If that man comes here this summer, she will probably see him without breaking with me. Who is this aunt, what mysterious life is this that has charity for its cloak, this liberty that cares nothing for opinion? May they not be adventurers, these two women with their little house, their prudence, and their caution, which enable them to impose on people so easily? Assuredly, for all I know, I have fallen into an affair of gallantry when I thought I was engaged in a romance. But what can I do? There is no one here who can help me except the priest, who does not care to tell me what he knows, and his uncle, who will say still less. Who will save me? How can I learn the truth?
Thus spoke jealousy; thus, forgetting so many tears and all that I had suffered, I had come at the end of two days to a point where I was tormenting myself with the idea that Brigitte had yielded too easily. Thus, like all who doubt, I brushed aside sentiment and reason to dispute with facts, to attach myself to the letter and dissect my love.
While absorbed in these reflections I was slowly approaching Madame
Pierson's.
I found the gate open, and as I entered the garden I saw a light in the kitchen. I thought of questioning the servant, I stepped to the window.
A feeling of horror rooted me to the spot. The servant was an old woman, thin and wrinkled and bent, a common deformity in people who have worked in the fields. I found her shaking a cooking. utensil over a filthy sink. A dirty candle fluttered in her trembling hand; about her were pots, kettles, and dishes, the remains of dinner that a dog sniffed at, from time to time, as though ashamed; a warm, nauseating odor emanated from the reeking walls. When the old woman caught sight of me, she smiled in a confidential way; she had seen me take leave of her mistress.
I shuddered as I thought what I had come to seek in a spot so well suited to my ignoble purpose. I fled from that old woman as from jealousy personified, and as if the stench of her cooking had come from my heart.
Brigitte was at the window watering her well-beloved flowers; a child of one of her neighbors was lying in a cradle at her side, and she was gently rocking the cradle with her disengaged hand; the child's mouth was full of bonbons, and in gurgling eloquence it was addressing an incomprehensible apostrophe to its nurse. I sat down near her and kissed the child on its fat cheeks, as if to imbibe some of its innocence. Brigitte accorded me a timid greeting; she could see her troubled image in my eyes. For my part I avoided her glance; the more I admired her beauty and her air of candor, the more I was convinced that such a woman was either an angel or a monster of perfidy; I forced myself to recall each one of Mercanson's words, and I confronted, so to speak, the man's insinuations with her presence and her face. "She is very beautiful," I said to myself, "and very dangerous if she knows how, to deceive; but I will fathom her and I will sound her heart; and she shall know who I am."
"My dear," I said after a long silence, "I have just given a piece of advice to a friend who consulted me. He is an honest young man, and he writes me that a woman he loves has another lover. He asks me what he ought to do."
"What reply did you make?"
"Two questions: Is she pretty? Do you love her? If you love her, forget her; if she is pretty and you do not love her, keep her for your pleasure; there will always be time to quit her, if it is merely a matter of beauty, and one is worth as much as another."