I saw no harm in this flirtation. What danger was there, after all, in the fact that an insect thought me pretty, and expressed his admiration? It cannot be too well impressed, upon all whom it may concern, that beauty must be appreciated; the public gaze is the sun, which warms it into bloom, and sustains its vitality; cold indifference first mars, and then destroys it. Our coquetry simply expresses a natural craving for being seen, a thoroughly honest and respectable ambition. I had no shade of guilty intention, or exaggerated pride; it was only the consciousness of a tribute, paid daily by the sun to the flower which opens to display its charms to the heavenly gaze. I looked upon this tribute of the world as my right. To prove that I was the most virtuous greyhound in Paris, I felt intoxicated by the words of my new admirer.
“Your eyes are terribly bright,” said my husband on my return home. He was polishing a bone in a corner of our kennel—where he had picked it up, I do not know—“your voice is sweeter than usual.”
“To please you, my eyes must grow dim and my voice husky,” I replied.
Nothing is more galling than these simple remarks some people are always making, and asking why you detest them. My spouse was growing more and more distasteful to me. The trouble he takes to please me is most annoying. I hate to profit by his ridiculous labour, to eat his bread; all the time thinking that I owe it to the infernal clarionet he plays so badly. His irritating temper is killing me, his unutterable calm and absolute self-control compel me to shut up within myself all my bad temper, my indignation, my scorn! This sort of thing is perfectly frightful when one is nervous.
Life became a burden, and the polished insect soon found it out, for he followed me about with his dreamy, delicious buzzing.
“Greyhound, you are unhappy! you are suffering! I feel it, I see it. Grief ought not to touch a heart so tender,” he said in tones so pathetic, that I looked upon him as a deliverer.
“Care will line your forehead and tarnish your beauty!”
I shuddered. What he said was, alas! too true, anxiety would certainly rob me of my charms, clog my steps, and veil my eyes. His words kindled my wrath against my husband, who would surely bring this grief upon me.
“Well,” pursued the insect, “why not amuse yourself, come with me into the woods. Go on in front, and I shall follow, so that I may admire you, and drive away your gloom with my songs. Come, let us fly from the city-throng, and fill our breasts with the pure air of the fields.”
I was choking; air I must have, air at any price. “To-morrow at such an hour, be at such a place, and we shall go out together.”