What became of it?"
Marianne made a vague and far-away gesture,—a gesture that seemed to pull aside the heavy veils from the limbos where her child was sleeping. She answered in that harsh voice which alcohol produces:
"Oh! well, you can imagine. What should I have done with it, my God!"
"Like the little guinea-pigs, then?"
"That's it."
And she poured herself out a drink.
We went up to our rooms somewhat intoxicated. _____
VII
October 6.
Decidedly, autumn is here.
Frosts which were not expected so soon have browned the last flowers of the garden.
The dahlias, the poor dahlias, witnesses of Monsieur's amorous timidity, are dried up; dried up also are the big sunflowers that mounted guard at the kitchen-door.
There is nothing left in the devastated flower-beds,—nothing but a few sorry-looking geraniums here and there, and five or six clusters of asters, whose blue flowers—the dull blue of rottenness—are bending toward the ground in anticipation of death.
The garden-plots of Captain Mauger, whom I saw just now over the hedge, present a scene of veritable disaster, and everything is of the color of tobacco.
The trees, through the fields, are beginning to turn yellow and to lose their foliage, and the sky is funereal.
For four days we have been living in a thick fog, a brown fog that smelt of soot and that did not dissipate even in the afternoon.
Now it is raining, an icy, beating rain, which a fierce wind, blowing in squalls from the northwest, occasionally intensifies.
Ah!
I am not comfortably situated here. In my room it is bitter cold.
The wind blows into it, and the water penetrates the cracks in the roof, principally around the two windows which stingily illuminate this dark hole.
And the noise of lifting slates, of shocks that shake the roof, of creaking timbers and of squeaking hinges, is deafening. In spite of the urgent need of repairs, I have had all the difficulty in the world in getting Madame to order the plumber to come to-morrow morning. And I do not dare yet to ask for a stove, although, being very chilly, I feel that I shall not be able to live in this mortal room through the winter. This evening, to stop the wind and the rain, I have had to stuff old skirts into the cracks.
And this weather-vane above my head, never ceasing to turn on its rusty pivot, at times shrieks out so sharply in the night that one would take it for Madame's voice in the corridors, after a scene.
My first feelings of revolt having quieted down a little, my life proceeds here monotonously and stupidly; and I am gradually getting accustomed to it, without too great moral suffering.
No one ever comes here; one would take it for a cursed house.
And, outside of the petty domestic incidents that I have related, never does anything happen.
All the days are alike, and all the tasks, and all the faces.
It is ennui and death. But I am beginning to be so stupid that I am accommodating myself to this ennui, as if it were a natural thing.
Even the deprivation of love does not cause me too much embarrassment, and I endure without too painful struggles this chastity to which I am condemned, or to which, rather, I have condemned myself,—for I have abandoned Monsieur, I have dropped Monsieur finally.
Monsieur bores me, and I am angry with him for having, out of cowardice, disparaged me so grossly in talking with Madame.
Not that he is becoming resigned, or ceasing to pay attention to me.
On the contrary, he persists in revolving about me, with eyes that grow rounder and rounder, and a mouth that grows more and more frothy. According to an expression that I have read in I have forgotten what book, it is always toward my trough that he drives the pigs of his desire to drink.
Now that the days are shortening, Monsieur spends the afternoon at his desk, where he does the devil knows what, occupying his time in moving about old papers without reason, in checking off seed-catalogues and medical advertisements, and in distractedly turning the leaves of old hunting-books.
You should see him when I go in at night to close the blinds or attend to his fire.
Then he rises, coughs, sneezes, clears his throat, runs against the furniture, upsets objects, and tries in all sorts of stupid ways to attract my attention. It is enough to make one twist with laughter.
I make a pretence of hearing nothing, of not understanding his puerile tricks; and I go away, silent and haughty, without looking at him any more than if he were not there.
Last evening, however, we exchanged the following brief remarks:
"Celestine!"
"Monsieur desires something?"
"Celestine, you are unkind to me; why are you unkind to me?"
"Why, Monsieur knows very well that I am a loose creature!...."
"Oh! come!"
"A dirty thing!...."
"Oh! come, come!"
"And possibly diseased."
"Oh! heavens! Celestine!
Come, Celestine, listen to me!"
"Bah!"
Oh!
I have enough of him.
It no longer amuses me to upset his head and his heart by my coquetries. _____