“Bah! anything I could have done would have been utterly useless!”
But the clerk had theories of his own. All that was necessary in order to get a thing was to desire it strongly.
“Nevertheless, you yourself, a little while ago—”
“I don’t care a straw about that sort of thing!” returned Deslauriers, cutting short Frederick’s allusion. “Am I going to get entangled with women?”
And he declaimed against their affectations, their silly ways—in short, he disliked them.
“Don’t be acting, then!” said Frederick.
Deslauriers became silent. Then, all at once:
“Will you bet me a hundred francs that I won’t do the first woman that passes?”
“Yes—it’s a bet!”
The first who passed was a hideous-looking beggar-woman, and they were giving up all hope of a chance presenting itself when, in the middle of the Rue de Rivoli, they saw a tall girl with a little bandbox in her hand.
Deslauriers accosted her under the arcades. She turned up abruptly by the Tuileries, and soon diverged into the Place du Carrousel. She glanced to the right and to the left. She ran after a hackney-coach; Deslauriers overtook her. He walked by her side, talking to her with expressive gestures. At length, she accepted his arm, and they went on together along the quays. Then, when they reached the rising ground in front of the Châtelet, they kept tramping up and down for at least twenty minutes, like two sailors keeping watch. But, all of a sudden, they passed over the Pont-au-Change, through the Flower Market, and along the Quai Napoleon. Frederick came up behind them. Deslauriers gave him to understand that he would be in their way, and had only to follow his own example.
“How much have you got still?”
“Two hundred sous pieces.”
“That’s enough—good night to you!”
Frederick was seized with the astonishment one feels at seeing a piece of foolery coming to a successful issue.
“He has the laugh at me,” was his reflection. “Suppose I went back again?”
Perhaps Deslauriers imagined that he was envious of this paltry love! “As if I had not one a hundred times more rare, more noble, more absorbing.” He felt a sort of angry feeling impelling him onward. He arrived in front of Madame Arnoux’s door.
None of the outer windows belonged to her apartment. Nevertheless, he remained with his eyes pasted on the front of the house—as if he fancied he could, by his contemplation, break open the walls. No doubt, she was now sunk in repose, tranquil as a sleeping flower, with her beautiful black hair resting on the lace of the pillow, her lips slightly parted, and one arm under her head. Then Arnoux’s head rose before him, and he rushed away to escape from this vision.
The advice which Deslauriers had given to him came back to his memory. It only filled him with horror. Then he walked about the streets in a vagabond fashion.
When a pedestrian approached, he tried to distinguish the face. From time to time a ray of light passed between his legs, tracing a great quarter of a circle on the pavement; and in the shadow a man appeared with his dosser and his lantern. The wind, at certain points, made the sheet-iron flue of a chimney shake. Distant sounds reached his ears, mingling with the buzzing in his brain; and it seemed to him that he was listening to the indistinct flourish of quadrille music. His movements as he walked on kept up this illusion. He found himself on the Pont de la Concorde.
Then he recalled that evening in the previous winter, when, as he left her house for the first time, he was forced to stand still, so rapidly did his heart beat with the hopes that held it in their clasp. And now they had all withered!
Dark clouds were drifting across the face of the moon. He gazed at it, musing on the vastness of space, the wretchedness of life, the nothingness of everything. The day dawned; his teeth began to chatter, and, half-asleep, wet with the morning mist, and bathed in tears, he asked himself, Why should I not make an end of it? All that was necessary was a single movement. The weight of his forehead dragged him along—he beheld his own dead body floating in the water. Frederick stooped down. The parapet was rather wide, and it was through pure weariness that he did not make the attempt to leap over it.
Then a feeling of dismay swept over him. He reached the boulevards once more, and sank down upon a seat. He was aroused by some police-officers, who were convinced that he had been indulging a little too freely.
He resumed his walk. But, as he was exceedingly hungry, and as all the restaurants were closed, he went to get a “snack” at a tavern by the fish-markets; after which, thinking it too soon to go in yet, he kept sauntering about the Hôtel de Ville till a quarter past eight.
Deslauriers had long since got rid of his wench; and he was writing at the table in the middle of his room. About four o’clock, M. de Cisy came in.
Thanks to Dussardier, he had enjoyed the society of a lady the night before; and he had even accompanied her home in the carriage with her husband to the very threshold of their house, where she had given him an assignation. He parted with her without even knowing her name.
“And what do you propose that I should do in that way?” said Frederick.
Thereupon the young gentleman began to cudgel his brains to think of a suitable woman; he mentioned Mademoiselle Vatnaz, the Andalusian, and all the rest. At length, with much circumlocution, he stated the object of his visit. Relying on the discretion of his friend, he came to aid him in taking an important step, after which he might definitely regard himself as a man; and Frederick showed no reluctance. He told the story to Deslauriers without relating the facts with reference to himself personally.
The clerk was of opinion that
