“A regular harebrained fellow! He burned the candle at both ends! The petticoat has ruined him! ’Tis not himself that I pity, but his poor wife!” For the Citizen admired virtuous women, and had a great esteem for Madame Arnoux.
“She must have suffered a nice lot!”
Frederick felt grateful to him for his sympathy; and, as if Regimbart had done him a service, pressed his hand effusively.
“Have you done all that’s necessary in the matter?” was Rosanette’s greeting to him when she saw him again.
He had not been able to pluck up courage to do it, he answered, and walked about the streets at random to divert his thoughts.
At eight o’clock, they passed into the dining-room; but they remained seated face to face in silence, gave vent each to a deep sigh every now and then, and pushed away their plates.
Frederick drank some brandy. He felt quite shattered, crushed, annihilated, no longer conscious of anything save a sensation of extreme fatigue.
She went to look at the portrait. The red, the yellow, the green, and the indigo made glaring stains that jarred with each other, so that it looked a hideous thing—almost ridiculous.
Besides, the dead child was now unrecognisable. The purple hue of his lips made the whiteness of his skin more remarkable. His nostrils were more drawn than before, his eyes more hollow; and his head rested on a pillow of blue taffeta, surrounded by petals of camelias, autumn roses, and violets. This was an idea suggested by the chambermaid, and both of them had thus with pious care arranged the little corpse. The mantelpiece, covered with a cloth of guipure, supported silver-gilt candlesticks with bunches of consecrated box in the spaces between them. At the corners there were a pair of vases in which pastilles were burning. All these things, taken in conjunction with the cradle, presented the aspect of an altar; and Frederick recalled to mind the night when he had watched beside M. Dambreuse’s deathbed.
Nearly every quarter of an hour Rosanette drew aside the curtains in order to take a look at her child. She saw him in imagination, a few months hence, beginning to walk; then at college, in the middle of the recreation-ground, playing a game of base; then at twenty years a full-grown young man; and all these pictures conjured up by her brain created for her, as it were, the son she would have lost, had he only lived, the excess of her grief intensifying in her the maternal instinct.
Frederick, sitting motionless in another armchair, was thinking of Madame Arnoux.
No doubt she was at that moment in a train, with her face leaning against a carriage window, while she watched the country disappearing behind her in the direction of Paris, or else on the deck of a steamboat, as on the occasion when they first met; but this vessel carried her away into distant countries, from which she would never return. He next saw her in a room at an inn, with trunks covering the floor, the wallpaper hanging in shreds, and the door shaking in the wind. And after that—to what would she be compelled to turn? Would she have to become a schoolmistress or a lady’s companion, or perhaps a chambermaid? She was exposed to all the vicissitudes of poverty. His utter ignorance as to what her fate might be tortured his mind. He ought either to have opposed her departure or to have followed her. Was he not her real husband? And as the thought impressed itself on his consciousness that he would never meet her again, that it was all over forever, that she was lost to him beyond recall, he felt, so to speak, a rending of his entire being, and the tears that had been gathering since morning in his heart overflowed.
Rosanette noticed the tears in his eyes.
“Ah! you are crying just like me! You are grieving, too?”
“Yes! yes! I am—”
He pressed her to his heart, and they both sobbed, locked in each other’s arms.
Madame Dambreuse was weeping too, as she lay, face downwards, on her bed, with her hands clasped over her head.
Olympe Regimbart having come that evening to try on her first coloured gown after mourning, had told her about Frederick’s visit, and even about the twelve thousand francs which he had ready to transfer to M. Arnoux.
So, then, this money, the very money which he had got from her, was intended to be used simply for the purpose of preventing the other from leaving Paris—for the purpose, in fact, of preserving a mistress!
At first, she broke into a violent rage, and determined to drive him from her door, as she would have driven a lackey. A copious flow of tears produced a soothing effect upon her. It was better to keep it all to herself, and say nothing about it.
Frederick brought her back the twelve thousand francs on the following day.
She begged of him to keep the money lest he might require it for his friend, and she asked a number of questions about this gentleman. Who, then, had tempted him to such a breach of trust? A woman, no doubt! Women drag you into every kind of crime.
This bantering tone put Frederick out of countenance. He felt deep remorse for the calumny he had invented. He was reassured by the reflection that Madame Dambreuse could not be aware of the facts. All the same, she was very persistent about the subject; for, two days later, she again made enquiries about his young friend, and, after that, about another—Deslauriers.
“Is this young man trustworthy and intelligent?”
Frederick spoke highly of him.
“Ask him to call on me one of these mornings; I want to consult him about a matter of business.”
She had found a roll of old papers in which there were some bills of Arnoux, which had
