Her husband, indulging in displays of wild folly, was flirting with one of the girls in his pottery works, the one who was known as “the girl from Bordeaux.” Madame Arnoux was herself informed about it by Frederick. He wanted to make use of it as an argument, “inasmuch as she was the victim of deception.”
“Oh! I’m not much concerned about it,” she said.
This admission on her part seemed to him to strengthen the intimacy between them. Would Arnoux be seized with mistrust with regard to them?
“No! not now!”
She told him that, one evening, he had left them talking together, and had afterwards come back again and listened behind the door, and as they both were chatting at the time of matters that were of no consequence, he had lived since then in a state of complete security.
“With good reason, too—is that not so?” said Frederick bitterly.
“Yes, no doubt!”
It would have been better for him not to have given so risky an answer.
One day she was not at home at the hour when he usually called. To him there seemed to be a sort of treason in this.
He was next displeased at seeing the flowers which he used to bring her always placed in a glass of water.
“Where, then, would you like me to put them?”
“Oh! not there! However, they are not so cold there as they would be near your heart!”
Not long afterwards he reproached her for having been at the Italian opera the night before without having given him a previous intimation of her intention to go there. Others had seen, admired, fallen in love with her, perhaps; Frederick was fastening on those suspicions of his merely in order to pick a quarrel with her, to torment her; for he was beginning to hate her, and the very least he might expect was that she should share in his sufferings!
One afternoon, towards the middle of February, he surprised her in a state of great mental excitement. Eugène had been complaining about his sore throat. The doctor had told her, however, that it was a trifling ailment—a bad cold, an attack of influenza. Frederick was astonished at the child’s stupefied look. Nevertheless, he reassured the mother, and brought forward the cases of several children of the same age who had been attacked with similar ailments, and had been speedily cured.
“Really?”
“Why, yes, assuredly!”
“Oh! how good you are!”
And she caught his hand. He clasped hers tightly in his.
“Oh! let it go!”
“What does it signify, when it is to one who sympathises with you that you offer it? You place every confidence in me when I speak of these things, but you distrust me when I talk to you about my love!”
“I don’t doubt you on that point, my poor friend!”
“Why this distrust, as if I were a wretch capable of abusing—”
“Oh! no!—”
“If I had only a proof!—”
“What proof?”
“The proof that a person might give to the first comer—what you have granted to myself!”
And he recalled to her recollection how, on one occasion, they had gone out together, on a winter’s twilight, when there was a fog. This seemed now a long time ago. What, then, was to prevent her from showing herself on his arm before the whole world without any fear on her part, and without any mental reservation on his, not having anyone around them who could importune them?
“Be it so!” she said, with a promptness of decision that at first astonished Frederick.
But he replied, in a lively fashion:
“Would you like me to wait at the corner of the Rue Tronchet and the Rue de la Ferme?”
“Good heavens, my friend!” faltered Madame Arnoux.
Without giving her time to reflect, he added:
“Next Tuesday, I suppose?”
“Tuesday?”
“Yes, between two and three o’clock.”
“I will be there!”
And she turned aside her face with a movement of shame. Frederick placed his lips on the nape of her neck.
“Oh! this is not right,” she said. “You will make me repent.”
He turned away, dreading the fickleness which is customary with women. Then, on the threshold, he murmured softly, as if it were a thing that was thoroughly understood:
“On Tuesday!”
She lowered her beautiful eyes in a cautious and resigned fashion.
Frederick had a plan arranged in his mind.
He hoped that, owing to the rain or the sun, he might get her to stop under some doorway, and that, once there, she would go into some house. The difficulty was to find one that would suit.
He made a search, and about the middle of the Rue Tronchet he read, at a distance on a signboard, “Furnished apartments.”
The waiter, divining his object, showed him immediately above the ground-floor a room and a closet with two exits. Frederick took it for a month, and paid in advance. Then he went into three shops to buy the rarest perfumery. He got a piece of imitation guipure, which was to replace the horrible red cotton foot-coverlets; he selected a pair of blue satin slippers, only the fear of appearing coarse checked the amount of his purchases. He came back with them; and with more devotion than those who are erecting processional altars, he altered the position of the furniture, arranged the curtains himself, put heather in the fireplace, and covered the chest of drawers with violets. He would have liked to pave the entire apartment with gold. “Tomorrow is the time,” said he to himself. “Yes, tomorrow! I am not dreaming!” and he felt his heart throbbing violently under the delirious excitement begotten by his anticipations. Then, when everything was ready, he carried off the key in his pocket, as if the happiness which slept there might have flown away along with it.
A letter from his mother was awaiting him when he
