“What does it matter? He looked at me.”
“Do you want to make me unhappy? No doubt he looked at you, why it may be he is going to speak to you. I told him that you were a relative of my mother, and that you had arrived from Genlis. He is a Franc-contois, and has never gone beyond Dôleon the Burgundy Road, so say what you like and fear nothing.”
Julien was still hesitating. Her barmaid’s imagination furnished her with an abundance of lies, and she quickly added.
“No doubt he looked at you, but it was at a moment when he was asking me who you were. He is a man who is boorish with everyone. He did not mean to insult you.”
Julien’s eye followed the pretended brother-in-law. He saw him buy a ticket for the pool, which they were playing at the further of the two billiard tables. Julien heard his loud voice shouting out in a threatening tone, “My turn to play.”
He passed sharply before Madame Amanda, and took a step towards the billiard table. Amanda seized him by the arm.
“Come and pay me first,” she said to him.
“That is right,” thought Julien. “She is frightened that I shall leave without paying.” Amanda was as agitated as he was, and very red. She gave him the change as slowly as she could, while she repeated to him, in a low voice,
“Leave the café this instant, or I shall love you no more, and yet I do love you very much.”
Julien did go out, but slowly. “Am I not in duty bound,” he repeated to himself, “to go and stare at that coarse person in my turn?” This uncertainty kept him on the boulevard in the front of the café for an hour; he kept looking if his man was coming out. He did not come out, and Julien went away.