Rosalie became in my eyes the most interesting being in Vendome.As Istudied her,I detected signs of an inmost thought,in spite of the blooming health that glowed in her dimpled face.There was in her soul some element of ruth or of hope;her manner suggested a secret,like the expression of devout souls who pray in excess,or of a girl who has killed her child and for ever hears its last cry.Nevertheless,she was simple and clumsy in her ways;her vacant smile had nothing criminal in it,and you would have pronounced her innocent only from seeing the large red and blue checked kerchief that covered her stalwart bust,tucked into the tight-laced bodice of a lilac-and white-striped gown.'No,'said I to myself,'I will not quit Vendome without knowing the whole history of la Grande Breteche.To achieve this end,I will make love to Rosalie if it proves necessary.'
'Rosalie!'said I one evening.
'Your servant,sir?'
'You are not married?'She started a little.
'Oh!there is no lack of men if ever I take a fancy to be miserable!'she replied,laughing.She got over her agitation at once;for every woman,from the highest lady to the inn-servant inclusive,has a native presence of mind.
'Yes;you are fresh and good-looking enough never to lack lovers!
But tell me,Rosalie,why did you become an inn-servant on leaving Madame de Merret?Did she not leave you some little annuity?'
'Oh yes,sir.But my place here is the best in all the town of Vendome.'
This reply was such an one as judges and attorneys call evasive.
Rosalie,as it seemed to me,held in this romantic affair the place of the middle square of the chess-board:she was at the very centre of the interest and of the truth;she appeared to me to be tied into the knot of it.It was not a case for ordinary love-making;this girl contained the last chapter of a romance,and from that moment all my attentions were devoted to Rosalie.By dint of studying the girl,Iobserved in her,as in every woman whom we make our ruling thought,a variety of good qualities;she was clean and neat;she was handsome,Ineed not say;she soon was possessed of every charm that desire can lend to a woman in whatever rank of life.A fortnight after the notary's visit,one evening,or rather one morning,in the small hours,I said to Rosalie:
'Come,tell me all you know about Madame de Merret.'
'Oh!'she said,'I will tell you;but keep the secret carefully.'
'All right,my child;I will keep all your secrets with a thief's honor,which is the most loyal known.'
'If it is all the same to you,'said she,'I would rather it should be with your own.'
Thereupon she set her head-kerchief straight,and settled herself to tell the tale;for there is no doubt a particular attitude of confidence and security is necessary to the telling of a narrative.
The best tales are told at a certain hour--just as we are all here at table.No one ever told a story well standing up,or fasting.
If I were to reproduce exactly Rosalie's diffuse eloquence,a whole volume would scarcely contain it.Now,as the event of which she gave me a confused account stands exactly midway between the notary's gossip and that of Madame Lepas,as precisely as the middle term of a rule-of-three sum stands between the first and third,I have only to relate it in as few words as may be.I shall therefore be brief.
The room at la Grande Breteche in which Madame de Merret slept was on the ground floor;a little cupboard in the wall,about four feet deep,served her to hang her dresses in.Three months before the evening of which I have to relate the events,Madame de Merret had been seriously ailing,so much so that her husband had left her to herself,and had his own bedroom on the first floor.By one of those accidents which it is impossible to foresee,he came in that evening two hours later than usual from the club,where he went to read the papers and talk politics with the residents in the neighborhood.His wife supposed him to have come in,to be in bed and asleep.But the invasion of France had been the subject of a very animated discussion;the game of billiards had waxed vehement;he had lost forty francs,an enormous sum at Vendome,where everybody is thrifty,and where social habits are restrained within the bounds of a simplicity worthy of all praise,and the foundation perhaps of a form of true happiness which no Parisian would care for.
For some time past Monsieur de Merret had been satisfied to ask Rosalie whether his wife was in bed;on the girl's replying always in the affirmative,he at once went to his own room,with the good faith that comes of habit and confidence.But this evening,on coming in,he took it into his head to go to see Madame de Merret,to tell her of his ill-luck,and perhaps to find consolation.During dinner he had observed that his wife was very becomingly dressed;he reflected as he came home from the club that his wife was certainly much better,that convalescence had improved her beauty,discovering it,as husbands discover everything,a little too late.Instead of calling Rosalie,who was in the kitchen at the moment watching the cook and the coachman playing a puzzling hand at cards,Monsieur de Merret made his way to his wife's room by the light of his lantern,which he set down at the lowest step of the stairs.His step,easy to recognize,rang under the vaulted passage.
At the instant when the gentleman turned the key to enter his wife's room,he fancied he heard the door shut of the closet of which I have spoken;but when he went in,Madame de Merret was alone,standing in front of the fireplace.The unsuspecting husband fancied that Rosalie was in the cupboard;nevertheless,a doubt,ringing in his ears like a peal of bells,put him on his guard;he looked at his wife,and read in her eyes an indescribably anxious and haunted expression.
'You are very late,'said she.--Her voice,usually so clear and sweet,struck him as being slightly husky.
Monsieur de Merret made no reply,for at this moment Rosalie came in.