"Aristide--if you kiss me, I think I can go to sleep."
He bent down to kiss her forehead. A fragile arm twined itself about his
neck and he kissed her on the lips.
"She is sleeping," said Mme. Bidoux, after a while.
Aristide tiptoed out of the room.
And so died Fleurette. Aristide borrowed money from the kind-hearted
Bocardon for a beautiful funeral, and Mme. Bidoux and Bocardon and a few
neighbours and himself saw her laid to rest. When they got back to the
Rue Saint Honore he told Mme. Bidoux about the letters. She wept and
clasped him, weeping too, in her kind, fat old arms.
The next evening Aristide, coming back from his day's work at the Hotel
du Soleil et de l'Ecosse, was confronted in the shop by Mme. Bidoux,
hands on broad hips.
"_Tiens, mon petit_," she said, without preliminary greeting. "You are
an angel. I knew it. But that a man's an angel is no reason for his
being an imbecile. Read this."
She plucked a paper from her apron pocket and thrust it into his hand.
He read it, and blinked in amazement.
"Where did you get this, Mere Bidoux?"
"Where I got many more. In your drawer. The letters you were saving for
this infamous scoundrel. I wanted to know what she had written to him."
"Mere Bidoux!" cried Aristide. "Those letters were sacred!"
"Bah!" said Mme. Bidoux, unabashed. "There is nothing sacred to a sapper
or an old grandmother who loves an imbecile. I have read the letters,
_et voila, et voila, et voila!_" And she emptied her pockets of all the
letters, minus the envelopes, that Fleurette had written.
And, after one swift glance at the first letter, Aristide had no
compunction in reading. They were all addressed to himself.
They were very short, ill-written in a poor little uncultivated hand.
But they all contained one message, that of her love for Aristide.
Whatever illusions she may have had concerning Batterby had soon
vanished. She knew, with the unerring instinct of woman, that he had
betrayed and deserted her. Aristide's pious fraud had never deceived her
for a second. Too gentle, too timid to let him know what was in her
heart, she had written the secret patiently week after week, hoping
every time that curiosity, or pity, or something--she knew not
what--would induce him to open the idle letter, and wondering in her
simple peasant's soul at the delicacy that caused him to refrain. Once
she had boldly given him the envelope unclosed.
[Illustration: HE READ IT, AND BLINKED IN AMAZEMENT]
"She died for want of love, _parbleu_," said Aristide, "and there was
mine quivering in my heart and trembling on my lips all the time.... She
had _des yeux de pervenche_. Ah! _nom d'un chien!_ It is only with me
that Providence plays such tricks."
He walked to the window and looked out into the grey street. Presently I
heard him murmuring the words of the old French song:--
Elle est morte en fevrier;
Pauvre Colinette!