“I have not a son. That’s what it all means.” She stopped short, and looking into his eyes to read the truth in them, said: “You say?”
He had flushed to the roots of his hair. “I say that I have not a sou. Do you understand? Not twenty sous, not ten, not enough to pay for a glass of cassis in the café we may go into. You force me to confess what I am ashamed of. It was, however, impossible for me to go out with you, and when we were seated with refreshments in front of us to tell you quietly that I could not pay for them.”
She was still looking him in the face. “It is true, then?”
In a moment he had turned out all his pockets, those of his trousers, coat, and waistcoat, and murmured: “There, are you satisfied now?”
Suddenly opening her arms, in an outburst of passion, she threw them around his neck, crying: “Oh, my poor darling, my poor darling, if I had only known. How did it happen?”
She made him sit down, and sat down herself on his knees; then, with her arm round his neck, kissing him every moment on his moustache, his mouth, his eyes, she obliged him to tell her how this misfortune had come about.
He invented a touching story. He had been obliged to come to the assistance of his father, who found himself in difficulties. He had not only handed over to him all his savings, but had even incurred heavy debts on his behalf. He added: “I shall be pinched to the last degree for at least six months, for I have exhausted all my resources. So much the worse; there are crises in every life. Money, after all, is not worth troubling about.”
She whispered: “I will lend you some; will you let me?”
He answered, with dignity: “You are very kind, pet; but do not think of that, I beg of you. You would hurt my feelings.”
She was silent, and then clasping him in her arms, murmured: “You will never know how much I love you.”
It was one of their most pleasant evenings.
As she was leaving, she remarked, smilingly: “How nice it is when one is in your position to find money you had forgotten in your pocket — a coin that had worked its way between the stuff and the lining.”
He replied, in a tone of conviction: “Ah, yes, that it is.”
She insisted on walking home, under the pretense that the moon was beautiful and went into ecstasies over it. It was a cold, still night at the beginning of winter. Pedestrians and horses went by quickly, spurred by a sharp frost. Heels rang on the pavement. As she left him she said: “Shall we meet again the day after tomorrow?”
“Certainly.”
“At the same time?”
“The same time.”
“Goodbye, dearest.” And they kissed lovingly.
Then he walked home swiftly, asking himself what plan he could hit on the morrow to get out of his difficulty. But as he opened the door of his room, and fumbled in his waistcoat pocket for a match, he was stupefied to find a coin under his fingers. As soon as he had a light he hastened to examine it. It was a louis. He thought he must be mad. He turned it over and over, seeking by what miracle it could have found its way there. It could not, however, have fallen from heaven into his pocket.
Then all at once he guessed, and an angry indignation awoke within him. His mistress had spoken of money slipping into the lining, and being found in times of poverty. It was she who had tendered him this alms. How shameful! He swore: “Ah! I’ll talk to her the day after tomorrow. She shall have a nice time over it.”
And he went to bed, his heart filled with anger and humiliation.
He woke late. He was hungry. He tried to go to sleep again, in order not to get up till two o’clock, and then said to himself: “That will not forward matters. I must end by finding some money.” Then he went out, hoping that an idea might occur to him in the street. It did not; but at every restaurant he passed a longing to eat made his mouth water. As by noon he had failed to hit on any plan, he suddenly made up his mind: “I will lunch out of Clotilde’s twenty francs. That won’t hinder me from paying them back tomorrow.”
He, therefore, lunched for two francs fifty centimes. On reaching the office he also gave three francs to the messenger, saying: “Here, Foucart, here is the money you lent me last night for my cab.”
He worked till seven o’clock. Then he went and dined taking another three francs. The two evening bocks brought the expenditure of the day up to nine francs thirty centimes. But as he could not re-establish a credit or create fresh resources in twenty-four hours, he borrowed another six francs fifty centimes the next day from the twenty he was going to return that very evening, so that he came to keep his appointment with just four francs twenty centimes in his pocket.
He was in a deuce of a temper, and promised himself that he would pretty soon explain things. He would say to his mistress: “You know, I found the twenty francs you slipped into my pocket the other day. I cannot give them back to you now, because my situation is unaltered, and I have not had time to occupy myself with money matters. But I will give them to you the next time we meet.”
She arrived, loving, eager, full of alarm. How would he receive her? She kissed him persistently to avoid an explanation at the outset.
He said to himself: “It will be time enough to enter on the matter by-and-by. I will find an opportunity of doing so.”
He did not find the opportunity, and said nothing, shirking before the difficulty of opening this delicate subject. She did not speak of going out, and was in every way charming. They separated about midnight, after making an appointment for the Wednesday of the following week, for Madame de Marelle was engaged to dine out several days in succession.
The next day, as Duroy, on paying for his breakfast, felt for the four coins that ought to be remaining to him, he perceived that they were five, and one of them a gold one. At the outset he thought that he had received it by mistake in his change the day before, then he understood it, and his heart throbbed with humiliation at this persistent charity. How he now regretted not having said anything! If he had spoken energetically this would not have happened.
For four days he made efforts, as numerous as they were fruitless, to raise five louis, and spent Clotilde’s second one. She managed, although he had said to her savagely, “Don’t play that joke of the other evening’s again, or I shall get angry,” to slip another twenty francs into his trouser pockets the first time they met. When he found them he swore bitterly, and transferred them to his waistcoat to have them under his hand, for he had not a rap. He appeased his conscience by this argument: “I will give it all back to her in a lump. After all, it is only borrowed money.”
At length the cashier of the paper agreed, on his desperate appeals, to let him have five francs daily. It was just enough to live upon, but not enough to repay sixty francs with. But as Clotilde was again seized by her passion for nocturnal excursions in all the suspicious localities in Paris, he ended by not being unbearably annoyed to find a yellow boy in one of his pockets, once even in his boot, and another time in his watch-case, after their adventurous excursions. Since she had wishes which he could not for the moment gratify himself, was it not natural that she should pay for them rather than go without them? He kept an account, too, of all he received in this way, in order to return it to her some day.
One evening she said to him: “Would you believe that I have never been to
