"Thank you."
"The hotel is good, well situated. I spent a pleasant week there, the other winter. If I had known of your decision, Madame, I should have recommended the room I occupied, for the view through its sunny windows is delightful. Ah! just a year ago from to-day. I am becoming tranquil!"
He slowly walked as far as the boulevard Saint-Michel, under the pitiless rain which now fell in fine and penetrating needles.
"This Russian was imprudent in giving his address in advance! For I might go to trouble the first peace of this improvised honey-moon by a duel. So, at midnight she gives me a rendezvous for the next evening at her home, and at five o'clock in the morning she yields to Moscowitch in her own home, in her ball dress, and at about seven o'clock the two lovers take the express for Nice. Either it was well planned, and she decoyed me shamefully or, as I think, it is a matter of an impromptu affair and she held her modesty of soul in contempt so as to repel me. It is evident that Moscowitch waited for her at the door of the Aubry mansion, in a carriage, and that she let herself be carried off. Ah! he is a clever rascal. I am quite anxious to have some details. If he really followed my ironic advice, if the plan I gave him was good, I am ... I am truly below the most naive school boy. Well! there still remains for me the satisfaction of a dilettante: I have not myself won the battle, but like a staff-chief major general, I have directed the victory's course. Yes, in short, I am the organizer of my own defeat.... Now, it is a matter of producing a strict reasoning and not to lose myself in the by-ways of analysis. A proof? There is none, or not yet. I should, to the very end, respect the dignity of my sentiment. Coincidences, probabilities, but in the end she will give me an explanation. Then I shall judge. What reproaches? She has followed her pleasure."
He entered a café where warm drinks comforted him. At this moment he perceived that he was pierced with cold and that his hands were shivering. It was not only with cold that, he trembled, but his pride would not admit it and haughtily clothed itself in the cloak of irony. He did not even admit that his heart could bleed under a real wound; the griefs where he condescended to quench his original thirst were divine, voluntary, and not the work of a human hand. He possessed to a high degree the art of crucifying and stigmatizing himself, like a visionary, of leading his wounded heart to frightful tortures, to a slow agony; he had the art of being his own executioner. He had voluntarily sweated with anguish, but that the gentle thrust of a woman's delicate gauntlet should drive the crown of thorns into his skull, no, no, no! "For after all, complicity is essential to suffering and it must be voluntary; and that is a favor no creature will ever obtain from me."
Quite honestly, he reflected:
"At least it was brief and the commencement, middle and end took three months. There are many days to revive in this trilogy of zodiacs. Thus, that first meeting which she, the traitress, recalled herself, yesterday evening. Residual sensations still vibrate in my nerves and I hear "the wind pass, stirring the dry leaves." May they sound in your ears, too, Sixtine, and may the sound of their pursuit sadden, like the tattoo of a rattle-snake, the "delicate landscape" where moves your captive soul! You asked to be plundered, treasure: well! now you are a prisoner of the flesh, adore your prison, your chains, and your jailer.
"This journey was for me the occasion of a return to my youth: these renewals are anthologies, but what if it were necessary to re-read the entire book, letter by letter! Oh! no, oh! no. And no more than the vendor of almanachs de Leopardi, will I give my consent: 'Oh! no! but another, monsieur, one quite new!' Ah! oxydized hearts aspiring after the virginity of a new stamp, you will fall into the crucible! Ah! patience, we shall enjoy the devouring liquefaction: and our molecules will return into the matrix and other coins of divinity will continue our broken circulation,—other coins eternally the same!
"Wretched logic: these three months of my life are dominated by an absurdity which will decide its disposition, like a lunar play in an old, used mirror.
"Sixtine, it will be good of you to tell me that legend, now that you no longer need reserve the charm of mysteries, this one and the other, you know which one, that of the poison!—Ah! to think that I shall never know it,—no more than the color of your eyes when they open to the morning light.