She didn’t care for him any more: it may be that she never had loved him. Under the transforming power of absence and that “tender glory” which misfortune gave to the Moor Abencerage he had appeared to her from a distance as her man of destiny. It seemed a proud act on her part to knit her own existence with that of one who was abandoned by everything, success and protectors together. But when she got back to Paris, what a pitiless clearness of things! What a terror to perceive how absolutely she had made a mistake!
To start with, Audiberte’s first visit had shocked her because of the new manners of the girl, too familiar and free and easy, and because of the look of an accomplice which she gave when telling her in whispers: “Hush, don’t say anything! he’s coming to get me....”
That kind of action seemed to her rather hasty and rather bold, more especially the idea of presenting this young man to her parents. But the peasant girl wanted to hurry things. And then, all at once, Hortense perceived her error when she looked upon this artist of the variety stage with his long hair behind his ears, full of stage movements, denting in and shifting his sombrero of Provence on his characteristic head—always handsome, of course, but full of a plain preoccupation to appear so.
Instead of taking a lowly manner in order to make her forgive him for that generous spirit of interest which she had felt for him, he preserved his air of a conqueror, his silly look of the victor, and without saying a word—for he would hardly have known what to say—he treated this finely organized Parisian girl just as he would in similar conditions have treated her, the Des Combette girl—took her by the waist with the motion of a soldier and troubadour and wanted to press her to his breast. She disengaged herself with a sudden repulsion and a letting go of all her nerves, leaving him there looking foolish and astonished, while Audiberte quickly intervened and scolded her brother violently. What kind of manners had he, anyhow? It must have been in Paris that he learned such manners, in the Faubourg Saint Germoyne, without a doubt, among his duchesses?
“Come now, wait at least until she is your wife!”
And turning to Hortense:
“O, he is so in love with you; his blood is parching with his love, pécaïré!”
From that time on, when Valmajour came to get his sister he considered it necessary to assume the sombre and desperate air of an illustration to a ballad: “‘The ocean waits for me,’ the Knight hadjured.” In other conditions the young girl might have been touched, but really the poor fellow seemed too much of a nullity. All he knew how to do was to smooth the nap of his soft hat while reciting the list of his successes in the faubourg of the nobles, or else the rivalries of the stage. One day he talked to her for a whole hour about the vulgarity of handsome Mayol, who had refrained from congratulating him at the end of a concert; and all the while he kept repeating:
“There you are with your Mayol!... Bé! he is not very polite, your Mayol isn’t!”
And all this was accompanied by Audiberte’s attitudes of watchfulness, her severity of a policeman of morals, and this in the face of these very cold lovers! O, if she had been able to divine what a terror possessed the soul of Hortense, what a loathing for her frightful mistake!