I swore insane vows of celibacy; but she laughed at me in her common-sense way, and uttered blunt truths concerning the weaknesses of my sex.
"Besides, my little Asticot," she added, "I love you very much; you know that well; but you are not the Master."
Once I suggested the possibility of her marrying some one else. There was a cheerful quincaillier at the corner of the street who, to my knowledge, paid her assiduous attentions. He was evidently a man of substance and refinement, for a zinc bath was prominently displayed among his hardware. But Blanquette's love laughed at tinsmiths. She who had lived on equal terms with the Master and myself (I bowed my acknowledgment of the tribute) to marry a person without education? Ah! mais non! Au grand nom! Merci! She was as scornful as you please, and without rhyme or reason plucked a bunch of Christmas roses from a jug on the table and threw them into the stove. Poor quincaillier! There was nothing for it but to se fich' à l'eau—to chuck herself into the river. That was the end of most of our conversations on the disastrous subject.
It was the end of a talk on one November evening, about three weeks after I had returned to Paris. I had dined at home with Blanquette, and was in the midst of a drawing which I blush to say I was doing for Le Fou Rire, an unprincipled comic paper fortunately long since defunct—(fortunately? Tartuffe that I am. Many a welcome louis did I get from it in those necessitous days)—when she looked up from her sewing and asked when the Master was coming back. The question led to an answer, the answer to an observation, and the observation to the discussion of the Subject.
"There is no way out of it, mon pauvre Asticot, je vais me fich' à l'eau, comme je l'ai dit."
"In the meanwhile, my dear," said I, throwing down the crow-quill pen and pushing my drawing away, "if you remain in this pestilential condition of morbidness, you will die without the necessity of drowning yourself. Instead of making ourselves miserable, let us go and dance at the Bal Jasmin. Veux-tu?"
"This evening?" she asked, startled. She had never grown accustomed to the suddenness of the artistic temperament.
"Of course this evening. You don't suppose I would ask you to dance next month so as to cure you of indigestion to-night."
"But nothing is wrong with my stomach, mon cher," said the literal Blanquette.