Part 28

I went home sadly enough. I felt completely exhausted; my clothes were stuck to my body; I could hardly walk, but I looked in vain for a cab; it rained in torrents, and I did not meet a single one. I reached home at last. Madame Dupont was waiting for me; the poor woman was terrified when she saw the state I was in; she insisted on going upstairs to warm my bed, on my taking something hot; but I refused her attentions; I hoped that rest would restore me. When I entered my room, my teeth chattered violently and my legs trembled under me. I felt far from well; I crept into bed with Nicette's bouquet on my heart; it seemed to me that that must cure me.

The next morning my concierge found me wildly delirious; I recognized nobody; my head was on fire, my mouth was parched; I was consumed by a burning fever. Fatigue, the storm, the mental agitation of the preceding night, had all combined to make me seriously ill. In a few days I was at the door of the tomb.

Who was there to take care of me? who would nurse me? My relations were not in Paris. I had a wife, but she, instead of coming to my bedside, would have fled from me for fear of contagion; strangers had to take the place of kindred and friends.

For nine days I had no idea who was nursing me; I neither heard nor saw anything. Not until the end of that time was the crisis safely passed; I was saved, my delirium disappeared; all that I needed was good care, quiet, and rest.

I half opened my eyes and looked about me with difficulty, trying to collect my thoughts. I saw Madame Dupont by my side.

"Have I been delirious long?" I asked.

"Nine days, monsieur; oh! you've been very sick; you almost died! But, thank heaven! you're saved; all you need now is patience and plenty of rest. I was sure you'd be sick. The idea of going out in such a storm! and all in a sweat, too! And when you came back, why, your eyes were starting out of your head! But young men will never listen to advice! And then, think of going to sleep with a nosegay under your nose! that's very bad--very unhealthy!"

"What has been done with that bouquet?"

"It's in the other room there; never fear, you'll find it all right."

"Who has nursed me since I have been sick?"

"I have, and--your neighbor."

"My neighbor!"

"Yes, the lady on your landing. Oh! she has taken the best possible care of you. As soon as she heard you was sick, she insisted on being your nurse, and, my word! if she'd been nursing sick folks all her life, she couldn't have done better."

"Where is she? I would like to thank her."

"Oh! you can thank her later. She's just gone to her room. But here you are talking, and the doctor told us we mustn't let you talk! Go to sleep, monsieur, go to sleep; it'll do you good."

Madame Dupont closed my curtains and refused to answer any more questions. I was at a loss to understand the unknown lady's conduct; but I was not strong enough to reflect long; I fell asleep wishing that I might see her. Toward evening I woke. Someone was beside me. When I moved, the person attempted to hurry away; but it was too late; my eyes had met hers, I had recognized her: it was Nicette.

I cried out, and she returned to me.

"Oh! in heaven's name, speak to me!" I said; "so that I may be sure that it is you!"

"Yes, yes, it's I, it's your Nicette. Oh! Monsieur Dorsan, pray don't talk any more; the doctor has strictly forbidden it. That's the reason I didn't want you to see me."

"Dear Nicette! as if the sight of you was not more powerful than all their medicines! It is you! it is really you!"

I took her hands and pressed them and held them to my heart; I no longer had strength to speak. She tried to calm me, but she was as deeply moved as I was; the tears rolled down her cheeks and dropped on me; but how sweet they were to us both!

"So it was you, Nicette, who nursed me during my illness?"

"Wasn't it my duty? Could I have trusted others to do it?"

"Then you were my neighbor?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"Cruel girl! you concealed yourself from me!"

"I thought that the sight of me would not give you any pleasure."

"You did not think that!"

"You are married."

"But you see that I have ceased to live with my wife."

"I didn't dare show myself to you, for fear that would make you leave your lodgings."

"What an idea! O Nicette!"

"But I couldn't resist the longing to remind you of me; and that is why you found the bouquet."

"Ah! it is to it that I am indebted for finding you. Nicette, don't leave me again, I implore you!"

"Oh, no! I won't leave you again, monsieur, as you allow me to stay. But, I beg of you, be calm, don't talk any more, and take a little rest."

I yielded to her entreaties; in truth, I did need to pull myself together. Nicette was with me, it was to her nursing that I owed my life! I had difficulty in realizing my happiness. Ah! how blissfully happy I was! and yet, some regret was mingled with my joy, when I thought that Raymond---- But if that were not true, I should be too happy.

Every day my convalescence advanced a step; but I was not content unless Nicette was by my side; so she never left me. She seemed surprised by the feeling that I manifested for her; I saw in her eyes all the intoxicating joy that it caused her. It was plain, therefore, that she still loved me. Often I flattered myself that it was so, and then I abandoned myself to the affection that she aroused in me, I basked blissfully in the fire of her glances, I laid my head on her breast and inhaled her sweet breath. But when the image of Raymond appeared before me, all my happiness vanished, my heart swelled, and I moved away from Nicette.

She noticed these abrupt transitions from joy to gloom, these sudden changes in my manner toward her.

"Are you thinking of your wife?" she asked me one day, when I had moved away from her and sighed.

"No," I said, gazing at her in distress; "I am thinking of Raymond."

"Of Monsieur Raymond; and that makes you sigh?"

"Can you wonder at it? Did he not rob me of the greatest of blessings?"

"What do you mean? I don't understand you."

"Ah! Nicette, you loved him, and yet you say that you don't understand me!"

"I--love him! Great God! who told you that?"

"I saw it; I know that he was your lover."

"My lover! O heaven! then I am a most despicable creature in your eyes! And you believed that!"

Tears suffocated her; she could say no more. I ran to her, threw my arms about her, and covered her with kisses; the mere suspicion that Raymond had lied to me was perfect bliss.

"Nicette, dear Nicette, tell me how it all happened? I saw him in your shop; he held your hands--and you admitted it yourself."

"Ah! could you believe that I loved anybody but you? I, who would give my life for you--who have never given a thought to anybody else since I first saw you! Oh! forgive me for loving you so much; perhaps it offends you, but I must tell you now the whole secret of my heart. When I lived in my shop, the only joy I had was to see you; every day I expected or hoped to see you pass; but it happened very seldom. I used to bring you bouquets as a pledge of my gratitude, and I would seize a moment when the concierge was out to run up and tie them on your door. Sometimes I saw you go by with a lady on your arm. Then I used to cry, for I would say to myself: 'I shall never walk like that with him'--When I went a long while without seeing you, I used to long to know something about you, but I didn't dare go to your house to inquire. One day Monsieur Raymond stopped to buy some flowers of me; he looked at me very hard, recognized me, I suppose, and came again the next day. While he was looking at my flowers, he paid me compliments, but I didn't listen to him. Then he mentioned you, and I was very glad to listen to him. He noticed that, for every time he came he talked about you, and I always urged him to stay. He was the only person from whom I heard anything about you; what he said made me sad, and yet I wanted to hear it. He told me that you had twenty mistresses, that you loved all the women, and that you had made fun of me; then he showed me the bouquets I had carried to you, which he said you had given to him."

"The miserable cur! And you believed him, Nicette?"

"Alas! when I saw you come to buy flowers with that lady who--who called you her dear friend and looked at me with such a sneering expression, I thought he had told me the truth. That made me so unhappy that I couldn't stay at home; I went out and walked about the streets most of the night, hardly knowing what I did. It was while I was out that you came. The next morning, when you came again, you seemed to be very angry, and you left me very suddenly, you know; I wanted to call you back, but I didn't dare. That evening Monsieur Raymond came; he talked about you; I cried, and he tried to comfort me; he may have taken my hands in his, but if he did I didn't feel it; I was thinking only of you. He came again the next night, and then he wanted to talk about himself: he said that he adored me, and a lot of other things; but he said nothing more about you, and I wouldn't listen to him. I didn't let him in again; he wrote me a long love letter, calling me cruel and wicked. I have kept it to show you. At last he let me alone. I never saw you after that. I came to this house and learned that you had gone away, but had kept your apartment; that made me hope you would return. But one day Monsieur Raymond passed my shop, and, being delighted to make me unhappy, told me you were married. Alas! I should have expected it; I knew that there must be many other women who loved you; and yet, I became so miserable that I didn't have the courage to keep my shop; besides, I was rich enough to get along without it. I came to this house and found that the other apartment on your landing was empty, so I hired it on the spot. That brought me nearer to these rooms where I passed that night which changed the whole course of my life. But when you came back here to live, I didn't dare to let you see me, because I was afraid that the sight of me would not be pleasant to you.--That is the truth; do you believe now that I have loved any man but you?"

When she had finished her story, Nicette went for Raymond's letter and brought it to me. I no longer needed it to induce me to believe her; but that final proof thoroughly convinced me that I had been deceived by appearances and by Raymond's lies.

Ah! how delicious was that moment when I found that Nicette was worthy of all my love! I hastened to tell her, in my turn, all that had happened to me, all that I had felt when I believed that she was Raymond's mistress. She wept with joy and love as she listened; she gazed into my face, took my hands, and held them to her heart.

"So you did love me," she said, "and you love me still! Ah! how happy I am!"

The story of my marriage and of Pélagie's conduct caused her the greatest surprise; she could not conceive how my wife could fail to love me. Dear Nicette! But for that miserable Raymond, I should still have been free! but the ties which bound me to Pélagie were broken by nature, if not by man.

"What!" she said; "are you not going back to your wife?"

"Never. That resolution was irrevocable before I found you; it can bring no blame upon you."

"And you really want me to stay with you?"

"Do I want you to! Could I live without you now?"

"Oh! how happy I am going to be, monsieur!"

"Dear Nicette! no more _monsieur_, no more formal address! I am your friend, your lover, and you are the whole world to me! Call me Eugène, your Eugène!"

The evening passed away in this blissful conversation.

"I must go to my room now," said Nicette; "it is time to go to sleep, and you need it."

"Oh! happiness has restored my health. But you are my nurse, and you must not leave me."

She blushed and looked at me; but she had not the strength to deny me anything.

"Dear Eugène," she said, "I am yours. This is surely the place where I owe the reward of your love."

Oh! unalloyed ecstasy of true love, I had never known you before! Never until that day did I really exist!

XXXVI

GREAT EVENTS.--CONCLUSION

A new dawn had risen for me; beside Nicette time fairly flew, and love alone remained. It seemed to me that I loved her more dearly every day. Sometimes the poor child feared that her happiness was only a dream. How keen our pleasures were! how sweet our intercourse! Nicette was no longer the poor flower girl whom I had known long before. Since she had known me, she had striven incessantly to leave behind her every trace of manners and mode of speech that might be unpleasant to me; she had struggled to acquire the indispensable knowledge that she lacked. During all the time that she had lived alone on my landing, she had devoted to study every instant that was not given to thoughts of me. The result was that she talked easily and expressed herself with facility; her manners were refined, her appearance simple, but modest; she did not hold herself perfectly stiff, or keep her eyes cast down, or assume the prudish airs which distinguished Pélagie--before she was my wife; but her demeanor was respectable, her glance sweet and expressive; her whole aspect was most attractive; and her heart--ah! her heart was a treasure!

Six months had passed like a day since I had found Nicette; our happiness would have been perfect but for her occasional fits of melancholy, the cause of which I divined.

"You are married," she often said to me; "perhaps it is very wrong of me to live with you. Suppose that you should despise me some day."

"Dear Nicette! drive away these thoughts, which my heart repels. Let the world think and say what it will! If it blames me, it is wrong. In good faith, which of the two deserves to be despised, the wife who deceives her husband, or the mistress who is true to her lover?"

But one morning, while we were breakfasting, there came a violent ring at my door. Nicette answered the bell and returned, followed by a woman whom I recognized: it was Justine, Pélagie's maid.

My blood froze in my veins. Why had she come?

"Monsieur," said Justine, "madame your wife is very sick; when she came home from a ball three days ago, she began to vomit blood; they think she can't get well, and she wants to see you."

Nicette turned pale; I saw her stagger, but she ran to fetch my hat.

"Go, my dear," she said; "go at once; your wife is waiting for you. If necessary, stay with her, don't come back! But try to save her life."

I hurried after Justine and returned to that house which I had thought that I should never enter again. How everything was changed! What confusion everywhere! I found my way at last to my wife's apartment and approached her bed; I could hardly recognize her. Was this that Pélagie who used to be so fresh and pretty?--I forgot her faults, and I was conscious of no feeling for her but pity.

She held out her hand.

"I wanted to see you before I died," she said, in a faint voice. "Eugène, forgive my wrongdoing. I am punished for it, as you see. If I had listened to you, I should not be standing now on the edge of the grave."

I tried to comfort her, to revive hope in her heart; but I could not; she knew too well that the mainspring of life was broken.

I took my place by her side. The day passed without bringing any change in her condition, but the night was terrible; and about five in the morning, Pélagie ceased to live.

I shed tears over the remains of a woman whose life was so brief and whose happiness was so deceptive.

Having completed the business to which this sad event required me to attend, and having paid my wife's debts, I returned to Nicette.

"Well?" she said; "your wife?"

"She is no more!"

"Oh! my dear, let us weep over her fate! she might have been so happy if she had loved you!"

To divert my thoughts from that occurrence, I formed the plan of taking a journey with Nicette. That would complete her training; the sight of Switzerland and Italy is always profitable to those who can think and remember.

Nicette was ready to go with me; wherever she could be with me, she was perfectly happy; it mattered little to her under what sky or in what climate we were to pass our lives. To her I was the world, pleasure, happiness. Ah! Nicette! love me so always! If you should ever be false to me, then I should know that no one on earth is worthy of love or faith.

We started in a berlin which I had bought, so that we were free to halt wherever some monument should arouse our admiration, or some fact of history our interest; that is the only agreeable and profitable way to travel.

We made the tour of Switzerland. I was anxious to show Nicette the splendors of Mont Cenis, and we stopped at an inn near the foot of the mountain. I observed that there was a great commotion in the house. I ordered a room, and the maid who showed us the way to it kept uttering exclamations.

"What has happened here, in heaven's name?" I asked her; "you all seem much excited. You have guests here, I suppose?"

"Yes, monsieur, a party of foreigners arrived this morning, to climb the mountain; there are Englishmen and Frenchmen and Russians, a whole party of sightseers, in fact. But that isn't what distresses us so. You see, monsieur, this morning before breakfast all these gentlemen were together, and they began to talk about tables d'hôte. One man said that he liked them because he ate very fast; another declared that he was a better eater than any of the rest, and that he'd eat six eggs before breakfast and, even then, eat faster than anyone; they laughed at him, so he bet ten louis, and an Englishman took the bet. The poor man ordered hard-boiled eggs; he ate them, and then began his breakfast; oh! he went at it in fine style, I tell you! and so he won his ten louis. But just after, he turned yellow, red, and blue; they had to put him to bed, and instead of climbing the mountain he's likely to die on our hands."

"It's an Englishman, of course, who undertook that pretty trick?"

"No, monsieur; a Frenchman."

"A Frenchman!"

"If you want to see him, everybody's standing round his bed; everyone has some remedy to save his life."

I was curious to see the fellow. I left Nicette and bade the girl show me to the dying man's room. As I entered, he breathed his last, as a result of his wager. I glanced at his face, and recognized my neighbor Raymond.

* * * * *

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

interrupting her converversation=> interrupting her conversation {pg 78}

which I was detemined=> which I was determined {pg 198}

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

even though one act wretchedly=> even though one acts wretchedly {pg 287}

* * * * *