Page:The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter.djvu/348

“Seeing that he was inclined to stray along the path of recollection, I spoke to him about something else, and then it was no longer a question of you. He spent the whole evening with me and seemed as calm as the Mediterranean. But what astonished me most was, that this calmness was not at all affected. It was genuine indifference. At midnight we went home. ‘You seem surprised at my coolness in the position in which I find myself,’ said he to me, ‘well, let me point out a comparison to you, my dear fellow, if it is common-place it has, at least, the merit of being accurate. My heart is like a cistern the tap of which has been turned on all night, in the morning not a drop of water is left. My heart is really the same, last night I wept away all the tears that were left me. It is strange, but I thought myself richer in grief, and yet by a single night of suffering I am ruined, cleaned out. On my word of honor it is as I say. Now, in the very bed in which I all but died last night, beside a woman who was no more moved than a stone, I shall sleep like a dock-laborer after a hard day’s work, whilst she rests her head on the pillow of another.’ ‘Humbug,’ I thought to myself, ‘I shall no sooner have left him than he will be dashing his head against the wall. However, I left Rodolphe alone and went up to my own room, but I did not go to bed. At three in the morning I thought I heard a noise in Rodolphe’s room, and I went down in a hurry, thinking to find him in a desperate fever.”

“Well?” said Mimi.

“Well, my dear Rodolphe was sleeping, the bedclothes were quite in order and everything proved that he had soon fallen asleep, and that his slumbers had been calm.”

“It is possible,” said Mimi, “he was so worn out by the night before, but the next day?”

“The next day Rodolphe came and roused me up early