"Precisely. So you're not going to tell him. I adore you. I have come to protect you. _Foi de Provencal._"

"The only way to protect me is to prove my innocence."

"And then?"

She drew herself up and looked him straight between the eyes.

"I'll recognize that you have a loyal heart, and will be your very good friend."

"Mme. Zette," cried Aristide, "I will devote my life to your service.

Tell me the particulars of the affair."

"Ask M. Bocardon." She left him, and sailed out of the room and past the bureau with her proud head in the air.

If Aristide Pujol had the rapturous idea of proving the innocence of Mme. Zette, triumphing over the fat pig of a husband, and eventually, in a fantastic fashion, carrying off the insulted and spotless lady to some bower of delight (the castle in Perpignan--why not?), you must blame, not him, but Provence, whose sons, if not devout, are frankly pagan.

Sometimes they are both.

M. Bocardon sat in his bureau, pretending to do accounts and tracing columns of figures with a huge, trembling forefinger. He looked the picture of woe. Aristide decided to bide his opportunity. He went out into the streets again, now with the object of killing time. The afternoon had advanced, and trees and buildings cast cool shadows in which one could walk with comfort; and Nimes, clear, bright city of wide avenues and broad open s.p.a.ces, instinct too with the grandeur that was Rome's, is an idler's Paradise. Aristide knew it well; but he never tired of it. He wandered round the Maison Carree, his responsive nature delighting in the splendour of the Temple, with its fluted Corinthian columns, its n.o.ble entablature, its ma.s.sive pediment, its perfect proportions; reluctantly turned down the Boulevard Victor Hugo, past the Lycee and the Bourse, made the circuit of the mighty, double-arched oval of the Arena, and then retraced his steps. As he expected, M. Bocardon had left the bureau. It was the hour of absinthe. The porter named M.

Bocardon's habitual cafe. There, in a morose corner of the terrace, Aristide found the huge man gloomily contemplating an absurdly small gla.s.s of the bitters known as Dubonnet. Aristide raised his hat, asked permission to join him, and sat down.

"M. Bocardon," said he, carefully mixing the absinthe which he had ordered, "I learn from my fair cousin that there is between you a regrettable misunderstanding, for which I am sincerely sorry."

"She calls it a misunderstanding?" He laughed mirthlessly. "Women have their own vocabulary. Listen, my good sir. There is infamy between us.

When a wife betrays a man like me--kind, indulgent, trustful, who has worshipped the ground she treads on--it is not a question of misunderstanding. It is infamy. If she had anywhere to lay her head, I would turn her out of doors to-night. But she has not. You, who are her relative, know I married her without a dowry. You alone of her family survive."

It was on the tip of Aristide's impulsive tongue to say that he would be only too willing to shelter her, but prudently he refrained.

"She has broken my heart," continued Bocardon.

Aristide asked for details of the unhappy affair. The large man hesitated for a moment and glanced suspiciously at his companion; but, fascinated by the clear, luminous eyes, he launched with Southern violence into a whirling story. The villain was a traveller in b.u.t.tons--_b.u.t.tons!_ To be wronged by a traveller in diamonds might have its compensations--but b.u.t.tons! Linen b.u.t.tons, bone b.u.t.tons, bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, _trouser b.u.t.tons!_ To be a traveller in the inanity of b.u.t.tonholes was the only lower degradation. His name was Bondon--he uttered it scathingly, as if to decline from a Bocardon to a Bondon was unthinkable. This Bondon was a regular client of the hotel, and such a client!--who never ordered a bottle of _vin cachete_ or coffee or cognac. A contemptible creature. For a long time he had his suspicions.

Now he was certain. He tossed off his gla.s.s of Dubonnet, ordered another, and spoke incoherently of the opening and shutting of doors, whisperings, of a dreadful incident, the central fact of which was a glimpse of Zette gliding wraith-like down a corridor. Lastly, there was the culminating proof, a letter found that morning in Zette's room.

He drew a crumpled sheet from his pocket and handed it to Aristide.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "THE VILLAIN WAS A TRAVELLER IN b.u.t.tONS--b.u.t.tONS!"]

It was a crude, flaming, reprehensible, and entirely d.a.m.ning epistle.

Aristide turned cold, shivering at the idea of the superb and dainty Zette coming in contact with such abomination. He hated Bondon with a murderous hate. He drank a great gulp of absinthe and wished it were Bondon's blood. Great tears rolled down Bocardon's face, and gathering at the ends of his scrubby moustache dripped in splashes on the marble table.

"I loved her so tenderly, monsieur," said he.

The cry, so human, went straight to Aristide's heart. A sympathetic tear glistened in his bright eyes. He was suddenly filled with an immense pity for this grief-stricken, helpless giant. An odd feminine streak ran through his nature and showed itself in queer places. Impulsively he stretched out his hand.

"You're going?" asked Bocardon.

"No. A sign of good friendship."

They gripped hands across the table. A new emotion thrilled through the facile Aristide.

"Bocardon, I devote myself to you," he cried, with a flamboyant gesture.

"What can I do?"

"Alas, nothing," replied the other, miserably.

"And Zette? What does she say to it all?"

The mountainous shoulders heaved with a shrug. "She denies everything.

She had never seen the letter until I showed it to her. She did not know how it came into her room. As if that were possible!"

"It's improbable," said Aristide, gloomily.

They talked. Bocardon, in a choking voice, told the simple tale of their married happiness. It had been a love-match, different from the ordinary marriages of reason and arrangement. Not a cloud since their wedding-day. They were called the turtle-doves of the Rue de la Curatterie. He had not even manifested the jealousy justifiable in the possessor of so beautiful a wife. He had trusted her implicitly. He was certain of her love. That was enough. They had had one child, who died.

Grief had brought them even nearer each other. And now this stroke had been dealt. It was a knife being turned round in his heart. It was agony.

They walked back to the hotel together. Zette, who was sitting by the desk in the bureau, rose and, without a word or look, vanished down the pa.s.sage. Bocardon, with a great sigh, took her place. It was dinner-time. The half-dozen guests and frequenters filled for a moment the little hall, some waiting to wash their hands at the primitive _lavabo_ by the foot of the stairs. Aristide accompanied them into the _salle a manger_, where he dined in solemn silence. The dinner over he went out again, pa.s.sing by the bureau where Bocardon, in its dim recesses, was eating a sad meal brought to him by the melancholy Euphemie. Zette, he conjectured, was dining in the kitchen. An atmosphere of desolation impregnated the place, as though a corpse were somewhere in the house.

Aristide drank his coffee at the nearest cafe in a complicated state of mind. He had fallen furiously in love with the lady, believing her to be the victim of a jealous husband. In an outburst of generous emotion he had taken the husband to his heart, seeing that he was a good man stricken to death. Now he loved the lady, loved the husband, and hated the villain Bondon. What Aristide felt, he felt fiercely. He would reconcile these two people he loved, and then go and, if not a.s.sa.s.sinate Bondon, at least do him some bodily injury. With this idea in his head, he paid for his coffee and went back to the hotel.

He found Zette taking her turn at the bureau, for clients have to be attended to, even in the most distressing circ.u.mstances. She was talking to a new arrival, trying to smile a welcome. Aristide, loitering near, watched her beautiful face, to which the perfect cla.s.sic features gave an air of n.o.ble purity. His soul revolted at the idea of her mixing herself up with a sordid wretch like Bondon. It was unbelievable.

"_Eh bien_?" she said as soon as they were alone.

"Mme. Zette, to-day I called your husband a scoundrel and a crocodile. I was wrong. I find him a man with a beautiful nature."

"You needn't tell me that, M. Aristide."

"You are breaking his heart, Mme. Zette."

"And is he not breaking mine? He has told you, I suppose. Am I responsible for what I know nothing more about than a babe unborn? You don't believe I am speaking the truth? Bah! And your professions this afternoon? Wind and gas, like the words of all men."

"Mme. Zette," cried Aristide, "I said I would devote my life to your service, and so I will. I'll go and find Bondon and kill him."

He watched her narrowly, but she did not grow pale like a woman whose lover is threatened with mortal peril. She said dryly:--

"You had better have some conversation with him first."

"Where is he to be found?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "How do I know? He left by the early train this morning that goes in the direction of Tarascon."

"Then to-morrow," said Aristide, who knew the ways of commercial travellers, "he will be at Tarascon, or at Avignon, or at Arles."

"I heard him say that he had just done Arles."

"_Tant mieux._ I shall find him either at Tarascon or Avignon. And by the Tarasque of Sainte-Marthe, I'll bring you his head and you can put it up outside as a sign and call the place the 'Hotel de la Tete Bondon.'"

[Ill.u.s.tration: HE BURST INTO SHRIEKS OF LAUGHTER]

Early the next morning Aristide started on his quest, without informing the good Bocardon of his intentions. He would go straight to Avignon, as the more likely place. Inquiries at the various hotels would soon enable him to hunt down his quarry; and then--he did not quite know what would happen then--but it would be something picturesque, something entirely unforeseen by Bondon, something to be thrillingly determined by the inspiration of the moment. In any case he would wipe the stain from the family escutcheon. By this time he had convinced himself that he belonged to the Bocardon family.