He appeared indifferent, but inwardly he rejoiced, for he had no doubt that Gilberte had feigned her ardent desire to inspect the library simply to see him in secret. And, while affecting indifference, he promised himself to renew those offers which, this time, would not be refused.
Under the romantic bust of Alexandre d’Esparvieu, they were met by the silent shadow of a little wan, hollow-eyed old man, who wore a settled expression of mute terror.
“Do not let us disturb you, Monsieur Sariette,” said Maurice. “I am showing Madame des Aubels round the library.”
Maurice and Madame des Aubels passed on into the great room where against the four walls rose presses filled with books and surmounted by bronze busts of poets, philosophers, and orators of antiquity. All was in perfect order, an order which seemed never to have been disturbed from the beginning of things.
Only, a black void was to be seen in the place which, only the evening before, had been filled by an unpublished manuscript of Richard Simon. Meanwhile, by the side of the young couple walked Monsieur Sariette, pale, faded, and silent.
“Really and truly, you have not been nice,” said Maurice, with a look of reproach at Madame des Aubels.
She signed to him that the librarian might overhear. But he reassured her.
“Take no notice. It is old Sariette. He has become a complete idiot.” And he repeated: “No, you have not been at all nice. I awaited you. You did not come. You have made me unhappy.”
After a moment’s silence, while one heard the low melancholy whistling of asthma in poor Sariette’s bronchial tubes, young Maurice continued insistently:
“You are wrong.”
“Why wrong?”
“Wrong not to do as I ask you.”
“Do you still think so?”
“Certainly.”
“You meant it seriously?”
“As seriously as can be.”
Touched by his assurance of sincere and constant feeling, and thinking she had resisted sufficiently, Gilberte granted to Maurice what she had refused him a fortnight ago.
They slipped into an embrasure of the window, behind an enormous celestial globe whereon were graven the signs of the Zodiac and the figures of the stars, and there, their gaze fixed on the Lion, the Virgin, and the Scales, in the presence of a multitude of Bibles, before the works of the Fathers, both Greek and Latin, beneath the casts of Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, Thucydides, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Seneca, and Epictetus, they exchanged vows of love and a long kiss on the mouth.
Almost immediately Madame des Aubels bethought herself that she still had some calls to pay, and that she must make her escape quickly, for love had not made her lose all sense of her own importance. But she had barely crossed the landing with Maurice when they heard a hoarse cry and saw Monsieur Sariette plunge madly downstairs, exclaiming as he went:
“Stop it, stop it; I saw it fly away! It escaped from the shelf by itself. It crossed the room … there it is—there! It’s going downstairs. Stop it! It has gone out of the door on the ground floor!”
“What?” asked Maurice.
Monsieur Sariette looked out of the landing window, murmuring horror-struck:
“It’s crossing the garden! It’s going into the summerhouse. Stop it, stop it!”
“But what is it?” repeated Maurice—“in God’s name, what is it?”
“My Flavius Josephus,” exclaimed Monsieur Sariette. “Stop it!”
And he fell down unconscious.
“You see he is quite mad,” said Maurice to Madame des Aubels, as he lifted up the unfortunate librarian.
Gilberte, a little pale, said she also thought she had seen something in the direction indicated by the unhappy man, something flying.
Maurice had seen nothing, but he had felt what seemed like a gust of wind.
He left Monsieur Sariette in the arms of Hippolyte and the housekeeper, who had both hastened to the spot on hearing the noise.
The old gentleman had a wound in his head.
“All the better,” said the housekeeper; “this wound may save him from having a fit.”
Madame des Aubels gave her handkerchief to stop the blood, and recommended an arnica compress.
IX
Wherein it is shown that, as an ancient Greek poet said, “nothing is sweeter than Aphrodite the golden.”
Although he had enjoyed Madame des Aubels’ favours for six whole months, Maurice still loved her. True they had had to separate during the summer. For lack of funds of his own he had had to go to Switzerland with his mother, and then to stop with the whole family at the Château d’Esparvieu. She had spent the summer with her mother at Niort, and the autumn with her husband at a little Normandy seaside place, so that they had hardly seen each other four or five times. But since the winter, kindly to lovers, had brought them back to town again, Maurice had been receiving her twice a week in his little flat in the Rue de Rome, and received no one else. No other woman had inspired him with feelings of such constancy and fidelity. What augmented his pleasure was that he believed himself loved, and indeed he was not unpleasing.
He thought that she did not deceive him, not that he had any reason to think so, but it appeared right and fitting that she should be content with him alone. What annoyed him was that she always kept him waiting, and was unpunctual in coming to their meeting-place; she was invariably late—at times very late.
Now on Saturday, January 30th, since four o’clock in the afternoon, Maurice had been awaiting Madame des Aubels in the little pink room, where a bright fire was burning. He was gaily clad in a suit of flowered pyjamas, smoking Turkish cigarettes. At first he dreamt of receiving her with long kisses, with hitherto unknown caresses. A quarter of an hour having passed, he meditated serious and affectionate reproaches, then after an hour of disappointed waiting he vowed he would meet her with cold disdain.
At length she appeared, fresh and fragrant.
“It was scarcely worth while coming,” he said bitterly, as she laid her muff
