“She loves me! oh, yes! she loves me, for she held me to her heart a long while, and she said: ‘Don’t forget anything that I said to you!’—Ah! I shall never forget those words; I shall remember them all my life.”

Louise did not close her eyes during the rest of the night. As soon as the day began to break, she rose, dressed hastily, made a bundle of her clothes, placed in her bosom the letter that Madame de Noirmont had given her, and, softly opening the door, left her room, stole noiselessly through several rooms to the staircase, and so down to the courtyard; she knocked on the concierge’s window, he opened the gate, and at daybreak she stood in the street.

XXVI
FEAR

Since his adventure with Chichette Chichemann, Chérubin had been less quick to take fire; or, rather, he had begun to understand that what he had taken for love was simply those desires which the sight of a pretty woman arouses in a man’s heart; desires which are certain to be renewed often in a wholly inexperienced heart, whose sensations have the charm of novelty.

But the checks he had met with in his amorous essays had made Chérubin even more shy and timid; instead of taking advantage of the lessons that he had received to bear himself more gallantly in a tête-à-tête, poor Chérubin was so afraid of being unfortunate or awkward again, that the bare idea of an assignation almost made him tremble. On the other hand, as love, at his age, is the first joy of life, the young marquis, not knowing how he could procure that joy, became sad and melancholy. At twenty years of age, with a noble name, a handsome fortune, with good looks and a fine figure; in a word, possessed of everything that is supposed to make a man happy, Chérubin was not happy; he lost his good spirits and even his fresh coloring. He no longer had that bright, ruddy complexion which people used to admire in him; for it is useless to try to conceal the fact that, while excessive dissipation sometimes destroys the health, excessive virtue may produce the same result; excess in anything is to be deplored.

The young marquis no longer visited the Comtesse de Valdieri, or Madame Célival, because the frigid greeting he received from those ladies was equivalent to a dismissal; but he sometimes met them in society. When he did, it seemed to him that all the ladies looked at him in a strange fashion, that they whispered together and even went so far as to laugh when he appeared. All this tormented and disturbed him; he told his troubles to his friend Monfréville.

“Do you suppose that that little countess and Madame Célival have been saying unkind things about me?” he said. “I don’t know what I have done to them.”

“That is just the reason!” replied Monfréville, with a smile. “I beg you, my young friend, do not persist in this apathy, which is ill-suited to your years. You have everything that a man needs, to be agreeable to the ladies; form other connections. Have three or four mistresses at once, deceive them all openly, and your reputation will soon be reëstablished.”

“That is very easy for you to say, my dear Monfréville, but, since my misadventures, I am so afraid of being—er—awkward again with a woman, that it makes me shudder beforehand. It is enough to kill one with shame and despair! I prefer not to take the risk. And yet I feel that I am terribly bored.”

“I can well believe it—to live without love, at your age! when one has not even the memory of his follies! that is perfectly absurd. But if you are afraid that you are not yet sufficiently enterprising with a great lady, why, my friend, make a beginning with grisettes and actresses. I assure you they will train you quite as well.”