CHAPTER XVIII
THE next morning, towards eleven, Mlle. Clara Laneret, better known in night cabarets by her nickname of rlandaise, bent over the banister of her staircase to watch someone go down.
“Eh, monsieur!” she exclaimed suddenly, discreetly recalling him. “You will come again, wo you?”
The “monsieur”—that is to say, M. Eusèbe Raindal, member of the Institute of France, officer of the Légion onneur, author of the Life of Cleopatra and of several other important books—the “monsieur” replied in a weak voice, rendered even more hollow by the distance of the steps:
“Yes, yes, certainly, I shall come back!...”
What a disgrace! What turpitude! He had followed that brunette girl, missed his train, lost his self-respect altogether! Ah! if his family, if Zozé were to see him on that sordid staircase running out, pursued by the tenderness of Clara rlandaise!... And now, where was he to go? What could he do till the hour of his train?
He stopped on the edge of the pavement, trying to read on the high enameled plate, the name of the street—rue ms ... rue msterdam—which he had forgotten. His head was heavy, his tongue pasty and he longed to resume his sleep.
“I might go and see Cyprien,” he thought, stiffening himself against slumber.
He called a cab. But when he reached the house in the rue ssas, Uncle Cyprien had gone out on his tricycle.
“Not three minutes ago,” the concierge assured him.