Valvèdre

II

II ithout fortune or ancestors, Alida had been chosen by Valvèdre. Had he loved her? Did he still love her? No one knew; but no one had reason to believe that love had not guided his choice since Alida had no other capital than her beauty. During the first years, the couple had been inseparable. It is true that gradually, for the last five or six years, Valvèdre had resumed his life of explorations and travels but without appearing to neglect his companion and without ceasing to surround her with care, luxury, attentions, and condescension. It was not true, according to Obernay, that he kept her prisoner in his villa, or that Mademoiselle Juste de Valvèdre, the oldest of her sisters-in-law, was a chaperone charged with oppressing her. On the contrary, Mademoiselle Juste was a very distinguished person in charge of the children’s early education and of the running of the household, tasks for which Alida herself declared she was unfit. Paule had been brought up by her older sister. The three women thus lived as they wished: Paule under her sister Juste’s influence out of inclination and duty, Alida completely independent of both. As for the matter of the affairs attributed to her, Obernay did not believe it at all; that is to say, no exclusive relationship had taken a visible place in her life since he had known her. “I think she is a flirt,” he would say, “but she is so out of affectation or idleness. I don’t consider her active or energetic enough to be passionate or even to have strong desires. She likes attention; she is bored when there is a dearth of compliments, and perhaps they are rare in the countryside. She may miss them in Geneva also where she has honored us by accepting our hospitality on occasion. Our circle is a little too serious for her, and it is a great misfortune, isn’t it, that a thirty-year-old woman should be forced by social conventions to W - 29 - 30 Valvèdre live reasonably? I know that before, in an effort to please her, her husband often took her out in fashionable circles; but there is a time for everything. A scientist owes his time to science; a mother owes hers to her children. To tell you the truth, I have a poor opinion of a woman’s brain when she finds her duties boring.” “It seems, though, that she obeys them, since, free to throw herself into the whirl, she lives in seclusion?” “She would have to face the whirl on her own and it is not easy, unless you have a certain audacious vitality, which she doesn’t have. In my opinion, it would be better for her to have the courage to do it since she has the inclination, and it would be better for Valvèdre to have a wife completely dissolute and promiscuous, who would leave him perfectly free and at peace, than an elegy in skirts who cannot make any decisions and whose weakened deportment seems to be a protest against common sense, a reproach to rational life.” All this is easy to say, I thought to myself. Perhaps this woman is yearning after something other than frivolous pleasures; perhaps she has a great need to love, especially if her husband introduced her to love before leaving her for physics and chemistry. Such a woman really starts life at thirty and the company of two brats and of two infinitely virtuous sisters-in-law does not appear to be an ideal to which I would devote myself. Why do we demand of beauty, which is exclusively made for love, what we, the ugly sex, would be incapable of accepting? At the age of forty, M. de Valvèdre is completely devoted to his passion for science. He has thought it quite fair to drop sisters, brats, and wife in the bargain . . . It is true that he lets her have her freedom . . . Well, let her take advantage of it; it is her right, and it is the task of a young and ardent soul like mine to make her overcome the scruples that hold her back! Of course, I refrained from sharing these thoughts with Obernay. On the contrary, I pretended to agree with all of his pronouncements and I left him without contradicting him in the least. I was supposed to see Alida again...