At seven he had given a lesson at Ecole Saint-André. From eight to ten he had taken a class of boys in the same school who were still too young to follow the ordinary curriculum. Then he had just had time to jump into a Pantheon omnibus which took him to a third lesson in the Rue d'Astorg. 'I bought a paper on the way,' added the good man, 'to read the account of last night's affair. Dear me,' he exclaimed, undoing the strap that held his small parcel of books, 'I must have lost it.'
'You are so careless,' said Emilie almost angrily.
'Oh! it doesn't matter!' cried René gaily; 'Offarel will tell us all about it. You know that he is my walking guide-book. By to-night he will have read all the Paris and provincial newspapers.'
Knowing that the smallest details of last night's performance would be collected by Rosalie's father and commented upon by her mother, René was the more anxious to give the girl a full account of it himself. There is an instinct in man—is it hypocrisy or pity?—which impels him to treat with the utmost regard the woman who no longer holds his affections. Directly lunch was over he bent his steps towards the Rue de Bagneux. It had formerly been his custom to call upon the Fresneaus pretty frequently about that time. While covering the short distance he had often extemporised a few verses, after the manner of Heine, which he poured into Rosalie's ear when they were alone. The power of walking in a day-dream had, however, long since left him, and rarely had the vulgarity of this corner of Paris struck him to such a degree. All in it was eloquent of the sordid lives of the petit bourgeois—from the number of the little shops to the display of their cheap and varied wares that covered half the pavement. In the windows of the restaurants were bills of fare offering meals of various courses at extraordinarily low prices. Even the cooking utensils on sale in the bazaars seemed to have an air of poverty about them.
These and a score of other details reminded the young man of the limited resources of small incomes, of an existence reduced to that shabby gentility which has not the horrible and attractive picturesqueness of absolute want. When we begin to love we find in all the surroundings of our beloved so many reasons for increased affection, and when we cease to love these same details furnish the heart with as many reasons for further hardening. Why did the impression made upon René by the wretchedness of the neighbourhood cause him to feel annoyed with Rosalie? Why did the appearance of the Rue de Bagneux make him as angry with the girl as any personal wrong done to himself? This street, with its line of old houses and a blank wall at the bottom, had a most deserted and poverty-stricken air. At the moment when René entered it one end was almost blocked up by a cart heavily laden with straw, the three horses yoked to it, in country fashion, by stout ropes, standing with their heads half hidden in their nosebags whilst the driver was finishing his dinner in a small, greasy-looking cookshop. A Sister of Mercy was walking along the pavement on the left carrying a large umbrella under her arm; the wind flapped the wings of her immense white cap up and down, and the cross of her rosary beat against her blue serge dress. Why, after having heaped upon Rosalie all the displeasure caused by the sight of her miserable surroundings, did René involuntarily connect Madame Moraines with the religious ideas the good Sister's dress evoked? The manner in which that beautiful creature had spoken only the night before of the pious works performed by many so-called frivolous women came back to him. Three times that day had Suzanne's image come before him, and each time more distinctly. Great heavens! What joy were his if his good genius brought him face to face with her in some retired street like this as she was going to visit her poor! But that was out of the question, so René turned down a passage at the end of which were the ground floor apartments occupied by the Offarels. Profiting by the example of the Fresneaus, they, too, had realised the ambition of every family of the petite bourgeoisie of Paris, and had found in this deserted quarter of the capital a suite of rooms with a bit of garden as large as a pocket-handkerchief.
'Ah! Monsieur René!' exclaimed Rosalie, coming to the door in answer to the young man's ring at the bell. The Offarels only employed the services of a charwoman who left at twelve o'clock, and concerning whom the old lady always had an inexhaustible stock of anecdotes. At the sight of her lover, poor Rosalie, generally somewhat pale, coloured with joy, and she could not repress the cry of pleasure that rose to her lips.
'How good of you to come and tell us so soon how your play got on!' she said, taking the visitor into the dining-room, a dismal apartment with a north light, and in which there was no fire. Madame Offarel was so stingy that in winter, when the weather was not too cold, she would save the expense of fuel, and make her daughters wear mittens and capes instead! 'We are just going through the linen,' remarked the good lady, motioning René to a chair.
On the table lay the whole of the fortnightly washing, from the old man's shirts to the girls' underclothes, the bluish whiteness of the calicots and cottons being enhanced by the darkness of the room. It was the poor linen of a family in straitened circumstances; there were stockings evidently darned times out of number, serviettes full of holes, cuffs and collars frayed at the edges—in fact, a whole heap of things that Rosalie felt were not for a poet's eyes. She therefore gave him no time to sit down, but said, 'Monsieur René had much better come into the drawing-room—it's so dark here.'
Before her mother had had time to say anything further she had pushed the visitor into the apartment honoured by that pompous name, and which, in reality, more often served as a workroom for Angélique. The latter added a little to the income of the family by occasionally translating an English novel, and was at that moment seated at a small table near the window, writing. A dictionary was lying at her feet, those extremities being encased in a pair of slippers the backs of which she had trodden down for ease. No sooner had she caught sight of Vincy than she gathered up her books and papers and fled.
'Excuse me, Monsieur René,' she exclaimed, brushing back with one hand the hair that hung about her head and casting an apologetic look at her dress—a loose morning wrapper wanting some half-dozen buttons down the front. 'I am a perfect fright—don't look at me, please.'