What was also tormenting was the thought that Juliette would never forgive me the loss of Spy. She would be horrified at the mere sight of me. I wrote her letters of repentance, assured her that from now on I was going to be satisfied with what little attention she might give me, that I would never again complain, that I was not going to reproach her for her behavior; my letters were so humble, so self-degrading, so vilely submissive that a person other than Juliette would feel disgusted on reading them. I sent them with a messenger whose return I would anxiously await on the corner of the Rue de Balzac.
“No answer!”
“Are you sure you did not give it to the wrong person? Did you deliver it to the party on the first floor?”
“Yes, Monsieur. The maid even said to me: ‘No answer!’ ”
I went to her house. The door was opened only to the extent allowed by the chain lock which Juliette, fearing me, had ordered put on, since the evening of that terrible scene; and through the half-opened space I could see the mocking and cynical face of Celestine.
“Madame is not in!”
“Celestine, my good Celestine, let me in, please!”
“Madame is not in!”
“Celestine! My dear little Celestine. Let me go in and wait for her. I’ll give you a lot of money.”
“Madame is not in!”
“Celestine, I beg of you! Go and tell Madame that I am here, that I am all right now … that I am very sick … that I am going to die! And you shall have a hundred francs, Celestine … two hundred francs!”
Celestine looked at me slyly, with a mocking air, happy to see me suffer, happy above all to see a man reduced to her own level, begging servilely to her.
“For just one minute, Celestine. I’ll just look at her and go away!”
“No, no, Monsieur! She’ll scold me!”
The ringing of a bell was heard. I heard the noise of it quicken.
“You see, Monsieur, she is calling me!”
“Well, now! Celestine, tell her that if she does not come to my house by six o’clock, if she does not write to me by six o’clock … tell her that I am going to kill myself! Six o’clock, Celestine! Don’t forget now … tell her that I am going to kill myself!”
“All right, Monsieur!”
The door was shut behind me with the clang of a chained lock.
It occurred to me to see Gabrielle Bernier, to tell her my troubles, to ask her advice, and use her offices for a reconciliation with Juliette. Gabrielle was finishing breakfast with a friend of hers, a short, skinny woman of dark complexion, with a pointed chin like a mouse which when speaking seemed always to be nibbling at something. In a morning robe of white silk, soiled and rumpled, her hair kept from falling by a comb stuck across it on top of her head, her elbows resting on the table, Gabrielle was smoking a cigarette and sipping chartreuse from a glass.
“Why, Jean! And so you have come back?”
She showed me into her dressing room which was very untidy. At the very first words which I spoke of Juliette, she exclaimed:
“Why … don’t you know? We have not been on speaking terms for two months since the time she beat me out of a consul, my dear, an American Consul, who paid me five thousand a month! Yes, she beat me out of it, that skinflint did! And how about you? You have made her come down a peg lower, I hope.”
“Ah! I!” I answered, “I am very unhappy! And so a consul is her lover now!”
Gabrielle relit her extinguished cigarette and shrugged her shoulders.
“Her lover! Do you think women like that can keep a lover! She could not keep the Lord himself, my dear! Ah, men don’t stick to her very long, I tell you. They come one day and then the next they pitch camp somewhere else. Well, thanks very much! It’s all right to fleece them but you must do it with your gloves on, don’t you think? And you are still in love with her, poor boy.”
“Still—why I am more so than ever! I have done everything to cure myself of this shameful infatuation which makes me the lowest of men, which kills me, but I can’t. Well now, she is leading a loathsome life, isn’t she?”
“Ah! Well … that’s
