My Neighbor Raymond (Novels of Paul de Kock Volume XI)

by Paul de Kock

I had ceased to go into society; I should have run the risk of meeting my wife or of being beset with disagreeable questions concerning the cause of our separation; in society, people are so indiscreet that they always ask, from preference, the most unpleasant questions, and I did not choose to afford them that pleasure.

I went to the play, to all the places where one is free from restraint. Sometimes I caught a glimpse of my wife in a carriage, or in a box at the theatre with two or three young men; it seemed that she had not regretted Raymond very deeply, and I was not surprised; she was not so constituted as to regret anyone. When I saw her in the distance, I hastened away in the opposite direction; and she did the same; that was the only thing in which we agreed.

I prayed that she might not have children now! I should have to be their father, willy-nilly. How delightful it would be to be presented with a little family that I must support!

“You should have gone back to your wife,” someone will say; “then you could have believed that you were the father of your children.”

Thanks; I preferred to live in peace and receive such gifts as my wife chose to send me.

I had been a bachelor three months; that time had passed very rapidly, for ennui never found its way into my little apartment. I had resumed my books and my music;—music! so soothing to the heart, and so sympathetic with our joys and our sorrows! Every evening I sat down at my piano and passed two or three hours there; it seemed to me that Nicette was with me, that she was listening to me; I dreamed that she still loved me, that she had never loved anyone else, and I was happy while cajoling myself thus with chimeras; men are great children who cajole themselves all their lives.

Sometimes I forgot the hour; the quiet of the night inclines the heart to feed on illusions, and I abandoned myself to those illusions that fascinated me. No one in the house had complained because I played so late; there was no one above me but maid-servants, whom it did not keep from sleeping; below was an old annuitant, slightly deaf; so that there was nobody except my neighbor on the same landing who might be annoyed by it; but I had asked the concierge if she had said anything about it, and she said no. That woman was absolutely invisible; several times I had fancied that I heard her door open, and had gone out quickly; for I confess that I was curious to see her—but her door was already closed.

She might have passed me again and again, and I should not have noticed her; but nothing arouses curiosity so keenly as an air of mystery. I determined to rise very early some morning and try to see her. I made that resolve at night, but I fell asleep and forgot it. I was not the man to do sentry duty on the landing, or to stare through the keyhole ten or fifteen minutes; I left such methods to Raymond.

I heard nothing more from Melun, and for some time past I had not seen my wife; she left me in peace. I heard sometimes, from one of those officious friends whom one meets in spite of one’s self, try as one may to avoid them, that Madame Dorsan was no more prudent in her conduct, that she had the same mania for balls and dissipation, that her coquetry increased every day, and a thousand other bits of news no less agreeable. There were some who advised me to exert my rights and to apply for an order to have her confined. I thanked them and turned on my heel; I would swear that the very same people told Pélagie that I was a tyrant, a bear, a wretch unworthy to be the husband of so pretty and interesting a woman, and that I ought to be put under guardianship.

In order to avoid meeting my wife, I frequently went into the country, not in the direction which fashion has made its own, but to those places where the worthy bourgeois and little grisettes go to amuse themselves; the little grisettes whom I used to follow! But I had grown wiser; marriage had matured my head considerably; I might say, had embellished it.