Irinel crossed the threshold; she came up to me. I realized that she had crossed the threshold, but still my happiness remained outside. I understood the old man had sent her back in order to deceive me, and that she had guessed nothing.
“Do you know what Father has just told me? A guest is coming to us at the festival of St. Peter. A big merchant.”
What did that mean?
“And did he say anything else?”
“Nothing; but yes, he did. We are to kill our fattest chicken and the house is to be put into the most spick and span order, for our guest is an important merchant, a deputy, elderly, and I don’t know what all and what else.”
After teasing me and laughing at me because I coughed just as the girls at school did to make the doctor prescribe iron and old wine, but more particularly old wine than iron, Irinel left me.
“Ugh! It’s lucky he is old. Supposing he had been a young man?”
On St. Peter’s day I rose in such a state of anxiety that I started at every sound. Has it not been known for old men to lose their heads and marry girls of eighteen?
For three hours I wandered about the grounds. I waited for this rival with the same impatience with which I once waited for Irinel to come quickly from school. Am I deceiving myself or not? The same sensations, identically the same, were present with me, waiting thus for the object of my hatred as when I waited for her I loved. I wanted to see him as soon as possible; for a second; just to know him; to find out who he was.
At ten o’clock a carriage drew up in front of the door. Some one got out. When I saw him I began to laugh. He was very feeble, he was very old. No doubt he was smart with his black coat and red tie. I greeted him with respect, I might almost say with affection, and then, sorry at having felt hatred for such an old man, with such snowwhite hair, I went quietly into the garden. I turned down one of the paths. How sad and drear do the most beautiful natural surroundings become when they are reflected by a sad and lonely heart? What indifference everywhere!