Presently she found herself in another garden surrounded by arcades.
She recognized the Palais Royal. Being tired and warm, she sat down
here for an hour or two.
A crowd of people came in, a well-dressed crowd, chatting, smiling,
bowing to each other, that happy crowd of beautiful women and wealthy
men who live only for dress and amusement. Jeanne felt bewildered in
the midst of this brilliant assemblage, and got up to make her escape.
But suddenly the thought came to her that she might meet Paul in this
place; and she began to wander about, looking into the faces, going
and coming incessantly with her quick step from one end of the garden
to the other.
People turned round to look at her, others laughed as they pointed her
out. She noticed it and fled, thinking that they were doubtless amused
at her appearance and at her dress of green plaid, selected by
Rosalie, and made according to her ideas by the dressmaker at
Goderville.
She no longer dared even to ask her way of passersby, but at last she
ventured to do so and found her way back to the hotel.
The following day she went to the police department to ask them to
look for her child. They could promise her nothing, but said they
would do all they could. She wandered about the streets hoping that
she might come across him. And she felt more alone in this bustling
crowd, more lost, more wretched than in the lonely country.
That evening when she came back to the hotel she was informed that a
man had come to see her from M. Paul, and that he would come back
again the following day. Her heart began to beat violently and she
never closed her eyes that night. If it should be he! Yes, it
assuredly was, although she would not have recognized him from the
description they gave her.
About nine o'clock the following morning there was a knock at the
door. She cried: "Come in!" ready to throw herself into certain
outstretched arms. But an unknown person appeared; and while he
excused himself for disturbing her, and explained his business, which
was to collect a debt of Paul's, she felt the tears beginning to
overflow, and wiped them away with her finger before they fell on her
cheeks.
He had learned of her arrival through the janitor of the Rue Sauvage,
and as he could not find the young man, he had come to see his mother.
He handed her a paper, which she took without knowing what she was
doing and read the figures--ninety francs--which she paid without a
word.
She did not go out that day.
The next day other creditors came. She gave them all that she had left
except twenty francs and then wrote to Rosalie to explain matters to
her.