“He was sad yesterday,” he said, “owing to an unexpected
disappointment; but he does not lose courage. We shall succeed.”
The young girl could not help smiling to see her mother assisting
thus the unconscious complicity of the Signor Gismondo. Then she
reproached herself for having smiled, and for having thus come,
through a gradual and fatal descent, to laugh at a duplicity at
which she would have blushed in former times. In spite of herself,
however, she took a passionate interest in the game that was being
played between her mother and herself, and of which her secret was
the stake. It was an ever-palpitating interest in her hitherto
monotonous life, and a source of constantly-renewed emotions.
The days became weeks, and the weeks months; and Mme. Favoral
relaxed her useless surveillance, and, little by little, gave it
up almost entirely. She still thought, that, at a certain moment,
something unusual had occurred to her daughter; but she felt
persuaded, that, whatever that was, it had been forgotten.
So that, on the stated days, Mlle. Gilberte could go and lean upon
the window, without fear of being called to account for the emotion
which she felt when M. de Tregars appeared. At the expected hour,
invariably, and with a punctuality to shame M. Favoral himself, he
turned the corner of the Rue Turenne, exchanged a rapid glance with
the young girl, and passed on.
His health was completely restored; and with it he had recovered
that graceful virility which results from the perfect blending of
suppleness and strength. But he no longer wore the plain garments
of former days. He was dressed now with that elegant simplicity
which reveals at first sight that rarest of objects,--a “perfect
gentleman.” And, whilst she accompanied him with her eyes as he
walked towards the Boulevard, she felt thoughts of joy and pride
rising from the bottom of her soul.
“Who would ever imagine,” thought she, “that this young gentleman
walking away yonder is my affianced husband, and that the day is
perhaps not far, when, having become his wife, I shall lean upon
his arm? Who would think that all my thoughts belong to him, that
it is for my sake that he has given up the ambition of his life,
and is now prosecuting another object? Who would suspect that it
is for Gilberte Favoral’s sake that the Marquis de Tregars is
walking in the Rue St. Gilles?”
And, indeed, Marius did deserve some credit for these walks; for
winter had come, spreading a thick coat of mud over the pavement
of all those little streets which are always forgotten by the
street-cleaners.
The cashier’s home had resumed its habits of before the war, its
drowsy monotony scarcely disturbed by the Saturday dinner, by M.
Desclavettes’ naivetes or old Desormeaux’s puns.
Maxence, in the mean time, had ceased to live with his parents. He
had returned to Paris immediately after the Commune; and, feeling no
longer in the humor to submit to the paternal despotism, he had
taken a small apartment on the Boulevard du Temple; but, at the
pressing instance of his mother, he had consented to come every
night to dine at the Rue St. Gilles.
Faithful to his oath, he was working hard, though without getting
on very fast. The moment was far from propitious; and the occasion,
which he had so often allowed to escape, did not offer itself again.
For lack of any thing better, he had kept his clerkship at the
railway; and, as two hundred francs a month were not quite sufficient
for his wants, he spent a portion of his nights copying documents
for M. Chapelain’s successor.
“What do you need so much money for?” his mother said to him when
she noticed his eyes a little red.
“Every thing is so dear!” he answered with a smile, which was
equivalent to a confidence, and yet which Mme. Favoral did not
understand.
He had, nevertheless, managed to pay all his debts, little by
little. The day when, at last, he held in his hand the last
receipted bill, he showed it proudly to his father, begging him to
find him a place at the Mutual Credit, where, with infinitely less
trouble, he could earn so much more.