While the lawyers were arranging matters, Bouchalka came to see me.  He was remorseful and miserable enough, and I think his perplexity was quite sincere.  If there had been an intrigue with a woman of her own class, an infatuation, an affair, he said, he could understand.  But anything so venial and accidental—­He shook his head slowly back and forth.  He assured me that he was not at all himself on that fateful evening, and that when he recovered himself he would have sent Ruzenka away, making proper provision for her, of course.  It was an ugly thing, but ugly things sometimes happened in one’s life, and one had to put them away and forget them.  He could have overlooked any accident that might have occurred when his wife was on the road, with Poppas, for example.  I cut him short, and he bent his head to my reproof.

“I know,” he said, “such things are different with her.  But when have I said that I am noble as she is?  Never.  But I have appreciated and I have adored.  About me, say what you like.  But if you say that in this there was any meprise to my wife, that is not true.  I have lost all my place here.  I came in from the streets; but I understand her, and all the fine things in her, better than any of you here.  If that accident had not been, she would have lived happy with me for years.  As for me, I have never believed in this happiness.  I was not born under a good star.  How did it come?  By accident.  It goes by accident.  She tried to give good fortune to an unfortunate man, un miserable; that was her mistake.  It cannot be done in this world.  The lucky should marry the lucky.”  Bouchalka stopped and lit a cigarette.  He sat sunk in my chair as if he never meant to get up again.  His large hands, now so much plumper than when I first knew him, hung limp.  When he had consumed his cigarette he turned to me again.

“I, too, have tried.  Have I so much as written one note to a lady since she first put out her hand to help me?  Some of the artists who sing my compositions have been quite willing to plague my wife a little if I make the least sign.  With the Espanola, for instance, I have had to be very stern, farouche; she is so very playful.  I have never given my wife the slightest annoyance of this kind.  Since I married her, I have not kissed the cheek of one lady!  Then one night I am bored and drink too much champagne and I become a fool.  What does it matter?  Did my wife marry the fool of me?  No, she married me, with my mind and my feelings all here, as I am today.  But she is getting a divorce from the fool of me, which she would never see anyhow!  The stupidity which excuse me is the thing she will not overlook.  Even in her memory of me she will be harsh.”