"HENRIETTE."
"Well! what do you say to that?"
"Why! I say--but what reply did you make? did you send the money?"
"I"m not so foolish, I tell you! In the first place, this letter is altogether too much! What does she mean by "her furniture, that she thought was paid for, but is not?" And this upholsterer who will have her turned out of her apartments if she doesn"t pay him? An upholsterer may take back his furniture, but he doesn"t turn you into the street by that. The trick was too plain; and in order to write such stuff to a man, one must take him for a goose. As I don"t care to be likened to that bird, I instantly informed the messenger that I was terribly distressed, that I was in despair, but that I was unable to hand her anything for Mademoiselle Henriette, and she went away with that answer.--_Bigre_! four hundred francs at one slap, for a flower-maker--that"s too magnificent! You aim too high, my love!"
"Well! what next?"
"Why, there is no next."
"Didn"t Henriette send to you again?"
"Not at all! she made the best of it, like a brave heart. She said to herself: "There"s a young buck who isn"t such an a.s.s as I thought."--And I am sure that I have gained greatly in her esteem; that pleases me."
"I can see nothing in all this to interfere with our going now to call for the young ladies and taking them to the Opera ball, as we agreed."
"Ah! you can"t, eh? Well, when I went out for a stroll before dinner, I thought I would find out if the catastrophe had had any results, and I walked as far as Rue de Saintonge, where our turtle-doves had their perch. I asked the concierge: "Is Mademoiselle Henriette in?"--Thereupon that counterfeit Swiss looked at me with rather a bantering expression, and replied:
""No, monsieur, those young women have gone away."
""Will they return soon?"
""Return! oh! I fancy they won"t return here; they carried off their belongings very cunningly in little bundles, and then they skipped. The landlord came and made a row with me about it, and said that I didn"t ought to let anything go out of the house. But what can you expect? the women nowadays wear skirts puffed out like balloons, so, you see, those girls could have stuffed their whole wardrobe underneath. Ah! those skirts are very deceitful; they"ll be the cause of many _poufs_."[C]
""But," I said to the man, "what is the landlord afraid of? Those young women had some very nice furniture, and I don"t suppose they put their mattresses and their wardrobes with gla.s.s doors under their skirts, did they? And this isn"t a furnished lodging-house; they had their own furniture, didn"t they?"
""That is to say, they had their own furniture to pay for; the upholsterer wanted to carry it away this morning; but not much--the landlord must be paid first and they owed him for three quarters. For all that, it"s mighty unpleasant; it always ends in a row! When the upholsterer found that he couldn"t carry away his furniture, he was crazy. "You ought not to have let those women go!" he said; "I"d have had them put in prison." And so on and so forth. Have I any right to keep tenants from going out, I"d like to know?"
""No, certainly you haven"t any such right; a concierge"s authority doesn"t go so far as that; perhaps it may come, though, I shouldn"t be surprised! They do some pretty rough things already, but they haven"t got to the point of imprisoning tenants."
""Never mind; when we let rooms to two girls together again, it will be hotter than it is now!"
""Do you think there"s less danger when they are alone?"
""Certainly, one can keep a closer watch on them then; but when there"s two of "em, why, they do nothing else besides going back and forth before one"s eyes, and it"s impossible to know who goes in and out--so one gets totally bewildered."
"That, my dear fellow, is the conversation I had with the concierge of those damsels, who strike me as being decidedly a bad lot. You see that it"s no use for us to go to their last lodgings to look for them."
"I see that the letter wasn"t so far from the truth, when it said that they would be turned out if they did not pay."
"They succeeded in escaping unaided. I asked how much the upholsterer claimed: it was eight or nine hundred francs, I believe; but if I had turned in four hundred francs, do you imagine for a moment that they would have given it to their creditor? Ah! how little you know of that breed! They would have vanished with my money, that"s all!"
"Do you think so?"
"In other words, I am sure of it. "Brought up in the harem, I know all its devious ways." These girls pa.s.s their lives making _poufs_; then they make a trip to England, to try to make the conquest of some _lord_; and when they don"t succeed in that, they are obliged to sell everything, even to their chemises, to pay for their return trip to Paris. I tell you that I know the whole business, step by step."
"It"s a pity! I regret Amelia, for she was very pretty!"
"There are others! Paris swarms with pretty women. Henriette was very attractive, too; pink and white, Watteau style."
"I am terribly annoyed."
"But you"re not unprovided for; you must fall back on your beautiful brunette, whom I christened the Andalusian--your Madame de Sainte-Suzanne, a woman almost comme il faut; at all events, she is pleased now to affect the manners of one."
"I told you that I had broken with that lady; she insisted on having me always at her side, and questioned me about every step I took; I had to render her an account of my most trivial acts, and it was downright slavery! A little more and she would have confined me to my room. You can understand that that sort of thing didn"t suit me!"
"Bless me! not unless you"re an absolute idiot. Still, there are men stupid enough to allow their mistresses to lead them by the nose.
There"s Dutaillis, for example; he can"t take a step for fear of a row!
When he goes out, it"s: "Where are you going?" When he comes in: "Where have you been? what makes you so red? why are you so pale? why is your collar so rumpled? where did you pick up all that mud?"--There"s no end to it. And the jacka.s.s takes a world of pains to prove that he"s no redder than usual, and that his collar rumpled of itself because it wasn"t well starched! And the prettiest part of it all is that he"ll end by marrying his Virginette! What a grovelling future I foresee for the poor wretch!--Your chimney is in bad order, it doesn"t draw."
"I don"t know whether Madame de Sainte-Suzanne flattered herself that I would marry her; I don"t think she went so far as that; but she was atrociously jealous."
"Did she carry a dagger in her garter?"
"No, but she had several in her room, and very beautiful ones, encrusted with jewels."
"They were gifts."
"However, I must do her justice: people told me she was a very covetous woman and had ruined several of her adorers; but when I attempted to give her rather a handsome present, she refused it; she would accept, or rather take, nothing from me except a big lock of hair."
"The devil! that"s much more dangerous; she"ll probably make some kind of a spell with your hair, some charm that will force you to love her.
For my part, I never give away any hair; I sell it, especially as I shall be bald very early in life. Ah! then I"ll make them pay dear for it."
"Thelenie has beautiful black hair, very long and thick."
"Ah! that makes a lovely ornament for a woman! When I have a mistress with handsome hair, I lose no time in removing her comb and arranging her hair like a Bacchante"s. But you must be careful; several times, when I have supposed that I was dealing with real hair, upon removing the comb suddenly--without asking permission--I have seen the whole business fall: bands, curls and chignon! And then they flew into a rage with me.--I am more prudent now and always ask if I may touch."
"Thelenie has jet-black eyes, too; you rarely see eyes of such a pure black."
"Why, it seems to me you"re still in love with her!"
"Oh, no! not at all. I made her acquaintance, as one makes many acquaintances, by chance. She is a beautiful woman, always dressed with no less taste than style. Such a conquest is always flattering to a young man; but I soon saw that there was not the slightest sympathy between that woman"s temperament and mine; she is imperious and exacting, and, as I said, very jealous."
"And you have broken with her?"
"I haven"t set foot inside her door for a week."
"That"s not very long. Hasn"t she written to you?"
"Indeed she has, letter after letter; but I don"t answer them."
"Very good! but take my advice and wear a coat of mail when you are out late at night."
"Bah! what nonsense! Tell me, what motive for revenge can that woman have? I didn"t take her away from anybody else, I made her no promise of marriage; I never swore that I would pa.s.s my life at her feet."
"It would have made your knees ache."
"I am sure that it"s simply her self-esteem that makes her anxious to renew our intimacy; she is vexed because I was unfaithful first."