Again he pressed his young wife’s head to his bosom:
“That was really what I was bound to say to the captain; would not you have said the same thing, child?”
I took my pipe and got up, because I was beginning to feel my eyes rather moist, and that doesn’t suit me.
“Come! come!” I said, “things will clear themselves up later on. If the lady objects to tobacco, her withdrawal would oblige.”
She got up, her face all flaming and wet with tears, like a child that has been scolded.
“Anyhow,” she said to me, looking at my clock, “you are forgetting, you people; what about the letter!”
I felt something which affected me powerfully. I seemed to have a pain in my hair when she said that to me.
“Good Heavens! I had quite forgotten about it,” I said. “Ah! upon my word, this is a pretty business! If we had passed the first degree of north latitude, there would be nothing more for me to do but to throw myself into the water.—Just to make me happy, the child reminds me of that villainous letter!”
I looked quickly at my chart, and, when I saw that we had a week at least still to go, my head was relieved, but my heart, without my knowing why, was not.
“The fact is that the Directory doesn’t treat the question of obedience as a joke!” I said. “Come, I am posted up this time again. The time went past so quickly that I had quite forgotten that.”