Frederick descended the stairs slowly. This caprice was worse than any of the others she had indulged in. He could not understand it at all.
In front of the porter’s lodge Mademoiselle Vatnaz stopped him.
“Has she received you?”
“No.”
“You’ve been put out?”
“How do you know that?”
“ ’Tis quite plain. But come on; let us go away. I am suffocating!”
She made him accompany her along the street; she panted for breath; he could feel her thin arm trembling on his own. Suddenly, she broke out:
“Ah! the wretch!”
“Who, pray?”
“Why, he—he—Delmar!”
This revelation humiliated Frederick. He next asked:
“Are you quite sure of it?”
“Why, when I tell you I followed him!” exclaimed the Vatnaz. “I saw him going in! Now do you understand? I ought to have expected it for that matter—’twas I, in my stupidity, that introduced him to her. And if you only knew all; my God! Why, I picked him up, supported him, clothed him! And then all the paragraphs I got into the newspapers about him! I loved him like a mother!”
Then, with a sneer:
“Ha! Monsieur wants velvet robes! You may be sure ’tis a speculation on his part. And as for her!—to think that I knew her to earn her living as a seamstress! If it were not for me, she would have fallen into the mire twenty times over! But I will plunge her into it yet! I’ll see her dying in a hospital—and everything about her will be known!”
And, like a torrent of dirty water from a vessel full of refuse, her rage poured out in a tumultuous fashion into Frederick’s ear the recital of her rival’s disgraceful acts.
“She lived with Jumillac, with Flacourt, with little Allard, with Bertinaux, with Saint-Valéry, the pockmarked fellow! No, ’twas the other! They are two brothers—it makes no difference. And when she was in difficulties, I settled everything. She is so avaricious! And then, you will agree with me, ’twas nice and kind of me to go to see her, for we are not persons of the same grade! Am I a fast woman—I? Do I sell myself? Without taking into account that she is as stupid as a head of cabbage. She writes ‘category’ with a th. After all, they are well met. They make a precious couple, though he styles himself an artist and thinks himself a man of genius. But, my God! if he had only intelligence, he would not have done such an infamous thing! Men don’t, as a rule, leave a superior woman for a hussy! What do I care about him after all? He is becoming ugly. I hate him! If I met him, mind you, I’d spit in his face.” She spat out as she uttered the words.
“Yes, this is what I think about him now. And Arnoux, eh? Isn’t it abominable? He has forgiven her so often! You can’t conceive the sacrifices he has made for her. She ought to kiss his feet! He is so generous, so good!”
Frederick was delighted at hearing Delmar disparaged. He had taken sides with Arnoux. This perfidy on Rosanette’s part seemed to him an abnormal and inexcusable thing; and, infected with this elderly spinster’s emotion, he felt a sort of tenderness towards her. Suddenly he found himself in front of Arnoux’s door. Mademoiselle Vatnaz, without his attention having been drawn to it, had led him down towards the Rue Poissonnière.
“Here we are!” said she. “As for me, I can’t go up; but you, surely there is nothing to prevent you?”
“From doing what?”
“From telling him everything, faith!”
Frederick, as if waking up with a start, saw the baseness towards which she was urging him.
“Well?” she said after a pause.
He raised his eyes towards the second floor. Madame Arnoux’s lamp was burning. In fact there was nothing to prevent him from going up.
“I am going to wait for you here. Go on, then!”
This direction had the effect of chilling him, and he said:
“I shall be a long time up there; you would do better to return home. I will call on you tomorrow.”
“No, no!” replied the Vatnaz, stamping with her foot. “Take him with you! Bring him there! Let him catch them together!”
“But Delmar will no longer be there.”
She hung down her head.
“Yes; that’s true, perhaps.”
And she remained without speaking in the middle of the street, with vehicles all around her; then, fixing on him her wildcat’s eyes:
“I may rely on you, may I not? There is now a sacred bond between us. Do what you say, then; we’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
Frederick, in passing through the lobby, heard two voices responding to one another.
Madame Arnoux’s voice was saying:
“Don’t lie! don’t lie, pray!”
He went in. The voices suddenly ceased.
Arnoux was walking from one end of the apartment to the other, and Madame was seated on the little chair near the fire, extremely pale and staring straight before her. Frederick stepped back, and was about to retire, when Arnoux grasped his hand, glad that someone had come to his rescue.
“But I am afraid—” said Frederick.
“Stay here, I beg of you!” he whispered in his ear.
Madame remarked:
“You must make some allowance for this scene, Monsieur Moreau. Such things sometimes unfortunately occur in households.”
“They do when we introduce them there ourselves,” said Arnoux in a jolly tone. “Women have crotchets, I assure you. This, for instance, is not a bad one—see! No; quite the contrary. Well, she has been amusing herself for the last hour by teasing me with a heap of idle stories.”
“They are true,” retorted Madame Arnoux, losing patience; “for, in fact, you bought it yourself.”
“I?”
“Yes, you yourself, at the Persian House.”
“The cashmere,” thought Frederick.
He was filled with a consciousness of guilt, and got quite alarmed.
She quickly added:
“It was on Saturday, the fourteenth.”
“The fourteenth,” said Arnoux, looking up, as if he were searching in his mind for a date.
“And, furthermore, the clerk who sold
