They went to see the ponies, which were indeed worthy to figure in the stables of the King of Lilliput.

CHAPTER VIII

ANOTHER MARTYR TO MILLIONS

Three weeks have glided by; another day and Jean will be obliged to leave with his regiment for the artillery practice.  He will lead the life of a soldier.  Ten days’ march on the highroad going and returning, and ten days in the camp at Cercottes in the forest of Orleans.  The regiment will return to Souvigny on the 10th of August.

Jean is no longer tranquil; Jean is no longer happy.  He sees approach with impatience, and at the same time with terror, the moment of his departure.  With impatience—­for he suffers an absolute martyrdom, he longs to escape from it; with terror—­for to pass twenty days without seeing her, without speaking to her, without her in a word—­what will become of him?  Her!  It is Bettina; he adores her!

Since when?  Since the first day, since that meeting in the month of May in the Cure’s garden.  That is the truth; but Jean struggles against and resists that truth.  He believes that he has only loved Bettina since the day when the two chatted gayly, amicably, in the little drawing-room.  She was sitting on the blue couch near the widow, and, while talking, amused herself with repairing the disorder of the dress of a Japanese princess, one of Bella’s dolls, which she had left on a chair, and which Bettina had mechanically taken up.

Why had the fancy come to Miss Percival to talk to him of those two young girls whom he might have married?  The question of itself was not at all embarrassing to him.  He had replied that, if he had not then felt any taste for marriage, it was because his interviews with these two girls had not caused him any emotion or any agitation.  He had smiled in speaking thus, but a few minutes after he smiled no more.  This emotion, this agitation, he had suddenly learned to know them.  Jean did not deceive himself; he acknowledged the depth of the wound; it had penetrated to his very heart’s core.

Jean, however, did not abandon himself to this emotion.  He said to himself: 

“Yes, it is serious, very serious, but I shall recover from it.”

He sought an excuse for his madness; he laid the blame on circumstances.  For ten days this delightful girl had been too much with him, too much with him alone!  How could he resist such a temptation?  He was intoxicated with her charm, with her grace and beauty.  But the next day a troop of visitors would arrive at Longueval, and there would be an end of this dangerous intimacy.  He would have courage; he would keep at a distance; he would lose himself in the crowd, would see Bettina less often and less familiarly.  To see her no more was a thought he could not support!  He wished to remain Bettina’s friend, since he could be nothing but her friend; for there was another thought which scarcely entered the mind of Jean.  This thought did not appear extravagant to him; it appeared monstrous.  In the whole world there was not a more honorable man than Jean, and he felt for Bettina’s money horror, positively horror.