They had met last year at a fête given under the patronage of Lecureuil,
the deputy; a benefit performance given in aid of poor actors of the
ninth _arrondissement_. He had prowled around her, dumb, famishing, and
with blazing eyes. For a whole fortnight he had pursued her incessantly.
Cold and unmoved, she had appeared to ignore him. Then, suddenly, she
surrendered; so suddenly that when he left her that day, still radiant
and amazed, he had said a stupid thing. He had told her: "And I took you
for a little bit of china!" For three whole months he had tasted joys
acute as pain. Then Félicie had grown elusive, remote, and estranged.
She loved him no longer. He sought the reason, but could not discover
it. It tortured him to know that he was no longer loved; jealousy
tortured him still more. It was true that in the first beautiful hours
of his love he had known that Félicie had a lover, one Girmandel, a
court bailiff, who lived in the Rue de Provence, and he had felt it
deeply. But as he never saw him he had formed so confused and
ill-defined an idea of him that his jealousy lost itself in uncertainty.
Félicie assured him that she had never been more than passive in her
intercourse with Girmandel, that she had not even pretended to care for
him. He believed her, and this belief gave him the keenest satisfaction.
She also told him that for a long time past, for months, Girmandel had
been nothing more than a friend, and he believed her. In short, he was
deceiving the bailiff, and it was agreeable to him to feel that he
enjoyed this advantage. He had learned also that Félicie, who was just
finishing her second year at the Conservatoire, had not denied herself
to her professor. But the grief which he had felt because of this was
softened by a time-honoured and venerable custom. Now Robert de Ligny
was causing him intolerable suffering. For some time past he had found
him incessantly dangling about her. He could not doubt that she loved
Robert; and although he sometimes told himself that she had not yet