XVI
AN ELECTRIC SPARK
Chamoureau went home completely overwhelmed by what he had learned in his interview with Monsieur Beauregard. He thought of nothing else all the rest of the day, the result being that it did not occur to him to go to Monsieur Courtivaux and conclude the negotiation that Madame Dalmont had entrusted to him. He asked himself every moment whether he should try once more to see Edmond, and question him on the subject of his liaison with Madame Sainte-Suzanne; but he remembered that she had expressly forbidden him to mention her name to anyone.
"To be sure," he said to himself, "I have already broken my promise by talking about her with this Monsieur Beauregard; but that wasn't my fault. That man caught me in Madame Sainte-Suzanne's reception-room, so I could not deny that I knew her; and the familiar way in which he asked for her proved conclusively that he knew her very well indeed!"
On the following day our widower was still undecided, hesitating whether he ought or ought not to talk to Edmond about the lady with the beautiful black eyes.
Hesitating people often pass whole days unable to decide what to do, and when, after mature consideration, they say to themselves: "I will decide on this course," you see them suddenly change their minds and pause just as they are about to act. Such characters generally fail in whatever they undertake, because they never do it in time.
In a business agent, this failing is even more dangerous than in anybody else. The agent with whom we have to do had two reasons for not attending to the business placed in his hands: in addition to his habitual indecision, he was in love, passionately in love, with a woman with whom he had no hope of success, which fact necessarily increased his love. It is always the thing that we cannot have for which we crave.
Chamoureau then was at home, saying to himself:
"I think I will go to Edmond Didier and tell him the whole truth; or rather, tell him nothing, but question him shrewdly. I will lead him on to talk of his love-affairs. He will begin about little Amélia, and then I will say: 'No, it's not that one, but another—a very beautiful brunette—that I want to talk to you about.'
"Yes, but then he will reply: 'How do you know that I ever knew a very beautiful brunette? Do you know her yourself?'—Damnation! it's terribly embarrassing!"
At that moment the doorbell rang and shortly after, Edmond Didier entered the office.