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I promised never to give a glance to Veronique, of whom I was already afraid, but I loved Rosalie and would have done anything to save her the least grief. I set to at my translation after dinner; it was work I liked. I did not go out that day, and I spent the whole of the next morning with M. de Grimaldi. I went to the banker Belloni and changed all my gold into gigliati sequins.
I wanted to get some amusement out of the interval, and proposed an ablution, which made Annette laugh and which Veronique pronounced to be absolutely necessary. I found it a delicious hors d'oeuvre to the banquet I had enjoyed. The two sisters rendered each other various services, standing in the most lascivious postures, and I found my situation as looker-on an enviable one.
It was gratitude on his part which made him smooth the way to my conquest of Veronique, who doubtless struck him as a fit and proper person to console me for the loss of Rosalie. I did not take any part in the conversation at supper, but the marquis drew out Veronique, and she shone.
She soon came back telling me that Veronique was obliged, but begged me to let her sleep. I supped with Annette, and was glad to see that, though she only drank water, her appetite was better than mine. My passion for her sister prevented me thinking of her, but I felt that Annette would otherwise have taken my fancy.
But I walked through it all without seeing anything. I had my ruins, I had my dead, to crush me. I was told that many of the bodies had been buried in trenches in a corner of the cemetery. Only, they had had the forethought to photograph the unidentified. And it was among these lamentable photographs that I found Gaspard and Veronique.
I behaved in the same way at dinner; and the general high spirits which M. de Grimaldi found prevailing in the evening, made him think, doubtless, that we were getting on well, and he congratulated us. Veronique behaved exactly as if the marquis had guessed the truth, and I felt sure of having her after supper, and in the ecstasy of the thought I promised to stay for four days longer.
Neither of the bridal pair could dance; Veronique continued therefore to do the honors to her guests, and to win the esteem and good graces of nearly all the persons who were presented to her, asking Grossetete, who took an honest liking to her, for information about the company. She made no mistakes and committed no blunders.
And thus shielded from the sight of Marcisse's intended passionate gesture of farewell at the palace-door, Eustecie was laid at full length on the seat of the great ponderous family coach, where Veronique hardly wished to revive her till the eight horses should have dragged her beyond the streets of Paris, with their terrible associations, and the gibbets still hung with the limbs of the murdered.
I would not go out at all, and I thanked her. It was much easier to write sweet things to her than to Robert. When I was alone I could not eat. Véronique came in to try and persuade me. I looked so very pale, she said, she feared I had taken cold. She was in one of her "old-mother" moods, when she drops the third person sometimes, and calls me "mon enfant."
He looked round the room, and on through the wide-open double doors into my dainty bedroom, where Véronique was still packing. "You are very cosey here; it is absurd of you to leave it," he said. I got up off the floor and went to the window and back. I don't know why I felt moved a sudden sense of the cosiness came over me. The world looked wet and bleak outside.
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