Volume I Part 57 (1/2)
XXI
AN a.s.sIGNATION IN A COUPe
After an absence of several days, Freluchon returned home one morning.
He came from Rouen alone, having left the young Pompadour there, making eyes at the _jeune premier_ of the Grand Theatre; as Freluchon was beginning to weary of his conquest and was on the lookout for an opportunity to break with her, he did not fail to seize that one. After a tremendous outburst of jealousy, on leaving the theatre where the _jeune premier_ had made a great hit in _An Odd Bet_, a vaudeville from the _Varietes_, Freluchon had abandoned his faithless fair and taken the train for Paris.
When he entered the courtyard of his house, he cried:
”How dear to every n.o.ble heart one's native land!
With rapture I once more behold this blest abode!”
His concierge interrupted him in the middle of his declamation to say:
”Monsieur, your friend Monsieur Edmond Didier has been here almost every day to ask for you.”
”Indeed! dear Edmond! Is he in such haste to see me?”
”And then another one of your friends, Monsieur Chamoureau, whose clothes you have kept since Mi-Careme, and who is very angry with you.
He often comes twice a day to know if you have returned.”
”What's that? Chamoureau angry! Oh, well! he'll calm down! Why, one would think he hadn't any other clothes to put on--a man with a real estate office!--Poor Chamoureau! I would have liked to find him still dressed as a Spaniard; I should have enjoyed that! But, to console him, I'll give him a stick of sugar-candy that I brought from Rouen, where they cost more than they do in Paris; to be sure, they're made in Rouen.”
Freluchon had not been at home an hour, when his doorbell rang violently; he went to open the door, saying to himself:
”That's Chamoureau, I'll bet; if he's still out of temper I'll talk to him about Eleonore and make him weep.”
But it was not the business agent, it was Edmond who entered his friend's apartment.
”Well, you have returned at last!” he said; ”that's fortunate! I have been longing for you; I wanted to see you!”
Freluchon planted himself in front of Edmond, who had thrown himself on a couch, and gazed at him with a look of amazement, as he replied:
”This eager desire to see me flatters as much as it surprises me! not that I doubt your friends.h.i.+p, but between young men friends.h.i.+p never goes so far as ennui because of absence; we have too much to distract our thoughts. Something has gone wrong in your love-affairs. Amelia has indulged in some new escapade!”
”As if Amelia had anything to do with it! I haven't seen her for a week.”
”Have you had a row?”
”Oh, no! I think no more about her than if I had never known her.”
”Ah! that is better, and I congratulate you. But if you have ceased to think of her, I'll stake Chamoureau's coat against twenty-five sous that it's because you are thinking of somebody else!”
”Yes, yes! I am thinking of somebody else! but this time--Ah! Freluchon, this is no mere caprice, no amourette; it isn't one of those pa.s.sions to which desire alone gives birth; ah, no! I feel that I am truly in love, in love for the first time; and this love bears no resemblance to the others! If you knew how it changes one, how timid, humble, respectful one becomes! how little it takes to make one happy! how a trifle causes one to feel the keenest, sweetest sensation! But I can't make you understand all that; no, it's impossible. To form a conception of love, you must be in love yourself; without that, you cannot comprehend the happiness and the torments it causes.”
”Sapristi! here's a kettle of fis.h.!.+ What, can it be you, Edmond, that fickle, heedless youth, who have got caught in this fas.h.i.+on! And who is the lady with the camellias, or with the white carnations, who----”
”Ah! Freluchon, you are all wrong; there is no question here of one of those great coquettes or of those fas.h.i.+onable courtesans who take delight in making numerous conquests and to whom all men do homage. No, it is not a woman of the world--_monde_--or of the demi-monde; it is a carefully reared, virtuous girl, and pretty--ah! as pretty as the most beautiful of the angels!”