On the day of departure, seeing that matters were growing worse from hour to hour, he was utterly miserable. It seemed to him a peculiarly ominous thing that they should thrust the linen into dismal-looking chests. Pauline was packing her own boxes with joyful eagerness. He turned from her as though she were doing an evil thing, and huddled against the wall. “The worst has come,” he thought. “This is the end of all things!”
Whether he believed that things ceased to exist when he saw them no longer, or whether he was only anxious to avoid a painful spectacle, he was careful not to look in Pauline’s direction. As she went to and fro she chanced to notice Riquet’s attitude, and its melancholy struck her as comical. Laughing, she called him: “Here, Riquet, here!” But he would neither stir from his corner nor turn his head. He hadn’t at that moment the heart to caress his young mistress, and a secret instinct, a kind of foreboding, warned him not to go too near to the gaping trunk. Pauline called him several times, and as he did not respond she went over to him and picked him up in her arms.
“How miserable we are!” she said. “How much to be pitied!”
Her tone was ironical; Riquet did not understand irony. He lay motionless and dejected in her arms, feigning to see nothing, to hear nothing.
“Look at me, Riquet!” she demanded. Three times she bade him look at her, but in vain. Then, simulating violent anger, she threw him into the trunk, crying, “In you go, stupid!” and banged the lid on him. At that moment her aunt called her, and she went out of the room, leaving Riquet in the trunk.
He felt exceedingly uneasy, for it never entered his head that Pauline had put him there for fun, and merely to tease him. Judging that his position was quite bad enough already, he endeavoured not to aggravate it by thoughtless behaviour. For some moments, therefore, he remained motionless without even drawing a breath. Then, feeling that no fresh disaster threatened him, he thought he had better explore his gloomy prison. He pawed the petticoats and chemises upon which he had been so cruelly precipitated, seeking some outlet by which he might escape. He had been busy for two or three minutes when Monsieur Bergeret, who was getting ready to go out, called him:
“Riquet! Riquet! Here! we’re going to the bookshop to say good-bye to Paillot! Here! Where are you?”
Monsieur Bergeret’s voice comforted Riquet greatly. He replied to it by a desperate scratching at the wicker sides of the trunk.
“Where is the dog?” inquired Monsieur Bergeret of Pauline, who at that moment returned, carrying a pile of linen.
“In my trunk, papa.”