"Have I the face of a happy woman, Armand? Do not mock my sorrow, you, who know better than any one what its cause and its depth are.""It only depended on you not to have been unhappy at all, if you are as you say.""No, my friend; circumstances were stronger than my will. Iobeyed, not the instincts of a light woman, as you seem to say, but a serious necessity, and reasons which you will know one day, and which will make you forgive me.""Why do you not tell me those reasons to-day?""Because they would not bring about an impossible reunion between us, and they would separate you perhaps from those from whom you must not be separated.""Who do you mean?"
"I can not tell you."
"Then you are lying to me."
Marguerite rose and went toward the door. I could not behold this silent and expressive sorrow without being touched, when Icompared in my mind this pale and weeping woman with the madcap who had made fun of me at the Opera Comique.
"You shall not go," I said, putting myself in front of the door.
"Why?"
"Because, in spite of what you have done to me, I love you always, and I want you to stay here.""To turn me out to-morrow? No; it is impossible. Our destinies are separate; do not try to reunite them. You will despise me perhaps, while now you can only hate me.""No, Marguerite," I cried, feeling all my love and all my desire reawaken at the contact of this woman. "No, I will forget everything, and we will be happy as we promised one another that we would be."Marguerite shook her head doubtfully, and said:
"Am I not your slave, your dog? Do with me what you will. Take me; I am yours."And throwing off her cloak and hat, she flung them on the sofa, and began hurriedly to undo the front of her dress, for, by one of those reactions so frequent in her malady, the blood rushed to her head and stifled her. A hard, dry cough followed.
"Tell my coachman," she said, "to go back with the carriage."I went down myself and sent him away. When I returned Marguerite was lying in front of the fire, and her teeth chattered with the cold.
I took her in my arms. I undressed her, without her making a movement, and carried her, icy cold, to the bed. Then I sat beside her and tried to warm her with my caresses. She did not speak a word, but smiled at me.
It was a strange night. All Marguerite's life seemed to have passed into the kisses with which she covered me, and I loved her so much that in my transports of feverish love I asked myself whether I should not kill her, so that she might never belong to another.
A month of love like that, and there would have remained only the corpse of heart or body.
The dawn found us both awake. Marguerite was livid white. She did not speak a word. From time to time, big tears rolled from her eyes, and stayed upon her cheeks, shining like diamonds. Her thin arms opened, from time to time, to hold me fast, and fell back helplessly upon the bed.
For a moment it seemed to me as if I could forget all that had passed since I had left Bougival, and I said to Marguerite:
"Shall we go away and leave Paris?"
"No, no!" she said, almost with affright; "we should be too unhappy. I can do no more to make you happy, but while there is a breath of life in me, I will be the slave of your fancies. At whatever hour of the day or night you will, come, and I will be yours; but do not link your future any more with mine, you would be too unhappy and you would make me too unhappy. I shall still be pretty for a while; make the most of it, but ask nothing more."When she had gone, I was frightened at the solitude in which she left me. Two hours afterward I was still sitting on the side of the bed, looking at the pillow which kept the imprint of her form, and asking myself what was to become of me, between my love and my jealousy.
At five o'clock, without knowing what I was going to do, I went to the Rue d'Antin.
Nanine opened to me.
"Madame can not receive you," she said in an embarrassed way.
"Why?"
"Because M. le Comte de N. is there, and he has given orders to let no one in.""Quite so," I stammered; "I forgot."
I went home like a drunken man, and do you know what I did during the moment of jealous delirium which was long enough for the shameful thing I was going to do? I said to myself that the woman was laughing at me; I saw her alone with the count, saying over to him the same words that she had said to me in the night, and taking a five-hundred-franc note I sent it to her with these words:
"You went away so suddenly that I forgot to pay you. Here is the price of your night."Then when the letter was sent I went out as if to free myself from the instantaneous remorse of this infamous action.
I went to see Olympe, whom I found trying on dresses, and when we were alone she sang obscene songs to amuse me. She was the very type of the shameless, heartless, senseless courtesan, for me at least, for perhaps some men might have dreamed of her as Idreamed of Marguerite. She asked me for money. I gave it to her, and, free then to go, I returned home.
Marguerite had not answered.
I need not tell you in what state of agitation I spent the next day. At half past nine a messenger brought me an envelope containing my letter and the five-hundred-franc note, not a word more.
"Who gave you this?" I asked the man.
"A lady who was starting with her maid in the next mail for Boulogne, and who told me not to take it until the coach was out of the courtyard."I rushed to the Rue d'Antin.
"Madame left for England at six o'clock," said the porter.
There was nothing to hold me in Paris any longer, neither hate nor love. I was exhausted by this series of shocks. One of my friends was setting out on a tour in the East. I told my father Ishould like to accompany him; my father gave me drafts and letters of introduction, and eight or ten days afterward Iembarked at Marseilles.
It was at Alexandria that I learned from an attache at the embassy, whom I had sometimes seen at Marguerite's, that the poor girl was seriously ill.
I then wrote her the letter which she answered in the way you know; I received it at Toulon.
I started at once, and you know the rest.
Now you have only to read a few sheets which Julie Duprat gave me; they are the best commentary on what I have just told you.
