They drove into the courtyard from either side at the same time as if it had been prearranged. Our friends hurried to meet them and Mittler hid himself and had his horse brought him and rode off in annoyance.

CHAPTER TEN

THE guests were welcomed and conducted in. They were very happy to be again in the house and the rooms where they had spent so many good days and which they had not seen for a long time. The Count and the Baroness were both of that tall well-formed type of person you almost prefer to see in middle age than in youth: if they have lost something of their first bloom, they now excite not only affection but a decided feeling of trust and confidence. This couple too were very easy to get along with. Their easy manner of accepting and dealing with life’s circumstances, their cheerfulness, their apparent unaffectedness communicated themselves right away, and their whole deportment was characterized by a noble decorum untouched by any sense of constraint.

This effect made itself felt immediately. The new arrivals had come straight from the great world, as you could see from their dress, their effects and everything else about them, and they supplied a kind of contrast to our friends, with their country ways and their secluded passions. But this was soon dissipated as old memories and present interests mingled, and they were quickly united in lively conversation.

But before long they separated again. The ladies retired to their wing, where they found plenty of entertainment in exchanging confidences and criticizing the latest fashions. The men busied themselves with the coaches and horses and were soon horse-trading and horse-exchanging.

They first reassembled at table. They had dressed and in this too the new arrivals showed themselves to advantage. All they wore was new and so to speak unseen, and yet already tried out and therefore comfortable and familiar.

Conversation was lively and varied: when people such as this are present everything and nothing seems to be of interest. They spoke French so as to exclude the servants, they chattered gaily about the affairs of the great world and the not so great. But on one point their talk stayed with a subject longer than might seem proper, and that was when Charlotte inquired after a friend of her youth and learned with some surprise she was about to be divorced.

‘Disagreeable,’ said Charlotte, ‘to think your absent friends are safe, a friend you love is well taken care of, and before you know it to hear her fate is in the balance, to hear she is about to enter on to a new road and perhaps an uncertain one.’

‘Actually, my dear,’ replied the Count, ‘it is our own fault if we are surprised in this fashion. We do so like to imagine that earthly things are so very permanent, and especially the marriage tie. And as to that, we are misled by all those comedies we see so much of into imaginings which are quite contrary to the way of the world. In a comedy we see a marriage as the final fulfilment of a desire which has been thwarted by the obstacles of several acts. The moment this desire is fulfilled the curtain falls, and this momentary satisfaction goes on echoing in our minds. Things are different in the real world. In the real world the play continues after the curtain has fallen, and when it is raised again there is not much pleasure to be gained by seeing or hearing what is going on.’

‘It cannot be as bad as all that,’ said Charlotte, smiling, ‘since you see actors who have retired from this stage glad enough to get back on to it.’

‘You cannot take objection to that,’ said the Count. ‘To assume a new role may be a very pleasant thing. When you know the world you see that in the case of marriage too it is only this fixed eternal duration amid so much change that has something inappropriate about it. A friend of mine whose humour usually takes the form of suggesting new laws used to say marriages ought to be contracted for only five years. He said this lovely odd and sacred number and the length of time measured by it would suffice for getting to know one another, producing a few children, separating and, what would be the best of it, becoming reconciled again. He used to say: What a happy time you would have at first! Two or three years at the least would be spent in contentment. Then one of the parties would be interested in seeing the relationship protracted, would grow more and more attentive as the end drew closer. The indifferent or even discontented party would be propitiated and won over by this behaviour. As you forget the time when in good company, so they too would forget the passage of time and would be most pleasantly surprised to notice after the term was up that it had already been silently prolonged.’

This was all very clever and merry, and Charlotte was not unaware the joke could be given a profound moral meaning, but she found such utterances unpleasant, especially on account of Ottilie. She knew well nothing is more dangerous than too free conversation in which a culpable or semiculpable situation is treated as normal, commonplace, or even praiseworthy; and anything that impugns the marriage tie certainly comes into this category. She tried with all her skill to turn the conversation elsewhere; she was unable to do so, and she was sorry Ottilie had arranged everything so well that she had no occasion to leave the table.