Yet he did not want to go and knock, like an obsessed bourgeois, like clerks on paydays, at the latticed door of some sordid house, leading his idealism to promiscuous divans and submitting his body to the least withered bidder! He hesitated between a quite proper harem nearby, and the semblances of soothing intrigue: he did not despise a reciprocal choice that had the appearance of being voluntary, the excuse of a desire that fixed on this one rather than on the other, public preliminaries which are cleansed of all shame by the complicity of the environment—the Bal Bullier, for example, or the Folies-Bergère. By making a rapid decision and calling a carriage, he could reach one of those slave markets before closing time. Upon reflection, he abandoned the Bullier: the jades of this place were enjoying a rest. As for the other exhibition, it was quite far away.
Undecided, he grew composed. For a moment he hoped to have freed himself cheaply, but the eyes, the implacable eyes reappeared—obscene stars that would cease and vanish only at the clandestine house.
It was in a little street near the Saint-Sulpice market.
There, lived a woman whose eyes, adequate for his youthful dreams, had formerly captivated him—formerly, when he was about twenty—and no reasoned disgust dulled the senses. Each time his carnal obsessions evoked this pleasant memory he believed, with an animal waywardness, that he would find the same woman and the same contentment.
Since she did not surrender to the first importunate caller, having the coquetry of a certain amorous fastidiousness, one often found her either alone or able, under the pretext of a jealous protector, to turn out the guest of the evening, if the newcomer pleased her more.
"So this," reflected Entragues, "is the end? Honest women know quite well to what promiscuities they are exposed by their refusals; they should yield for the sake of dignity, at least. They should be taught this: it would be one of the useful chapters in the courses of love which old women could teach so well! But if they should yield, then farewell to the pleasant duels of vanity."
Without suspecting how futile and mischievous his reflections were, he followed the star.
"Now then, what is going to happen? Oh! I know in advance. None the less, I am going in!"
He knocked in a certain way.
"To think that I remember all this! Yet it is long since I came here. I have been spared these sudden and irremissible tortures for years. Years! She must be changed, old and ugly. All the better, it will be the necessary douche, and perhaps in a half-hour I shall be laughing at myself instead of crying. Perhaps she will be absent, or asleep, or engaged. Engaged! Like a school boy, I have a mind to run away before the door opens. One, two ... I am going to leave."