""Have you forgotten that this is the day, at the _Hotel de Bade_, between five and six o"clock? In an hour, Madame de Lauriere will be at the office of the Police Commissary in the Rue de Provence, with her uncle and Maitre Cantenac ..."
"An hour; I only had an hour, sixty short minutes to dress in, to take a room, find a woman and persuade her to go with me immediately, and to excite her feelings, so that this extravagant adventure might not appear too equivocal to the Commissary of Police. One hour in which to carry out such a program was enough to make a man lose his head. And there were no possible means of putting off that obligatory entertainment, to let Madame Le Lauriere know in time, and to gain a few minutes more.
""Have you found a woman, at any rate?" Maitre de Chevrier continued anxiously.
""No, my dear sir!"
"I immediately began to think of the whole string of my dear female friends. Should I choose Liline Ablette, who could refuse me nothing, Blanch Rebus, who was the best comrade a man ever had, or Lalie Spring, that luxurious creature, who was constantly in search of something new?
Neither one nor the other of them, for it was ninety-nine chances to one that all these confounded girls were in the _Bois de Boulogne_, or at their dressmakers!"
""Bah! Just pick up the first girl you meet on the pavement."
"And before the hour was up, I was bolting the door of a room, which looked out onto the boulevard.
"The woman whom I had picked up, as she was walking past the _cafes_, from the _Vaudeville_ to _Tortoni"s_, was twenty at the most. She had an impudent, snub nose, as if it had been turned up in fun by a fillip, large eyes with-deep rims round them; her lips were too red, and she had the slow, indolent walk of a girl who goes in for debauchery too freely and who began too soon, but she was pretty, and her linen was very clean and neat. And she was evidently used to chance love-making, and had a way of undressing herself in two or three rapid movements, of throwing her toggery to the right and left, until she was extremely lightly clad, and of throwing herself onto the bed which astonished me as a sight that was well worth seeing.
"She did not talk much, though she began by saying: "Pay up at once, old man ... You don"t look like a fellow who would bilk a girl, but it puts me into better trim when I have been paid."
"I gave her two napoleons, and she eyed me with grat.i.tude and respect at the same time, but also with that uneasy look of a girl who asks herself: "What does this tool expect for it?"
"The whole affair began to amuse me, and I must confess that I was rather taken with her, for she had a beautiful figure and complexion, and I was hoping that the Commissary would not come directly, when there was a loud rapping at the door.
"She sat up with a start, and grew so pale that one would have said she was about to faint.
""What a set of pigs, to come and interrupt people like this!" she muttered between her teeth; while I affected the most complete calm.
""Somebody who has made a mistake in the room, my dear," I said.
"But this noise increased, and suddenly I heard a man"s voice saying clearly and authoritatively:
""Open the door, in the name of the law!"
"On hearing that, one would have thought that she had received a shock from an electric battery, by the nimble manner in which she jumped out of bed; and quickly putting on her stays and her dress anyhow, she endeavored to discover a way out in every corner of the room, like a wild beast, trying to escape from its cage. I thought that she was going to throw herself out of the window, so I seized hold of her to prevent her.
"The unfortunate creature acted like a madwoman, and when she felt my arm round her waist, she cried in a hoa.r.s.e voice:
""I see it ... You have sold me ... You thought that I should expose myself.... Oh! you filthy brutes--you filthy brutes!"
"And suddenly, pa.s.sing from abuse to entreaties, pale and with chattering teeth, she threw herself at my feet, and said, in a low voice:
""Listen to me, my dear: you don"t look a bad sort of fellow, and you would not like them to lock me up. I have a kid and the old woman to keep. Hide me behind the bed, do, and please don"t give me up.... I will make it up to you, and you shall have no cause for grumbling...."
"At that moment however, the lock which they had unscrewed fell onto the floor with a metallic sound, and Madame de Lauriere and the Police Commissary, wearing his tricolored scarf, appeared in the door, while behind them the heads of the uncle and of the lawyer could be seen indistinctly in the background.
"The girl had uttered a cry of terror and going up to the Commissary she said, panting:
""I swear to you that I am not guilty, that I was not ... I will tell you everything if you will promise me not to tell them that I spilt, for they would pay me out...."
"The Commissary, who was surprised, but who guessed that there was something which was not quite clear behind all this, forgot to draw up his report, and so the lawyer went up to him and said:
""Well, monsieur, what are we waiting for?"
"But he paid no attention to anything but the woman, and looking at her sharply and suspiciously through his gold-rimmed spectacles, he said to her in a hard voice:
""Your names and surnames?"
""Juliette Randal, or as I am generally called, Jujutte Pipehead."
""So you will swear you were not--"
"She interrupted him eagerly:
""I swear it, monsieur, and I know that my little man had nothing to do with it either. He was only keeping a look-out while the others collared the swag. ... I will swear that I can account for every moment of my time that night. Roquin was drunk, and told me everything.... They got five thousand francs from Daddy Zacharias, and of course Roquin had his share, but he did not work with his partners. It was Minon Menilmuche, whom they call _Drink-without-Thirst_, who held the gardener"s hands, and who bled him with a blow from his knife."
"The Commissary let her run on, and when she had finished, he questioned me, as if I had belonged to Jujutte"s band.
""Your name, Christian name, and profession?"
""Marquis Sulpice de Laurier, living on my own private income, at 24, Rue de Galilee."
""De Laurier? Oh, very well.... Excuse me, monsieur, but at Madame de Lauriere"s request, I declare formally before these gentlemen, who will be able to give evidence, that the girl Juliette Randal, whom they call _Jujutte Tete-de-Pipe_, is your mistress. You are at liberty to go, Monsieur le Marquis, and you, girl Randal answer my questions."
"Thus, by the most extraordinary chance, our divorce suit created a sensation which I had certainly never foreseen. I was obliged to appear in the a.s.size Court as a witness in the celebrated case of those burglars, when three of them were condemned to death, and to undergo the questioning of the idiotic Presiding Judge, who tried by all means in his power to make me acknowledge that I was Jujutte Tete-de-Pipe"s regular lover; and in consequence, ever since then I have pa.s.sed as an ardent seeker after novel sensations, and a man who wallows in the lowest depths of the Parisian dunghill.
"I cannot say that this unjust reputation has brought me any pleasant love affairs. Women are so perverse, so absurd, and so curious!"
THE CONFESSION
Monsieur de Champdelin had no reason to complain of his lot as a married man; nor could he accuse destiny of having played him in a bad turn, as it does so many others, for it would have been difficult to find a more desirable, merrier, prettier little woman, or one who was easier to amuse and to guide than his wife. To see the large, limpid eyes which illuminated her fair, girlish face, one would think that her mother must have spent whole nights before her birth, in looking dreamily at the stars, and so had become, as it were, impregnated with their magic brightness. And one did not know which to prefer--her bright, silky hair, or her slightly _restrousse_ nose, with its vibrating nostrils, her red lips, which looked as alluring as a ripe peach, her beautiful shoulders, her delicate ears, which resembled mother-of-pearl, or her slim waist and rounded figure, which would have delighted and tempted a sculptor.
And then she was always merry, overflowing with youth and life, never dissatisfied, only wishing to enjoy herself, to laugh, to love and be loved, and putting all the house into a tumult, as if it had been a great cage full of birds. In spite of all this, however, that worn out fool, Champdelin, had never cared much about her, but had left that charming garden lying waste, and almost immediately after their honeymoon, he had resumed is usual bachelor habits, and had begun to lead the same fast life that he had done of old.
It was stronger than he, for his was one of those libertine natures which are constant targets for love, and which never resign themselves to domestic peace and happiness. The last woman who came across him, in a love adventure, was always the one whom he loved best, and the mere contact with a petticoat inflamed him, and made him commit the most imprudent actions.
As he was not hard to please, he fished, as it were, in troubled waters, went after the ugly ones and the pretty ones alike, was bold even to impudence, was not to be kept off by mistakes, nor anger, nor modesty, nor threats, though he sometimes fell into a trap and got a thrashing from some relative or jealous lover; he withstood all attempts to get hush-money out of him, and became only all the more enamored of vice and more ardent in his lures and pursuit of love affairs on that account.
But the work-girls and the shop-girls and all the tradesmen"s wives in Saint Martejoux knew him, and made him pay for their whims and their coquetry, and had to put up with his love-making. Many of them smiled or blushed when they saw him under the tall plane-trees in the public garden, or met him in the unfrequented, narrow streets near the Cathedral, with his thin, sensual face, whose looks had something satyr-like about them, and some of them used to laugh at him and make fun of him, though they ran away when he went up to them. And when some friend or other, who was sorry that he could forget himself so far, used to say to him, when he was at a loss for any other argument: "And your wife, Champdelin? Are you not afraid that she will have her revenge and pay you out in your own coin?" his only reply was a contemptuous and incredulous shrug of the shoulders.
She deceive him, indeed; she, who was as devout, as virtuous, and as ignorant of forbidden things as a nun, who cared no more for love than she did for an old slipper! She, who did not even venture on any veiled allusions, who was always laughing, who took life as it came, who performed her religious duties with edifying a.s.siduity, she to pay him back, so as to make him look ridiculous, and to gad about at night?
Never! Anyone who could think such a thing must have lost his senses.
However, one summer day, when the roofs all seemed red-hot, and the whole town appeared dead, Monsieur de Champdelin had followed two milliner"s girls, with bandboxes in their hands from street to street, whispering nonsense to them, and promising beforehand to give them anything they asked him for, and had gone after them as far as the Cathedral. In their fright, they took refuge there, but he followed them in, and, emboldened by the solitude of the nave, and by the perfect silence in the building, he became more enterprising and bolder. They did not know how to defend themselves, or to escape from him, and were trembling at his daring attempts, and at his kisses, when he saw a confessional whose doors were open, in one of the side chapels. "We should be much more comfortable in there, my little dears," he said, going into it, as if to get such an unexpected nest ready for them.
But they were quicker than he, and throwing themselves against the grated door, they pushed it to before he could turn round, and locked him in. At first he thought it was only a joke, and it amused him; but when they began to laugh heartily and putting their tongues at him, as if he had been a monkey in a cage, and overwhelmed him with insults, he first of all grew angry, and then humble, offering to pay well for his ransom, and he implored them to let him out, and tried to escape like a mouse does out of a trap. They, however, did not appear to hear him, but naively bowed to him ceremoniously, wished him good night, and ran out as fast as they could.