I decided to pack up my belongings; that would keep me busy, and I should be able to carry everything away at daybreak, and to leave forever that woman, to whom I had been married about eighteen months, and who had already made of me a—but one does not care to speak that word concerning one’s self, although ready enough to apply it to others.
This, then, is the result of that happy marriage!—Ah! my dear sister, why did I hearken to you? Why did I marry a woman who did not love me—a woman who was not suited to me in any one respect! If we had been happy together, if I had enjoyed being with her, if I had not left her so much to her own resources, perhaps it would not have happened!
So that young innocent, that Agnès, that little simpleton, had betrayed me after only eighteen months! Perhaps it had been going on a long while already; and once more it was Raymond who—— But, in truth, I should have foreseen it; it was certain to happen.
“But,” I said to myself, “this will be your last escapade, Monsieur Raymond; to-morrow I will call upon you with a pair of pistols, which I will load myself.”
The day was beginning to break; I went down into the street, ordered a messenger to go to my room with me, gave him all my goods and chattels to carry, and bade adieu to my home. Thenceforth I would resume my bachelor life.
I had my bundles carried to my old apartment. Ah! how rejoiced I was that I had kept it! It was as if I had divined that I should return to it some day. Madame Dupont stared at my bundles.
“Does this mean that monsieur is going to sleep in his room now?” she asked slyly.
“Yes, Madame Dupont; after this I am going to live as I used to.”
That business completed, I took my weapons and went to Raymond’s apartment.
“Where are you going, monsieur?” inquired the concierge, when she saw me hurrying upstairs.