She insisted on walking home, under the pretense that the moon was
beautiful and went into ecstasies over it. It was a cold, still night at
the beginning of winter. Pedestrians and horses went by quickly, spurred
by a sharp frost. Heels rang on the pavement. As she left him she said:
"Shall we meet again the day after to-morrow?"
"Certainly."
"At the same time?"
"The same time."
"Good-bye, dearest." And they kissed lovingly.
Then he walked home swiftly, asking himself what plan he could hit on
the morrow to get out of his difficulty. But as he opened the door of
his room, and fumbled in his waistcoat pocket for a match, he was
stupefied to find a coin under his fingers. As soon as he had a light he
hastened to examine it. It was a louis. He thought he must be mad. He
turned it over and over, seeking by what miracle it could have found
its way there. It could not, however, have fallen from heaven into his
pocket.
Then all at once he guessed, and an angry indignation awoke within him.
His mistress had spoken of money slipping into the lining, and being
found in times of poverty. It was she who had tendered him this alms.
How shameful! He swore: "Ah! I'll talk to her the day after to-morrow.
She shall have a nice time over it."
And he went to bed, his heart filled with anger and humiliation.
He woke late. He was hungry. He tried to go to sleep again, in order not
to get up till two o'clock, and then said to himself: "That will not
forward matters. I must end by finding some money." Then he went out,
hoping that an idea might occur to him in the street. It did not; but at
every restaurant he passed a longing to eat made his mouth water. As by
noon he had failed to hit on any plan, he suddenly made up his mind: "I
will lunch out of Clotilde's twenty francs. That won't hinder me from
paying them back to-morrow."
He, therefore, lunched for two francs fifty centimes. On reaching the
office he also gave three francs to the messenger, saying: "Here,
Foucart, here is the money you lent me last night for my cab."
He worked till seven o'clock. Then he went and dined taking another
three francs. The two evening bocks brought the expenditure of the day
up to nine francs thirty centimes. But as he could not re-establish a
credit or create fresh resources in twenty-four hours, he borrowed
another six francs fifty centimes the next day from the twenty he was
going to return that very evening, so that he came to keep his
appointment with just four francs twenty centimes in his pocket.
He was in a deuce of a temper, and promised himself that he would pretty
soon explain things. He would say to his mistress: "You know, I found
the twenty francs you slipped into my pocket the other day. I cannot
give them back to you now, because my situation is unaltered, and I have
not had time to occupy myself with money matters. But I will give them
to you the next time we meet."
She arrived, loving, eager, full of alarm. How would he receive her? She
kissed him persistently to avoid an explanation at the outset.
He said to himself: "It will be time enough to enter on the matter
by-and-by. I will find an opportunity of doing so."
He did not find the opportunity, and said nothing, shirking before the
difficulty of opening this delicate subject. She did not speak of going
out, and was in every way charming. They separated about midnight, after
making an appointment for the Wednesday of the following week, for
Madame de Marelle was engaged to dine out several days in succession.
The next day, as Duroy, on paying for his breakfast, felt for the four
coins that ought to be remaining to him, he perceived that they were
five, and one of them a gold one. At the outset he thought that he had
received it by mistake in his change the day before, then he understood
it, and his heart throbbed with humiliation at this persistent charity.
How he now regretted not having said anything! If he had spoken
energetically this would not have happened.
For four days he made efforts, as numerous as they were fruitless, to
raise five louis, and spent Clotilde's second one. She managed, although
he had said to her savagely, "Don't play that joke of the other
evening's again, or I shall get angry," to slip another twenty francs
into his trouser pockets the first time they met. When he found them he
swore bitterly, and transferred them to his waistcoat to have them under
his hand, for he had not a rap. He appeased his conscience by this
argument: "I will give it all back to her in a lump. After all, it is
only borrowed money."
At length the cashier of the paper agreed, on his desperate appeals, to
let him have five francs daily. It was just enough to live upon, but not
enough to repay sixty francs with. But as Clotilde was again seized by
her passion for nocturnal excursions in all the suspicious localities in
Paris, he ended by not being unbearably annoyed to find a yellow boy in
one of his pockets, once even in his boot, and another time in his
watch-case, after their adventurous excursions. Since she had wishes
which he could not for the moment gratify himself, was it not natural
that she should pay for them rather than go without them? He kept an
account, too, of all he received in this way, in order to return it to
her some day.
One evening she said to him: "Would you believe that I have never been
to the Folies-Bergere? Will you take me there?"
He hesitated a moment, afraid of meeting Rachel. Then he thought: "Bah!
I am not married, after all. If that girl sees me she will understand
the state of things, and will not speak to me. Besides, we will have a
box."
Another reason helped his decision. He was well pleased of this
opportunity of offering Madame de Marelle a box at the theater without
its costing anything. It was a kind of compensation.
He left her in the cab while he got the order for the box, in order that
she might not see it offered him, and then came to fetch her. They went
in, and were received with bows by the acting manager. An immense crowd
filled the lounge, and they had great difficulty in making their way
through the swarm of men and women. At length they reached the box and
settled themselves in it, shut in between the motionless orchestra and
the eddy of the gallery. But Madame de Marelle rarely glanced at the
stage. Wholly taken up with the women promenading behind her back, she
constantly turned round to look at them, with a longing to touch them,
to feel their bodices, their skirts, their hair, to know what these
creatures were made of.
Suddenly she said: "There is a stout, dark girl who keeps watching us
all the time. I thought just now that she was going to speak to us. Did
you notice her?"
He answered: "No, you must be mistaken." But he had already noticed her
for some time back. It was Rachel who was prowling about in their
neighborhood, with anger in her eyes and hard words upon her lips.
Duroy had brushed against her in making his way through the crowd, and
she had whispered, "Good evening," with a wink which signified, "I
understand." But he had not replied to this mark of attention for fear
of being seen by his mistress, and he had passed on coldly, with haughty
look and disdainful lip. The woman, whom unconscious jealousy already
assailed, turned back, brushed against him again, and said in louder
tones: "Good evening, George." He had not answered even then. Then she
made up her mind to be recognized and bowed to, and she kept continually
passing in the rear of the box, awaiting a favorable moment.
As soon as she saw that Madame de Marelle was looking at her she touched
Duroy's shoulder, saying: "Good evening, are you quite well?"
He did not turn round, and she went on: "What, have you grown deaf since
Thursday?" He did not reply, affecting a contempt which would not allow
him to compromise himself even by a word with this slut.
She began to laugh an angry laugh, and said: "So you are dumb, then?
Perhaps the lady has bitten your tongue off?"
He made an angry movement, and exclaimed, in an exasperated tone: "What
do you mean by speaking to me? Be off, or I will have you locked up."
Then, with fiery eye and swelling bosom, she screeched out: "So that's
it, is it? Ah! you lout. When a man sleeps with a woman the least he can
do is to nod to her. It is no reason because you are with someone else
that you should cut me to-day. If you had only nodded to me when I
passed you just now, I should have left you alone. But you wanted to do
the grand. I'll pay you out! Ah, so you won't say good evening when you
meet me!"
She would have gone on for a long time, but Madame de Marelle had opened
the door of the box and fled through the crowd, blindly seeking the way
out. Duroy started off in her rear and strove to catch her up, while
Rachel, seeing them flee, yelled triumphantly: "Stop her, she has stolen
my sweetheart."
People began to laugh. Two gentlemen for fun seized the fugitive by the
shoulders and sought to bring her back, trying, too, to kiss her. But
Duroy, having caught her up, freed her forcibly and led her away into
the street. She jumped into an empty cab standing at the door. He jumped
in after her, and when the driver asked, "Where to, sir?" replied,
"Wherever you like."
The cab slowly moved off, jolting over the paving stones. Clotilde,
seized by a kind of hysterical attack, sat choking and gasping with her
hands covering her face, and Duroy neither knew what to do nor what to
say. At last, as he heard her sobbing, he stammered out: "Clo, my dear
little Clo, just listen, let me explain. It is not my fault. I used to
know that woman, some time ago, you know--"
She suddenly took her hands from her face, and overcome by the wrath of
a loving and deceitful woman, a furious wrath that enabled her to
recover her speech, she pantingly jerked out, in rapid and broken
sentences: "Oh!--you wretch--you wretch--what a scoundrel you are--can
it be possible? How shameful--O Lord--how shameful!" Then, getting
angrier and angrier as her ideas grew clearer and arguments suggested
themselves to her, she went on: "It was with my money you paid her,
wasn't it? And I was giving him money--for that creature. Oh, the
scoundrel!" She seemed for a few minutes to be seeking some stronger
expression that would not come, and then all at once she spat out, as it
were, the words: "Oh! you swine--you swine--you swine--you paid her
with my money--you swine--you swine!" She could not think of anything
else, and kept repeating, "You swine, you swine!"
Suddenly she leant out of the window, and catching the driver by the
sleeve, cried, "Stop," and opening the door, sprang out.
George wanted to follow, but she cried, "I won't have you get out," in
such loud tones that the passers-by began to gather about her, and Duroy
did not move for fear of a scandal. She took her purse from her pocket
and looked for some change by the light of the cab lantern, then taking
two francs fifty centimes she put them in the driver's hand, saying, in
ringing tones: "There is your fare--I pay you, now take this blackguard
to the Rue Boursault, Batignolles."
Mirth was aroused in the group surrounding her. A gentleman said: "Well
done, little woman," and a young rapscallion standing close to the cab
thrust his head into the open door and sang out, in shrill tones,
"Good-night, lovey!" Then the cab started off again, followed by a burst
of laughter.