She can no more live without me
than I without her. What shall I say? How shall I receive her?"
Then the thought of her perfidy recurred to me.
"Ah! let her come! I will kill her!"
Since my last letter I had heard nothing of her.
"What is she doing?" I asked myself. "She loves another? Then I will love
another also. Whom shall I love?"
While casting about I heard a far distant voice crying:
"Thou, love another? Two beings who love, who embrace, and who are not
thou and I! Is such a thing possible? Are you a fool?"
"Coward!" said Desgenais, "when will you forget that woman? Is she such a
great loss? Take the first comer and console yourself."
"No," I replied, "it is not such a great loss. Have I not done what I
ought? Have I not driven her away from here? What have you to say to
that? The rest concerns me; the bull wounded in the arena is at liberty
to go to sleep in a corner with the sword of the matador in his shoulder,
and die in peace. What can I do, tell me? What do you mean by first
comer? You will show me a cloudless sky, trees and houses, men who talk,
drink, sing, women who dance and horses that gallop. All that is not
life, it is the noise of life. Go, go, leave me in peace."
CHAPTER V
WHEN Desgenais saw that my despondency was incurable, that I would
neither listen to any advice nor leave my room, he took the matter
seriously. I saw him enter one evening with an expression of gravity on
his face; he spoke of my mistress and continued in his tone of sadness,
saying all manner of evil of women.
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