“Listen,” she said with a kind of gravity, “you’re not to hurt this one. I won’t have it.”
“I tell you I’m going to make up as a curé.”
As soon as he had disappeared, Carola got up and began to dress.
I cannot exactly tell what to think of Carola Venitequa. This exclamation of hers leads me to suppose that her heart at that time was not altogether fundamentally corrupt. Thus sometimes, in the very midst of abjection, the strangest delicacies of feelings suddenly reveal themselves, just as an azure tinted flower will grow in the middle of a dung-heap. Essentially submissive and devoted, Carola, like so many other women, had need of guidance. When Lafcadio had abandoned her, she had immediately rushed off to find her old lover, Protos—out of spite—out of self-assertion—to revenge herself. She had once more gone through hard times—and Protos had no sooner recovered her than he had once more made her his tool. For Protos liked being master.
Another man than Protos might have raised, rehabilitated this woman. But first of all, he must have had the wish to. Protos, on the contrary, seemed bent on degrading her. We have seen what shameful services the ruffian demanded of her; it is true that she apparently submitted to them without much reluctance; but the first impulses of a soul in revolt against the ignominy of its lot, often pass unperceived by that very soul itself. It is only in the light of love that the secret kicking against the pricks is revealed. Was Carola falling in love with Amédée? It would be rash to affirm it; but, corrupt as she was, she had been touched to emotion by the contact of his purity, and the exclamation which I have recorded came indubitably from her heart.
Protos returned. He had not changed his dress. He carried in his hand a bundle of clothes, which he put down on a chair.
“Well! and now what?” she asked.
“I’ve reflected. I must first go round to the post and look at his letters. I won’t change till this afternoon. Pass me your looking-glass.”
He went to the window, and bending towards his reflection in the glass, he fastened to his lip a pair of short brown moustaches, a trifle lighter than his hair.
“Call Baptistin.”