LITMIR.BIZ

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came and told me he was going to kill himself. I was stupid enough to think him dead, and to cry about it. He, kill himself? Why, he’s too much of a coward to hurt himself! Yes, I love him, but I don’t esteem him. That’s our fate, you see, only to love the men we despise.”

      Jenny talked loud, gesticulating, and every now and then thumping the table with her fist so that the bottles and glasses jingled. Sauvresy was somewhat fearful lest the hotel people should hear her; they knew him, and had seen him come in. He began to be sorry that he had come, and tried to calm the girl.

      “But Hector is not deserting you,” repeated he. “He will assure you a good position.”

      “Humph! I should laugh at such a thing! Have I any need of him? As long as I have ten fingers and good eyes, I shall not be at the mercy of any man. He made me change my name, and wanted to accustom me to luxury! And now there is neither a Miss Jenny, nor riches, but there is a Pelagie, who proposes to get her fifty sous a day, without much trouble.”

      “No,” said Sauvresy, “you will not need—”

      “What? To work? But I like work; I am not a do-nothing. I will go back to my old life. I used to breakfast on a sou’s worth of biscuit and a sou’s worth of potatoes, and was well and happy. On Sundays, I dined at the Turk for thirty sous. I laughed more then in one afternoon, than in all the years I have known Tremorel.”

      She no longer cried, nor was she angry; she was laughing. She was thinking of her old breakfasts, and her feasts at the Turk.

      Sauvresy was stupefied. He had no idea of this Parisian nature, detestable and excellent, emotional to excess, nervous, full of transitions, which laughs and cries, caresses and strikes in the same minute, which a passing idea whirls a hundred leagues from the present moment.

      “So,” said Jenny, more calmly, “I snap my fingers at Hector,” —she had just said exactly the contrary, and had forgotten it —“I don’t care for him, but I will not let him leave me in this way. It sha’n’t be said that he left me for another. I won’t have it.”

      Jenny was one of those women who do not reason, but who feel; with whom it is folly to argue, for their fixed idea is impregnable to the most victorious arguments. Sauvresy asked himself why she had asked him to come, and said to himself that the part he had intended to play would be a difficult one. But he was patient.

      “I see, my child,” he commenced, “that you haven’t understood or even heard me. I told you that Hector was intending to marry.”

      “He!” answered Jenny, with an ironical gesture. “He get married.”

      She reflected a moment, and added:

      “If it were true, though—”

      “I tell you it is so.”

      “No,” cried Jenny, “no, that can’t be possible. He loves another, I am sure of it, for I have proofs.”

      Sauvresy smiled; this irritated her.

      “What does this letter mean,” cried she warmly, “which I found in his pocket, six months ago? It isn’t signed to be sure, but it must have come from a woman.”

      “A letter?”

      “Yes, one that destroys all doubts. Perhaps you ask, why I did not speak to him about it? Ah, you see, I did not dare. I loved him. I was afraid if I said anything, and it was true he loved another, I should lose him. And so I resigned myself to humiliation, I concealed myself to weep, for I said to myself, he will come back to me. Poor fool!”

      “Well, but what will you do?”

      “Me? I don’t know—anything. I didn’t say anything about the letter, but I kept it; it is my weapon—I will make use of it. When I want to, I shall find out who she is, and then—”

      “You will compel Tremorel, who is kindly disposed toward you, to use violence.”

      “He? What can he do to me? Why, I will follow him like his shadow —I will cry out everywhere the name of this other. Will he have me put in St. Lazare prison? I will invent the most dreadful calumnies against him. They will not believe me at first; later, part of it will be believed. I have nothing to fear—I have no parents, no friends, nobody on earth who cares for me. That’s what it is to raise girls from the gutter. I have fallen so low that I defy him to push me lower. So, if you are his friend, sir, advise him to come back to me.”

      Sauvresy was really alarmed; he saw clearly how real and earnest Jenny’s menaces were. There are persйcutions against which the law is powerless. But he dissimulated his alarm under the blandest air he could assume.

      “Hear me, my child,” said he. “If I give you my word of honor to tell you the truth, you’ll believe me, won’t you?”

      She hesitated a moment, and said:

      “Yes, you are honorable; I will believe you.”

      “Then, I swear to you that Tremorel hopes to marry a young girl who is immensely rich, whose dowry will secure his future.”

      “He tells you so; he wants you to believe it.”

      “Why should he? Since he came to Valfeuillu, he could have had no other affair than this with you. He lives in my house, as if he were my brother, between my wife and myself, and I could tell you how he spends his time every hour of every day as well as what I do myself.”

      Jenny opened her mouth to reply, but a sudden reflection froze the words on her lips. She remained silent and blushed violently, looking at Sauvresy with an indefinable expression. He did not observe this, being inspired by a restless though aimless curiosity. This proof, which Jenny talked about, worried him.

      “Suppose,” said he, “you should show me this letter.”

      She seemed to feel at these words an electric shock.

      “To you?” she said, shuddering. “Never!”

      If, when one is sleeping, the thunder rolls and the storm bursts, it often happens that the sleep is not troubled; then suddenly, at a certain moment, the imperceptible flutter of a passing insect’s wing awakens one.

      Jenny’s shudder was like such a fluttering to Sauvresy. The sinister light of doubt struck on his soul. Now his confidence, his happiness, his repose, were gone forever. He rose with a flashing eye and trembling lips.

      “Give me the letter,” said he, in an imperious tone. Jenny recoiled with terror. She tried to conceal her agitation, to smile, to turn the matter into a joke.

      “Not to-day,” said she. “Another time; you are too curious.”

      But Sauvresy’s anger was terrible; he became as purple as if he had had a stroke of apoplexy, and he repeated, in a choking voice:

      “The letter, I demand the letter.”

      “Impossible,” said Jenny. “Because,” she added, struck with an idea, “I haven’t got it here.”

      “Where is it?”

      “At my room, in Paris.”

      “Come, then, let us go there.”

      She saw that she was caught; and she could find no more excuses, quick-witted as she was. She might, however, easily have followed Sauvresy, put his suspicions to sleep with her gayety, and when once in the Paris streets, might have eluded him and fled. But she did not think of that. It occurred to her that she might have time to reach the door, open it, and rush downstairs. She started to do so. Sauvresy caught her at a bound, shut the door, and said, in a low, hoarse voice:

      “Wretched girl! Do you wish me to strike you?”

      He pushed her into a chair, returned to the door, double locked it, and put the keys in his pocket. “Now,” said he, returning to the girl, “the letter.”

      Jenny had never been so terrified in her life. This man’s rage made her tremble; she saw that he was

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