"My dear Dixmer, I solemnly declare to you that when I visited at your house, I had totally forgotten I was in the house of a smuggler."
"Truly?"
"Truly."
"You really, then, had no other reason for abandoning the house than that you have stated?"
"Upon my honor."
"Well," said Dixmer, rising and taking the young man's hand, "I hope you will re-consider this resolution which has been productive of pain to us all, and will again return to us as usual."
Maurice bowed, but made no reply, which was of course equivalent to a refusal. Dixmer left, annoyed at not having been able to re-establish an intimacy with this man whom certain circumstances had rendered not only useful to him but almost indispensable. Maurice was agitated by a variety of emotions of a contrary nature. Dixmer entreated him to return. Geneviève would pardon him. Why then should he despond? Lorin in his place would have selected a crowd of aphorisms from his favorite authors. But then he had Geneviève's letter, that formal dismissal, which he had carried with him to the section and placed near his heart; also the little word received from her the day after he had rescued her from the cowards who insulted her; and lastly, the obstinate jealousy entertained by the young man against the detestable Morand, the first cause of his rupture with Geneviève.
Maurice remained inflexible in his resolution. But it must be acknowledged the privation of his daily visits to the old Rue Saint Jacques formed a sad blank in his existence; and when the hour arrived at which he had been accustomed to pay his daily visit to the quarter Saint Victor, he fell into a profound fit of melancholy, and began, from that moment, to experience every aspect of hope and regret.
Each morning on awakening he expected to receive a letter from Dixmer, and acknowledged to himself that he who had so firmly resisted all personal persuasion, would now at last yield to a letter; each day he sallied out in hopes of meeting Geneviève, and, beforehand, had arranged a thousand means of accosting her; each evening he returned home in hopes of there finding that messenger who had one morning unwittingly brought him the grief which had now become his constant companion.
Often, in his hours of despair, his strong nature rebelled at the idea of enduring so much torture, without retaliating upon the primary cause of all his suffering and all his misery, Morand. Then he formed a project to go and seek some quarrel with Morand; but Dixmer's partner was so inoffensive and gentlemanly that to insult or provoke him would be a cowardly proceeding on the part of a Colossus like Maurice.