"Yes, all over the town; I believe the General is not thinking about that: he has no thoughts to spare for that. Besides, Miss Polina has a perfect right to live where she likes. In regard to that family, one may say quite correctly that the family no longer exists."
I walked away laughing at this Englishman's strange conviction that I was going to Paris. "He wants to shoot me in a duel, though," I thought, "if Mlle. Polina dies—what a complication!" I swear I was sorry for Polina, but, strange to say, from the very moment when I reached the gambling tables the previous evening and began winning a pile of money, my love had retreated, so to speak, into the background. I say this now; but at the time I did not realise all this clearly. Can I really be a gambler? Can I really . . . have loved Polina so strangely? No, I love her to this day. God is my witness! And then, when I left Mr. Astley and went home, I was genuinely miserable and blaming myself. But at this point a very strange and silly thing happened to me.
I was hurrying to see the General, when suddenly, not far from his rooms, a door was opened and someone called me. It was Madame la veuve Cominges, and she called me at the bidding of Mlle. Blanche. I went in to see Mlle. Blanche.
They had a small suite of apartments, consisting of two rooms. I could hear Mlle. Blanche laugh and call out from the bedroom.
She was getting up.
"A, c'est lui! Viens donc, bête! Is it true, que tu as gagné une montagne d'or et d'argent? J'aimerais mieux l'or."
"Yes, I did win," I answered, laughing.
"How much?"
"A hundred thousand florins."
"Bibi, comme tu es bête. Why, come in here. I can't hear anything. Nous ferons bombance, n'est ce pas?"
I went in to her. She was lying under a pink satin quilt, above which her robust, swarthy, wonderfully swarthy, shoulders were visible, shoulders such as one only sees in one's dreams, covered to some extent by a batiste nightgown bordered with white lace which was wonderfully becoming to her dark skin.
"Mon fils, as-tu du cœur?" she cried, seeing me, and burst out laughing. She laughed very good-humouredly, and sometimes quite genuinely.
"Tout autre," I began, paraphrasing Corneille.
