“Why, monsieur, didn’t you know that he’d gone away?”
“What’s that? gone away?”
“To be sure; he didn’t sleep here; he took his things away during the night, paid his quarter’s rent, and told me to sell his furniture, saying that he’d send someone for the money after a while. I don’t know what had happened to him, but he seemed so confused that at first I thought he’d gone mad; he was in such a hurry that he didn’t take time to pack the most necessary things. And then he rushed off without telling me where he was going.”
“The coward! Woe to him if I ever meet him! But he is quite capable of having left Paris!”
I left Raymond’s concierge in open-mouthed amazement and returned to Rue Saint-Florentin, to arrange my little apartment with a view to resuming my former habits.
XXXV
MY NEIGHBOR
After a few days I recovered my tranquillity; even my spirits, which I had lost, seemed to return with me to my old lodgings; sometimes I fancied that I was still a bachelor; in truth, the best thing for me to do, now that I had no wife, was to forget that I was married.
As I had foreseen, I was the one at whom the stones were thrown; I received a letter from my sister, who informed me that it was a frightful thing to have deserted my wife; that we simply must be reconciled; that Madame de Pontchartrain was furious, and that Pélagie was constantly asking her for money. In reply, I wrote my sister an exact account of what had happened, begging her to keep it secret. I knew that she would not, but I did not care if the good people of Melun knew that I was a cuckold; I had no desire to go back there.
In my old lodgings I resumed my former mode of life, save for its follies, in which I no longer indulged; indeed, it was necessary for me to lead an orderly, economical life; for my dear wife was running through her fortune very rapidly, and I foresaw that she would soon have recourse to me, and that I should be obliged to make her an allowance.