Nevertheless her despair had not entirely disappeared on the following day or during the weeks which ensued, and which she had spent in the neighbourhood of Paris at a country house belonging to one of her friends who was acquainted with Hubert. He had gone there to see her and had found her as silent as ever, and at times almost dull. She had returned to Paris in the same condition, and with her face somewhat altered; but he had attributed the change to physical uneasiness. A sudden and new association of ideas now caused him to say to himself:
"What if this were remorse? Remorse for what? Why, for her infamy!"
He got up, went out of the café, resumed his walk, and shook off this frightful hypothesis.
"Fool that I am," he thought, "if she had deceived me it would have been because she did not love me, and what motive would she then have to lie to me?"
This objection, which appeared irrefutable to him, drove away the suspicion for a few minutes. Then it came back again as it always does: "But who is this Count de la Croix-Firmin? Has she ever spoken of him to me?" he asked himself.
He searched anxiously through all his recollections, but could not find that this name had ever been uttered by her. Still, if— Suddenly in a hidden corner of his memory he perceived the syllables of the already hateful name. He had seen them printed in a newspaper article on the festivities at Trouville. It was certainly in a Boulevard paper, and in a connection in which he had also remarked his mistress's name. By what chance did this little fact, in itself insignificant, return to torment him at this moment?
He had a doubt as to his accuracy, and he took a carriage to go to the office of the only paper that he read habitually. He searched through the collection, and laid his hand upon the short paragraph, which he recollected, doubtless, because he had read it several times on Theresa's account. It was the report of a garden party given by a Marchioness de Jussat. Did it merely prove that this Monsieur de la Croix-Firman had been introduced to Madame de Sauve?
"Ah!" exclaimed the poor fellow after these murderous reflections, "am I going to become jealous?"
This represented an insupportable idea to him, for nothing was more contrary to the innate loyalty of his whole nature than distrust. Then he remembered the warm tenderness which she had lavished upon him from the first, and as he had ever since followed the sweet practice of opening up his whole heart to her, he said to himself that he had a sure means of removing this evil vision for ever. He had simply to see Theresa and tell her everything. In the first place this would warn her of a calumny which she must immediately put down. Then, he felt that a single word coming from the lips of this woman would immediately dissipate every shadow of anxiety in his mind. He entered a post-office and scrawled on the blue paper of a little pneumatic despatch:
"Tuesday, five o'clock.—The lover is sad, and cannot do without his mistress. Wicked persons have been maligning her to him. Who should hear all this, if not the dear confidante of every sorrow and every joy? Can she come to-morrow, she knows where, at ten o'clock in the morning? Let her do so, and she shall be loved still more, if that be possible, by her H.L.,—which denotes this closing afternoon: Horrible lassitude."