Henri, therefore, found himself beneath the domination of that
confused sentiment which is unknown to true love. There was needful,
in some sort, the persuasive grip of comparisons, and the irresistible
attraction of memories to lead him back to a woman. True love rules
above all through recollection. A woman who is not engraven upon the
soul by excess of pleasure or by strength of emotion, how can she ever
be loved? In Henri's case, Paquita had established herself by both of
these reasons. But at this moment, seized as he was by the satiety of
his happiness, that delicious melancholy of the body, he could hardly
analyze his heart, even by recalling to his lips the taste of the
liveliest gratifications that he had ever grasped.
He found himself on the Boulevard Montmartre at the break of day,
gazed stupidly at the retreating carriage, produced two cigars from
his pocket, lit one from the lantern of a good woman who sold brandy
and coffee to workmen and street arabs and chestnut venders--to all
the Parisian populace which begins its work before daybreak; then he
went off, smoking his cigar, and putting his hands in his trousers'
pockets with a devil-may-care air which did him small honor.
"What a good thing a cigar is! That's one thing a man will never tire
of," he said to himself.
Of the girl with the golden eyes, over whom at that time all the
elegant youth of Paris was mad, he hardly thought. The idea of death,
expressed in the midst of their pleasure, and the fear of which had
more than once darkened the brow of that beautiful creature, who held
to the houris of Asia by her mother, to Europe by her education, to
the tropics by her birth, seemed to him merely one of those deceptions
by which women seek to make themselves interesting.
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