"She has soared above you, dish-clouts!" he would cry sometimes, half mad with misery. "It was you who first estranged us—now it is your turn to be spurned." And, as he tossed sleepless, his fancy followed her; or pacing the room, he projected some passionate indictment, which, on reflection, he never sent.
"You should try to work," his reason told him. "If you worked, you might manage to forget in minutes." And, setting his teeth, he took palette and brush and worked doggedly for hours. But he did not forget, and the result of his effort was so execrable that he knew that he was simply wasting good paint.
Then, because work was beyond him, and his purse was always slimmer, he began to make déjeuner do for dinner, too. And not long after that, he was reducing his rations more every day. It was a haggard Floromond who threaded his way among the crowds that massed the pavements when some weeks had passed. The boulevards were gay with booths of toys and trifles now; great branches of holly glowed on the baroques of the flower-vendors at the street corners; and the restaurants, where throngs would fête the Réveillon, and New Year's Eve, displayed advice to merry-makers to book their tables well ahead.
"My own rejoicings will be held at home!" said Floromond.
And, during the afternoon of New Year's Eve, it was by a stroke of irony that the first comrade who had rapped at the door since Frisonnette's flight came to propose expenditure. "Two places go begging for the supper at the Café des Beaux Esprits," he explained blithely, "and it struck me that you and your wife might join our party? Quite select, mon vieux. They promise to do one very well, and five francs a cover is to include everything but the wine."
"My wife has an engagement that she found it impossible to refuse," said the painter, huddled over the fading fire. "And as for me, I am not hungry."
The other stared. "There is time enough for you to be hungry by midnight."
"That is a fact," assented Floromond; "I may be most inconveniently hungry by midnight. But I am less likely to be scattering five francs. In plain French, my dear Bonvoisin, if you could lend me a few sous, I should feel comparatively prosperous. I am like the two places at the Beaux Esprits—I go begging."
Bonvoisin looked down his nose. "I should have been overjoyed to accommodate you, of course," he mumbled, "but at this season, you know how it is. What with the pestilential tips to the concierge, and the postman, and one thing and another, I am confoundedly hard up myself."
"All my sympathy!" said Floromond. "Amuse yourself well at the banquet." And he sprinkled a little more dust over the dying boulets in the grate, to prolong their warmth.