At the same time, she could be trying, she could be exasperating. And she had a temper—a temper. What she made me suffer in the way of jealousy, during that winter, it would be gruesome to recount. She enjoyed an exceeding great popularity in the Quarter; she was much run after. It were futile to pretend that she hadn’t her caprices. And she held herself free as air. She would call no man master.
You might take what she would give, and welcome; but you must claim nothing as your due. You mustn’t presume upon the fact that she was supping with you to-night, to complain if she should sup tomorrow with another. Her concession of a privilege did not by any means imply that it was exclusive. She would endure no exactions, no control or interference, no surveillance, above all, no reproaches. Mercy, how angry she would become if I ventured any, how hoighty-toighty and unapproachable.
“You imagine that I am your property? Did you invent me? One would say you held a Government patent. All rights reserved! Thank you. You fancy perhaps that Paris is Constantinople? Ah, mais non!”
She had a temper and a flow of language. There were points you couldn’t touch without precipitating hail and lightning.
Thus my winter was far from a tranquil one, and before it was half over I had three grey hairs. Honey and wormwood, happiness and heartburn, reconciliations and frantic little tiffs, carried us blithely on to Mi-Carême, when things reached a crisis....
Mi-Carême fell midway in March that year: a velvety, sweet, sunlit day, Spring stirring in her sleep. P’tit-Bleu and I had spent the day together, in the crowded, crowded streets. We had visited the Boulevards, of course, to watch the triumph of the Queen of Washerwomen; we had pelted everybody with confetti; and we had been pelted so profusely in return, that there were confetti in our boots, in our pockets, down our necks, and numberless confetti clung in the black meshes of P’tit-Bleu’s hair, like little pink, blue, and yellow stars. But all day long something in P’tit-Bleu’s manner, something in her voice, her smile, her carriage, had obscurely troubled me; something not easy to take hold of, something elusive, unformulable, but disquieting. A certain indefinite aloofness, perhaps; an accentuated independence; as if she were preoccupied with secret thoughts, with intentions, feelings, that she would not let me share.
And then, at night, we went to the Opera Ball.
P’tit-Bleu was dressed as an Odalisque: a tiny round Turkish cap set jauntily sidewise on her head, a short Turkish jacket, both coat and jacket jingling and glittering with sequins; a long veil of gauze, wreathed like a scarf round her shoulders; then baggy Turkish trousers of blue silk, and scarlet Turkish slippers. Oh, she was worth seeing; I was proud to have her on my arm. Her black crinkling hair, her dancing eyes, her eager face and red smiling mouth—the Sultan himself might have envied me such a houri. And many, in effect, were the envious glances that we encountered, as we made our way into the great brilliantly lighted ball-room, and moved hither and thither among the Harlequins and Columbines, the Pierrots, the Toréadors, the Shepherdesses and Vivandières, the countless fantastic masks, by whom the place was peopled. P’tit-Bleu had a loup of black velvet, which sometimes she wore, and sometimes gave to me to carry for her. I don’t know when she looked the more dangerous, when she had it on, and her eyes glimmered mysteriously through its peepholes, or when she had it off.
Many were the envious glances that we encountered, and presently I became aware that one individual was following us about: a horrid, glossy creature, in a dress suit, with a top-hat that was much too shiny, and a hugh waxed moustache that he kept twirling invidiously: an undersized, dark, Hebraic-featured man, screamingly “rasta’.” Whithersoever we turned, he hovered annoyingly near to us, and ogled P’tit-Bleu under my very beard. This was bad enough; but—do sorrows ever come as single spies?—conceive my emotions, if you please, when, by-and-by, suspicion hardened into certitude that P’tit-Bleu was not merely getting a vainglorious gratification from his attentions, but that she was positively playing up to them, encouraging him to persevere! She chattered—to me, indeed, but at him—with a vivacity there was no misconstruing; laughed noisily, fluttered her fan, flirted her veil, donned and doffed her loup, and, I daresay, when my back was turned, exchanged actual eye-shots with the brute.... In due time quadrilles were organised, and P’tit-Bleu led a set. The glossy interloper was one of the admiring circle that surrounded her. Ugh! his complacent, insinuating smile, the conquering air with which he twirled his moustachios. And P’tit-Bleu.... When, at the finish, she sprang up, after her grand écart, what do you suppose she did?... The brazen little minx, instead of rejoining me, slipped her arm through his, and went tripping off with him to the supper-room.
Oh, the night I passed, the night of anguish! The visions that tortured me, as I tramped my floor! The delirious revenges that I plotted, and gloated over in anticipation! She had left me—the mockery of it!—she had left me her loup, her little black velvet loup, with its empty eye-holes, and its horribly reminiscent smell. Everything P’tit-Bleu owned was scented with peau-d’.spagne. I wreaked my fury upon that loup, I promise you. I smote it with my palm, I ground it under my heel, I tore it limb from limb, I called it all manner of abusive names. Early in the morning I was at P’tit-Bleu’s house; but the concierge grunted, “Pas rentrée.” Oh, the coals thereof are coals of fire. I returned to her house a dozen times that day, and at length, towards nightfall, found her in. We had a stormy session, but, of course, the last word of it was hers: still, for all slips, she was one of Eve’s family. Of course she justified herself, and put me in the wrong. I went away, vowing I would never, never, never see her again. “Va! Ça m’est bien égal,” she capped the climax by calling after me. Oh, youth! Oh, storm and stress! And to think that one lives to laugh at its memory.