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Updated: May 17, 2025
Perhaps it was a letter to Madame Schmoll, who was not a friend of Madame Marmet, but immediately he realized that this idea was foolish. All was clear. She had a lover. She was writing to him. Perhaps she was saying to him: "I saw Dechartre to-day; the poor fellow is deeply in love with me." But whether she wrote that or something else, she had a lover. He had not thought of that.
"To be beautiful, must a woman have that thin form and that length of limb? I am not shaped in that way." He took pains to reassure her. But she was not disturbed about it. She was looking now at the little castle of the ice-vender. A sudden desire had come to her to eat an ice standing there, as the working-girls of the city stood. "Wait a moment," said Dechartre.
At this instant Dechartre came into the room with Count Martin, who, after beating him at billiards, had acquired a great affection for him and was explaining to him the dangers of a personal tax based on the number of servants one kept. A pale winter sun piercing the mists of the Seine, illuminated the dogs painted by Oudry on the doors of the dining room.
Thus we shall participate in what has been, in what is, and in what shall be. You do not wish to be immortal, Monsieur Dechartre? Beware, for God may hear you." Dechartre replied: "It would be enough for me to live one moment more." And he said good-night, promising to return the next day to escort Madame Martin to the Brancacci chapel.
And Garain still shivered at the thought of his former colleague. Therese rose. Senator Loyer offered his arm to her, with the graceful attitude that he had learned forty years before at Bullier's dancing- hall. She left the politicians in the drawing-room, and hastened to meet Dechartre. A rosy mist covered the Seine, the stone quays, and the gilded trees.
She made no reply. When, in her Carmelite mantle, she came to the Lungarno Acciaoli, at about half-past six, Dechartre greeted her with a humble look that moved her. The setting sun made the Arno purple. They remained silent for a moment. While they were walking past the monotonous line of palaces to the old bridge, she was the first to speak. "You see, I have come. I thought I ought to come.
She foresaw difficulties; her lucid mind and her temperament presented them all to her. For a moment she tried to deceive herself; she reflected that perhaps he, a dreamer, exalted, lost in his studies of art, might remain assiduous without being exacting. But she did not wish to reassure herself with that idea. If Dechartre were not a lover, he lost all his charm.
She reproached herself for feeling anxiety without reason, when, on the contrary, she should be reassured and joyful. She knew she would meet Jacques Dechartre in Paris. They would have liked to arrive there at the same time, or, rather, to go there together.
Dechartre, seated near Madame Martin, questioned her on her tastes about art and beauty, sustained, led, animated her admirations, at times prompted her with caressing brusquerie, wished her to see all that he had seen, to love all that he loved. He wished that she should go in the gardens at the first flush of spring.
For thirteen centuries she retained this funereal majesty, until one day a child passed a candle through the opening of the grave and burned the body." Madame Martin-Belleme asked what that dead woman, so obstinate in her conceit, had done during her life. "Twice a slave," said Dechartre, "she became twice an empress." "She must have been beautiful," said Madame Martin.
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