No, I certainly would not be jealous again. I blushed to think that I had been for a single instant. If Eugénie was no longer the same with me as in the first months of our wedded life, it was doubtless because we are not permitted to enjoy such happiness forever. Enjoyment, if it does not entirely extinguish love, certainly diminishes its piquancy; when one can gratify one’s desires as soon as they are formed, one does not form so many. And yet Ernest and Marguerite were still like lovers! To be sure, they were not married. Could it be that the idea that they could leave each other at any minute was the consideration that kept their love from growing old?
When she had entirely recovered her health, Eugénie’s taste for society revived; she paid little attention to her daughter, and that distressed me. For our Henriette was fascinating. I passed hours talking with her, and those hours passed much more rapidly than those which I was obliged to spend at evening parties.
I suggested going to see my son at Livry. My wife declared that he was too small, that we must wait until his features had become more formed. But I did not choose to wait any longer; I longed to embrace my little Eugène, so I hired a horse one morning, and went to the nurse’s house.
My son seemed to me a fascinating little fellow; I recognized his mother’s features in his. I embraced him, but I sighed; something was lacking to my happiness. I felt that it was wrong of Eugénie not to have desired to embrace her son.
The nurse asked me if my wife was sick. The good people thought that she must be sick because she had failed to accompany me.
“Yes, she is not feeling very well,” I said to the nurse.
“Oh well! as soon as she’s all right again, I’m sure that madame will want to come too.”
“Yes, we will come together the next time.”
I passed several hours beside my son’s cradle. As I drove back to Paris, I indulged in reflections which were not cheerful. In vain did I try to excuse Eugénie, I felt that her conduct was not what it should be, and it distressed me to feel that she was in the wrong.
I reached home at six o’clock. Madame was not there; she had gone to dine with Madame Dorcelles. She was one of her school friends whom she had met again in society; one of those dissipated, coquettish women, who consider it perfectly natural to see their husbands only by chance, when they dine with him. I did not like that woman, and I had told Eugénie so and had requested her not to see too much of her; and she went to dine at her house!