FullReads

For a moment I remained in the street, uncertain whether I had better go upstairs and question the lovers, who were still laughing in the sunshine. However, I decided to enter the little restaurant below. When I started on my walk the old doctor had placed a five-franc piece in my hand. No doubt I was changed beyond recognition, for my beard had grown during the brain fever, and my face was wrinkled and haggard. As I took a seat at a small table I saw Mme Gabin come in carrying a cup; she wished to buy a penny-worth of coffee. Standing in front of the counter, she began to gossip with the landlady of the establishment.

“Well,” asked the latter, “so the poor little woman of the third floor has made up her mind at last, eh?”

“How could she help herself?” answered Mme Gabin.”It was the very best thing for her to do. Monsieur Simoneau showed her so much kindness. You see, he had finished his business in Paris to his satisfaction, for he has inherited a pot of money. Well, he offered to take her away with him to his own part of the country and place her with an aunt of his, who wants a housekeeper and companion.

The landlady laughed archly. I buried my face in a newspaper which I picked off the table. My lips were white and my hands shook.

“It will end in a marriage, of course,” resumed Mme Gabin.”The little widow mourned for her husband very properly, and the young man was extremely well behaved. Well, they left last night—and, after all, they were free to please themselves.”

Just then the side door of the restaurant, communicating with the passage of the house, opened, and Dédé appeared.

“Mother, aren’t you coming?” she cried.”I’m waiting, you know; do be quick.”

“Presently,” said the mother testily.”Don’t bother.”

The girl stood listening to the two women with the precocious shrewdness of a child born and reared amid the streets of Paris.

“When all is said and done,” explained Mme Gabin, “the dear departed did not come up to Monsieur Simoneau. I didn’t fancy him overmuch; he was a puny sort of a man, a poor, fretful fellow, and he hadn’t a penny to bless himself with. No, candidly, he wasn’t the kind of husband for a young and healthy wife, whereas Monsieur Simoneau is rich, you know, and as strong as a Turk.”

“Oh yes!” interrupted Dédé.”I saw him once when he was washing— his door was open. His arms are so hairy!”

“Get along with you,” screamed the old woman, shoving the girl out of the restaurant.”You are always poking your nose where it has no business to be.”

Then she concluded with these words: “Look here, to my mind the other one did quite right to take himself off. It was fine luck for the little woman!”

When I found myself in the street again I walked along slowly with trembling limbs. And yet I was not suffering much; I think I smiled once at my shadow in the sun. It was quite true. I was very puny. It had been a queer notion of mine to marry Marguerite. I recalled her weariness at Guérande, her impatience, her dull, monotonous life. The dear creature had been very good to me, but I had never been a real lover; she had mourned for me as a sister for her brother, not otherwise. Why should I again disturb her life? A dead man is not jealous.

When I lifted my eyelids I saw the garden of the Luxembourg before me. I entered it and took a seat in the sun, dreaming with a sense of infinite restfulness. The thought of Marguerite stirred me softly. I pictured her in the provinces, beloved, petted and very happy. She had grown handsomer, and she was the mother of three boys and two girls. It was all right. I had behaved like an honest man in dying, and I would not commit the cruel folly of coming to life again.

Since then I have traveled a good deal. I have been a little everywhere. I am an ordinary man who has toiled and eaten like anybody else. Death no longer frightens me, but it does not seem to care for me now that I have no motive in living; and I sometimes fear that I have been forgotten upon earth.