what are Cloche's intentions."

"He'll do just the same thing as the others," said the physician. "But there is something else, of which I have been thinking for the last few days, and which we have completely forgotten – it is the meteorological bulletin."

"What meteorological bulletin?"

"In the big Parisian newspapers. It is indispensable, this is! It is necessary that the temperature of a thermal station should be better, less variable, more uniformly mild than that of the neighboring and rival stations. You subscribe to the meteorological bulletin in the leading organs of opinion, and I will send every evening by telegraph the atmospheric situation. I will do it in such a way that the average arrived at when the year is at an end may be higher than the best mean temperatures of the surrounding stations. The first thing that meets our eyes when we open the big newspapers are the temperatures of Vichy, of Royat, of Mont Doré, of Chatel-Guyon, and other places during the summer season, and, during the winter season, the temperatures of Cannes, Mentone, Nice, Saint Raphael. It is necessary that the weather should always be hot and always fine in these places, in order that the Parisian might say: 'Christi! how lucky the people are who go down there!'"