Volume I Part 42 (1/2)
”Oh! monsieur, what are you saying? What! Edmond Didier?”
”I am telling you the truth; I am opening your eyes; I am doing you a service.”
”It's a service which causes me a great deal of pain, then.”
”What difference does it make to you whether she loves that young man or another, so long as she doesn't love you?”
”But I hoped that she would love me, monsieur.”
”If that's your hope, don't despair; who knows? women are so strange, they have such surprising caprices; it is quite possible that she won't always spurn you.--By the way, pardon the question, but are you rich, monsieur?”
”Not very; I make four or five thousand francs a year.”
”In that case, my dear monsieur, you have no great chance of succeeding with Thelenie; and if you are wise enough to follow some good advice, you will forget her and cease to bother your head about her.--But, excuse me--I go in this direction. Good-day, monsieur.”
”A thousand pardons, monsieur, but it would be a great pleasure to me to know with whom I have had the honor of conversing.”
”Here is my card, monsieur.”
”And here is mine, monsieur; I have a real estate office, and if you should ever have any business that hangs fire----”
”Be a.s.sured, monsieur, that I shall remember you.”
Beauregard walked away, while Chamoureau read the card he held in his hand, saying to himself:
”He was once Madame Sainte-Suzanne's lover! and Edmond is now! and I am nothing at all! I have acted as an information machine, that is all!--Ah! I am not surprised that she expressly forbade me to mention her name. Well! all this doesn't prevent my adoring her. Monsieur Beauregard advises me not to think of her any more; but perhaps he still thinks of her himself; if he doesn't, why does he go to see her? That is something he would have found it difficult to explain, I fancy.
Perhaps what he told me about Edmond isn't true. That man has a sardonic expression; I think that I shall do well to be suspicious of him.--O Eleonore! I am grieved that I no longer weep for you!”
XVI
AN ELECTRIC SPARK
Chamoureau went home completely overwhelmed by what he had learned in his interview with Monsieur Beauregard. He thought of nothing else all the rest of the day, the result being that it did not occur to him to go to Monsieur Courtivaux and conclude the negotiation that Madame Dalmont had entrusted to him. He asked himself every moment whether he should try once more to see Edmond, and question him on the subject of his liaison with Madame Sainte-Suzanne; but he remembered that she had expressly forbidden him to mention her name to anyone.
”To be sure,” he said to himself, ”I have already broken my promise by talking about her with this Monsieur Beauregard; but that wasn't my fault. That man caught me in Madame Sainte-Suzanne's reception-room, so I could not deny that I knew her; and the familiar way in which he asked for her proved conclusively that he knew her very well indeed!”
On the following day our widower was still undecided, hesitating whether he ought or ought not to talk to Edmond about the lady with the beautiful black eyes.
Hesitating people often pa.s.s whole days unable to decide what to do, and when, after mature consideration, they say to themselves: ”I will decide on this course,” you see them suddenly change their minds and pause just as they are about to act. Such characters generally fail in whatever they undertake, because they never do it in time.
In a business agent, this failing is even more dangerous than in anybody else. The agent with whom we have to do had two reasons for not attending to the business placed in his hands: in addition to his habitual indecision, he was in love, pa.s.sionately in love, with a woman with whom he had no hope of success, which fact necessarily increased his love. It is always the thing that we cannot have for which we crave.
Chamoureau then was at home, saying to himself:
”I think I will go to Edmond Didier and tell him the whole truth; or rather, tell him nothing, but question him shrewdly. I will lead him on to talk of his love-affairs. He will begin about little Amelia, and then I will say: 'No, it's not that one, but another--a very beautiful brunette--that I want to talk to you about.'
”Yes, but then he will reply: 'How do you know that I ever knew a very beautiful brunette? Do you know her yourself?'--d.a.m.nation! it's terribly embarra.s.sing!”