Then he went away. As usual, I felt sorry for him.
Four days after this I left that house. I had a passionate desire to say good-by to Queen Margot, but I had not the audacity to go to her, though I confess I thought that she would have sent for me herself.
When I bade good-by to the little girl I said:
"Tell your mother that I thank her very much, will you?"
"Yes, I will," she promised, and she smiled lovingly and tenderly. "Good-by till to-morrow, eh? Yes?"
I met her again twenty years later, married to an officer in the gendarmerie.
[CHAPTER XI]
Once more I became a washer-up on a steamboat, the Perm, a boat as white as a swan, spacious, and swift. This time I was a "black" washer-up, or a "kitchen man." I received seven rubles a month, and my duties were to help the cook.
The steward, stout and bloated, was as bald as a billiard-ball. He walked heavily up and down the deck all day long with his hands clasped behind his back, like a boar looking for a shady corner on a sultry day. His wife flaunted herself in the buffet. She was a woman of about forty, handsome, but faded, and so thickly powdered that her colored dress was covered with the white, sticky dust that fell from her cheeks.