He tried to console her, but she wanted to start,
to return, and to go home immediately, and she kept
saying as she walked along quickly: “Good
heavens! good heavens!” He said to her:
“Louise! Louise! Please let us stop
here.” But now her cheeks were red and her
eyes hollow, and as soon as they got to the railway
station in Paris, she left him, without even saying
good-bye.
When he met her in the omnibus next day, she appeared
to him to be changed and thinner, and she said to
him: “I want to speak to you; we will get
down at the Boulevard.”
As soon as they were on the pavement, she said:
“We must bid each other good-bye; I cannot meet
you again after what has happened.” “But
why?” he asked. “Because I cannot;
I have been culpable, and I will not be so again.”
Then he implored her, tortured by desire, maddened
by the wish of having her entirely, in the absolute
freedom of nights of love, but she replied firmly:
“No, I cannot, I cannot.” He, however,
only grew all the more excited, and promised to marry
her, but she said again: “No.”
And left him.
For a week he did not see her. He could not manage
to meet her, and as he did not know her address, he
thought that he had lost her altogether. On the
ninth day, however, there was a ring at his bell, and
when he opened it, she was there. She threw herself
into his arms, and did not resist any longer, and
for three months she was his mistress. He was
beginning to grow tired of her, when she told him she
was pregnant, and then he had one idea and wish:
To break with her at any price. As, however,
he could not do that, not knowing how to begin or what
to say, full of anxiety through the fear of that child
which was growing, he took a decisive step: One
night he changed his lodgings, and disappeared.
The blow was so heavy that she did not look for the
man who had abandoned her, but threw herself at her
mother’s knees and confessed her misfortune,
and some months after, she gave birth to a boy.
Years passed, and Francois Tessier grew old without
there having been any alteration in his life.
He led the dull, monotonous life of bureaucrates,
without hopes and without expectations. Every
day he got up at the same time, went through the same
streets, went through the same door, passed the same
porter, went into the same office, sat in the same
chair, and did the same work. He was alone in
the world, alone, during the day in the midst of his
colleagues, and alone at night in his bachelor’s
lodgings, and he laid by a hundred francs a month,
against old age.
Every Sunday he went to the Champs-Elysees,
to watch the elegant people, the carriages and the
pretty women, and the next day he used to say to one
of his colleagues: “The return of the carriages
from the Bois de Boulogne was very brilliant
yesterday.” One fine Sunday morning, however,
he went into the Parc Monceau, where the mothers
and nurses, sitting on the sides of the walks, watched
the children playing, and suddenly Francois Tessier
started. A woman passed by, holding two children
by the hand; a little boy of about ten and a little
girl of four. It was she.
