She laughed and clung closer to me. Despite her bitter experiences, she had no more real knowledge of the world than myself. Money was a thing to amuse oneself with—a thing very hard to obtain.
"You will leave this place and live in the country. You will never go to Cardillac's again. Think, Eloise; it is May! You never see the country here in Paris. The hawthorn is out, and the woods at Etiolles are more beautiful than the forest was at Lichtenberg. Why, you are crying!"
"I am crying because I am happy," said she, whispering the words against my shoulder.
Then I left her.
I cannot tell you my feelings. I cannot put them into words. It was as if I had seen Moloch face to face, seen the brazen monster in the Square of Carthage, seen the officiating priests and the little veiled children seized by the brazen arms and plunged in the burning stomach.
I had seen that day Eloise Feliciani, the living child, and Amy Feraud, the cinder remnants of a child consumed; and God in His mercy had given me power to seize Eloise from the monster, scorched, indeed, but living.
I found the Boulevard St. Michel almost deserted now, and took my way along it to the Seine.
"What are you to do with her?"
That is the question I would have asked myself had I been a man of the world. But I knew nothing of the world or the convenances. I was not in love with her. Had I met her for the first time that night it might have been different; but for me she was just the child of Lichtenberg, the little figure I had last seen standing at the door of the Hôtel de Mayence, holding in her arms the black cat with the amber eyes.
What was I to do with her? I had already made up my mind. I would put her to live in the Pavilion of Saluce. I had not a real friend in the world except old Joubert, or a thing to love. I would be no longer lonely. What good times we would have!