When I reached home I began to cry like a child. There is no man to whom a woman has not been unfaithful, once at least, and who will not know what I suffered.
I said to myself, under the weight of these feverish resolutions which one always feels as if one had the force to carry out, that I must break with my amour at once, and I waited impatiently for daylight in order to set out forthwith to rejoin my father and my sister, of whose love at least I was certain, and certain that that love would never be betrayed.
However, I did not wish to go away without letting Marguerite know why I went. Only a man who really cares no more for his mistress leaves her without writing to her. I made and remade twenty letters in my head. I had had to do with a woman like all other women of the kind. I had been poetizing too much. She had treated me like a school-boy, she had used in deceiving me a trick which was insultingly simple. My self-esteem got the upper hand. I must leave this woman without giving her the satisfaction of knowing that she had made me suffer, and this is what I wrote to her in my most elegant handwriting and with tears of rage and sorrow in my eyes:
"MY DEAR MARGUERITE: I hope that your indisposition yesterday was not serious. I came, at eleven at night, to ask after you, and was told that you had not come in. M. de G. was more fortunate, for he presented himself shortly afterward, and at four in the morning he had not left.
"Forgive me for the few tedious hours that I have given you, and be assured that I shall never forget the happy moments which Iowe to you.
"I should have called to-day to ask after you, but I intend going back to my father's.
"Good-bye, my dear Marguerite. I am not rich enough to love you as I would nor poor enough to love you as you would. Let us then forget, you a name which must be indifferent enough to you, I a happiness which has become impossible.
"I send back your key, which I have never used, and which might be useful to you, if you are often ill as you were yesterday."As you will see, I was unable to end my letter without a touch of impertinent irony, which proved how much in love I still was.
I read and reread this letter ten times over; then the thought of the pain it would give to Marguerite calmed me a little. I tried to persuade myself of the feelings which it professed; and when my servant came to my room at eight o'clock, I gave it to him and told him to take it at once.
"Shall I wait for an answer?" asked Joseph (my servant, like all servants, was called Joseph).
"If they ask whether there is a reply, you will say that you don't know, and wait."I buoyed myself up with the hope that she would reply. Poor, feeble creatures that we are! All the time that my servant was away I was in a state of extreme agitation. At one moment I would recall how Marguerite had given herself to me, and ask myself by what right I wrote her an impertinent letter, when she could reply that it was not M. de G. who supplanted me, but I who had supplanted M. de G.: a mode of reasoning which permits many women to have many lovers. At another moment I would recall her promises, and endeavour to convince myself that my letter was only too gentle, and that there were not expressions forcible enough to punish a woman who laughed at a love like mine. Then Isaid to myself that I should have done better not to have written to her, but to have gone to see her, and that then I should have had the pleasure of seeing the tears that she would shed.
Finally, I asked myself what she would reply to me; already prepared to believe whatever excuse she made.
Joseph returned.
"Well?" I said to him.
"Sir," said he, "madame was not up, and still asleep, but as soon as she rings the letter will be taken to her, and if there is any reply it will be sent."She was asleep!
Twenty times I was on the point of sending to get the letter back, but every time I said to myself: "Perhaps she will have got it already, and it would look as if I have repented of sending it."As the hour at which it seemed likely that she would reply came nearer, I regretted more and more that I had written. The clock struck, ten, eleven, twelve. At twelve I was on the point of keeping the appointment as if nothing had happened. In the end Icould see no way out of the circle of fire which closed upon me.
Then I began to believe, with the superstition which people have when they are waiting, that if I went out for a little while, Ishould find an answer when I got back. I went out under the pretext of going to lunch.
Instead of lunching at the Cafe Foy, at the corner of the Boulevard, as I usually did, I preferred to go to the Palais Royal and so pass through the Rue d'Antin. Every time that I saw a woman at a distance, I fancied it was Nanine bringing me an answer. I passed through the Rue d'Antin without even coming across a commissionaire. I went to Very's in the Palais Royal.
The waiter gave me something to eat, or rather served up to me whatever he liked, for I ate nothing. In spite of myself, my eyes were constantly fixed on the clock. I returned home, certain that I should find a letter from Marguerite.
The porter had received nothing, but I still hoped in my servant.
He had seen no one since I went out.
If Marguerite had been going to answer me she would have answered long before.
Then I began to regret the terms of my letter; I should have said absolutely nothing, and that would undoubtedly have aroused her suspicions, for, finding that I did not keep my appointment, she would have inquired the reason of my absence, and only then Ishould have given it to her. Thus, she would have had to exculpate herself, and what I wanted was for her to exculpate herself. I already realized that I should have believed whatever reasons she had given me, and anything was better than not to see her again.
At last I began to believe that she would come to see me herself;but hour followed hour, and she did not come.
Decidedly Marguerite was not like other women, for there are few who would have received such a letter as I had just written without answering it at all.
