"Monsieur de la Croix-Firmin?" he asked.
"The Count is not at home," replied the doorkeeper.
"But he made an appointment with me for half-past eleven, and I am punctual," said Hubert, drawing out his watch; "has he long gone out?"
"No, sir; you ought to have met him. The Count was here five minutes ago; he cannot have turned the corner."
Hubert had learnt what he wanted. He hurried in the direction of the place where he had passed La Croix-Firmin, and, after a few paces he saw him again, about to follow the footpath of the Avenue towards the Arc de Triomphe. It was he, then! Hubert followed him slowly at a little distance, and watched him with a sort of devouring anguish. He saw him walking daintily along, with a litheness that was at once refined and strong. He remembered what had taken place at Trouville, and every one of La Croix-Firmin's movements revived the physical vision.
Hubert compared himself mentally, frail and slight as he was, with the sturdy, haughty fellow, who, half a head taller than himself, was thus passing along beneath the beautiful sky of this winter's morning, with a step which spoke the certainty of strength, and holding his stick by the middle, in the English fashion, at some distance from his body. The comparison sufficiently explained the determining cause of Theresa's fault, and for the first time the young man perceived those deadly causes in their genuine brutishness. "Ah! the why! The why! There it is!" he thought, as, with painful envy, he observed this man's animal energy. His first emotion was too bitter for him, and the unhappy fellow was about to give up his pursuit when he saw La Croix-Firmin get into a cab. He hailed one himself.
"Follow that vehicle," he said to the driver.
The thought that his enemy was going to see Theresa had just restored all Hubert's frenzy. From time to time he leaned out of the window of his four-wheeler, and could see the one which conveyed his rival driving along. This cab, which was of a yellow colour, went down the Champs Elysées, passed along the Rue Royale, entered the Rue Saint Honoré, and then stopped in front of the Café-Voisin. La Croix-Firmin was merely going out to breakfast. Hubert could not repress a smile at the pitiful result of his curiosity. Mechanically he also entered the café. The young Count was already seated at a table with two friends, who had been waiting for him.
At the other extremity of the hall there was a single table unoccupied, at which Hubert placed himself. From here he was able, not, indeed, to hear the conversation of the three guests—the noise in the restaurant was too loud for that—but to study the physiognomy of the man whom he detested. He ordered his own meal at random, and sank into a kind of analysis known to those observers from taste or by profession, who will enter a theatre, a smoking-room, or a railway carriage with the sole desire of observing the workings of human physiology, and of tracing the instinctive manifestations of temperament in gesture, look, sound of breathing, or posture. It sometimes happened, indeed, that a raising of the voice would cause a fragmentary sentence to reach Hubert; but he paid no heed to it, sunk as he was in the contemplation of the man himself, whom he saw almost in front of him, with his bold eyes, his rather short neck, and his strong jaws.
When La Croix-Firmin had entered, his complexion had looked worn and pimply; but when breakfast was half over the work of digestion began to send an influx of blood into his face. He ate much and steadily, with potent slowness. He laughed loudly. His hands, holding his knife and fork, were strong, and displayed two rings. His forehead, which was shown in all its narrowness by his short curls, could never have been lit up by a flame of thought. All this formed a whole which, even in Hubert's hostile eyes, was not devoid of a manly, healthy beauty; but it was the brutish beauty of a being of flesh and blood, as to whom it was impossible for a person of refinement to entertain an illusion for an hour. To say of a woman that she had given herself to this man was to say that she had yielded to an instinct of a wholly physical order.