He followed me.
In this hotel they did not look too closely at the guests who returned at night.
With its dark and narrow staircase, its slimy banister, its vile atmosphere, its fetid odors, it seemed like a house for the accommodation of transients and cut-throats.
My companion coughed, to give himself assurance.
And I, with my soul full of disgust, reflected:
"Oh! indeed! this is not equal to the Houlgate villas or to the warm and richly-adorned mansions in the Rue Lincoln."
What a hussy one is sometimes!
Oh, misery me! _____
And my life began again, with its ups and downs, its changes of front, its liaisons as quickly ended as begun, and its sudden leaps from opulent interiors into the street, just as of old.
Singular thing!
I, who in my amorous exaltation, my ardent thirst for sacrifice, had sincerely and passionately wished to die, was haunted for long months by the fear of having contracted Monsieur Georges's disease from his kisses.
The slightest indisposition, the most fleeting pain, filled me with real terror.
Often at night I awoke with mad frights and icy sweats.
I felt of my chest, where, by suggestion, I suffered from pains and lacerations; I examined the discharges from my throat, in which I saw red streaks; and I gave myself a fever, by frequent counting of my pulse.
It seemed to me, as I looked in the glass, that my eyes were growing hollow, and that my cheeks were growing pinker, with that mortal pink that colored Monsieur Georges's face. One night, as I was leaving a public ball, I took cold, and I coughed for a week.
I thought that it was all over with me.
I covered my back with plasters, and swallowed all sorts of queer medicines; I even sent a pious offering to Saint Anthony of Padua. Then, as, in spite of my fear, my health remained good, showing that I had equal power to endure the fatigues of toil and of pleasure, it all passed away. _____
Last year, on the sixth of October, I went to lay flowers on M. Georges's grave, as I had done every year when that sad date came round. He was buried in the Montmartre cemetery.
In the main path I saw, a few steps ahead of me, the poor grandmother.
Oh! how old she was, and how old also were the two old servants who accompanied her!
Arched, bent, tottering, she walked heavily, sustained at the arm-pits by her two old servants, as arched, as bent, as tottering, as their mistress.
A porter followed them, carrying a large bunch of red and white roses.
I slackened my pace, not wishing to pass them and be recognized.
Hidden behind the wall of a high monument, I waited until the poor and sorrowful old woman had placed her flowers, told her beads, and dropped her tears upon her grandson's grave. They came back with the same feeble steps, through the smaller path, brushing against the wall of the vault on the other side of which I was hiding.
I concealed myself still more, that I might not see them, for it seemed to me that it was my remorse, the phantoms of my remorse, that were filing by me.
Would she have recognized me?
Ah! I do not think so. They walked without looking at anything, without seeing even the ground about them.
Their eyes had the fixity of the eyes of the blind; their lips moved and moved, and not a word came from them.
One would have said that they were three old dead souls, lost in the labyrinth of the cemetery, and looking for their graves. I saw again that tragic night, and my red face, and the blood flowing from Georges's mouth.
It sent a shiver to my heart.
At last they disappeared.
Where are they to-day, those three lamentable shades?
Perhaps they are a little more dead; perhaps they are dead quite.
After having wandered on for days and nights, perhaps they have found the hole of silence and of rest of which they were in search.
All the same, it is a queer idea that the unfortunate grandmother had, in choosing me as a nurse for a young and pretty boy like Monsieur Georges.
And really, when I think of the matter again, and realize that she never suspected anything, that she never saw anything, that she never understood anything, this seems to me the most astonishing feature of the matter. Ah! one can say it now; they were not very sharp, the three of them. They had an abundance of confidence. _____
I have seen Captain Mauger again, over the hedge.
Crouching before a freshly-dug bed, he was transplanting pansies and gilly-flowers.
As soon as he saw me, he left his work, and came to the hedge to talk.
He is no longer angry with me for the murder of his ferret.
He even seems very gay.
Bursting with laughter, he confides to me that this morning he has wrung the neck of the Lanlaires' white cat. Probably the cat avenges the ferret.
"It is the tenth that I have gently killed for them," he cries, with ferocious joy, slapping his thigh, and then rubbing his grimy hands.
"Ah! the dirty thing will scratch no more compost from my garden-frames; it will no longer ravage my seed-plots, the camel!
And, if I could also wring the necks of your Lanlaire and his female!
Oh! the pigs!
Oh! oh! oh! that's an idea."
This idea makes him twist with laughter for a moment.
And suddenly, his eyes sparkling with a stealthy malice, he asks:
"Why don't you put some smart-weed in their bed?