I went out without replying; and I had the pleasure of observing, from the sudden flush which overspread the face of the schoolmistress, that my silence had wounded her far more than my words.
As I passed through the court I looked about me in every direction for Jeanne. She was watching for me, and she ran to me.
“If anybody touches one little hair of your head, Jeanne, write to me! Good-bye!”
“No, not good-bye.”
I replied,
“Well, no—not good-bye! Write to me!”
I went straight to Madame de Gabry’s residence.
“Madame is at Rome with Monsieur. Did not Monsieur know it?”
“Why, yes,” I replied. “Madame wrote to me.”...
She had indeed written to me in regard to her leaving home; but my head must have become very much confused, so that I had forgotten all about it. The servant seemed to be of the same opinion, for he looked at me in a way that seemed to signify, “Monsieur Bonnard is doting”—and he leaned down over the balustrade of the stairway to see if I was not going to do something extraordinary before I got to the bottom. But I descended the stairs rationally enough; and then he drew back his head in disappointment.