To answer them properly, one requires a certain knack, and I had not had the opportunity of acquiring it; besides, the idea that Ihad 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 assurance 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 pass 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. Itook 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 passed 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 Ilooked upon it as one of those passions 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 passed 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, Ishould not have needed to see her in order to recognise her: Ishould 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 passed 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.
