IV
M. Martini had finished speaking. Mme. Parisse, her walk over, was returning. She passed near me, gravely, her eyes turned to the Alps whose peaks were rosy now in the last rays of the sun.
I wanted to speak to her, the poor unhappy woman who must have thought long of that night of love, now so far in the past, and of the bold man who for one kiss of hers had dared to put a town in a state of siege and jeopardise his whole future.
He had doubtless forgotten her now; or remembered her only when his tongue was loosened by wine and he told the story of that audacious, comic and passionate jest.
Had she seen him again? Did she still love him? I thought: “It is an admirable instance of modern love, absurd and still heroic. The Homer who would sing this Helen, and the adventure of her Menelaus, would have to possess the mind of Paul de Kock. And yet the hero of this forsaken woman is brave, daring, beautiful, as strong as Achilles, and craftier than Ulysses.”