He rose to his feet in a daze, took his hat and left.

The following day, she returned to the valley of Ciré. Surprised, her husband reproached her for having acted so impetuously.

‘I couldn’t bear being without you any more,’ she said.

He found her personality had changed. She was sadder than before. When he asked, ‘What’s the matter, then? You seem unhappy. What can I get you?’ she would reply, ‘Nothing. Only my dreams.’

Little Lamb came to see her the following summer. She received him calmly and with no regrets, realizing all of a sudden that she had only ever loved him in a dream from which Paul Péronel had awakened her.

But the young man, who still adored her, reflected as he returned: ‘Really strange, complex … unfathomable creatures, women.’

THE JEWELS

The minute Monsieur Lantin met a certain young girl at a party given by the deputy head of his department, he fell hopelessly and head over heels in love. She was the daughter of a provincial tax inspector long since deceased. After his death she and her mother had moved to Paris where they became part of a circle of neighbouring middle-class families within whose ranks the mother hoped one day to marry her young daughter. They were poor but worthy, quiet and sweet-tempered ladies. The young girl was exactly the kind of virtuous young woman any decent young man would aspire to make his wife. Her unassuming beauty and modesty were charming and the faint but angelic smile which hovered constantly on her lips reflected the very purest of hearts.

Everyone sang her praises. All those who knew her always said: ‘Whoever marries her will be a lucky man. They really don’t come any better.’

Monsieur Lantin, then a chief clerk at the Ministry of the Interior, with an annual salary of 3,500 francs, asked for her hand in marriage and was accepted.

He was extremely happy with her. She ran his household so cleverly and with such thrift that they always seemed to live in the lap of luxury. She was so sweet, so kind and so loving towards her husband that six months after their first meeting he was more in love with her than ever.

The only two faults he could find with her were that she was mad on both the theatre and on imitation jewellery. Her friends, the wives of various minor bureaucrats, would pass on tickets to her for all the fashionable plays, and, like it or not, he would have to accompany her to these wretched productions even after a hard day at the office. After a while he begged her to find some lady friend to go with who could drop her off afterwards. At first she demurred, saying it was hardly the correct thing to do, but after a while she gave in and he was infinitely grateful.