Widow Portal.
The whole of his frightful egotism broke from him with the dismayed exclamation:
“Oh, what devoted fidelity am I losing in her!”
Then he thought of his wife who was present at that death-bed and had allowed Aunt Portal to send the despatch. Her wrath had not yielded and probably never would give way. Nevertheless, if she had been willing, how thoroughly would he not have recommenced life at her side, giving up all his imprudent follies and becoming a straightforward and almost austere family man! And then, never giving a thought to the harm that he had done, he reproached Rosalie for her hardness of heart, as if she were treating him unjustly.
He passed the night correcting the proofs of his speech and interrupting work every now and then to write bits of letters to that little scoundrel of an Alice Bachellery, letters either raging or sarcastic, scolding or abusive. Méjean was also up all night in the Secretary’s office; overwhelmed with bitter sorrow, he tried to find forgetfulness in unremitting toil, and Numa, who was pleased with his company, experienced a veritable pain because he could not pour out to him in confidence the deception he had met with. But then he would have been forced to acknowledge that he had gone back to her and stand the ridicule of the situation.
Nevertheless, he was not able to hold out, and in the morning whilst his chief of cabinet was accompanying him to the station he committed to him amongst other orders the charge of giving Lappara his walking-papers. “O, he is expecting it, you may be sure! I caught him in the very act of committing the blackest piece of ingratitude.—And when I think how kind I have been to him, to the point of intending to make him—” he stopped short; would it be believed that he was on the point of telling the man in love with Hortense that he had promised the girl’s hand to another person? Without going further into details, he declared that he did not wish to find on his return such a wretchedly immoral person at the Ministry. But on general principles he was heart-broken at the duplicity of the world—all was ingratitude and egotism. It was so bad, he would like to toss them into the street, all his honors and business matters, in order to quit Paris and become the keeper of a lighthouse on a horrible crag in the midst of the ocean.
“You have slept badly, my dear Master,” said Méjean with his tranquil air.
“No, no, it is exactly as I tell you—Paris makes me sick at my stomach....”
Standing on the platform near the cars, he turned about with a gesture of supreme disgust aimed at that great city into which the provinces pour all their ambitions and concupiscences, all their boiling and sordid overflow—and then accuse it of degeneracy and moral taint. He interrupted his tirade and then, with a bitter laugh, pointing to a wall:
“How he does dog me everywhere, that fellow over there!”