The three days which separated her from this Friday passed for Camille
in increasing expectancy. I did not see her during that time, for she
took a jealous care in avoiding me, for fear I should derange her plan.
But she told me afterwards that never since the beginning of her liaison
with Jacques had she felt such a fever of impatience. She passed the
night from Thursday to Friday like a mad woman, and when she left the
Rue de la Barouillére to go to the Rue Nouvelle, she had neither slept
nor eaten for thirty-six hours. At half-past three she was on the
pavement in front of the windows of the rooms walking up and down
wrapped in her cloak and unrecognizable through her double veil, never
losing sight of the door through which her rival must go. There was at
the corner of the Rue de Clichy a cabstand which she fixed as the
boundary of her promenade. Each time she passed she noticed the clock on
the cabstand. First it was twenty minutes to four, and more than twenty
minutes to wait. Then it was ten minutes to four, and she had ten
minutes to wait. Four o’clock struck. They were late. At twenty minutes
past four neither Jacques nor Madam de Bonnivet had appeared. What had
happened?
In face of this delay, the more inexplicable as, in the case of a woman
of position like the one for whom revenge was watching, her moments of
leisure are few, it seemed obvious to Camille that the lovers had
altered the time and place of the appointment, and the idea maddened
her. They had seen one another so often since she had listened to their
caresses and familiarity so close to her. Who knows? Perhaps the porter
had noticed her when she went out the other day, although she had taken
advantage of a moment when he was absent from the lodge and talking in
the courtyard to replace the key. Perhaps he had warned Jacques of the
visit!
It was half-past four, and still no one had appeared. Camille was at
last convinced that to remain longer watching was useless, all the more
since, as happens at this time in a cold February day, a bitter fog had
come down mixed with sleet, which made her shiver. She cast a desperate
glance at the impenetrable windows with their closed shutters from which
no gleam of light came, and was preparing to depart, when in searching
the short street with her eyes for the last time she saw a carriage stop
opposite the cabstand and a face look out of it which gave her one of
those attacks of terror which dissolve the forces of the body and soul:
it was the face of Pierre de Bonnivet!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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