He was not one of those in whom a budding love, even a love of the head, abolishes the senses. The more he dreamed about Rose, the more disquietingly tense grew his nerves. His desire did not turn towards her; he caught himself one evening spying on the wife of the Barnavast keeper, who was showing her legs as she bent over the well. It made him feel rather ashamed, for this big Norman peasant woman, so young and fresh, could boast, he imagined, of nothing more than a peasant's cleanliness—wholly exterior, and he would only, could only tolerate woman in the state of the nymph fresh risen from the bath, like the companions of Diana.
Besides, he noticed that Lanfranc was making up to this good creature and doing it in all seriousness. Sure of giving him satisfaction by taking himself off for a few days, he drove to Valognes and took the Paris train.
Leonor, without making pretensions to conquests, would have liked to have certain kinds of adventures. He wanted to find one of those women whom some careless husband, whether through avarice or poverty, deprives of the joy of fashionable elegance or who, adorned by a lover's prodigalities, dreams of giving for nothing the present which they none the less very gladly sell. He had experienced these equivocal good graces in the days when he lived in Paris. He had even succeeded, during the space of eighteen months, in enchanting a very agreeable little actress who fitted marvellously into the second category, and he remembered how he had taken in a very pretty and very poor young middle-class woman who had surrendered herself to him because he had given himself out to be a rich nobleman. At the moment his mistress was Mme. de la Mesangerie, a local beauty; but he had never really possessed her as he desired.
What Grand Turk ever ruled over such a harem? Paris, the cafés, the concert halls, the theatres, the stations, the big shops, the gardens, the Park! The women belong to whoever takes them; none belongs to herself. None leaves her home in freedom and is sure of not returning a slave. Leonor had no illusions with regard to the results of his sensual quest He knew very well that he would captivate none but willing slaves, slaves by profession, slaves by birth. But the hunt, if the game came and offered itself graciously to the hunter, would still have its attraction—that of choice; the fun would be to put one's hand on the fattest partridge.
"No," he said to himself, as he walked down the Avenue de l'Opera, "this child from Robinvast shall not obsess me thus hour by hour. Any woman, provided she is acceptable to my senses, will deliver me from this silly vision. Is there such a thing as love without carnal desire? It would be contrary to physiological truth. If I love Rose, it means that I desire her.... If I desire her, it means that I have physical needs. Once these needs are satisfied, I shall feel no desire for any woman and I shall stop thinking of this silly girl. Hervart can do what he likes with her; I shan't mind; and, after all, will the satisfaction which he derives from her be so different from that which some unknown woman will lavish so generously on me? A little coyness, does that add a spice? The sensation of a victory, a favour is better. Shall I obtain a favour? Alas, no. But by paying for it one can have the most perfect imitations. Ah! why am not I at Barnavast, gauging cubes of masonry, with glimpses of Placide Gerard's podgy thighs? Now I know just what will happen.... Does one ever know? It's only eleven in the morning and I've got a week before me."
Still pursuing his stroll and his reflections, he entered the Louvre stores. Here, provincials and foreigners were parading their requirements and their astonishments. One heard all the possible ways of pronouncing French badly. It was an exhibition of provincial dialects. He jumped on moving platforms and staircases, passed down long files of stoves and lamps, went down again, traversed an ocean of crockery, went upstairs, found leather goods, whips and carriage lanterns, tumbled into lifts, was caught once more in a labyrinth of endless drapery, and after having wandered for some time among white leather belts garters and umbrellas, he found himself face to face with Mme de la Mesangerie, who blushed.
"Is it a stroke of luck?" he wondered.
Perhaps it was, for she said to him very quickly:
"I'm alone. My husband has just gone back. I was going to wire to you."
Then in a lower voice: