Dodichet pretended not to hear, and insisted on continuing his air; but the audience made a terrible uproar, and some young men in the pit threw raw potatoes and copper sous at the debutant.

"Ah! this is the way you treat me, is it?" he cried; "well, you're a pack of brazen-faced hounds!"

And with that, he turned his back on the audience, made a most contemptuous gesture, and rushed into the wings. But the gesture he had indulged in and the words he had uttered excited the wrath of the spectators to the highest pitch; they jumped down among the musicians, climbed upon the stage, and scoured it in all directions.

"We'll teach the fellow to show such disrespect to the public," they said; "it's a hiding, not hisses, that Signor Rouladini needs."

And the prompter in his hole rubbed his hands in glee.

The manager tried in vain to pacify the audience; they would not listen to him. But Dodichet's comrades, seeing that the matter was becoming serious, hustled him out of the theatre by a side door, with a policeman's cloak over his shoulders and a fireman's helmet on his head.

"Leave the town at once," they said to him. "Don't go back to your hotel, for you won't be safe there. Hurry to the station, and skip! the Bretons don't understand a joke; they might do you a serious injury."

Bewildered by what had happened to him, Dodichet found himself in the street with no clear idea how he had got there. Luckily for him, he invariably carried his purse in his belt, so that he would always be able to take something. He soon decided what course to take. Wrapping himself in the cloak they had thrown over his shoulders, and fixing the fireman's helmet firmly on his head, he made for the railway station.

"The provinces are not enlightened enough to appreciate me," he said to himself; "I will return to Paris. I have two hundred francs in my purse still, and with that I can await events."

He jumped into a carriage in which there were three women. His strange costume frightened them, and they started to change carriages; but Dodichet rea.s.sured them by saying that he had just left a fancy-dress ball, and that he had retained his disguise on a wager. But, at the first stop, he purchased other clothes, not daring to return to Paris as Joconde, a policeman, and a fireman all in one.

This change of costume was expensive, and when he arrived in Paris Dodichet had but one hundred francs left of the thousand Seringat had lent him. But, on the very day of his return, he received a letter from Troyes in an envelope with a black border.

"My poor aunt is dead!" he said to himself; "faith! I'll not play the hypocrite so far as to weep for her. Her money arrives in the nick of time. I will pay Seringat, I will buy a cashmere shawl for Boulotte, and I will weave days of gold, truffles, and champagne; for the dear aunt was rich. She must have left me more than a hundred thousand francs!"

Dodichet broke the seal; the letter did, in fact, announce the death of his aunt, who had left her whole fortune to a third or fourth cousin, as she did not choose that it should go to her scapegrace of a nephew, who had made such a wretched use of the money his other relations had left him.

Dodichet did not expect to be disinherited; he angrily crumpled the notary's letter which told him the news; and for the first time his reflections were not rose-colored.

XV

A RASCALLY BROTHER-IN-LAW

After his quarrel with Nathalie, Adhemar sought distraction and pleasure to no purpose; go where he would, he found neither. When one loves truly, it is a very painful thing to cease to see her whose presence had a never-failing charm; one tries in vain to put a brave face upon it, and to tell one's self that a lost love is readily replaced by another; in reality, we cannot tear a beloved image from our hearts so easily; we are conscious of an aching void, a brooding melancholy which follows us everywhere; and we prefer the memories of the past for which we sigh to all the pleasures that the present has to offer us.

Adhemar was unhappy, and dissatisfied with himself; and yet he strove to convince himself that he was justified in breaking off that intimacy which had so much charm for him.

"I loved her," he would say to himself; "I loved her sincerely, but she did not love me, for she deceived me. That pipe case did not belong to any woman. So that she received visits from men without telling me! and when one's mistress once has mysteries of that sort in her life, everyone knows what it means. And that smell of tobacco, which I had noticed before! That smoker must have come often to see her! Ah!

Nathalie, Nathalie! you who were the woman I had dreamed of--to be loved by whom would have made me so happy! But, no, women cannot be faithful; why should she have acted differently from the others?"

On a certain day, when the young author was walking along the street in gloomy mood, thinking such thoughts as these, he suddenly found himself face to face with Lucien, who, also, was sighing dolorously.

"Ah! Lucien!"

"Adhemar!"

"Where are you going, my dear Lucien?"

"I am going--upon my word! I don't know where I am going. I am walking about at random--I am so unhappy! so desperate!"

"Really? Come, tell me your troubles, my poor Lucien. I am none too cheerful myself, by the way. So we will share our sorrows; that always helps a little. Hasn't your invention, your little business enterprise, succeeded?"

"Why, yes, it is going on very well, and that is just the reason I am in such despair."

"I don't understand you."

"As my business seemed to be prospering, I thought I might hope that Juliette's hand would be given to me at last. But, instead of that, Monsieur Mirotaine has turned me out of his house and forbidden me ever to go there again, all because Dodichet conceived the unfortunate idea of helping along my suit by introducing to the Mirotaines a pretended millionaire Italian count, who was to propose for Juliette; they got themselves invited to dinner, and Monsieur Mirotaine went to some expense to entertain them. Then Dubotte arrived and laid bare the fraud.

Monsieur Mirotaine saw that they had made a fool of him, and he is convinced that I was in the plot with Dodichet; hence his anger against me, and the prohibition to go to his house again!"

"What a devil of a fellow that Dodichet is! I remember perfectly that you definitely forbade him to play one of his wretched jokes on this Mirotaine."

"He meant to do me a service, so I can't be angry with him. And yet, he is the cause of my being turned out of the house."

"That old miser's anger will cool down, if you succeed in your undertakings. His daughter will make him listen to reason."

"But meanwhile I can't see her, or have any understanding with her. When I was admitted to her father's house, we found ways of exchanging a word or two in secret. But now that I can never see her, how am I to let her know anything about me? Why, to be unable to see, even for a single minute, the woman one loves, is the cruelest kind of torture, Adhemar, I tell you!"

"To whom are you saying that?"

"Do you mean to say that you can't see the woman you love?"

"In other words, the woman I loved did not love me! or she deceived me, which amounts to the same thing. So I ceased to see her; and yet, I know perfectly well that I love her still."

"Are you quite sure that she deceived you?"

"Quite sure; as sure as a man can be when he sees that a woman has secrets from him. Tell me, Lucien, suppose you should learn that your Juliette received visits, of which she never breathed a word to you; wouldn't you think that she had some intrigue on hand? I a.s.sume, of course, that she is living in her own apartment and is mistress of her actions."

"If Juliette was her own mistress and lived in the most modest little room imaginable, it would be of no use for anyone to say to me: 'She receives other men than you;' I would not suspect her for an instant!"

"Sapristi! what confidence! And suppose you had proof that she received men secretly?"

"Why, I should consider that she must have some reason for concealing those visits from me; for she certainly has none for telling me, for swearing to me that she loves me, if she doesn't love me. When I enter the room where she is, doesn't she always receive me with the sweetest smile? can I not read in her eyes all the pleasure that my presence affords her? Ah! not until she ceased to be the same to me, should I have the slightest fear that she no longer loved me!"

"You have a happy disposition, and no mistake! You are not jealous, are you?"

"Oh, no! not at all!"

"Tell me, do you know Madame Dermont? She is a friend of Mademoiselle Juliette, I believe?"

"Madame Dermont? Yes; I met her several times at Juliette's before Monsieur Mirotaine had forbidden me to talk with his daughter. She's a most attractive woman. Juliette has no better friend. They tell each other their joys and their sorrows, and neither of them has any secrets from the other. She knows that Juliette loves me; and if she could do anything to help us, she would ask nothing better. But she hasn't the power, poor woman! She has had a heap of trouble of her own."

"Who? Nathalie?--I mean Madame Dermont. What trouble? She never mentioned it to me."

"Do you know her, then?"

"Yes, a little. I go to her house sometimes. But this trouble of hers?