"Even if I never, never, in this world forgave him?"
"You would forgive him in the next, Madame," I answered, scarce knowing what I said, "and he would be contented."
The carriage stopped at the appointed place. I felt as if I were about to descend from the side of an Olympian goddess to sordid humanity, to step from the Land East of the Sun and West of the Moon on to the common earth. It was I who looked wistful.
"May I come to see you, Madame?"
The quick fear came into her eyes.
"Not as yet, Mr. Asticot," she said holding out her hand. "My husband is queer tempered at times. I will write to you."
The carriage drove off. For the second time she had left me with her husband on her lips. I had forgotten him completely. I stamped my foot on the pavement.
"He is a scaly vulture," said I, echoing Paragot. Gods! How I hated the poor man.
One evening, about a week after this, some seven or eight of us were gathered around Paragot's table at the Café Delphine. Two were rapins—we have no word for the embryo painter—my companions in Janot's atelier. Of the rest I only remember one—poor Cazalet. He wore a self-tailored grotesque attire, a brown stuff tunic girt at the waist by a leathern belt, shapeless trousers of the same material, and sandals. He had long yellow hair and untrimmed chicken fluff grew casually about his face. A sombre genius, he used to paint dark writhing horrors of souls in pain, and in his hours of relaxation to drink litres of anisette. At first he disliked and scoffed at me because I was an Englishman, which grieved me sorely, for I regarded him as the greatest genius, save Paragot, of my acquaintance. I found him ten years afterwards a sous-chef de gare on the Belgian frontier.