He grew pale with anger. She stared at the woman who was by his side.
Madame Dambreuse had recognised her, and for a minute they examined each other from head to foot minutely, in order to discover the defect, the blemish—the one perhaps envying the other’s youth, and the other filled with spite at the extreme good form, the aristocratic simplicity of her rival.
At last Madame Dambreuse turned her head round with a smile of inexpressible insolence.
The crier had opened a piano—her piano! While he remained standing before it he ran the fingers of his right hand over the keys, and put up the instrument at twelve hundred francs; then he brought down the figures to one thousand, then to eight hundred, and finally to seven hundred.
Madame Dambreuse, in a playful tone, laughed at the appearance of some socket that was out of gear.
The next thing placed before the secondhand dealers was a little chest with medallions and silver corners and clasps, the same one which he had seen at the first dinner in the Rue de Choiseul, which had subsequently been in Rosanette’s house, and again transferred back to Madame Arnoux’s residence. Often, during their conversations his eyes wandered towards it. He was bound to it by the dearest memories, and his soul was melting with tender emotions about it, when suddenly Madame Dambreuse said:
“Look here! I am going to buy that!”
“But it is not a very rare article,” he returned.
She considered it, on the contrary, very pretty, and the appraiser commended its delicacy.
“A gem of the Renaissance! Eight hundred francs, messieurs! Almost entirely of silver! With a little whiting it can be made to shine brilliantly.”
And, as she was pushing forward through the crush of people:
“What an odd idea!” said Frederick.
“You are annoyed at this!”
“No! But what can be done with a fancy article of that sort?”
“Who knows? Love-letters might be kept in it, perhaps!”
She gave him a look which made the allusion very clear.
“A reason the more for not robbing the dead of their secrets.”
“I did not imagine she was dead.” And then in a loud voice she went on to bid:
“Eight hundred and eighty francs!”
“What you’re doing is not right,” murmured Frederick.
She began to laugh.
“But this is the first favour, dear, that I am asking from you.”
“Come, now! doesn’t it strike you that at this rate you won’t be a very considerate husband?”
Someone had just at that moment made a higher bid.
“Nine hundred francs!”
“Nine hundred francs!” repeated Maître Berthelmot.
“Nine hundred and ten—fifteen—twenty—thirty!” squeaked the auctioneer’s crier, with jerky shakes of his head as he cast a sweeping glance at those assembled around him.
“Show me that I am going to have a wife who is amenable to reason,” said Frederick.
And he gently drew her towards the door.
The auctioneer proceeded:
“Come, come, messieurs; nine hundred and thirty. Is there any bidder at nine hundred and thirty?”
Madame Dambreuse, just as she had reached the door, stopped, and raising her voice to a high pitch:
“One thousand francs!”
There was a thrill of astonishment, and then a dead silence.
“A thousand francs, messieurs, a thousand francs! Is nobody advancing on this bid? Is that clear? Very well, then—one thousand francs! going!—gone!”
And down came the ivory hammer. She passed in her card, and the little chest was handed over to her. She thrust it into her muff.
Frederick felt a great chill penetrating his heart.
Madame Dambreuse had not let go her hold of his arm; and she had not the courage to look up at his face in the street, where her carriage was awaiting her.
She flung herself into it, like a thief flying away after a robbery, and then turned towards Frederick. He had his hat in his hand.
“Are you not going to come in?”
“No, Madame!”
And, bowing to her frigidly, he shut the carriage-door, and then made a sign to the coachman to drive away.
The first feeling that he experienced was one of joy at having regained his independence. He was filled with pride at the thought that he had avenged Madame Arnoux by sacrificing a fortune to her; then, he was amazed at his own act, and he felt doubled up with extreme physical exhaustion.
Next morning his manservant brought him the news.
The city had been declared to be in a state of siege; the Assembly had been dissolved; and a number of the representatives of the people had been imprisoned at Mazas. Public affairs had assumed to his mind an utterly unimportant aspect, so deeply preoccupied was he by his private troubles.
He wrote to several tradesmen countermanding various orders which he had given for the purchase of articles in connection with his projected marriage, which now appeared to him in the light of a rather mean speculation; and he execrated Madame Dambreuse, because, owing to her, he had been very near perpetrating a vile action. He had forgotten the Maréchale, and did not even bother himself about Madame Arnoux—absorbed only in one thought—lost amid the wreck of his dreams, sick at heart, full of grief and disappointment, and in his hatred of the artificial atmosphere wherein he had suffered so much, he longed for the freshness of green fields, the repose of provincial life, a sleeping existence spent beneath his natal roof in the midst of ingenuous hearts. At last, when Wednesday evening arrived, he made his way out into the open air.
On the boulevard numerous groups had taken up their stand. From time to time a patrol came and dispersed them; they gathered together again in regular order behind it. They talked freely and in loud tones, made chaffing remarks about the soldiers, without anything further happening.
“What! are they not going to fight?” said Frederick to a workman.
“They’re not such fools as to get themselves killed for the well-off people! Let them take care of themselves!”
And a gentleman muttered, as he glanced across at the
