“T’en souvénès, digo?” (I say, do you remember?)
In a room near by could be heard a noise of high laughter and little screams.
“To the devil with females,” said Roumestan; “there is nothing worth while but friendship!”
And then they drank to each other once more; nevertheless their talk turned in another direction: “And how about the little girl?” asked Bompard, winking his eye. “How is she getting on?”
“O, of course, I have not seen her again, you know.”
“Of course not, of course not,” said the other turning suddenly very serious and putting on a solemn face.
Presently a piano behind the partition began to play scraps of waltzes, fashionable quadrilles and bars of music from operettas, now crazy and now languid. They stopped talking in order to listen, pulling off the withered grapes, and Numa, all of whose sensations appeared to have two faces and to be swung upon a pivot, began to think about his wife and his child and his lost happiness. So he must needs unbosom himself at the top of his voice with his elbows on the table.
“Eleven years of intimacy, trust and tenderness—all that flashed away and vanished in a minute! how can it be possible? ah, Rosalie, Rosalie—”
No one could ever know what she had been to him, and he himself had not thoroughly understood it until after her departure. Such an upright spirit, such a straightforward heart! And what shoulders and what arms! No little gingerbread doll like little Bachellery; something full and amber-tinted and delicate—
“Besides, don’t you see, my dear comrade, there’s no denying that when we are young we need surprises and adventures—meetings in a hurry, sharpened by the fear of being caught, staircases one comes down on all fours with one’s boots in one’s arms—all that is part of love. But at our age what we desire above everything else is peace and what the philosophers call security in pleasure. It is only marriage which can give you that.”