"Oh! my dear, you will waste your glances and your smiles, as I have done!" cried the blonde Flavia, showing the double row of pearls with which her mouth was embellished. "Your sweetest tones will slide over that steel cuirass. This gentleman has a heart of granite—or, rather, he has no heart at all!—See, he is not listening to us, he is going away!"
"Oh! not yet!" rejoined Camilla, laying her pretty hand on Jarnonville's arm.—"Tell me, chevalier, why do you insist on going away? Do you find yourself so very wretched with us?—Look at us—are we so unpleasant to the eye that you cannot even endure the sight of us?"
The young courtesan uttered these words in such a cajoling, suppliant tone, that the Black Chevalier glanced at her in spite of himself, and for the first time his expression lost something of its sternness.
"Good, it is decided!" exclaimed the fascinating brunette, overjoyed by this first success; "I propose to keep you; and why should you leave us so early? for you are your own master, you have neither wife nor child."
The words were no sooner out of her mouth than Jarnonville pushed the two courtesans roughly aside and left the card room, muttering in a hollow voice:
"No child! no child! Ah, no! I have no child! I have lost my most cherished treasure, my joy in the present, my hope for the future. That angel, a single glance from whose eyes banished all my cares, whose voice opened my heart to a felicity so pure that I lived in a veritable heaven on earth!—I have her no longer—death struck her down! In God's name, what had she done that she should die, O inexorable fate!"
Speaking thus to himself, Jarnonville left the house, crossed the courtyard, motioned to the concierge to open the gate, and passed out into the street. But he had not walked twenty yards from the gate when a person rushed to meet him and almost threw herself at his feet, crying:
"In pity's name, seigneur, listen to me! do not, I implore you, spurn a woman who seeks your help!"
"A woman!" rejoined Jarnonville, harshly, thinking that it was still another courtesan who accosted him; "what does it matter to me that you are a woman? Seek protection from the young popinjays within, but do not detain me, let me pass."
"Sire de Jarnonville!" exclaimed she who had stopped the Black Chevalier. "Ah! Providence befriends me.—You will not spurn me, seigneur, you will come to my assistance. I am no courtesan; I am not one of the women who frequent this house from which you have just come. I am an honest girl, and I can hold up my head before you without fear! Perhaps you would recognize me if the daylight were not still so faint. My name is Ambroisine—I am the daughter of Master Hugonnet, the bath keeper on Rue Saint-Jacques; and you have often been to my father's place."