It took us almost three months to install ourselves completely. The upholsterers could never get through with their work and Juliette's caprices often called for changes that took a long time to accomplish. Every day she would come back from her shopping with new ideas about the decoration of the parlor, or the dressing room. The hangings in the bedroom had to be entirely changed three times because she did not like them.
Finally one nice morning we took possession of our apartment on the Rue de Balzac.... It was high time we did.... All this unsettled existence, this continuous hurry, these open trunks yawning like coffins, this brutal scattering of dear and intimate things, these heaps of linen, these pyramids of boxes turned upside down, these cut-up pieces of string which dragged all over, all this disorder, this chaos, this trampling underfoot of things with which are associated the dearest memories or most tender regrets, and above all this feeling of uncertainty, of terror, and the sad reflections which the act of leaving a place occasions—all this made me uneasy, dejected and, must I say it, remorseful.
While Juliette was moving about, bustling amidst bundles, I was asking myself whether I had not committed some irreparable folly. Of course, I loved her.... Ah! I loved her with all the power of my soul. So far, nothing except this passion which obsessed me more and more every day, interested me at all. Still, I regretted that I had yielded so easily and quickly to an infatuation that was perhaps fraught with the gravest consequences for her and myself. I was dissatisfied with myself for not having been able to resist Juliette's wish, expressed in such delicious fashion, that I live together with her.... Could we not love each other just as well if each of us lived separately and avoid the possible clashes over such sordid things as wall-paper, for example.
And while the splendor of all this plush and the insolence of all these gilt objects in the midst of which we were now going to live frightened me, I felt a sorrowful attachment for my own scanty furniture placed without order, for my little apartment, austere yet tranquil, and now empty—an attachment one has for beloved things that are dead. But Juliette would pass by, busy, agile and charming, would embrace and kiss me on her way, and there was such a life-giving joy in her whole being, a joy so easily mingled with astonishment and childish despair at anything lost, that my morose thoughts vanished as do the night owls at sunrise.
Ah! the happy days that followed our moving from the Rue Saint Petersbourg!... First we had to test every piece of furniture down to the smallest details. Juliette sat on every divan, lounge and sofa, causing the springs to creak.
"You try it also, my dear," she would say to me. She examined every piece of furniture, scrutinized the hangings, tried the strings of the door curtain, moved a chair to a different place, smoothed a crease in the draperies. And every instant cries of admiration, of ecstasy were heard!
Then she wanted to start the inspection of the apartment all over again with the windows closed and the lights burning, in order to see the effect produced at night, never tiring of examining a thing more than once, running from one room to another, marking down every defect on a piece of paper. Then it was the wardrobe where she put her linen and mine with meticulous care and elaborate nicety and the consummate skill of a stall keeper. I chided her for assigning to me the better scentbags.
"No! no! no! I want to have a little husband who uses perfume!"
Of her old furniture and old knick-knacks, Juliette had kept only the terra cotta statue of Love which again took its place of honor on the mantlepiece in the parlor. I, on the other hand, had brought over only my books and two very beautiful sketches by Lirat which I thought it a duty to hang up in my study. Scandalized, Juliette cried with indignation:
"What are you doing there, my dear?... Such horrible things in our new apartment!... Please put these horrible things away somewhere! Oh, put them away!"