"But I tell you that I do not know him."
"You astonish me!
Why, everybody knows him. Don't you know the Fumeau biscuit? The young fellow who had a judicial adviser appointed for him two months ago?
Don't you remember?"
"Not at all, I swear to you, Monsieur Xavier."
"Never mind, little turkey.
Well, I played a good one on Fumeau last year,—a very good one.
Guess what?
You do not guess?"
"How do you expect me to guess, since I do not know him?"
"Well, it was this, my little baby. I introduced Fumeau to my mother. Upon my word! What do you think of that for a discovery?
And the funniest part of it is that in two months mamma succeeded in blackmailing Fumeau to the tune of three hundred thousand bones.
What a godsend that, for papa's works! Oh! they know a thing or two; they are up to snuff! But for that, the house would have gone up. We were over head and ears in debt. The priests themselves were refusing to have anything to do with us. What do you say to that, eh?"
"I say, Monsieur Xavier, that you have a queer way of treating the family."
"What do you expect, my dear? I am an Anarchist, I am. I have supped on the family."
That morning Madame was even nicer than usual with me.
"I am well satisfied with your service," she said to me.
"Mary, I raise your wages ten francs."
"If she raises me ten francs every time," thought I to myself, "that will not be bad. It is more suitable." Oh! when I think of all that!
I, too, have supped on it. _____
M. Xavier's fancy did not last long; he had quickly "supped on me."
Not for a moment, moreover, was I able to keep him in the house.
Several times, on entering his room in the morning, I found the bed undisturbed and empty.
M. Xavier had been out all night.
The cook knew him well, and she had told the truth when she said: "He prefers to roam elsewhere."
He pursued his old habits, and went in search of his customary pleasures, as before. On those mornings I felt a sudden pain in my heart, and all day long I was sad, sad!
The unfortunate part of it all is that M. Xavier had no feeling.
He was not poetical, like M. Georges.
He did not vouchsafe me the slightest attention. Never did he say to me a kind and touching word, as lovers do in books and plays. Moreover, he liked nothing that I liked; he did not like flowers, with the exception of the big carnations with which he adorned the buttonhole of his coat.
Yet it is so good to whisper to each other things that caress the heart, to exchange disinterested kisses, to gaze for eternities into one another's eyes. But men are such coarse creatures; they do not feel these joys,—these joys so pure and blue. And it is a great pity. M. Xavier knew nothing but vice, found pleasure only in debauchery. In love all that was not vice and debauchery bored him.
"Oh! no, you know, that makes me very tired. I have supped on poetry. The little blue flower ... we must leave that to papa."
To him I was always an impersonal creature, the domestic to whom he gave orders and whom he maltreated in the exercise of his authority as master, and with his boyish cynical jests.
And he often said to me, with a laugh in the corner of his mouth,—a frightful laugh that wounded and humiliated me:
"And papa?
Really, you are not yet intimate with papa?
You astonish me."
Once I had not the power to keep back my tears; they were choking me.
M. Xavier became angry at once:
"Oh! no, you know, that is the most tiresome thing of all. Tears, scenes?
You must stop that, my dear; or else, good evening! I have supped on all that nonsense."
For my part I feel an immense and imperative need of that pure embrace, of that chaste kiss, which is no longer the savage bite of the flesh, but the ideal caress of the soul. I need to rise from the hell of love to the paradise of ecstasy, to the fullness, the delicious and candid silence, of ecstasy. But M. Xavier had supped on ecstasy. Nothing pained me so much as to see that I had not left the slightest trace of affection, not the smallest tenderness, in his heart.
Yet I believe that I could have loved the little scoundrel,—that I could have devoted myself to him, in spite of everything, like a beast. Even to-day I think regretfully of his impudent, cruel, and pretty phiz, and of his perfumed skin. And I have often on my lips, from which, since then, so many lips ought to have effaced it, the acid taste, the burning sensation of his kiss. Oh! Monsieur Xavier! Monsieur Xavier! _____
One evening, before dinner, when he had returned to dress,—my! but how nice he looked in evening dress!—and as I was carefully arranging his affairs in the dressing-room, he asked me, without embarrassment or hesitation, and almost in a tone of command, precisely as he would have asked me for hot water:
"Have you five louis?
I am in absolute need of five louis to-night.
I will return them to you to-morrow."
That very morning Madame had paid me my wages. Did he know it?
"I have only ninety francs," I answered, a little ashamed,—ashamed of his question, perhaps, but more ashamed, I think, at not having the entire sum that he asked.
"That makes no difference," said he; "go and get me the ninety francs. I will return them to you to-morrow."
He took the money, and, by way of thanks, said in a dry, curt tone that froze my heart: "That's good!"