“Did anyone call?” I asked the caretaker.
“No, Monsieur Mintié.”
“No letters either?”
“No, Monsieur Mintié.”
“Are you sure nobody went up to my room while I was away?”
“The key was not touched.”
I scribbled the following words on my card: “I want to see you.”
“Take this over to the Rue de Balzac.”
I waited in the street, impatient, nervous; the caretaker was not long in returning.
“The maid told me that Madame had not yet come back.”
It was seven o’clock. I went to my room and stretched out on the sofa.
“She won’t come. Where is she? What is she doing?”
I did not light the candles. The window, illuminated by the street, shone in the room with a dark glimmer, reflected a yellow shine upon the ceiling, where appeared the trembling shadow of the curtains. And the hours passed, slow and endless, so endless and so slow that one might say the flow of time had suddenly stopped.
“She won’t come!”
From the street, the intermittent noise of vehicles reached me; the buses rolled heavily, the closed carriages passed by lightly and rapidly. When one of them passed close to the sidewalk or slowed down I would rush to the window, which I had left half-open, to look into the street. … No one alighted.
“She won’t come!”
And while saying to myself: “She won’t come,” I hoped that Juliette would be in shortly. Oh, how many times I had rolled on the sofa, crying: “She won’t come!” And Juliette always came. Always at the moment when I most despaired, I heard a carriage stop, then steps on the stairway, a creaking noise in the hallway, and Juliette would appear smiling, adorned with plumes, filling the room with a strong odor of perfume and the rustling of silk in motion.
“Come on, get your hat, my dear.”
Irritated by her smile, by her dress, by the perfume, exasperated by the long waiting, I used to upbraid her severely:
“Where have you been? In what joints have you been? Yes, tell me, in what joints?”
“Ah! You are trying to make a scene. Well, thanks! I am leaving. Good night! And here I have taken all the pains in the world to snatch a moment to look you up!”
Then pointing my finger to the door, my muscles contracted, I would burst out:
“Well, go ahead! Go to the devil! And never come back again, never!”
With the door scarcely shut behind Juliette, I would run after her.
“Juliette! Come back, please! Juliette! Wait. … I am going with you.”
She would still be descending the stairs, without turning her head. I would catch up with her.
Near her, near this dress, these plumes, these flowers, these jewels, fury would again seize me:
“Come right up with me or I’ll crack your head against these steps!”
And when in the room I would throw myself at her feet.
“Ah, my little Juliette, I am wrong, I know I am wrong. But I suffer so much! Have pity on me! If you only knew in what a hell I am living! If you could only tear my breast open and see what is going on in my heart! Juliette! Oh, I can’t, I can’t go on living like this anymore! Even a beast would have pity on me. Yes, a wretched beast would have pity on me!”
I would press her arms, cling to her dress.
“My Juliette! I have not killed you, though I have a perfect right to, I swear. I have not killed you! You should have given an account of yourself. I must make inhuman efforts to control myself, for you don’t know what terrible and vengeful things a man who suffers and is lonely can conceive. I have not killed you! I have been hoping!—I am still hoping! Come back to me. I’ll forget everything, I’ll erase everything from my memory, my sorrow and my shame. … You will be to me the purest, the most radiant of virgins. We’ll go away, far, far away from here. Wherever you wish. I shall marry you! Don’t you want me to? Do you think I am telling you this in order to have you with me again? Swear to me that you will change your mode of life and I’ll kill myself here in front of you! Listen, I have sacrificed everything for you! I am not talking of my fortune, but of what was formerly the pride of my life, my manly honor, my dream of an artist, all this I have given up for you, without the least regret. You should make some sacrifice for me in turn. And pray, what is it I ask of you? Nothing … except the gladness of being honest and good. To devote, to consecrate oneself to something, why that’s so grand, so noble! Oh, if you only knew the infinite pleasure of sacrifice? Look now … Malterre is rich. He is a good fellow, better than the others, he loved you! I’ll go to him, I’ll say to him: ‘You alone can save Juliette, you alone can save Juliette, you alone can bring her back from the life she is
