“Yes, she has been kind to me, but I don’t want any more of her favors. Oh, even if it can all be straightened out, I say again, no more flirtations with married women, no more illicit love-affairs. Unmarried girls or widows, women without entanglements,—they’re all right; with them one doesn’t have to hide all the time, to make long détours and hire cabs.”
“All such dangers are what give piquancy to that sort of intrigue.”
“Thanks; that same piquancy is very pleasant. Oh! just let me get out of this scrape, and I will turn over a new leaf, I will become incorruptible so far as the ladies are concerned. But if I am to have time to turn virtuous, Montdidier must not blow my brains out.—Come, my friend, let us think what it is best to do.”
“Go to Giraud’s; you can see whether Montdidier is there with his wife; and according to the way he behaves to you, you can easily judge whether he recognized you, and how he has taken the thing.”
“Go there and expose myself to his fury, to his wrath, before everybody? surely you don’t mean it, my friend?”
“A man of breeding doesn’t take society into his confidence in such matters.”
“I told you that Montdidier was a brutal fellow.”
“If he thinks that he has been wronged, he won’t go to a party with his wife.”
“That is true; but there is another way to make sure, and that is for you to go to Giraud’s. If our husband and wife are there, you can watch them, and you will be able to tell at once on what terms they are; furthermore, you might slyly give the lady to understand that you have just left me. What do you say? Oh! my dear Blémont, do me this favor; go to Giraud’s.”
“I will do it solely to oblige you, for the business agent’s receptions are not very interesting; and this evening I intended to go to see some very agreeable ladies.”