Then she began careering through the stalls. She made each of the men get weighed before the eyes of a large crowd. She made them buy absurd toys, which they had to carry in their arms. The prince and the chevalier very soon had more than enough of the jest; Servigny and the two drummers alone kept up their spirits.
At last they reached the far end, and she looked at her followers with a curious expression, a glint of malice and perversity in her eyes. A strange fancy came into her head; she made them all stand in a row on the right bank overlooking the river, and said:
“Let him who loves me most throw himself into the water.”
No one jumped. A crowd had formed behind them; women in white aprons gaped at them, and two soldiers in red breeches laughed stupidly.
“Then not one of you is ready to throw himself into the water at my request?” she repeated.
“So much the worse, damn it,” murmured Servigny, and leapt, upright, into the river.
His fall flung drops of water right up to Yvette’s feet. A murmur of surprise and amusement ran through the crowd. Then the young girl bent down, picked up a little piece of wood, and threw it into the river, crying: “Fetch it.”
The young man began to swim, and seizing the floating stick in his mouth, like a dog, he brought it to land, clambered up the bank, dropped on one knee, and offered it to her.
“Good dog,” she said, taking it, and patting his head.
“How can they do it?” cried a stout lady, vastly indignant.
“Nice goings-on,” said another.
“Damned if I’d take a ducking for any wench,” said a man.
She took Belvigne’s arm again, with the cutting remark: “You’re a noodle; you don’t know what you’ve missed.”
As they went home she threw resentful glances at the passersby.
“How stupid they all look,” she observed; then, raising her eyes to her companion’s face, added: “And you too, for the matter of that.”
Monsieur de Belvigne bowed. Turning round, she saw that the prince and the chevalier had disappeared. Servigny, wretched and soaked to the skin, was no longer playing the bugle, but walked with a melancholy air beside the two tired young men, who were not playing the drum now.
She began to laugh dryly.
“You seem to have had enough. That’s what you call fun, isn’t it? That’s what you’ve come here for. I’ve given you your money’s worth.”
She walked on without another word, and suddenly De Belvigne saw that she was crying.
“What’s the matter?” he asked in alarm.
“Leave me alone,” she murmured. “It’s nothing to do with you.”
But he insisted foolishly: “Now, now, Mademoiselle, what is the matter with you? Has anybody hurt you?”
“Be quiet,” she said irritably.
Abruptly, unable to withstand the terrible sorrow flooding her heart, she broke into such a violent fit of sobbing that she could not walk any further. She covered her face with her hands, and gasped for breath, choking, strangled, stifled by the violence of her despair.
Belvigne stood helplessly beside her, repeating:
“I don’t understand at all.”
But Servigny rushed towards her. “Come along home, Mam’zelle, or they’ll see you crying in the street. Why do you do these silly things, if they make you so unhappy?”
He led her forward, holding her arm. But as soon as they reached the gate of the villa she ran across the garden and up to her room, and locked herself in.
She did not reappear until dinnertime; she was pale and very grave. All the rest were gay enough, however. Servigny had bought a suit of workman’s clothes in the neighbourhood, corduroy trousers, a flowered shirt, a jersey, and a smock, and was talking like a peasant.
Yvette was in a fever for the ending of the meal, feeling her courage ebbing. As soon as coffee was over she went again to her room. She heard laughing voices under her window. The chevalier was telling jokes, foreign witticisms and puns, crude and not very savoury. She listened in despair. Servigny, slightly drunk, was imitating a tipsy workman, and was addressing the Marquise as “Mrs. Obardi.” Suddenly he said to Saval: “Hullo, Mr. Obardi.” Everyone laughed.
Then Yvette made up her mind. First she took a sheet of her notepaper and wrote:
“Bougival, Sunday, 9 p.m.
“I die so that I may not become a kept woman.
Then a postscript:
“Goodbye, mother dear. Forgive me.”
She sealed up the envelope, and addressed it to Madame la Marquise Obardi.
Then she moved her armchair up to the window, set a little table within reach of her hand, and placed upon it the large bottle of chloroform, with a handful of cotton wool beside it.
An immense rose-tree in full bloom, planted near the veranda and reaching right up to her window, filled the night with little gusts of faint, sweet fragrance; for some moments she sat breathing in the perfumed air. The crescent moon swung in the dark sky, its left side gnawed away, and veiled now and again with small clouds.
“I’m going to die,” thought Yvette. “I’m going to die!” Her heart, swollen with sobs, bursting with grief, choked her. She longed to cry for mercy, to be reprieved, to be loved.
Servigny’s voice came up to her; he was telling a shady story, constantly interrupted by bursts of laughter. The Marquise seemed more amused than any of them; she repeated gaily: “No one can tell a story like that as well as he can.”
Yvette took the bottle, uncorked it, and poured a little of the liquid on to the cotton wool. It had a queer, pungent, sweet smell, and as she lifted the pad of cotton wool to her lips, she swallowed the strong, irritating flavour of it, and it made her cough.
Then, closing
