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Two months had gone by, September was at hand, and the rapid fortune which Duroy had hoped for seemed to him slow in coming. He was, above all, uneasy at the mediocrity of his position, and did not see by what path he could scale the heights on the summit of which one finds respect, power, and money. He felt shut up in the mediocre calling of a reporter, so walled in as to be unable to get out of it. He was appreciated, but estimated in accordance with his position. Even Forestier, to whom he rendered a thousand services, no longer invited him to dinner, and treated him in every way as an inferior, though still accosting him as a friend.

From time to time, it is true, Duroy, seizing an opportunity, got in a short article, and having acquired through his paragraphs a mastery over his pen, and a tact which was lacking to him when he wrote his second article on Algeria, no longer ran any risk of having his descriptive efforts refused. But from this to writing leaders according to his fancy, or dealing with political questions with authority, there was as great a difference as driving in the Bois de Boulogne as a coachman, and as the owner of an equipage. That which humiliated him above everything was to see the door of society closed to him, to have no equal relations with it, not to be able to penetrate into the intimacy of its women, although several well-known actresses had occasionally received him with an interested familiarity.

He knew, moreover, from experience that all the sex, ladies or actresses, felt a singular attraction towards him, an instantaneous sympathy, and he experienced the impatience of a hobbled horse at not knowing those whom his future may depend on.

He had often thought of calling on Madame Forestier, but the recollection of their last meeting checked and humiliated him; and besides, he was awaiting an invitation to do so from her husband. Then the recollection of Madame de Marelle occurred to him, and recalling that she had asked him to come and see her, he called one afternoon when he had nothing to do.

“I am always at home till three o’clock,” she had said.

He rang at the bell of her residence, a fourth floor in the Rue de Verneuil, at halfpast two.

At the sound of the bell a servant opened the door, an untidy girl, who tied her cap strings as she replied: “Yes, Madame is at home, but I don’t know whether she is up.”

And she pushed open the drawingroom door, which was ajar. Duroy went in. The room was fairly large, scantily furnished and neglected looking. The chairs, worn and old, were arranged along the walls, as placed by the servant, for there was nothing to reveal the tasty care of the woman who loves her home. Four indifferent pictures, representing a boat on a stream, a ship at sea, a mill on a plain, and a woodcutter in a wood, hung in the center of the four walls by cords of unequal length, and all four on one side. It could be divined that they had been dangling thus askew ever so long before indifferent eyes.

Duroy sat down immediately. He waited a long time. Then a door opened, and Madame de Marelle hastened in, wearing a Japanese morning gown of rose-colored silk embroidered with yellow landscapes, blue flowers, and white birds.

“Fancy! I was still in bed!” she exclaimed. “How good of you to come and see me! I had made up my mind that you had forgotten me.”

She held out both her hands with a delighted air, and Duroy, whom the commonplace appearance of the room had put at his ease, kissed one, as he had seen Norbert de Varenne do.

She begged him to sit down, and then scanning him from head to foot, said: “How you have altered! You have improved in looks. Paris has done you good. Come, tell me the news.”

And they began to gossip at once, as if they had been old acquaintances, feeling an instantaneous familiarity spring up between them; feeling one of those mutual currents of confidence, intimacy, and affection, which, in five minutes, make two beings of the same breed and character good friends.

Suddenly, Madame de Marelle exclaimed in astonishment: “It is funny how I get on with you. It seems to me as though I had known you for ten years. We shall become good friends, no doubt. Would you like it?”

He answered: “Certainly,” with a smile which said still more.

He thought her very tempting in her soft and bright-hued gown, less refined and delicate than the other in her white one, but more exciting and spicy. When he was beside Madame Forestier, with her continual and gracious smile which attracted and checked at the same time; which seemed to say: “You please me,” and also “Take care,” and of which the real meaning was never clear, he felt above all the wish to lie down at her feet, or to kiss the lace bordering of her bodice, and slowly inhale the warm and perfumed atmosphere that must issue from it. With Madame de Marelle he felt within him a more definite, a more brutal desire — a desire that made his fingers quiver in presence of the rounded outlines of the light silk.

She went on talking, scattering in each phrase that ready wit of which she had acquired the habit just as a workman acquires the knack needed to accomplish a task reputed difficult, and at which other folk are astonished. He listened, thinking: “All this is worth remembering. A man could write charming articles of Paris gossip by getting her to chat over the events of the day.”

Some one tapped softly, very softly, at the door by which she had entered, and she called out: “You can come in, pet.”

Her little girl made her appearance, walked straight up to Duroy, and held out her hand to him. The astonished mother murmured: “But this is a complete conquest. I no longer recognize her.”

The young fellow, having kissed the child, made her sit down beside him, and with a serious manner asked her pleasant questions as to what she had been doing since they last met. She replied, in her little flute-like voice, with her grave and grown-up air.

The clock struck three, and the journalist arose.

“Come often,” said Madame de Marelle, “and we will chat as we have done to-day; it will always give me pleasure. But how is it one no longer sees you at the Forestiers?” He replied: “Oh! for no reason. I have been very busy. I hope to meet you there again one of these days.”

He went out, his heart full of hope, though without knowing why.

He did not speak to Forestier of this visit. But he retained the recollection of it the following days, and more than the recollection — a sensation of the unreal yet persistent presence of this woman. It seemed to him that he had carried away something of her, the reflection of her form in his eyes, and the smack of her moral self in his heart. He remained under the haunted influence of her image, as it happens sometimes when we have passed pleasant hours with some one.

He paid a second visit a few days later.

The maid ushered him into the drawingroom, and Laurine at once appeared. She held out no longer her hand, but her forehead, and said: “Mamma has told me to request you to wait for her. She will be a quarter-of-an-hour, because she is not dressed yet. I will keep you company.”

Duroy, who was amused by the ceremonious manners of the little girl, replied: “Certainly, Mademoiselle. I shall be delighted to pass a quarter-of-an-hour with you, but I warn you that for my part I am not at all serious, and that I play all day long, so I suggest a game at touch.”

The girl was astonished; then she smiled as a woman would have done at this idea, which shocked her a little as well as astonished her, and murmured: “Rooms are not meant to be played in.”

He said: “It is all the same to me. I play everywhere. Come, catch me.”

And he began to go round the table, exciting her to pursue him, while she came after him, smiling with a species of polite condescension, and sometimes extending her hand to touch him, but without ever giving way so far as to run. He stopped, stooped down, and when she drew near with her little hesitating steps, sprung up in the air like a jack-in-the-box, and then bounded with a single stride to the other end of the diningroom. She thought it funny, ended by laughing, and becoming aroused, began to trot after him, giving little gleeful yet timid cries when she thought she had him. He shifted the chairs and used them as obstacles, forcing her to go round and round one of them for a minute at a time, and then leaving that one to seize upon another. Laurine ran now, giving herself wholly up to the charm of this new game, and with flushed face, rushed forward with the bound of a delighted child at each of the flights, the tricks, the feints of her companion. Suddenly, just as she thought she had got him, he seized her in his arms, and lifting her to the ceiling, exclaimed: “Touch.”

The delighted girl wriggled her legs to escape, and laughed with all her heart.

Madame de Marelle came in at that moment, and was amazed. “What, Laurine, Laurine, playing! You are a sorcerer, sir.”

He put down the little girl, kissed her mother’s hand, and they sat down with the child between them. They began to chat, but Laurine, usually so silent, kept talking all the while, and had to be sent to her room. She obeyed without a word, but with tears in her eyes.

As soon as they were alone, Madame de Marelle lowered her voice. “You do not know, but I have a grand scheme, and I have thought of you. This is it. As I dine every week at the Forestiers, I return their hospitality from time to time at some restaurant. I do not like to entertain company at home, my household is not arranged for that, and besides, I do not understand anything about domestic affairs, anything about the kitchen, anything at all. I like to live anyhow. So I entertain them now and then at a restaurant, but it is not very lively when there are only three, and my own acquaintances scarcely go well with them. I tell you all this in order to explain a somewhat irregular invitation. You understand, do you not, that I want you to make one of us on Saturday at the Café Riche, at halfpast seven. You know the place?”

He accepted with pleasure, and she went on: “There will be only us four. These little outings are very amusing to us women who are not accustomed to them.”

She was wearing a dark brown dress, which showed off the lines of her waist, her hips, her bosom, and her arm in a coquettishly provocative way. Duroy felt confusedly astonished at the lack of harmony between this carefully refined elegance and her evident carelessness as regarded her dwelling. All that clothed her body, all that closely and directly touched her flesh was fine and delicate, but that which surrounded her did not matter to her.

He left her, retaining, as before, the sense of her continued presence in species of hallucination of the senses. And he awaited the day of the dinner with growing impatience.

Having hired, for the second time, a dress suit — his funds not yet allowing him to buy one — he arrived first at the rendezvous, a few minutes before the time. He was ushered up to the second story, and into a small private diningroom hung with red and white, its single window opening into the boulevard. A square table, laid for four, displaying its white cloth, so shining that it seemed to be varnished, and the glasses and the silver glittered brightly in the light of the twelve candles of two tall candelabra. Without was a broad patch of light green, due to the leaves of a tree lit up by the bright light from the diningrooms.

Duroy sat down in a low armchair, upholstered in red to match the hangings on the walls. The worn springs yielding beneath him caused him to feel as though sinking into a hole. He heard throughout the huge house a confused murmur, the murmur of a large restaurant, made up of the clattering of glass and silver, the hurried steps of the waiters, deadened by the carpets in the passages, and the opening of doors letting out the sound of voices from the numerous private rooms in which people were dining. Forestier came in and shook hands with him, with a cordial familiarity which he never displayed at the offices of the Vie Francaise.

“The ladies are coming together,” said he; “these little dinners are very pleasant.”

Then he glanced at the table, turned a gas jet that was feebly burning completely off, closed one sash of the window on account of the draught, and chose a sheltered place for himself, with a remark: “I must be careful; I have been better for a month, and now I am queer again these last few days. I must have caught cold on Tuesday, coming out of the theater.”

The door was opened, and, followed by a waiter, the two ladies appeared, veiled, muffled, reserved, with that charmingly mysterious bearing they assume in such places, where the surroundings are suspicious.

As Duroy bowed to Madame Forestier she scolded him for not having come to see her again; then she added with a smile, in the direction of her friend: “I know what it is; you prefer Madame de Marelle, you can find time to visit her.”

They sat down to table, and the waiter having handed the wine card to Forestier, Madame de Marelle exclaimed: “Give these gentlemen whatever they like, but for us iced champagne, the best, sweet champagne, mind — nothing else.” And the man having withdrawn, she added with an excited laugh: “I am going to get tipsy this evening; we will have a spree — a regular spree.”

Forestier, who did not seem to have heard, said: “Would you mind the window being closed? My chest has been rather queer the last few days.”

“No, not at all.”

He pushed too the sash left open, and returned to his place with a reassured and tranquil countenance. His wife said nothing. Seemingly lost in thought, and with her eyes lowered towards the table, she smiled at the glasses with that vague smile which seemed always to promise and never to grant.

The Ostend oysters were brought in, tiny and plump like little ears enclosed in shells, and melting between the tongue and the palate like salt bonbons. Then, after the soup, was served a trout as rose-tinted as a young girl, and the guests began to talk.

They spoke at first of a current scandal; the story of a lady of position, surprised by one of her husband’s friends supping in a private room with a foreign prince. Forestier laughed a great deal at the adventure; the two ladies declared that the indiscreet gossip was nothing less than a blackguard and a coward. Duroy was of their opinion, and loudly proclaimed that it is the duty of a man in these matters, whether he be actor, confidant, or simple spectator, to be silent as the grave. He added: “How full life would be of pleasant things if we could reckon upon the absolute discretion of one another. That which often, almost always, checks women is the fear of the secret being revealed. Come, is it not true?” he continued. “How many are there who would yield to a sudden desire, the caprice of an hour, a passing fancy, did they not fear to pay for a short-lived and fleeting pleasure by an irremediable scandal and painful tears?”

He spoke with catching conviction, as though pleading a cause, his own cause, as though he had said: “It is not with me that one would have to dread such dangers. Try me and see.”

They both looked at him approvingly, holding that he spoke rightly and justly, confessing by their friendly silence that their flexible morality as Parisians would not have held out long before the certainty of secrecy. And Forestier, leaning back in his place on the divan, one leg bent under him, and his napkin thrust into his waistcoat, suddenly said with the satisfied laugh of a skeptic: “The deuce! yes, they would all go in for it if they were certain of silence. Poor husbands!”

And they began to talk of love. Without admitting it to be eternal, Duroy understood it as lasting, creating a bond, a tender friendship, a confidence. The union of the senses was only a seal to the union of hearts. But he was angry at the outrageous jealousies, melodramatic scenes, and unpleasantness which almost always accompany ruptures.

When he ceased speaking, Madame de Marelle replied: “Yes, it is the only pleasant thing in life, and we often spoil it by preposterous unreasonableness.”

Madame Forestier, who was toying with her knife, added: “Yes — yes — it is pleasant to be loved.”

And she seemed to be carrying her dream further, to be thinking things that she dared not give words to.

As the first entreé was slow in coming, they sipped from time to time a mouthful of champagne, and nibbled bits of crust. And the idea of love, entering into them, slowly intoxicated their souls, as the bright wine, rolling drop by drop down their throats, fired their blood and perturbed their minds.

The waiter brought in some lamb cutlets, delicate and tender, upon a thick bed of asparagus tips.

“Ah! this is good,” exclaimed Forestier; and they ate slowly, savoring the delicate meat and vegetables as smooth as cream.

Duroy resumed: “For my part, when I love a woman everything else in the world disappears.” He said this in a tone of conviction.

Madame Forestier murmured, with her let-me-alone air:

“There is no happiness comparable to that of the first hand-clasp, when the one asks, ‘Do you love me?’ and the other replies, ‘Yes.’”

Madame de Marelle, who had just tossed a fresh glass of champagne off at a draught, said gayly, as she put down her glass: “For my part, I am not so Platonic.”

And all began to smile with kindling eyes at these words.

Forestier, stretched out in his seat on the divan, opened his arms, rested them on the cushions, and said in a serious tone: “This frankness does you honor, and proves that you are a practical woman. But may one ask you what is the opinion of Monsieur de Marelle?”

She shrugged her shoulders slightly, with infinite and prolonged disdain; and then in a decided tone remarked: “Monsieur de Marelle has no opinions on this point. He only has — abstentions.”

And the conversation, descending from the elevated theories, concerning love, strayed into the flowery garden of polished blackguardism. It was the moment of clever double meanings; veils raised by words, as petticoats are lifted by the wind; tricks of language; clever disguised audacities; sentences which reveal nude images in covered phrases; which cause the vision of all that may not be said to flit rapidly before the eye and the mind, and allow the well-bred people the enjoyment of a kind of subtle and mysterious love, a species of impure mental contact, due to the simultaneous evocation of secret, shameful, and longed-for pleasures. The roast, consisting of partridges flanked by quails, had been served; then a dish of green peas, and then a terrine of foie gras, accompanied by a curly-leaved salad, filling a salad bowl as though with green foam. They had partaken of all these things without tasting them, without knowing, solely taken up by what they were talking of, plunged as it were in a bath of love.

The two ladies were now going it strongly in their remarks. Madame de Marelle, with a native audacity which resembled a direct provocation, and Madame Forestier with a charming reserve, a modesty in her tone, voice, smile, and bearing that underlined while seeming to soften the bold remarks falling from her lips. Forestier, leaning quite back on the cushions, laughed, drank and ate without leaving off, and sometimes threw in a word so risque or so crude that the ladies, somewhat shocked by its appearance, and for appearance sake, put on a little air of embarrassment that lasted two or three seconds. When he had given vent to something a little too coarse, he added: “You are going ahead nicely, my children. If you go on like that you will end by making fools of yourselves.”

Dessert came, and then coffee; and the liquors poured a yet warmer dose of commotion into the excited minds.

As she had announced on sitting down to table, Madame de Marelle was intoxicated, and acknowledged it in the lively and graceful rabble of a woman emphasizing, in order to amuse her guests, a very real commencement of drunkenness.

Madame Forestier was silent now, perhaps out of prudence, and Duroy, feeling himself too much excited not to be in danger of compromising himself, maintained a prudent reserve.

Cigarettes were lit, and all at once Forestier began to cough. It was a terrible fit, that seemed to tear his chest, and with red face and forehead damp with perspiration, he choked behind his napkin. When the fit was over he growled angrily: “These feeds are very bad for me; they are ridiculous.” All his good humor had vanished before his terror of the illness that haunted his thoughts. “Let us go home,” said he.

Madame de Marelle rang for the waiter, and asked for the bill. It was brought almost immediately. She tried to read it, but the figures danced before her eyes, and she passed it to Duroy, saying: “Here, pay for me; I can’t see, I am too tipsy.”

And at the same time she threw him her purse. The bill amounted to one hundred and thirty francs. Duroy checked it, and then handed over two notes and received back the change, saying in a low tone: “What shall I give the waiter?”

“What you like; I do not know.”

He put five francs on the salver, and handed back the purse, saying: “Shall I see you to your door?”

“Certainly. I am incapable of finding my way home.”

They shook hands with the Forestiers, and Duroy found himself alone with Madame de Marelle in a cab. He felt her close to him, so close, in this dark box, suddenly lit up for a moment by the lamps on the sidewalk. He felt through his sleeve the warmth of her shoulder, and he could find nothing to say to her, absolutely nothing, his mind being paralyzed by the imperative desire to seize her in his arms.

“If I dared to, what would she do?” he thought. The recollection of all the things uttered during dinner emboldened him, but the fear of scandal restrained him at the same time.

Nor did she say anything either, but remained motionless in her corner. He would have thought that she was asleep if he had not seen her eyes glitter every time that a ray of light entered the carriage.

“What was she thinking?” He felt that he must not speak, that a word, a single word, breaking this silence would destroy his chance; yet courage failed him, the courage needed for abrupt and brutal action. All at once he felt her foot move. She had made a movement, a quick, nervous movement of impatience, perhaps of appeal. This almost imperceptible gesture caused a thrill to run through him from head to foot, and he threw himself upon her, seeking her mouth with his lips, her form with his hands.

But the cab having shortly stopped before the house in which she resided, Duroy, surprised, had no time to seek passionate phrases to thank her, and express his grateful love. However, stunned by what had taken place, she did not rise, she did not stir. Then he was afraid that the driver might suspect something, and got out first to help her to alight.

At length she got out of the cab, staggering and without saying a word. He rang the bell, and as the door opened, said, tremblingly: “When shall I see you again?”

She murmured so softly that he scarcely heard it: “Come and lunch with me tomorrow.” And she disappeared in the entry, pushed to the heavy door, which closed with a noise like that of a cannon. He gave the driver five francs, and began to walk along with rapid and triumphant steps, and heart overflowing with joy.

He had won at last — a married woman, a lady. How easy and unexpected it had all been. He had fancied up till then that to assail and conquer one of these so greatly longed-for beings, infinite pains, interminable expectations, a skillful siege carried on by means of gallant attentions, words of love, sighs, and gifts were needed. And, lo! suddenly, at the faintest attack, the first whom he had encountered had yielded to him so quickly that he was stupefied at it.

“She was tipsy,” he thought; “tomorrow it will be another story. She will meet me with tears.” This notion disturbed him, but he added: “Well, so much the worse. Now I have her, I mean to keep her.”

He was somewhat agitated the next day as he ascended Madame de Marelle’s staircase. How would she receive him? And suppose she would not receive him at all? Suppose she had forbidden them to admit him? Suppose she had said — but, no, she could not have said anything without letting the whole truth be guessed. So he was master of the situation.

The little servant opened the door. She wore her usual expression. He felt reassured, as if he had anticipated her displaying a troubled countenance, and asked: “Is your mistress quite well?”

She replied: “Oh! yes, sir, the same as usual,” and showed him into the drawingroom.

He went straight to the chimney-glass to ascertain the state of his hair and his toilet, and was arranging his necktie before it, when he saw in it the young woman watching him as she stood at the door leading from her room. He pretended not to have noticed her, and the pair looked at one another for a few moments in the glass, observing and watching before finding themselves face to face. He turned round. She had not moved, and seemed to be waiting. He darted forward, stammering: “My darling! my darling!”

She opened her arms and fell upon his breast; then having lifted her head towards him, their lips met in a long kiss.

He thought: “It is easier than I should have imagined. It is all going on very well.”

And their lips separating, he smiled without saying a word, while striving to throw a world of love into his looks. She, too, smiled, with that smile by which women show their desire, their consent, their wish to yield themselves, and murmured: “We are alone. I have sent Laurine to lunch with one of her young friends.”

He sighed as he kissed her. “Thanks, I will worship you.”

Then she took his arm, as if he had been her husband, to go to the sofa, on which they sat down side by side. He wanted to start a clever and attractive chat, but not being able to do so to his liking, stammered: “Then you are not too angry with me?”

She put her hand on his mouth, saying “Be quiet.”

They sat in silence, looking into one another’s eyes, with burning fingers interlaced.

“How I did long for you!” said he.

She repeated: “Be quiet.”

They heard the servant arranging the table in the adjoining diningroom, and he rose, saying: “I must not remain so close to you. I shall lose my head.”

The door opened, and the servant announced that lunch was ready. Duroy gravely offered his arm.

They lunched face to face, looking at one another and constantly smiling, solely taken up by themselves, and enveloped in the sweet enchantment of a growing love. They ate, without knowing what. He felt a foot, a little foot, straying under the table. He took it between his own and kept it there, squeezing it with all his might. The servant came and went, bringing and taking away the dishes with a careless air, without seeming to notice anything.

When they had finished they returned to the drawingroom, and resumed their place on the sofa, side by side. Little by little he pressed up against her, striving to take her in his arms. But she calmly repulsed him, saying: “Take care; someone may come in.”

He murmured: “When can I see you quite alone, to tell you how I love you?”

She leant over towards him and whispered: “I will come and pay you a visit one of these days.”

He felt himself redden. “You know — you know — my place is very small.”

She smiled: “That does not matter. It is you I shall call to see, and not your rooms.”

Then he pressed her to know when she would come. She named a day in the latter half of the week. He begged of her to advance the date in broken sentences, playing with and squeezing her hands, with glittering eyes, and flushed face, heated and torn by desire, that imperious desire which follows tête-à-tête repasts. She was amazed to see him implore her with such ardor, and yielded a day from time to time. But he kept repeating: “Tomorrow, only say tomorrow.”

She consented at length. “Yes, tomorrow; at five o’clock.”

He gave a long sigh of joy, and they then chatted almost quietly with an air of intimacy, as though they had known one another twenty years. The sound of the door bell made them start, and with a bound they separated to a distance. She murmured: “It must be Laurine.”

The child made her appearance, stopped short in amazement, and then ran to Duroy, clapping her hands with pleasure at seeing him, and exclaiming: “Ah! pretty boy.”

Madame de Marelle began to laugh. “What! Pretty boy! Laurine has baptized you. It’s a nice little nickname for you, and I will call you Pretty-boy, too.”

He had taken the little girl on his knee, and he had to play with her at all the games he had taught her. He rose to take his leave at twenty minutes to three to go to the office of the paper, and on the staircase, through the half-closed door, he still whispered: “Tomorrow, at five.”

She answered “Yes,” with a smile, and disappeared.

As soon as he had got through his day’s work, he speculated how he should arrange his room to receive his mistress, and hide as far as possible the poverty of the place. He was struck by the idea of pinning a lot of Japanese trifles on the walls, and he bought for five francs quite a collection of little fans and screens, with which he hid the most obvious of the marks on the wall paper. He pasted on the window panes transparent pictures representing boats floating down rivers, flocks of birds flying across rosy skies, multicolored ladies on balconies, and processions of little black men over plains covered with snow. His room, just big enough to sleep and sit down in, soon looked like the inside of a Chinese lantern. He thought the effect satisfactory, and passed the evening in pasting on the ceiling birds that he had cut from the colored sheets remaining over. Then he went to bed, lulled by the whistle of the trains.

He went home early the next day, carrying a paper bag of cakes and a bottle of Madeira, purchased at the grocer’s. He had to go out again to buy two plates and two glasses, and arranged this collation on his dressing-table, the dirty wood of which was covered by a napkin, the jug and basin being hidden away beneath it.

Then he waited.

She came at about a quarter-past five; and, attracted by the bright colors of the pictures, exclaimed: “Dear me, yours is a nice place. But there are a lot of people about on the staircase.”

He had clasped her in his arms, and was eagerly kissing the hair between her forehead and her bonnet through her veil.

An hour and a half later he escorted her back to the cab-stand in the Rue de Rome. When she was in the carriage he murmured: “Tuesday at the same time?”

She replied: “Tuesday at the same time.” And as it had grown dark, she drew his head into the carriage and kissed him on the lips. Then the driver, having whipped up his beast, she exclaimed: “Goodbye, Pretty-boy,” and the old vehicle started at the weary trot of its old white horse.

For three weeks Duroy received Madame de Marelle in this way every two or three days, now in the evening and now in the morning. While he was expecting her one afternoon, a loud uproar on the stairs drew him to the door. A child was crying. A man’s angry voice shouted: “What is that little devil howling about now?” The yelling and exasperated voice of a woman replied: “It is that dirty hussy who comes to see the penny-a-liner upstairs; she has upset Nicholas on the landing. As if dabs like that, who pay no attention to children on the staircase, should be allowed here.”

Duroy drew back, distracted, for he could hear the rapid rustling of skirts and a hurried step ascending from the story just beneath him. There was soon a knock at the door, which he had reclosed. He opened it, and Madame de Marelle rushed into the room, terrified and breathless, stammering: “Did you hear?”

He pretended to know nothing. “No; what?”

“How they have insulted me.”

“Who? Who?”

“The blackguards who live down below.”

“But, surely not; what does it all mean, tell me?”

She began to sob, without being able to utter a word. He had to take off her bonnet, undo her dress, lay her on the bed, moisten her forehead with a wet towel. She was choking, and then when her emotion was somewhat abated, all her wrathful indignation broke out. She wanted him to go down at once, to thrash them, to kill them.

He repeated: “But they are only workpeople, low creatures. Just remember that it would lead to a police court, that you might be recognized, arrested, ruined. One cannot lower one’s self to have anything to do with such people.”

She passed on to another idea. “What shall we do now? For my part, I cannot come here again.”

He replied: “It is very simple; I will move.”

She murmured: “Yes, but that will take some time.” Then all at once she framed a plan, and reassured, added softly: “No, listen, I know what to do; let me act, do not trouble yourself about anything. I will send you a telegram tomorrow morning.”

She smiled now, delighted with her plan, which she would not reveal, and indulged in a thousand follies. She was very agitated, however, as she went downstairs, leaning with all her weight on her lover’s arm, her legs trembled so beneath her. They did not meet anyone, though.

As he usually got up late, he was still in bed the next day, when, about eleven o’clock, the telegraph messenger brought him the promised telegram. He opened it and read:

“Meet me at five; 127, Rue de Constantinople. Rooms hired by Madame Duroy. — Clo.”

At five o’clock to the minute he entered the doorkeeper’s lodge of a large furnished house, and asked: “It is here that Madame Duroy has taken rooms, is it not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Will you show me to them, if you please.”

The man, doubtless used to delicate situations in which prudence is necessary, looked him straight in the eyes, and then, selecting one of the long range of keys, said: “You are Monsieur Duroy?”

“Yes, certainly.”

The man opened the door of a small suite of rooms on the ground floor in front of the lodge. The sitting-room, with a tolerably fresh wall-paper of floral design, and a carpet so thin that the boards of the floor could be felt through it, had mahogany furniture, upholstered in green rep with a yellow pattern. The bedroom was so small that the bed three-parts filled it. It occupied the further end, stretching from one wall to the other — the large bed of a furnished lodging-house, shrouded in heavy blue curtains also of rep, and covered with an eiderdown quilt of red silk stained with suspicious-looking spots.

Duroy, uneasy and displeased, thought: “This place will cost, Lord knows how much. I shall have to borrow again. It is idiotic what she has done.”

The door opened, and Clotilde came in like a whirlwind, with outstretched arms and rustling skirts. She was delighted. “Isn’t it nice, eh, isn’t it nice? And on the ground floor, too; no stairs to go up. One could get in and out of the windows without the doorkeeper seeing one. How we will love one another here!”

He kissed her coldly, not daring to put the question that rose to his lips. She had placed a large parcel on the little round table in the middle of the room. She opened it, and took out a cake of soap, a bottle of scent, a sponge, a box of hairpins, a buttonhook, and a small pair of curling tongs to set right her fringe, which she got out of curl every time. And she played at moving in, seeking a place for everything, and derived great amusement from it.

She kept on chattering as she opened the drawers. “I must bring a little linen, so as to be able to make a change if necessary. It will be very convenient. If I get wet, for instance, while I am out, I can run in here to dry myself. We shall each have one key, beside the one left with the doorkeeper in case we forget it. I have taken the place for three months, in your name, of course, since I could not give my own.”

Then he said: “You will let me know when the rent is to be paid.”

She replied, simply: “But it is paid, dear.”

“Then I owe it to you.”

“No, no, my dear; it does not concern you at all; this is a little fancy of my own.”

He seemed annoyed: “Oh, no, indeed; I can’t allow that.”

She came to him in a supplicating way, and placing her hands on his shoulders, said: “I beg of you, George; it will give me so much pleasure to feel that our little nest here is mine — all my own. You cannot be annoyed at that. How can you? I wanted to contribute that much towards our loves. Say you agree, Georgy; say you agree.”

She implored him with looks, lips, the whole of her being. He held out, refusing with an irritated air, and then he yielded, thinking that, after all, it was fair. And when she had gone, he murmured, rubbing his hands, and without seeking in the depths of his heart whence the opinion came on that occasion: “She is very nice.”

He received, a few days later, another telegram running thus: “My husband returns tonight, after six weeks’ inspection, so we shall have a week off. What a bore, darling. — Clo.”

Duroy felt astounded. He had really lost all idea of her being married. But here was a man whose face he would have liked to see just once, in order to know him. He patiently awaited the husband’s departure, but he passed two evenings at the Folies Bergère, which wound up with Rachel.

Then one morning came a fresh telegram: “To-day at five. — Clo.”

They both arrived at the meeting-place before the time. She threw herself into his arms with an outburst of passion, and kissed him all over the face, and then said: “If you like, when we have loved one another a great deal, you shall take me to dinner somewhere. I have kept myself disengaged.”

It was at the beginning of the month, and although his salary was long since drawn in advance, and he lived from day to day upon money gleaned on every side, Duroy happened to be in funds, and was pleased at the opportunity of spending something upon her, so he replied: “Yes, darling, wherever you like.”

They started off, therefore, at about seven, and gained the outer boulevards. She leaned closely against him, and whispered in his ear: “If you only knew how pleased I am to walk out on your arm; how I love to feel you beside me.”

He said: “Would you like to go to Père Lathuile’s?”

“Oh, no, it is too swell. I should like something funny, out of the way! a restaurant that shopmen and work-girls go to. I adore dining at a country inn. Oh! if we only had been able to go into the country.”

As he knew nothing of the kind in the neighborhood, they wandered along the boulevard, and ended by going into a wine-shop where there was a diningroom. She had seen through the window two bareheaded girls seated at tables with two soldiers. Three cabdrivers were dining at the further end of the long and narrow room, and an individual impossible to classify under any calling was smoking, stretched on a chair, with his legs stuck out in front of him, his hands in the waistband of his trousers, and his head thrown back over the top bar. His jacket was a museum of stains, and in his swollen pockets could be noted the neck of a bottle, a piece of bread, a parcel wrapped up in a newspaper, and a dangling piece of string. He had thick, tangled, curly hair, gray with scurf, and his cap was on the floor under his chair.

The entrance of Clotilde created a sensation, due to the elegance of her toilet. The couples ceased whispering together, the three cabdrivers left off arguing, and the man who was smoking, having taken his pipe from his mouth and spat in front of him, turned his head slightly to look.

Madame de Marelle murmured: “It is very nice; we shall be very comfortable here. Another time I will dress like a work-girl.” And she sat down, without embarrassment or disgust, before the wooden table, polished by the fat of dishes, washed by spilt liquors, and cleaned by a wisp of the waiter’s napkin. Duroy, somewhat ill at ease, and slightly ashamed, sought a peg to hang his tall hat on. Not finding one, he put it on a chair.

They had a ragout, a slice of melon, and a salad. Clotilde repeated: “I delight in this. I have low tastes. I like this better than the Café Anglais.” Then she added: “If you want to give me complete enjoyment, you will take me to a dancing place. I know a very funny one close by called the Reine Blanche.”

Duroy, surprised at this, asked: “Whoever took you there?”

He looked at her and saw her blush, somewhat disturbed, as though this sudden question had aroused within her some delicate recollections. After one of these feminine hesitations, so short that they can scarcely be guessed, she replied: “A friend of mine,” and then, after a brief silence, added, “who is dead.” And she cast down her eyes with a very natural sadness.

Duroy, for the first time, thought of all that he did not know as regarded the past life of this woman. Certainly she already had lovers, but of what kind, in what class of society? A vague jealousy, a species of enmity awoke within him; an enmity against all that he did not know, all that had not belonged to him. He looked at her, irritated at the mystery wrapped up within that pretty, silent head, which was thinking, perhaps, at that very moment, of the other, the others, regretfully. How he would have liked to have looked into her recollections — to have known all.

She repeated: “Will you take me to the Reine Blanche? That will be a perfect treat.”

He thought: “What matters the past? I am very foolish to bother about it,” and smilingly replied: “Certainly, darling.”

When they were in the street she resumed, in that low and mysterious tone in which confidences are made: “I dared not ask you this until now, but you cannot imagine how I love these escapades in places ladies do not go to. During the carnival I will dress up as a schoolboy. I make such a capital boy.”

When they entered the ballroom she clung close to him, gazing with delighted eyes on the girls and the bullies, and from time to time, as though to reassure herself as regards any possible danger, saying, as she noticed some serious and motionless municipal guard: “That is a strong-looking fellow.” In a quarter of an hour she had had enough of it and he escorted her home.

Then began quite a series of excursions in all the queer places where the common people amuse themselves, and Duroy discovered in his mistress quite a liking for this vagabondage of students bent on a spree. She came to their meeting-place in a cotton frock and with a servant’s cap — a theatrical servant’s cap — on her head; and despite the elegant and studied simplicity of her toilet, retained her rings, her bracelets, and her diamond earrings, saying, when he begged her to remove them: “Bah! they will think they are paste.”

She thought she was admirably disguised, and although she was really only concealed after the fashion of an ostrich, she went into the most ill-famed drinking places. She wanted Duroy to dress himself like a workman, but he resisted, and retained his correct attire, without even consenting to exchange his tall hat for one of soft felt. She was consoled for this obstinacy on his part by the reflection that she would be taken for a chambermaid engaged in a love affair with a gentleman, and thought this delightful. In this guise they went into popular wine-shops, and sat down on rickety chairs at old wooden tables in smoke-filled rooms. A cloud of strong tobacco smoke, with which still blended the smell of fish fried at dinner time, filled the room; men in blouses shouted at one another as they tossed off nips of spirits; and the astonished waiter would stare at this strange couple as he placed before them two cherry brandies. She — trembling, fearsome, yet charmed — began to sip the red liquid, looking round her with uneasy and kindling eye. Each cherry swallowed gave her the sensation of a sin committed, each drop of burning liquor flowing down her throat gave her the pleasure of a naughty and forbidden joy.

Then she would say, “Let us go,” and they would leave. She would pass rapidly, with bent head and the short steps of an actress leaving the stage, among the drinkers, who, with their elbows on the tables, watched her go by with suspicious and dissatisfied glances; and when she had crossed the threshold would give a deep sigh, as if she had just escaped some terrible danger.

Sometimes she asked Duroy, with a shudder: “If I were insulted in these places, what would you do?”

He would answer, with a swaggering air: “Take your part, by Jove!”

And she would clasp his arm with happiness, with, perhaps, a vague wish to be insulted and defended, to see men fight on her account, even such men as those, with her lover.

But these excursions taking place two or three times a week began to weary Duroy, who had great difficulty, besides, for some time past, in procuring the ten francs necessary for the cake and the drinks. He now lived very hardly and with more difficulty than when he was a clerk in the Northern Railway; for having spent lavishly during his first month of journalism, in the constant hope of gaining large sums of money in a day or two, he had exhausted all his resources and all means of procuring money. A very simple method, that of borrowing from the cashier, was very soon exhausted; and he already owed the paper four months’ salary, besides six hundred francs advanced on his lineage account. He owed, besides, a hundred francs to Forestier, three hundred to Jacques Rival, who was free-handed with his money; and he was also eaten up by a number of small debts of from five francs to twenty. Saint-Potin, consulted as to the means of raising another hundred francs, had discovered no expedient, although a man of inventive mind, and Duroy was exasperated at this poverty, of which he was more sensible now than formerly, since he had more wants. A sullen rage against everyone smouldered within him, with an ever-increasing irritation, which manifested itself at every moment on the most futile pretexts. He sometimes asked himself how he could have spent an average of a thousand francs a month, without any excess and the gratification of any extravagant fancy, and he found that, by adding a lunch at eight francs to a dinner at twelve, partaken of in some large café on the boulevards, he at once came to a louis, which, added to ten francs pocket-money — that pocket-money that melts away, one does not know how — makes a total of thirty francs. But thirty francs a day is nine hundred francs at the end of the month. And he did not reckon in the cost of clothes, boots, linen, washing, etc.

So on the 14th December he found himself without a sou in his pocket, and without a notion in his mind how to get any money. He went, as he had often done of old, without lunch, and passed the afternoon working at the newspaper office, angry and preoccupied. About four o’clock he received a telegram from his mistress, running: “Shall we dine together, and have a lark afterwards?”

He at once replied: “Cannot dine.” Then he reflected that he would be very stupid to deprive himself of the pleasant moments she might afford him, and added: “But will wait at nine at our place.” And having sent one of the messengers with this, to save the cost of a telegram, he began to reflect what he should do to procure himself a dinner.

At seven o’clock he had not yet hit upon anything and a terrible hunger assailed him. Then he had recourse to the stratagem of a despairing man. He let all his colleagues depart, one after the other, and when he was alone rang sharply. Monsieur Walter’s messenger, left in charge of the offices, came in. Duroy was standing feeling in his pockets, and said in an abrupt voice: “Foucart, I have left my purse at home, and I have to go and dine at the Luxembourg. Lend me fifty sous for my cab.”

The man took three francs from his waistcoat pocket and said: “Do you want any more, sir?”

“No, no, that will be enough. Thanks.”

And having seized on the coins, Duroy ran downstairs and dined at a slap-bank, to which he drifted on his days of poverty.

At nine o’clock he was awaiting his mistress, with his feet on the fender, in the little sitting-room. She came in, lively and animated, brisked up by the keen air of the street. “If you like,” said she, “we will first go for a stroll, and then come home here at eleven. The weather is splendid for walking.”

He replied, in a grumbling tone: “Why go out? We are very comfortable here.”

She said, without taking off her bonnet: “If you knew, the moonlight is beautiful. It is splendid walking about tonight.”

“Perhaps so, but I do not care for walking about!”

He had said this in an angry fashion. She was struck and hurt by it, and asked: “What is the matter with you? Why do you go on in this way? I should like to go for a stroll, and I don’t see how that can vex you.”

He got up in a rage. “It does not vex me. It is a bother, that is all.”

She was one of those sort of women whom resistance irritates and impoliteness exasperates, and she said disdainfully and with angry calm: “I am not accustomed to be spoken to like that. I will go alone, then. Goodbye.”

He understood that it was serious, and darting towards her, seized her hands and kissed them, saying: “Forgive me, darling, forgive me. I am very nervous this evening, very irritable. I have had vexations and annoyances, you know — matters of business.”

She replied, somewhat softened, but not calmed down: “That does not concern me, and I will not bear the consequences of your ill-temper.”

He took her in his arms, and drew her towards the couch.

“Listen, darling, I did not want to hurt you; I was not thinking of what I was saying.”

He had forced her to sit down, and, kneeling before her, went on: “Have you forgiven me? Tell me you have forgiven me?”

She murmured, coldly: “Very well, but do not do so again;” and rising, she added: “Now let us go for a stroll.”

He had remained at her feet, with his arms clasped about her hips, and stammered: “Stay here, I beg of you. Grant me this much. I should so like to keep you here this evening all to myself, here by the fire. Say yes, I beg of you, say yes.”

She answered plainly and firmly: “No, I want to go out, and I am not going to give way to your fancies.”

He persisted. “I beg of you, I have a reason, a very serious reason.”

She said again: “No; and if you won’t go out with me, I shall go. Goodbye.”

She had freed herself with a jerk, and gained the door. He ran towards her, and clasped her in his arms, crying:

“Listen, Clo, my little Clo; listen, grant me this much.”

She shook her head without replying, avoiding his kisses, and striving to escape from his grasp and go.

He stammered: “Clo, my little Clo, I have a reason.”

She stopped, and looking him full in the face, said: “You are lying. What is it?”

He blushed not knowing what to say, and she went on in an indignant tone: “You see very well that you are lying, you low brute.” And with an angry gesture and tears in her eyes, she escaped him.

He again caught her by the shoulders, and, in despair, ready to acknowledge anything in order to avoid a rupture, he said, in a despairing tone: “I have not a son. That’s what it all means.” She stopped short, and looking into his eyes to read the truth in them, said: “You say?”

He had flushed to the roots of his hair. “I say that I have not a sou. Do you understand? Not twenty sous, not ten, not enough to pay for a glass of cassis in the café we may go into. You force me to confess what I am ashamed of. It was, however, impossible for me to go out with you, and when we were seated with refreshments in front of us to tell you quietly that I could not pay for them.”

She was still looking him in the face. “It is true, then?”

In a moment he had turned out all his pockets, those of his trousers, coat, and waistcoat, and murmured: “There, are you satisfied now?”

Suddenly opening her arms, in an outburst of passion, she threw them around his neck, crying: “Oh, my poor darling, my poor darling, if I had only known. How did it happen?”

She made him sit down, and sat down herself on his knees; then, with her arm round his neck, kissing him every moment on his moustache, his mouth, his eyes, she obliged him to tell her how this misfortune had come about.

He invented a touching story. He had been obliged to come to the assistance of his father, who found himself in difficulties. He had not only handed over to him all his savings, but had even incurred heavy debts on his behalf. He added: “I shall be pinched to the last degree for at least six months, for I have exhausted all my resources. So much the worse; there are crises in every life. Money, after all, is not worth troubling about.”

She whispered: “I will lend you some; will you let me?”

He answered, with dignity: “You are very kind, pet; but do not think of that, I beg of you. You would hurt my feelings.”

She was silent, and then clasping him in her arms, murmured: “You will never know how much I love you.”

It was one of their most pleasant evenings.

As she was leaving, she remarked, smilingly: “How nice it is when one is in your position to find money you had forgotten in your pocket — a coin that had worked its way between the stuff and the lining.”

He replied, in a tone of conviction: “Ah, yes, that it is.”

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 tomorrow?”

“Certainly.”

“At the same time?”

“The same time.”

“Goodbye, 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 tomorrow. 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 tomorrow.”

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-Bergère? 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 passersby 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, “Goodnight, lovey!” Then the cab started off again, followed by a burst of laughter.