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Under the bridge at Chatou he saw some skiffs going at great pace under the vigorous strokes of the bare-armed oarsmen, and he thought: "There are some fellows who are certainly enjoying themselves!"
This surely was one source of his power over an emotional people: his feelings were the servant, not the master, of his reason. Meanwhile the Prussians were drawing near to Paris. Early on the 29th they were at Argenteuil, and Blücher detached a flying column to seize the bridge of Chatou over the Seine near Malmaison and carry off Napoleon on the following night.
"Could anything be more grotesque than the lives of these little creatures, hanging on to one another like that. They'd imagine they were utterly lost, upon my soul they would, if they didn't all meet again to-morrow at Chatou!" Alas! there would be the painter there also, the painter who enjoyed match-making, who would invite Forcheville to come with Odette to his studio.
Next, he was possessed by a frightful longing to fly, to save himself, for ever, from this furious passion which threatened his existence. He was about to return to Chatou and take the train, resolved never to come back again, never again to see her.
In the islands in the Seine between Chatou and Port-Marly, on the banks of Sartrouville and Triel he was long noted among the population of boatmen, who have now vanished, for his unwearying biceps, his cynical gaiety of good-fellowship, his unfailing practical jokes, his broad witticisms.
But at other times, grief would again take hold of him; he would imagine that Odette was Forcheville's mistress, and that, when they had both sat watching him from the depths of the Verdurins' landau, in the Bois, on the evening before the party at Chatou to which he had not been invited, while he implored her in vain, with that look of despair on his face which even his coachman had noticed, to come home with him, and then turned away, solitary, crushed, she must have employed, to draw Forcheville's attention to him, while she murmured: "Do look at him, storming!" the same glance, brilliant, malicious, sidelong, cunning, as on the evening when Forcheville had driven Saniette from the Verdurins'.
It required the dictation of the vindictive and malevolent Fenayrou to crystallise her hatred of Aubert into a deliberate participation in his murder. Eight or nine miles north-west of Paris lies the small town of Chatou, a pleasant country resort for tired Parisians. Here Madeleine Brohan, the famous actress, had inhabited a small villa, a two-storied building.
It was the end of July, and each of us, every Sunday, went to roll in the grass, or soak in the water in the country near by. Asnieres, Argenteuil, Chatou, Borgival, Maisons, Poissy, had their habitues and their ardent admirers. We argued about the merits and advantages of all these places, celebrated and delightful to all Parsian employees. Daddy Mongilet declared: "You are like a lot of sheep!
This crime is the revenge of a cowardly and pitiless woman, who writes down in her account book the expenses of the trip to Chatou and, after the murder, picnics merrily in the green fields. It was you who steeled your husband to the task. How far the President was justified in thus inverting the parts played by the husband and wife in the crime must be a matter of opinion.
This surely was one source of his power over an emotional people: his feelings were the servant, not the master, of his reason. Meanwhile the Prussians were drawing near to Paris. Early on the 29th they were at Argenteuil, and Blücher detached a flying column to seize the bridge of Chatou over the Seine near Malmaison and carry off Napoleon on the following night.
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