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."
With that she retired into her lodge, shrugging her shoulders.
"It was, then," cried Monsieur Dupres, "a plot, between her and that abominable Robert! I had better notify the police."
He took the street car to the Chtelet, and, just as it was jolting along at its fastest, he thought he saw them, still drunk, in broad daylight, staggering round a corner in the Rue de Clichy. By the time he had stopped the car and hurried back, they had utterly disappeared.
Feeling completely overcome, Monsieur Dupres gave up his errand, and decided to go home and rest a little, and took a taxi-cab to get there the sooner. This taxi was halted in a traffic block, and from it Monsieur Dupres saw quite distinctly, in a cab passing across the very nose of his own taxi, his wife and his friend, locked in each other's arms, scandalously drunk, and quite oblivious of his existence. "Follow that cab!" cried he.
The driver did his best. They followed a cab all the way to the Porte de Neuilly, only to see an elderly gentleman, probably an ambassador, descend from it.
Monsieur Dupres paid the fare, which was no trifle, and made his way back on the Metro. He had just descended from the train, when he saw two people getting in at the very far end, who were experiencing some difficulty in negotiating the narrow door, for each had an arm around the other's waist. He started towards them but the doors slammed all along the train, and in a moment it had pulled out of the station.
Monsieur Dupres leaned against the wall. "Is it not my old friend, Dupres?" asked a man who had just come onto the platform. "I see it is. My dear fellow, are you ill?"
"Ill enough," replied Monsieur Dupres, utterly shattered. "My wife has left me, my dear Labiche. She has left me for Robert Crespigny, and they are behaving abominably all over the town."
"No. No, my dear friend," replied the other. "Set your mind at rest, I implore you. We husbands are sometimes even more suspicious than we should be. Crespigny cannot have taken your wife, my dear fellow. I saw him only three months ago, back from Martinique and in hospital. He died a week later. Out there, their excesses are something formidable."
THE FROG PRINCE
Two young men were discussing life. Said the richer of them to the poorer, "Paul, you had better marry my sister."
"That is a very strange thing to say," said Paul, "considering I have told you all about my debts."
"I am not worldly, "replied Henry Vanhomry. "I should prefer my sister to marry a clean, decent, and kindly fellow like yourself, than some rich but blas rou, cynic, near-man, sub-man, or half-man."
"I am certainly not blas," said Paul. "On the other hand, I had not the pleasure of meeting your family when I was in Boston."
"I am very fond of my sister," said Henry, "in a way."
"How delightful! No doubt she was a mother to you when you were small. A little mother!"
"No. No. She is ten years younger than I am; only twenty-eight, in fact."
"Aha! She would have come into her fortune just in the rockiest year of our financial history."
"Fortunately it is well invested, and yields her an income of forty thousand dollars."
"An objection occurs to me. We are men of the world, Henry. If we were of the other sex, we might also make mistakes. Fond as I am of children "
"That would be a matter entirely for you to decide."
"Henry, your sister sounds charming. Tell me more about her. She is not by any chance a teeny little woman?" And Paul held his hand some thirty inches from the floor.
"Quite the reverse."
"Quite the reverse, eh?"
"My dear Paul, I do not mean that she is six feet four."
"Six feet three, perhaps?"
"And a half. But perhaps I should tell you she is rather plump. Disproportionately so, in fact."
"Upon my word! I hope she is good-tempered."
"Angelically. You should hear her petting her dolls."
"Pardon me, Henry, but is she at all backward?"
"A matter of opinion. She reads and writes admirably."
"How delightful. We could correspond, if I happened to be away."
"I will be frank with you, Paul; her letters to famous boxers are quite amazingly expressive, though by no means perfect in orthography."
"Henry, she is capable of hero worship; she has an affectionate nature."
"Almost embarrassingly so. It appears from these letters of hers, which we censor, that she would make a devoted wife. However, my family are old-fashioned, and the boxers are cowardly brutes. I should like to see her safely married."
"But, as yet, if I understand you, she is pure as the driven snow? Charming!"
"Hers has been a cloistered girlhood. Yet there is something romantic in her nature which causes me alarm. Supposing one of the boxers responded. He might not treat her politely."
"I, on the other hand, would write her the most devoted letters, and bow, with old-world courtesy, whenever we met. Hm! All I fear, to be perfectly candid, is that a certain confounded coldness, a defect of my nature, might be a cause of pain, dissatisfaction, or longing."
"Well, my dear Paul, that is hardly a matter for me to speculate upon. I can only remind you that faint heart never won fair lady."
"Very well, Henry. I will at least come with you and see your sister."
"I am afraid I cannot accompany you. You forget that I am off to Europe next week. However, I'll give you a letter of introduction to the family."
All this being arranged, our good Paul took leave of his friend, and after walking about for a little with an air of distraction, he paid a visit to the apartment of another friend of his.
"My dear Olga," he said, after a time, "I'm afraid I have some very ridiculous news for you. I am going to be poor no longer."
"Tell me only one thing, Paul. Is she beautiful?"
"Not very, it seems. I have not seen her, but she is over six feet three, and disproportionately fat."