The door was shut behind me with the clang of a chained lock.
It occurred to me to see Gabrielle Bernier, to tell her my troubles, to ask her advice, and use her offices for a reconciliation with Juliette. Gabrielle was finishing breakfast with a friend of hers, a short, skinny woman of dark complexion, with a pointed chin like a mouse which when speaking seemed always to be nibbling at something. In a morning robe of white silk, soiled and rumpled, her hair kept from falling by a comb stuck across it on top of her head, her elbows resting on the table, Gabrielle was smoking a cigarette and sipping chartreuse from a glass.
"Why, Jean! And so you have come back?"
She showed me into her dressing room which was very untidy. At the very first words which I spoke of Juliette, she exclaimed:
"Why ... don't you know? We have not been on speaking terms for two months since the time she beat me out of a consul, my dear, an American Consul, who paid me five thousand a month! Yes, she beat me out of it, that skinflint did! And how about you? You have made her come down a peg lower, I hope."
"Ah! I!" I answered, "I am very unhappy! And so a consul is her lover now!"
Gabrielle relit her extinguished cigarette and shrugged her shoulders.
"Her lover! Do you think women like that can keep a lover! She could not keep the Lord himself, my dear! Ah, men don't stick to her very long, I tell you. They come one day and then the next they pitch camp somewhere else. Well, thanks very much! It's all right to fleece them but you must do it with your gloves on, don't you think? And you are still in love with her, poor boy."
"Still—why I am more so than ever! I have done everything to cure myself of this shameful infatuation which makes me the lowest of men, which kills me, but I can't. Well now, she is leading a loathsome life, isn't she?"
"Ah! Well ... that's true," Gabrielle exclaimed, blowing a cloud of smoke in the air. "You know that I myself don't play the prude. I am enjoying myself just like everybody else ... but honestly ... I can swear.... I'd feel ashamed to do what she does!"