Page:The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter.djvu/241

to piteous mewings. For two nights already it had thus been vainly summoning its faithless love, an angora Manon Lescaut, who had started on a campaign of gallantry on the house-tops adjacent.

“Poor beast,” said Rodolphe, “you have been deceived. Your Mimi has jilted you like mine has jilted me. Bah! let us console ourselves. You see, my poor fellow, the hearts of women and she-cats are abysses that neither men nor toms will ever fathom.”

When he entered his room, although it was fearfully hot, Rodolphe seemed to feel a cloak of ice about his shoulders. It was the chill of solitude, that terrible nocturnal solitude that nothing disturbs. He lit his candle, and then perceived the ravaged room. The gaping drawers in the furniture little room, that seemed to Rodolphe vaster than a desert. Stepping forward he struck his foot against the parcels containing the things belonging to Mademoiselle Mimi, and he felt an impulse of joy to find that she had not yet come to fetch them as she had told him in the morning she would do. Rodolphe felt that, despite all his struggles, the moment of reaction was at hand, and readily divined that a cruel night was to expiate all the bitter mirth that he had dispensed in the course of the evening. However, he hoped that his body, worn out with fatigue, would sink to sleep before the reawakening of the sorrows so long pent back in his heart.

As he approached the couch, and on drawing back the curtains saw the bed that had not been disturbed for two days, the two pillows placed side by side, beneath one of which still peeped out the trimming of a woman’s night-cap, Rodolphe felt his heart gripped in the pitiless vice of that desolate grief that cannot burst forth. He fell at the foot of the bed, buried his face in his hands, and, after having cast a glance round the desolate room, exclaimed: