"Oh, my darling! if you only knew what I felt when I saw the papers this morning. Oh, tell me all about it! I want to know everything."
He had to give minute details. She said: "What a dreadful night you must have pa.s.sed before the duel."
"No, I slept very well."
"I should not have closed an eye. And on the ground--tell me all that happened."
He gave a dramatic account. "When we were face to face with one another at twenty paces, only four times the length of this room, Jacques, after asking if we were ready, gave the word "Fire." I raised my arm at once, keeping a good line, but I made the mistake of trying to aim at the head. I had a pistol with an unusually stiff pull, and I am accustomed to very easy ones, so that the resistance of the trigger caused me to fire too high. No matter, it could not have gone very far off him. He shoots well, too, the rascal. His bullet skimmed by my temple. I felt the wind of it."
She was sitting on his knees, and holding him in her arms as though to share his dangers. She murmured: "Oh, my poor darling! my poor darling!"
When he had finished his narration, she said: "Do you know, I cannot live without you. I must see you, and with my husband in Paris it is not easy. Often I could find an hour in the morning before you were up to run in and kiss you, but I won"t enter that awful house of yours. What is to be done?"
He suddenly had an inspiration, and asked: "What is the rent here?"
"A hundred francs a month."
"Well, I will take the rooms over on my own account, and live here altogether. Mine are no longer good enough for my new position."
She reflected a few moments, and then said: "No, I won"t have that."
He was astonished, and asked: "Why not?"
"Because I won"t."
"That is not a reason. These rooms suit me very well. I am here, and shall remain here. Besides," he added, with a laugh, "they are taken in my name."
But she kept on refusing, "No, no, I won"t have it."
"Why not, then?"
Then she whispered tenderly: "Because you would bring women here, and I won"t have it."
He grew indignant. "Never. I can promise you that."
"No, you will bring them all the same."
"I swear I won"t."
"Truly?"
"Truly, on my word of honor. This is our place, our very own."
She clasped him to her in an outburst of love, exclaiming: "Very well, then, darling. But you know if you once deceive me, only once, it will be all over between us, all over for ever."
He swore again with many protestations, and it was agreed that he should install himself there that very day, so that she could look in on him as she pa.s.sed the door. Then she said: "In any case, come and dine with us on Sunday. My husband thinks you are charming."
He was flattered "Really!"
"Yes, you have captivated him. And then, listen, you have told me that you were brought up in a country-house."
"Yes; why?"
"Then you must know something about agriculture?"
"Yes."
"Well, talk to him about gardening and the crops. He is very fond of that sort of thing."
"Good; I will not forget."
She left him, after kissing him to an indefinite extent, the duel having stimulated her affection.
Duroy thought, as he made his way to the office, "What a strange being.
What a feather brain. Can one tell what she wants and what she cares for? And what a strange household. What fanciful being arranged the union of that old man and this madcap? What made the inspector marry this giddy girl? A mystery. Who knows? Love, perhaps." And he concluded: "After all, she is a very nice little mistress, and I should be a very big fool to let her slip away from me."
VIII
His duel had given Duroy a position among the leader-writers of the _Vie Francaise_, but as he had great difficulty in finding ideas, he made a specialty of declamatory articles on the decadence of morality, the lowering of the standard of character, the weakening of the patriotic fiber and the anemia of French honor. He had discovered the word anemia, and was very proud of it. And when Madame de Marelle, filled with that skeptical, mocking, and incredulous spirit characteristic of the Parisian, laughed at his tirades, which she demolished with an epigram, he replied with a smile: "Bah! this sort of thing will give me a good reputation later on."
He now resided in the Rue de Constantinople, whither he had shifted his portmanteau, his hair-brush, his razor, and his soap, which was what his moving amounted to. Twice or thrice a week she would call before he was up, undress in a twinkling, and slip into bed, shivering from the cold prevailing out of doors. As a set off, Duroy dined every Thursday at her residence, and paid court to her husband by talking agriculture with him. As he was himself fond of everything relating to the cultivation of the soil, they sometimes both grew so interested in the subject of their conversation that they quite forgot the wife dozing on the sofa. Laurine would also go to sleep, now on the knee of her father and now on that of Pretty-boy. And when the journalist had left, Monsieur de Marelle never failed to a.s.sert, in that doctrinal tone in which he said the least thing: "That young fellow is really very pleasant company, he has a well-informed mind."
February was drawing to a close. One began to smell the violets in the street, as one pa.s.sed the barrows of the flower-sellers of a morning.
Duroy was living beneath a sky without a cloud.
One night, on returning home, he found a letter that had been slipped under his door. He glanced at the post-mark, and read "Cannes." Having opened it, he read:
"Villa Jolie, Cannes.
"DEAR SIR AND FRIEND,--You told me, did you not, that I could reckon upon you for anything? Well, I have a very painful service to ask of you; it is to come and help me, so that I may not be left alone during the last moments of Charles, who is dying. He may not last out the week, as the doctor has forewarned me, although he has not yet taken to his bed. I have no longer strength nor courage to witness this hourly death, and I think with terror of those last moments which are drawing near. I can only ask such a service of you, as my husband has no relatives. You were his comrade; he opened the door of the paper to you. Come, I beg of you; I have no one else to ask.
"Believe me, your very sincere friend,
"MADELEINE FORESTIER."
A strange feeling filled George"s heart, a sense of freedom and of a s.p.a.ce opening before him, and he murmured: "To be sure, I"ll go. Poor Charles! What are we, after all?"
The governor, to whom he read the letter, grumblingly granted permission, repeating: "But be back soon, you are indispensable to us."
George left for Cannes next day by the seven o"clock express, after letting the Marelles know of his departure by a telegram. He arrived the following evening about four o"clock. A commissionaire guided him to the Villa Jolie, built half-way up the slope of the pine forest clothed with white houses, which extends from Cannes to the Golfe Juan. The house--small, low, and in the Italian style--was built beside the road which winds zig-zag fashion up through the trees, revealing a succession of charming views at every turning it makes.
The man servant opened the door, and exclaimed: "Oh! Sir, madame is expecting you most impatiently."
"How is your master?" inquired Duroy.