Passion is subject to the most insensate reactions, the most
inexplicable revivals. The accursed love that Germinie believed to have
been killed by all the wounds and blows Jupillon had inflicted upon it
came to life once more. She was dismayed to find it in her heart when
she returned home. The mere sight of the man, his proximity for those
few moments, the sound of his voice, the act of breathing the air that
he breathed, were enough to turn her heart back to him and relegate her
to the past.
Notwithstanding all that had happened, she had never been able to tear
Jupillon's image altogether from her heart: its roots were still
imbedded there. He was her first love. She belonged to him against her
own will by all the weaknesses of memory, by all the cowardice of habit.
Between them there were all the bonds of torture that hold a woman fast
forever,--sacrifice, suffering, degradation. He owned her, body and
soul, because he had outraged her conscience, trampled upon her
illusions, made her life a martyrdom. She belonged to him, belonged to
him forever, as to the author of all her sorrows.
And that shock, that scene which should have caused her to think with
horror of ever meeting him again, rekindled in her the frenzied desire
to meet him again. Her passion seized her again in its full force. The
thought of Jupillon filled her mind so completely that it purified her.
She abruptly called a halt in the vagabondage of her passions: she
determined to belong thenceforth to no one, as that was the only method
by which she could still belong to him.
She began to spy upon him, to make a study of his usual hours for going
out, the streets he passed through, the places that he visited. She
followed him to Batignolles, to his new quarters, walked behind him,
content to put her foot where he had put his, to be guided by his steps,
to see him now and then, to notice a gesture that he made, to snatch one
of his glances. That was all: she dared not speak to him; she kept at
some distance behind, like a lost dog, happy not to be driven away with
kicks.
For weeks and weeks she made herself thus the man's shadow, a humble,
timid shadow that shrank back and moved away a few steps when it thought
it was in danger of being seen; then drew nearer again with faltering
steps, and, at an impatient movement from the man, stopped once more, as
if asking pardon.
Sometimes she waited at the door of a house which he entered, caught him
up again when he came out and escorted him home, always at a distance,
without speaking to him, with the air of a beggar begging for crumbs
and thankful for what she was allowed to pick up. Then she would listen
at the shutters of the ground-floor apartment in which he lived, to
ascertain if he was alone, if there was anybody there.
When he had a woman on his arm, although she suffered keenly, she was
the more persistent in following him. She went where they went to the
end. She entered the public gardens and ballrooms behind them. She
walked within sound of their laughter and their words, tore her heart to
tatters looking at them and listening to them, and stood at their backs
with every jealous instinct of her nature bleeding.