Suddenly I saw at the end of the path two people, a man and a woman, coming towards me. Annoyed at being disturbed in my quiet walk, I was on the point of plunging into the undergrowth when I fancied I heard them calling to me. The woman was actually waving her sunshade, and the man, in his shirtsleeves, his frock-coat over one arm, was raising the other as a signal of distress.
I went towards them. They were walking hurriedly, both very red, she with little rapid steps, he with long strides. Ill humour and weariness was visible on their faces. The woman asked me at once:
“Monsieur, can you tell me where we are? My idiotic husband has lost us, after saying that he knew this district perfectly.”
“Madame,” I replied confidently, “you are going towards Saint-Cloud, and Versailles is behind you.”
“What!” she continued, glancing with angry pity towards her husband. “Versailles is behind us? But that is precisely where we mean to have dinner!”
“So do I, madame; I am going there.”
“Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear!” she repeated, in the tone of overwhelming contempt with which women express their exasperation.
She was quite young, pretty, and dark, with a shadow of a moustache on her lip.
As for the man, he was perspiring and mopping his brow. Without doubt they were Parisian shopkeepers. The man looked overcome, tired out and miserable.
“But, my dear girl,” he murmured, “it was you …”
She did not permit him to finish the sentence.
“It was I! … Ah! it is I now. Was it I who wanted to go off without inquiries, declaring that I could always find my way? Was it I who wanted to turn to the right at the top of the hill, declaring that I remembered the way? Was it I who undertook to look after Cachou …”
She had not finished speaking when her husband, as though he had suddenly gone out of his mind, uttered a piercing cry, a long, wild cry, which cannot be written in any language, but which was something like teeeteeet.
The young woman seemed neither surprised nor excited, and continued:
“No, upon my word, some people are too silly, always pretending to know everything. Was it I who took the Dieppe train last year instead of the Havre train? Tell me, was it I? Was it I who betted that Monsieur Letournier lived in the Rue des Martyrs? … Was it I who wouldn’t believe that Céleste was a thief? …”
And she continued furiously, with amazing rapidity of speech, piling up the most heterogeneous, unexpected, and grievous charges, furnished by all the intimate situations in their existence together, blaming her husband for all his actions, ideas, manners, experiments, and efforts, his whole life, in fact, from their wedding day up to the present moment.
He tried to stop her, to calm her, and faltered:
“But, my dear girl … it’s no use … in front of the gentleman … we’re making an exhibition of ourselves. It is of no interest to the gentleman.”
And he turned his melancholy eyes upon the thickets, as though eager to explore their peaceful and mysterious depths, to rush into them, escape and hide from every eye. From time to time he again uttered his cry, a prolonged, very shrill teeeteeet. I imagined this habit was a nervous disorder.
The young woman abruptly turned to me and, changing her tone with remarkable rapidity, remarked:
“If monsieur will be good enough to permit us, we will go with him, in order not to lose ourselves again and risk having to sleep in the wood.”
I bowed; she took my arm and began to talk of a thousand things, of herself, her life, her family, and her business. They kept a glove-shop in the Rue Saint-Lazare.
Her husband walked beside her, continually throwing wild glances into the thick of the trees, and every now and then shouting teeeteeet.
At last I asked him:
“Why do you shout like that?”
“It’s my poor dog that I’ve lost,” he replied with an air of consternation and despair.
“What? You have lost your dog?”
“Yes. He was barely a year old. He had never gone out of the shop. I wanted to take him for a walk in the woods. He had never seen grass or leaves before, and it pretty well sent him off his head. He began to run about, barking, and has disappeared in the forest. I should also tell you that he was very frightened of the railway; it may have made him lose his senses. I have called and called in vain; he has not come back. He will die of hunger in there.”
Without turning towards her husband, the woman remarked:
“If you had kept him on the lead, it wouldn’t have happened. People as silly as you have no business to have dogs.”
“But, my dear girl, it was you …”
She stopped short; and looking into his eyes as though she were going to tear them out, she began once more her innumerable reproaches.
Night was falling. The veil of mist which covers the countryside at twilight was slowly unfolding; romance hovered around, born of the strange, delightful coolness that fills the woods at the approach of night.
Suddenly the young man stopped, and, feeling about himself frantically, exclaimed:
“Oh! I believe I have …”
“Well, what?” she asked, looking at him.
“I did not realise that I was carrying my frock-coat on my arm.”
“Well?”
“I have lost my letter-case … my money is in it.”
She quivered with rage and choked with indignation.
“That is the last straw. How idiotic you are, how perfectly idiotic! How can I have married such a fool? Well, go and look for it, and take care that you find it. I will go on to Versailles with this gentleman. I
