“Your health, my boy,” repeats Andoche, “and take my advice: Be careful what you do. Everybody knows Madame Catherine’s love of coquetry. It is not that she cares for you—oh, no! but she hates her husband. If Barrau at any time since the raspberry fête had but asked forgiveness, she would have turned her back on you fast enough, you may be sure.”
In spite of Firmin’s rising indignation, Andoche continues: “And if she were not so often twitted by the village girls of being at odds with Savin, she might now, even, overlook the humiliation she endured that day. But Rosalie and Félicité are always mocking her on the subject, and it only adds fuel to the flame. There will be trouble one of these days, mark my words, and as you are my friend, I advise you to keep out of it.”
A man of Firmin’s character and disposition, however, never accepts good advice. His egotism is too great, his mind too stupid for that. So now, with a supercilious smile, Firmin listens to Andoche’s not wholly unreasonable or irrelevant harangue.
“You can accept my advice or not, as you choose, my friend. But were I in your place, I should much prefer to pass my time with old Andoche, tinkling the merry glass of wine, than to throw myself away on a designing woman.”
Firmin indulges in a burst of laughter.
“So that is your opinion, is it? Well, well—let us drink a bumper and change the subject, for I am not a little weary of it, old fellow. Here’s to you and to all good counselors.”
And so for the time the subject is dropped. Andoche, however, poor sot that he is, has expressed opinions that are not altogether wrong.
For over two months Catherine has daily become more sullen and capricious. At times her face wears a terrible expression, and though she has lost none of her beauty, still, under the influence of the fixed idea that haunts her, she appears less gracious and agreeable. In her face lurks a defiant, scornful expression, which does not become her, and her smile is constrained and bitter. To those who know her well but one solution is evident.
Her thirst for revenge is inordinate. She evinces it in her actions. And Savin lacks that suppleness of discernment to characterize it as a craving for revenge, and thus obtusely fails to endeavor to turn her mind into other channels. He simply accepts his wife’s silence, and, to him, only odd conduct as a sudden caprice.
“When she is ready to do so she will return to my heart’s shelter,” he thinks, little imagining the true state of the case.