As soon as the terrible M. d’Antoine had taken leave of her, Henriette came to me, and observing that her eyes were red I heaved a deep sigh, but she tried to smile.

“Shall we go away to-morrow, dearest?”

“Oh! yes, I am ready.  Where do you wish me to take you?”

“Anywhere you like, but we must be here in a fortnight.”

“Here!  Oh, fatal illusion!”

“Alas! it is so.  I have promised to be here to receive the answer to a letter I have just written.  We have no violent proceedings to fear, but I cannot bear to remain in Parma.”

“Ah!  I curse the hour which brought us to this city.  Would you like to go to Milan?”

“Yes.”

“As we are unfortunately compelled to come back, we may as well take with us Caudagna and his sister.”

“As you please.”

“Let me arrange everything.  I will order a carriage for them, and they will take charge of your violoncello.  Do you not think that you ought to let M. d’Antoine know where we are going?”

“No, it seems to me, on the contrary, that I need not account to him for any of my proceedings.  So much the worse for him if he should, even for one moment, doubt my word.”

The next morning, we left Parma, taking only what we wanted for an absence of a fortnight.  We arrived in Milan without accident, but both very sad, and we spent the following fifteen days in constant tete-a-tete, without speaking to anyone, except the landlord of the hotel and to a dressmaker.  I presented my beloved Henriette with a magnificent pelisse made of lynx fur—­a present which she prized highly.

Out of delicacy, she had never enquired about my means, and I felt grateful to her for that reserve.  I was very careful to conceal from her the fact that my purse was getting very light.  When we came back to Parma I had only three or four hundred sequins.

The day after our return M. d’Antoine invited himself to dine with us, and after we had drunk coffee, I left him alone with Henriette.  Their interview was as long as the first, and our separation was decided.  She informed me of it, immediately after the departure of M. d’Antoine, and for a long time we remained folded in each other’s arms, silent, and blending our bitter tears.

“When shall I have to part from you, my beloved, alas! too much beloved one?”

“Be calm, dearest, only when we reach Geneva, whither you are going to accompany me.  Will you try to find me a respectable maid by to-morrow?  She will accompany me from Geneva to the place where I am bound to go.”

“Oh! then, we shall spend a few days more together!  I know no one but Dubois whom I could trust to procure a good femme-de-chambre; only I do not want him to learn from her what you might not wish him to know.”

“That will not be the case, for I will take another maid as soon as I am in France.”