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ON HIS WAY THROUGH THE WORLD 507
five-franc pieces, which she laid down on the table before him, and
said it was my first quarter's payment. It is not due yet; I know.
' But do you think I will be beholden,' says she, 'to a man like
you?' Aid P. shrugged his shoulders, and put the rouleau of
silver pieces into a drawer. He did not say a word, but, of course,
I saw he was ill-pleased. ' What shall we do with your fortune,
Char ?' he said, when mamma went away. And a part we spent
at the opera and at Véry's restaurant, where we took our dear kind
Madame Smolensk. Ah, how good that woman was to me ! Ah,
how I suffered in that house when mamma wanted to part me from
Philip ! We walked by and saw the windows of the room where
that horrible horrible tragedy was performed, and Philip shook his
fist at the green jalousies. ' Good heavens !' he said: ' how, my
darling, how I was made to suffer there !' I bear no malice. I
will do no injury. But I can never forgive: never ! I can forgive
mamma, who made my husband so unhappy ; but can I love her
again ? Indeed and indeed I have tried. Often and often in my
dreams that horrid tragedy is acted over again ; and they are taking
him from me, and I feel as if I should die. When I was with you
I used often to be afraid to go to sleep for fear of that dreadful
dream, and I kept one of his letters under my pillow so that I
might hold it in the night. And now ! No one can part us !—
oh, no one !—until the end, comes !
"He took me about to all his old bachelor haunts; to the
' Hotel Poussin,' where he used to live, which is very dingy but
comfortable. And he introduced me to the landlady, in a Madras
handkerchief, and to the landlord (in earrings and with no coat on),
and to the little boy who frottes the floors. And he said, 'Tiens'
and 'Merely madame !' as we gave him a five-franc piece out of my
fortune. And then we went to the café opposite the Bourse, where
Philip used to write his letters ; and then we went to the Palais
Royal, where Madame de Smolensk was in waiting for us. And
then we went to the play. And then we went to Tortoni's to take
ices. And then we walked a part of the way home with Madame
Smolensk under a hundred million blazing stars; and then we
walked down the Champs Elysées avenues, by which Philip used
to come to me, and beside the plashing fountains shining under the
silver moon. And, oh, Laura ! I wonder under the silver moon was
anybody so happy as your loving and grateful C. F.
"P.S." [In the handwriting of Philip Firmin, Esq.]—" MY
DEAR FRIENDS,—I'm so jolly that it seems like a dream. I have
been watching Charlotte scribble scribble for an hour past; and
wondered and thought is it actually true ? and gone and convinced