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It was the eve of the Festival, a calm, bright evening, and Élodie hanging on Évariste's arm, was strolling with him about the Champ de la Fédération. Workmen were hastily completing their task of erecting columns, statues, temples, a "mountain," an altar of the Fatherland. La Vendée was making good its check before Nantes by a series of startling victories.
Unsuccessful ladies of easy virtue from Whitechapel, perhaps, is the nearest rendering of the phrase. Elodie had quick ears. She also had the quick temper and tongue of Marseilles. She hung behind the two men, who proceeded to their table unconscious of drama. "In these places," she spat, "they pay naked women like you to come to attract men. You fear the competition of the modest, ma fille."
"Behold, you have a spare room centrally heated. You are virtue itself. I not only occupy the sacred position of your guardian, but am humiliatingly aware of my supreme lack of attraction. And yet " "Fich'-moi le camp," laughed Elodie. And Bakkus took up his old green valise and returned to his eyrie. There should be no scandal in the Faubourg Saint-Denis if Elodie could help it.
And Elodie, whom I had admired as a vital element in this combination, so alive, so smiling, so reponsive, appeared a merely mechanical figure, an exactly regulated automaton. My heart sank into my shoes, already chilled with the drippings of my fat neighbour's umbrella.
While the carts, escorted by gendarmes, were rumbling along on their way to the Place du Trône Renversé, carrying to their death Brotteaux and his "accomplices," Évariste sat pensive on a bench in the garden of the Tuileries. He was waiting for Élodie. The sun, nearing its setting, shot its fiery darts through the leafy chestnuts.
And the women of her acquaintance, mostly professional, were in poverty. They had the same cry, "My dear, lend me ten francs." "My little Elodie, I am on the rocks, my man is killed." "Ma bien aimee, I am starving. You who are at ease, let me come and eat with you" and so on and so on. Her heart grieved for them; but que veux-tu? one was not a charitable institution.
"Oh, aren't we married in real earnest now?" she asked. I explained that we weren't. "You have to have the Notary over from Bayonne, and go to Church. I know, because that's how it was when my cousin Elodie was married. We're only married in play?" Then she asked if that wasn't just as good. "Things one does in play are always so much nicer than real things," she said.
When it came to parting, Elodie wept and sobbed. He marvelled at her emotion. "You love me so much, my little Elodie?" "Mais tu es ma vie toute entiere. Haven't you understood it?" In that sense no. He had not understood. They had arranged their lives so much as business partners, friends, fate-linked humans dependent on each other for the daily amenities of a joint existence.
Évariste saw Élodie spring from a carriage and run forward. The girl's eyes flashed in the clear shadow cast by her straw hat; her lips, as red as the carnations she held in her hand, were wreathed in smiles. A scarf of black silk, crossed over the bosom, was knotted behind the back. Her yellow gown displayed the quick movements of the knees and showed a pair of low-heeled shoes below the hem.
He tried to speak but could not find his voice, and was chagrined at his failure, which Élodie preferred to the most eloquent greeting. She noticed also and looked upon it as a good omen, that he had tied his cravat with more than usual pains. She gave him her hand. "I wanted to see you," she began, "and talk to you.
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