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He went to live in a village on the shore of the Mediterranean, the classic sea of lovers. And three years passed. Renoldi, bent under the yoke, was vanquished, and became accustomed to the woman's persevering devotion. His hair had now turned white. He looked upon himself as a man done for, gone under.
And ere long there was a feeling of general reprobation against Lieutenant Renoldi for refusing to see her again a unanimous sentiment of blame. It was a matter of common talk that he had deserted her, betrayed her, ill-treated her. The Colonel, overcome by compassion, brought his officer to book in a quiet way.
Paul d'Henricol called on his friend: "Deuce take it, Renoldi, it's not good enough to let a woman die; it's not the right thing anyhow." The other, enraged, told him to hold his tongue, whereupon d'Henricol made use of the word "infamy." The result was a duel, Renoldi was wounded, to the satisfaction of everybody, and was for some time confined to his bed.
Then, when they remained together as if they had been legally united, the same colonel who had displayed indignation with him for abandoning her, objected to this irregular connection as being incompatible with the good example officers ought to give in a regiment. He warned the lieutenant on the subject, and then furiously denounced his conduct, so Renoldi retired from the army.
She returned the salutation of the two young men without lowering her eyes, glowing with such a flame that a doubt, at last, forced its way into Lieutenant Renoldi's mind. His friend said, in the same hushed voice: "I was sure of it. Did you not notice her this time? By Jove, she is a nice tit-bit!" But Jean Renoldi had no desire for a society intrigue.
I have, therefore, come to ask my wife to return home. I hope that to-day she will consent to go back to my house to her own house. As for me, I will make a show of having forgotten, for for the sake of my daughters." Renoldi felt a wild movement in his heart, and he was inundated with a delirium of joy like a condemned man who receives a pardon.
Then Renoldi, with the determination of a desperate man playing his last card, began talking to her in his turn, and pleaded the cause of the poor girls, the cause of the husband, his own cause. And when he stopped, trying to find some fresh argument, M. Poincot, at his wits' end, murmured, in the affectionate style in which he used to speak to her in days gone by: "Look here, Delphine!
But suddenly, one morning the news came that the regiment was about to be removed from the garrison; Renoldi began to dance with joy. He was saved! Saved without scenes, without cries! Saved! All he had to do now was to wait patiently for two months more. Saved! In the evening she came to him more excited than she had ever been before.
He stammered: "Why, yes certainly, Monsieur I myself be assured of it no doubt it is right, it is only quite right." This time M. Poincot no longer declined to sit down. Renoldi then rushed up the stairs, and pausing at the door of his mistress's room, to collect his senses, entered gravely. "There is somebody below waiting to see you," he said. "'Tis to tell you something about your daughters."
Madame Poincot was standing up exasperated, just on the point of going away, while her husband had seized hold of her dress, exclaiming: "But remember that you are destroying our daughters, your daughters, our children!" She answered stubbornly: "I will not go back to you!" Renoldi understood everything, came over to them in a state of great agitation, and gasped: "What, does she refuse to go?"
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