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Updated: June 9, 2025
He would understand it; he would know that their love had nothing to do with anything so stupid. What folly for him to care about another! As if there were other men in the world! M. Martin-Belleme half opened the bedroom door. Seeing a light he went in. "You are not asleep, Therese?" He had been at a conference with his colleagues. He wanted advice from his wife on certain points.
"And you wish me, dear, to save my kindness and my wickedness for a serious investment?" Therese made her drink some Tokay. Preceded by the sound of his powerful breathing, General Lariviere approached with heavy state and sat between the two women, looking stubborn and self-satisfied, laughing in every wrinkle of his face. "How is Monsieur Martin-Belleme? Always busy?"
He imagined that Countess Martin-Belleme was suggesting to him projects that she wished him to consider. And as he was thinking of defending himself and also avenging himself, he made velvet eyes at her and talked with tender gallantry: "You display, Madame, the pride of the beautiful and intelligent French women whom subjection irritates.
For thirteen centuries she retained this funereal majesty, until one day a child passed a candle through the opening of the grave and burned the body." Madame Martin-Belleme asked what that dead woman, so obstinate in her conceit, had done during her life. "Twice a slave," said Dechartre, "she became twice an empress." "She must have been beautiful," said Madame Martin.
And yet, perhaps, she did not know everything; perhaps there were loves in which one was deliciously lost. She put out her lamp. The dreams of her first youth came back to her. It was raining. Madame Martin-Belleme saw confusedly through the glass of her coupe the multitude of passing umbrellas, like black turtles under the watery skies. She was thinking.
Look at her: her forehead clouded, her glance vague, her mouth dolorous. Behold a victim!" She arose, kissed Therese tumultuously, and fled, leaving the General astonished. Madame Martin-Belleme prayed him not to listen to what the Princess had said. He collected himself and asked: "And how are your poets, Madame?"
He imagined that Countess Martin-Belleme was suggesting to him projects that she wished him to consider. And as he was thinking of defending himself and also avenging himself, he made velvet eyes at her and talked with tender gallantry: "You display, Madame, the pride of the beautiful and intelligent French women whom subjection irritates.
Therese did not hear. Her soul had followed Dechartre through the door of her box. In the anteroom was a noise of overthrown chairs. It was Schmoll coming back. He had learned that M. Martin-Belleme had recently been appointed Minister. At once he claimed the cross of Commander of the Legion of Honor and a larger apartment at the Institute.
She went into the dining-room and fell in a chair. M. Martin-Belleme was just finishing his breakfast. He was expected at the Cabinet Council and at the former Finance Minister's, to whom he owed a call. "Do not forget, my dear friend, to call on Madame Berthier d'Eyzelles. You know how sensitive she is." She made no answer.
In the dining-room, Count Martin-Belleme was doing the honors of his table with the good grace, the sad politeness, recently prescribed at the Elysee to represent isolated France at a great northern court. From time to time he addressed vapid phrases to Madame Garain at his right; to the Princess Seniavine at his left, who, loaded with diamonds, felt bored.
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