On the day following this agreement, Ernest entered my room, ran to me and embraced me.
“Do you know that I have been near death?” I asked him.
“I have just learned it from your concierge. Ungrateful man! not to send us any word! Is that the way that a man should treat his friends?”
“My dear Ernest, when I was in condition to send you word, I was out of danger; then I preferred to wait until I was entirely well, in order that I might come and tell you myself.”
“But what was this accident that happened to you?”
I told Ernest the whole story; I did not conceal from him that I was knocked down because I had gazed too long after Eugénie. Ernest was indignant at my weakness, and he started to scold me.
“My friend,” I said, “you will have no further cause for such reproaches; to prove it, I refuse from this instant to hear my wife mentioned. You will promise never to mention her name again, will you not?”
“Oh! I shall not be the one to break that promise!”
“Besides, I am going to leave you, for a long time perhaps. I am going to travel.”
“Despite my grief at being separated from you, I can only approve this plan. Change of scene will do you good. But are you going alone?”