“There is a God, as I have found you. If you had not been at home I think I should have lost my reason. Give me your hand, I want to clasp it, to feel that I am not dreaming, that you are there, a friend. My sufferings are so great.”
“Yes, a friend,” I replied, trying to calm her, “a true friend ready to help you, to listen to you, to advise you, and to prevent you, too, from giving way to your fancies.”
“Do not speak like that,” she interrupted, freeing her hand as she drew back with almost hateful aversion, “or else I shall think you are in the plot to lie to me. No. This man deceives you as he has me. You believe in him as I have done. He would be ashamed to show himself in his true colours before the honourable man you are. Listen.” She seized my arm again and came so near me that I could feel the feverish heat of her rapid breath. “Do you know where I, Camille Favier, have come from; I, the recognized mistress of Jacques? I have come from a chamber where that wretch, Madam de Bonnivet, has given herself to him, where the bed is still in disorder and warm from their two bodies. Oh, what a hideous thing it is!”
“Impossible!” I murmured, overwhelmed with fright at the words I had just listened to and the tone in which they were spoken. “You have been the dupe of an anonymous letter or a fancied resemblance.”
“Listen again,” she went on almost tragically, and her fingers bit into my flesh, so furious was their grasp. “For a week I have had no doubt as to the relations between Jacques and this woman. Suddenly he had become tender to me with that tenderness which a mistress never mistakes. He was humouring me. There was a certain expression in his eyes when he looked at me. I would have liked to snatch away that look to read what was behind it. Then I found around his eyes that voluptuous hollow I knew in him too well. I recognized in his whole being that exhausted languor which he used to have in the days gone by when we loved passionately, and he avoided our appointments. He always had an excuse to change and postpone them. You see, I am talking to you as I feel. It is brutal, but what I am telling you is true, as I have always told the truth to him and to you. It was I, you understand, who asked for these appointments, I who did the hunting, while he refused me and escaped from me. Is any other proof of a lover’s deception necessary? But this week I began again to doubt. I received a visit from this woman’s husband. She had the audacity to send him to me! He came with Senneterre to ask me to act at a grand affair they are having next Monday.”
“I have an invitation to it,” I interrupted, suddenly recollecting that I had received an invitation for it. “I was astonished at it, but I understand now. It was an account of you.”
“Ah, well! you will not see me there,” she replied in a tone which froze my heart, it was so ferocious, “and I have an idea that this function will not take place.” Then with rising anger she said: “Now, see how innocent I am still! When the fool of a husband asked me that, and I said 'yes,’ seeing that Jacques displayed no emotion, it seemed to me impossible that this woman could really be his mistress. I did not believe it of her, nor did I believe that he was her lover. I knew she was a famous coquette, and you remember how I judged him? But this was on her part such insolent audacity, and on his shameful cowardice! No. Had you come yourself, even this morning, to tell me that she was his mistress, I should not have believed it.”
She was so agonized at what she was preparing to tell that she had to stop again. Her hands, which had let go of me again, trembled and her eyes closed from her excessive suffering.
“And now?” I said to her.
“Now?” She burst into a nervous laugh. “Now I know of what they are capable, he in particular. She is a woman of the world who has lovers. But for him to have done what he has done! Oh, the wretch, the wicked monster! I am going mad as I talk to you. But listen, listen,” she repeated in a frenzy, as if she feared I should interrupt her story. “To-day at two o’clock there was to have been a rehearsal of the new comedy by Dorsenne at the theatre. He is altering an act and the rehearsal was countermanded. I did not hear of it till I got to the theatre. For that reason I found myself about two o’clock in the Rue de la Chausée d’Antin with the afternoon before me. I had one or two calls to make in the neighbourhood. I started, and then some clumsy person trod on my skirt, tearing a flounce almost off. Look.” She showed me that a large piece of the bottom of her skirt was torn. “It happened at the top of the Rue de Clichy near the Rue Nouvelle.”