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Mlle. Ange'lique I guessed to be thirty years old, her friend perhaps fifty-five. Each of their faces was as clear to me as in the moment of actual vision the man's fat shiny bewildered face; the taut white face of the woman, the hard red line of her mouth, the eyes that were not flashing, but positively dull, with rage.
I decided that I must choose the first of these two ways. It was the less chivalrous as well as the less lurid way, but clearly it was the more artistic as well as the easier. The 'chose vue, the 'tranche de la vie' this was the thing to aim at. Honesty was the best policy. I must be nothing if not merciless. Maupassant was nothing if not merciless. He would not have spared Mlle. Ange'lique.
Down below, but I pulled myself together, and asked pardon of my Muse. It may be that I had offended her by my fooling. Or it may be that she had a sisterly desire to shield Mlle. Ange'lique from my mordant art. Or it may be that she was bent on saving M. de Maupassant from a dangerous rivalry. Anyway, she withheld from me the inspiration I had so confidently solicited.
They touch a chord... Lest this confession raise false hopes in the reader, I add that I did not know their owner. I did once see her, and in Normandy, and by moonlight, and her name was Ange'lique. She was graceful, she was even beautiful. I was but nineteen years old. Yet even so I cannot say that she impressed me favourably. I was seated at a table of a cafe' on the terrace of a casino.
Wronged persons might be ever so communicative, but I surmised that persons in the wrong were reticent. Mlle. Ange'lique, therefore, would have to be modified by me in appearance and behaviour, toned down, touched up; and poor M. Joumand must look like a man of whom one could believe anything.... 'She ceased speaking.
That very hard Parisian face must have been as white as the powder that coated it. 'Coute, Ange'lique, gasped the perspiring bourgeois, 'écoute, je te supplie The swing-door received them and was left swinging to and fro. I wanted to follow, but had not paid for my bock. I beckoned my waiter.
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