Madame Dupres smiled indulgently. At that moment the door swung violently open, and a man entered, who looked about him on all sides. Monsieur Dupres looked at this man. «Impossible!» said he. «As I was saying, Marie, I have a delicious idea. Prepare yourself to be shocked.»
Madame Dupres, however, had noticed the newcomer. She smiled delightedly, and waved her hand. Smiling also, but not evincing any surprise, the newcomer hastened over.
«Robert!» cried Madame Dupres.
«God in heaven!» cried Monsieur. «It is Robert.»
No words can express the felicity of these three old friends, bound together by memories which were only mellowed by the passage of twenty years. Besides, they were already half tight, for it was apparent that Robert also had been indulging in an aperitif or two. «Fancy seeing you!» said he to Monsieur Dupres. «What a small world it is! There is really no room to do anything.»
Monsieur Dupres was equally incoherent. He could do nothing but slap Robert on the back. They had a last round, and moved into the restaurant on the other side of the partition.
«What have you been doing all these years?» asked Robert as they seated themselves.
«Nothing very much,» said Madame Dupres.
«Oho!» cried Robert, smiling all over his face. «Is that so? What a magnificent evening we shall have! Tonight we drink the wine we could never afford in the old days. You know the wine I mean, Marie?»
«You mean the Hermitage,» said Monsieur Dupres, who already had his nose in the list. «Eighty francs! Why not? To the devil with eighty francs! A wine like that puts all sorts of ideas into one's head. Champagne first. Why not? Like a wedding. Only better.»
«Bravo!» cried Robert. «You have neatly expressed it.»
«What shall we eat?» said Monsieur Dupres. «Study the menu, my children, instead of looking at one another as if you were raised from the dead. We must have something spicy. Marie, if you eat garlic, I must eat garlic. He! He! He!»
«No garlic,» said Robert.
«No garlic,» said Madame Dupres.
«What?» said her husband. «You know you adore it.»
«One's tastes change,» said Madame.
«You are right,» said her husband. «That was what I was saying when Robert came in. I wish the fal-lal shops were open. Marie, I would like to buy you a little present. Something I saw in a magazine. Heavens, what wickedness there is in the world! The air seems full of it. Marie, we have wasted our time. Here is the champagne. Here is a toast. After Lent, the Carnival!»
«After Lent, the Carnival!» cried the others, in the highest good humour, touching their glasses together.
«Why be ashamed?» said Monsieur Dupres, laughing heartily. «We have been married twenty years, Marie. Robert has been in Martinique. There, they are black. What of it?»
«What of it?» echoed Madame, filliping Robert on the nose and giggling uncontrollably.
«Embrace one another!» cried Monsieur Dupres, suddenly, and in a voice of thunder. He rose in his chair to put an arm round each of them. «Go on! Give her a kiss! She had a weakness for you in the old days. You didn't know that, my boy. But I know. I know everything. I remember on the night of our nuptials, I thought: 'She has a weakness for somebody.' Twenty years! Marie, you have never looked more beautiful than you look tonight. What is twenty times three hundred and sixty-five?» Overcome by the enormous figure that resulted, Monsieur Dupres burst into tears.
While he wept, the others, who were as drunk as he was, leaned across the table, their foreheads now and then colliding, while they chuckled inanely.
With the arrival of the brandy, Monsieur Dupres emerged into a calmer mood. «The thing to do,» said he, «is to make up for lost time. Do you not agree with me?»
«Perfectly,» said Robert, kissing him on both cheeks.
«Regard her,» said Monsieur Dupres. «A woman of forty. Oh, if only those little shops were open! Robert, old friend, a word in your ear.»
Robert inclined that organ, but Monsieur Dupres was unable to utter the promised confidence. He was capable of nothing but a sputter of laughter, which obliged Robert to use his napkin as a towel.
«To the devil with your little shops!» said Robert. «We need nothing. There are cafes, bars, bistros, boites, night clubs, cabarets, everything. To the boulevard, all three!»
With that, he sprang up. The others unsteadily followed him. On the street everyone looked at them with a smile. Madame's respectable grey hat fell over her nose. She gave it a flick, and sent it equally far over the back of her head. They linked arms, and began to sing a song about a broken casserole.
They visited several bars, and emerged from each more hilarious than before. The men, crouching down so that their overcoats trailed along the ground, shuffled along in imitation of dwarfs, as they had done in their student days. Madame was so excessively amused that she was compelled to retire into the midnight shadows of the little alley that runs between the Rue Guillaume and the Avenue des Gascons.
«I suppose,» hiccuped Monsieur Dupres, when she rejoined them, «I suppose we should soon be going home.»
Robert expressed his contempt for this notion wordlessly though not soundlessly. «Mes amis,» said he, facing round, and putting a hand on a shoulder of each, while he surveyed them with a comical and a supplicating face, «mes amis, mes amis, pourquoi pas le bordel?» At this he was overcome by a fit of silly laughter, which was soon echoed by the others.
«It is, after all, the twentieth century,» chuckled Monsieur Dupres. «Besides, we must consider our friend Robert.»
«It is in the nature of an occasion,» said Madame. «It is a little reunion.»
Accordingly they staggered in the direction of an establishment known as the Trois Jolies Japonaises, the staff of which would no doubt have worn kimonos were it not for the excessive warmth of the premises. This warmth was the undoing of Monsieur Dupres. They had no sooner seated themselves at a table in the lower salon than he found it necessary to cool his face on the glass table top, and immediately fell sound asleep.
After a humane interval, gentle hands must have guided him to the door, and perhaps given him a gentle push, which set his legs in motion after the manner of clockwork. At all events, he somehow or other got home.
Next morning he woke on the narrow sofa in the dining-room of his apartment, and smelled again the refreshing odour of furniture polish. He found his head and stomach disordered, and his mind half crazy. He had only a vague memory of great dissipation the night before.
«Thank heaven she has been spared this!» thought he, looking guiltily at the closed door of the bedroom. «It would have upset her appallingly. But what? Am I mad? Do I remember her somewhere last night? What poison they serve in these days! Yet … No, it is impossible!»
«I must call the doctor,» he said. «The undertaker, too. Notary, aunts, cousins, friends, all the damned fry. Oh, my poor head!» As he spoke he was proceeding towards the bedroom, and now he opened the door. His brain reeled when he found his family business would not after all be necessary. The bed was empty. Madame Dupres was gone.
Clasping his brow, Monsieur Dupres staggered from the room, and more fell than walked down the five flights of stairs to the conciergerie. «Madame!» cried he to that experienced vigilant. «My wife is gone!»
«I saw her go out last night,» replied the concierge. «I saw her grey hat go by soon after you had left.»
«But she is dead!» cried Monsieur Dupres.
«Impossible,» replied the concierge. «I would not discompose you, Monsieur, but Madame was from Angers. You know the proverb.»
