III
“Dinner made me lose my head altogether. I sat beside her, and my hand continually met hers under the tablecloth, my foot touched hers, and our glances met and melted together.
“After dinner we took a walk by moonlight, and I whispered to her all the tender things that rose in my heart. I held her close to me, embracing her every moment, and pressing my lips against hers. Her uncle and Rivet were arguing as they walked in front of us, their shadows following solemnly behind them on the sandy paths. We went in, and soon a messenger brought a telegram from her aunt, saying that she would not return until the first train the next morning, at seven o’clock.
“ ‘Very well, Henriette,’ her uncle said, ‘go and show the gentlemen their rooms.’ She showed Rivet his first, and he whispered to me: ‘There was no danger of her taking us into yours first.’ Then she took me to my room, and as soon as she was alone with me, I took her in my arms again and tried to excite her senses and overcome her resistance, but when she felt that she was near succumbing, she escaped out of the room, and I got between the sheets, very much put out and excited, and feeling rather foolish, for I knew that I should not sleep much. I was wondering how I could have committed such a mistake, when there was a gentle knock at my door, and on my asking who was there, a low voice replied: ‘I.’
“I dressed myself quickly and opened the door, and she came in. ‘I forgot to ask you what you take in the morning,’ she said, ‘chocolate, tea, or coffee?’ I put my arms around her impetuously and said, devouring her with kisses: ‘I will take—I will take—’ But she freed herself from my arms, blew out my candle, and disappeared, and left me alone in the dark, furious, trying to find some matches and not able to do so. At last I got some and I went into the passage, feeling half mad, with my candlestick in my hand.
“What was I going to do? I did not stop to think, I only wanted to find her, and I would. I went a few steps without reflecting, but then I suddenly thought to myself: ‘Suppose I should go into the uncle’s room, what should I say?’ And I stood still, with my head a void, and my heart beating.
“But in a few moments, I thought of an answer: ‘Of course, I shall say that I was looking for Rivet’s room, to speak to him about an important matter,’ and I began to inspect all the doors, trying to find hers. At random I took hold of a key, turned it, the door opened and I went in. There was Henriette, sitting on her bed and looking at me in terror. So I gently pushed the bolt, and going up to her on tiptoe, I said: ‘I forgot to ask you for something to read, Mademoiselle.’ She struggled, but I soon opened the book I was looking for. I will not tell you its title, but it is the most wonderful of romances, the divinest of poems. And when once I had turned the first page, she let me turn over as many leaves as I liked, and I got through so many chapters that our candles were quite burned out.
“Then, after thanking her, I was stealthily returning to my room, when a rough hand seized me, and a voice—it was Rivet’s—whispered in my ear: ‘Are you still settling the affair of that pig, Morin?’
“At seven o’clock the next morning, she herself brought me a cup of chocolate. I have never drunk anything like it, soft, velvety, perfumed, intoxicating, a chocolate to make one swoon with pleasure. I could scarcely take away my mouth from the delicious lips of her cup. She had hardly left the room when Rivet came in. He seemed nervous and irritable like a man who had not slept, and he said to me crossly: ‘If you go on like this, you will end by spoiling the affair of that pig, Morin!’
“At eight o’clock the aunt arrived. Our discussion was very short, the good people withdrew their complaint, and I left five hundred francs for the poor of the town. They wanted to keep us for the day, and they arranged an excursion to go and see some ruins. Henriette made signs to me to stay, behind her uncle’s back, and I accepted, but Rivet was determined to go. I took him aside, and begged and prayed him: ‘Come on, old man, do it for my sake.’ He appeared quite exasperated and kept saying to me: ‘I have had enough of that pig Morin’s affair, do you hear?’
“Of course I was obliged to go also, and it was one of the hardest moments of my life. I could have gone on settling that business as long as I lived, and when we were in the railway carriage, after shaking hands with her in silence, I said to Rivet: ‘You are a mere brute!’ And he replied: ‘My dear fellow, you were beginning to get on my nerves confoundedly.’
“On getting to the Fanal office, I saw a crowd waiting for us, and as soon as they saw us, they all exclaimed: ‘Well, have you settled the affair of that pig, Morin?’ All La Rochelle was excited about it, and Rivet, who had got over his ill humour on the journey, had great difficulty in keeping himself from laughing as he said: ‘Yes, we have managed it, thanks to Labarbe.’ And we went to Morin’s.
“He was sitting in an armchair, with mustard plasters on his legs, and cold bandages on his head, nearly dead with misery. He was coughing incessantly with the short cough of a dying man, without anyone knowing how he had caught this cold, and his wife seemed like a tigress ready to eat him. As soon as he saw us he trembled so violently as to make his hands and knees shake, so I said to him immediately: ‘It is all settled, you dirty scamp, but don’t do such a thing again.’
“He got up, choking, took my hands and kissed them as if they had belonged to a prince, cried, nearly fainted, embraced Rivet, and even kissed Madame Morin, who gave him a push that sent him staggering back into his armchair. But he never got over the blow: his mind had been too upset. In all the country round, moreover, he was called nothing but ‘that pig, Morin,’ and the epithet went through him like a sword-thrust every time he heard it. When a street-boy called after him: ‘Pig!’ he turned his head instinctively. His friends also overwhelmed him with horrible jokes, and used to chaff him, whenever they were eating ham, by saying: ‘Is this a bit of you?’ He died two years later.
“As for myself, when I was a candidate for the Chamber of Deputies in 1875, I called on the new notary at Tousserre, Monsieur Belloncle, to solicit his vote, and a tall, handsome, richly-dressed woman received me. ‘Don’t you remember me?’ she said.
“I stammered out: ‘No … No … Madame.’
“ ‘Henriette Bonnel?’
“ ‘Ah!’ And I felt myself turning pale, while she seemed perfectly at her ease, and looked at me with a smile.
“As soon as she had left me alone with her husband, he took both of my hands, and squeezing them as if he meant to crush them, he said: ‘I have been intending to go and see you for a long time, my dear sir, for my wife has very often talked to me about you. I know under what painful circumstances you made her acquaintance, and I know also how perfectly you behaved, how full of delicacy, tact, and devotion you showed yourself in the affair—’ He hesitated, and then said in a lower tone, as if he had been saying something low and coarse: ‘In the affair of that pig, Morin.’ ”