"We must go and get some sweets. She asked me for some."

We went into a confectioner's in the pa.s.sage de l'Opera. I would have bought the whole shop, and I was looking about to see what sweets to choose, when my friend asked for a pound of raisins glaces.

"Do you know if she likes them?"

"She eats no other kind of sweets; everybody knows it.

"Ah," he went on when we had left the shop, "do you know what kind of woman it is that I am going to introduce you to? Don't imagine it is a d.u.c.h.ess. It is simply a kept woman, very much kept, my dear fellow; don't be shy, say anything that comes into your head."

"Yes, yes," I stammered, and I followed him, saying to myself that I should soon cure myself of my pa.s.sion.

When I entered the box Marguerite was in fits of laughter. I would rather that she had been sad. My friend introduced me; Marguerite gave me a little nod, and said, "And my sweets?"

"Here they are."

She looked at me as she took them. I dropped my eyes and blushed.

She leaned across to her neighbour and said something in her ear, at which both laughed. Evidently I was the cause of their mirth, and my embarra.s.sment increased. At that time I had as mistress a very affectionate and sentimental little person, whose sentiment and whose melancholy letters amused me greatly. I realized the pain I must have given her by what I now experienced, and for five minutes I loved her as no woman was ever loved.

Marguerite ate her raisins glaces without taking any more notice of me.

The friend who had introduced me did not wish to let me remain in so ridiculous a position.

"Marguerite," he said, "you must not be surprised if M. Duval says nothing: you overwhelm him to such a degree that he can not find a word to say."

"I should say, on the contrary, that he has only come with you because it would have bored you to come here by yourself."

"If that were true," I said, "I should not have begged Ernest to ask your permission to introduce me."

"Perhaps that was only in order to put off the fatal moment."

However little one may have known women like Marguerite, one can not but know the delight they take in pretending to be witty and in teasing the people whom they meet for the first time. It is no doubt a return for the humiliations which they often have to submit to on the part of those whom they see every day.

To answer them properly, one requires a certain knack, and I had not had the opportunity of acquiring it; besides, the idea that I had formed of Marguerite accentuated the effects of her mockery. Nothing that dame from her was indifferent to me. I rose to my feet, saying in an altered voice, which I could not entirely control:

"If that is what you think of me, madame, I have only to ask your pardon for my indiscretion, and to take leave of you with the a.s.surance that it shall not occur again."

Thereupon I bowed and quitted the box. I had scarcely closed the door when I heard a third peal of laughter. It would not have been well for anybody who had elbowed me at that moment.

I returned to my seat. The signal for raising the curtain was given.

Ernest came back to his place beside me.

"What a way you behaved!" he said, as he sat down. "They will think you are mad."

"What did Marguerite say after I had gone?"

"She laughed, and said she had never seen any one so funny. But don't look upon it as a lost chance; only do not do these women the honour of taking them seriously. They do not know what politeness and ceremony are. It is as if you were to offer perfumes to dogs--they would think it smelled bad, and go and roll in the gutter."

"After all, what does it matter to me?" I said, affecting to speak in a nonchalant way. "I shall never see this woman again, and if I liked her before meeting her, it is quite different now that I know her."

"Bah! I don't despair of seeing you one day at the back of her box, and of bearing that you are ruining yourself for her. However, you are right, she hasn't been well brought up; but she would be a charming mistress to have."

Happily, the curtain rose and my friend was silent. I could not possibly tell you what they were acting. All that I remember is that from time to time I raised my eyes to the box I had quitted so abruptly, and that the faces of fresh visitors succeeded one another all the time.

I was far from having given up thinking about Marguerite. Another feeling had taken possession of me. It seemed to me that I had her insult and my absurdity to wipe out; I said to myself that if I spent every penny I had, I would win her and win my right to the place I had abandoned so quickly.

Before the performance was over Marguerite and her friend left the box.

I rose from my seat.

"Are you going?" said Ernest.

"Yes."

"Why?"

At that moment he saw that the box was empty.

"Go, go," he said, "and good luck, or rather better luck."

I went out.

I heard the rustle of dresses, the sound of voices, on the staircase.

I stood aside, and, without being seen, saw the two women pa.s.s me, accompanied by two young men. At the entrance to the theatre they were met by a footman.

"Tell the coachman to wait at the door of the Cafe' Anglais," said Marguerite. "We will walk there."

A few minutes afterward I saw Marguerite from the street at a window of one of the large rooms of the restaurant, pulling the camellias of her bouquet to pieces, one by one. One of the two men was leaning over her shoulder and whispering in her ear. I took up my position at the Maison-d'or, in one of the first-floor rooms, and did not lose sight of the window for an instant. At one in the morning Marguerite got into her carriage with her three friends. I took a cab and followed them. The carriage stopped at No. 9, Rue d'Antin. Marguerite got out and went in alone. It was no doubt a mere chance, but the chance filled me with delight.

From that time forward, I often met Marguerite at the theatre or in the Champs-Elysees. Always there was the same gaiety in her, the same emotion in me.

At last a fortnight pa.s.sed without my meeting her. I met Gaston and asked after her.

"Poor girl, she is very ill," he answered.

"What is the matter?"

"She is consumptive, and the sort of life she leads isn't exactly the thing to cure her. She has taken to her bed; she is dying."

The heart is a strange thing; I was almost glad at hearing it.

Every day I went to ask after her, without leaving my name or my card. I heard she was convalescent and had gone to Bagneres.

Time went by, the impression, if not the memory, faded gradually from my mind. I travelled; love affairs, habits, work, took the place of other thoughts, and when I recalled this adventure I looked upon it as one of those pa.s.sions which one has when one is very young, and laughs at soon afterward.

For the rest, it was no credit to me to have got the better of this recollection, for I had completely lost sight of Marguerite, and, as I told you, when she pa.s.sed me in the corridor of the Varietes, I did not recognise her. She was veiled, it is true; but, veiled though she might have been two years earlier, I should not have needed to see her in order to recognise her: I should have known her intuitively. All the same, my heart began to beat when I knew that it was she; and the two years that had pa.s.sed since I saw her, and what had seemed to be the results of that separation, vanished in smoke at the mere touch of her dress.

Chapter 8