She ran upstairs while the porter called a cab as she had ordered him. The simple object, if there must be a drama, of doing everything to prevent it taking place in his house, had made him as docile as if Camille had been the owner of the house, that incarnation of omnipotence to the Paris porter. When the plucky girl reached the landing before that door she had opened so many times with such sweet emotion, she had, in spite of the imminent danger, a moment’s weakness. The woman in her in a momentary flash revolted against the devotion love had suggested in such a rapid, almost animal, way, just as she would have jumped into the water to save Jacques if she had seen him drowning. Alas! she was not saving him alone! The image of her rival rose in front of her with that almost unbearable clearness of vision which accompanies the bitter attacks of the jealousy which knows it is not mistaken. Vengeance was there, however, so certain, so complete, so immediate and impersonal! It was sufficient to allow events to take their course down the slope upon which they had started.
When the poor child afterwards told me the details of this terrible day she did not make herself better than she really was. She confessed to me that the temptation was so strong that she had to act with frenzy and fury to put something irreparable between herself that moment, so she began to ring the bell at the door, first of all once, then twice, then three times, then ten times, with that prolonged ring which gives an accent of mad insistence to the bell. She could see in her mind as clearly as if she were in the room the two lovers, attracted by the bell, first laughing at the thought that it was an inopportune visitor, then exchanging glances in silence, Madam de Bonnivet in affright, and Jacques trying to reassure her, as they both got up. How she would have liked to have shouted “quick, quick!” Then she began to knock repeatedly at the door with her clenched fist. Afterwards she listened. It seemed to her, for the over-excitement of her anguish doubled the power of her senses, that she could distinguish a noise, a creaking of the floor beneath a stealthy step on the other side of the still closed door; and applying her mouth to the crack of the door to make sure of being heard—
“It is I, Jacques,” she cried, “It is I, Camille. Open the door, I beg of you, your life is in danger. Open the door, Pierre de Bonnivet is in the street.”
There was no reply. She was silent, listening once more and asking herself whether she were mistaken in thinking she heard a footstep. Then still more maddened, she began again to ring the bell at the risk of attracting the attention of some other resident in the house; she knocked at the door and called out: “Jacques, Jacques, open the door!” and she repeated: “Pierre de Bonnivet is below!” There was still no reply. In her paroxysm of fear a new idea occurred to her. She went down to the porter, who had come back with the cab, and who was now distracted and moaning in naïve egoism.
“This comes of being too good. If anything happens we shall get discharged. Where shall we go then? Where shall we get another place?”
“Give me pencil and paper,” she said, “and see if the watcher is still there.”
“He is still there,” the porter answered, and seeing Camille fold the paper on which she had feverishly scribbled a few lines, “I see,” he said, “you are going to slip the note under the door. But that won’t get the lady out. If I had a row with the fellow, we should both be locked up, and while explanations were taking place she could escape and there would be no scandal in the house.”
“That would be one way,” Camille replied, though she could not, in spite of the gravity of the danger, help smiling at the idea of a struggle between the man of the people and the elegant sportsman Pierre de Bonnivet; “but I think mine is the better plan.”
She rushed up the staircase once more, and after ringing the bell as loudly as before, she slipped under the door, as the porter had guessed, the bit of paper on which she had written: “Jacques, I want to save you. At least believe in the love you have betrayed. What more can I say? Open the door. I swear to you that B—— is at the corner of the street watching for you. If you look to the right you will see his carriage, and I swear to you, too, that I will save you.”
What a note, and how I preserve it, having obtained it from Jacques himself, as a monument of harrowing tenderness! It is impossible for me to transcribe it without shedding tears. The sublime lover had calculated that sooner or later Jacques would have to come to the door to go out. She also told herself that she would stand against the staircase wall till, after reading her supplication, he opened the door. With what a beating heart she watched her white note immediately disappear! A hand drew it inside. She could hear the rustle of the paper as the hand unfolded it and the noise of a window opening. Jacques was looking into the street, as she had told him to do, to verify for himself, in spite of the increasing darkness, the accuracy of the information contained in the strange missive. To the poor Duchess, although she had indicated the method of verification, this proof of distrust at that moment was really like the probing of a wound, the most painful spot in a painful wound! She had no time to think of this fresh humiliation. The door opened at last and the two lovers were in the anteroom facing one another: Camille a prey to her exaltation of sacrifice and martyrdom so strangely mingled with contempt and almost hatred; he pale and haggard, and looking untidy from his hasty toilet.