“Oh, nothing, but I’ve got to be going.  Good night.”

“Why, aren’t you feeling well?”

“Oh, it’s nothing, I assure you.”

“Oh, well,” said Des Hermies, knowing better than to insist.  “Look at this,” and took him into the kitchen and showed him a superb leg of mutton hanging beside the window.  “I hung it up in a draft so as to get some of the crass freshness out of it.  We’ll eat it when we have the astrologer Gevingey to dine with us at Carhaix’s.  As I am the only person alive who knows how to boil a gigot a l’Anglaise, I am going to be the cook, so I shan’t come by for you.  You will find me in the tower, disguised as a scullery maid.”

Once outside, Durtal took a long breath.  Well, well, his unknown was Chantelouve’s wife.  Impossible!  She had never paid the slightest attention to him.  She was silent and cold.  Impossible!  And yet, why had she spoken that way to Des Hermies?  But surely if she had wanted to see him she would have come to his apartment, since they were acquaintances.  She would not have started this correspondence under a pseudonym—­

“H. de Maubel!” he said suddenly, “why, Mme. Chantelouve’s name is Hyacinthe, a boy’s name which suits her very well.  She lives in the rue Babneux not vary far from the rue Littre post-office.  She is a blonde, she has a maid, she is a fervent Catholic.  She’s the one.”

And he experienced, almost simultaneously, two absolutely distinct sensations.

Of disappointment, first, for his unknown pleased him better.  Mme. Chantelouve would never realize the ideal he had fashioned for himself, the tantalizing features, the agile, wild animal body, the melancholy and ardent bearing, which he had dreamed.  Indeed, the mere fact of knowing the unknown rendered her less desirable, more vulgar.  Accessibility killed the chimera.

At the same time he experienced a lively relief.  He might have been dealing with a hideous old crone, and Hyacinthe, as he immediately began to call her, was desirable.  Thirty-three at most, not pretty, but peculiar; blonde, slight and supple, with no hips, she seemed thin because she was small-boned.  The face, mediocre, spoiled by too big a nose, but the lips incandescent, the teeth superb, her complexion ever so faint a rose in the slightly bluish milk white of rice water a little troubled.

Then her real charm, the really deceptive enigma of her, was in her eyes; ash-grey eyes which seemed uncertain, myopic, and which conveyed an expression of resigned boredom.  At certain moments the pupils glowed like a gem of grey water and sparks of silver twinkled to the surface.  By turns they were dolent, forsaken, languorous, and haughty.  He remembered that those eyes had often brought his heart into his throat!