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Updated: April 30, 2025
The prima donna had looked and pleaded like Valdorême. Caspilier shrugged his shoulders, but did not withdraw his wrist from her firm grasp. "Why go over the whole weary ground again?" he said. "If it were not Tenise, it would be somebody else. I was never meant for a constant husband, Val. I understood from Lacour that we were to have no more of this nonsense."
"You will find these cigarettes excellent. My husband's taste in cigarettes is better than in many things. He prefers the Russian to the French." Caspilier laughed loudly. "That's a slap at you, Tenise," he said. "At me? Not so; she speaks of cigarettes, and I myself prefer the Russian, only they are so expensive."
The hostess sat silent, but no second talker was needed when the poet was present. Tenise laughed merrily now and then at his bright sayings, for the excellence of the meal had banished her fears of poison. "What penetrating smell is this that fills the room? Better open the window," said Caspilier. "It is nothing," replied Valdorême, speaking for the first time since they had sat down.
Fortified once again, he resolved to act before his courage had time to evaporate, and so, goading himself on with the thought that no man should be afraid to meet any woman, be she Russian or civilised, he entered the shop, making his most polite bow to Madame Caspilier. "I have come, madame," he began, "as the friend of your husband, to talk with you regarding his affairs."
"A man must live," said Caspilier at last; "and the profession of decadent poet is not a lucrative one. Of course there is undying fame in the future, but then we must have our absinthe in the present. Why did I marry her, you ask? I was the victim of my environment. I must write poetry; to write poetry, I must live; to live, I must have money; to get money, I was forced to marry.
Madame Caspilier seated herself at a table, resting her elbow upon it, shading her eyes with her hand, and yet Lacour felt them searching his very soul. "Sit down," she said. "You are my husband's friend. What have you to say?" Now, it is a difficult thing for a man to tell a beautiful woman that her husband for the moment prefers some one else, so Lacour began on generalities.
The heart of the poet was filled with joy when he heard from his friend that at last Valdorême had come to regard his union with Tenise in the light of reason. Caspilier, as he embraced Lacour, admitted that perhaps there was something to be said for his wife after all.
"I'm afraid of her," whimpered Tenise, holding back. "She will poison us." "Nonsense," said Caspilier, in a whisper. "Come along. She is too fond of me to attempt anything of that kind, and you are safe when I am here." Valdorême sat at the head of the table, with her husband at her right hand and Tenise on her left. The breakfast was the best either of them had ever tasted.
Tenise, fluttering her helpless little hands before her, tottered shrieking to the broken window. Caspilier, staggering panting to his feet, gasped "You Russian devil! The key, the key!" He tried to clutch her throat, but she pushed him back. "Go to your Frenchwoman. She's calling for help." Tenise sank by the window, one burning arm over the sill, and was silent.
Eugène Caspilier sat at one of the metal tables of the Café Égalité, allowing the water from the carafe to filter slowly through a lump of sugar and a perforated spoon into his glass of absinthe. It was not an expression of discontent that was to be seen on the face of Caspilier, but rather a fleeting shade of unhappiness which showed he was a man to whom the world was being unkind.
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