Page:The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant.djvu/159

Rh and were coveting me as their prey; that their lustful looks rested on my pink tights, and followed the graceful outlines of my body when I was posing on the rope that stretched from one end of the circus to the other, or jumped through the paper hoops at full gallop.

"They were no longer the same, and spoke to me in a totally different tone of voice. They tried to come into my dressing-room when I was changing my dress, and Rapha Ginestous seemed to have lost his head, and his heart throbbed audibly when he came near me. Yes, he had the audacity to propose bargains to me which covered my cheeks and forehead with blushes, and which filled me with disgust; and as I felt a fierce hatred for him, and detested him with all my soul and all my strength—as I wished to make him suffer the tortures which he had inflicted on me, a hundredfold, I used him as the target at which I was constantly aiming.

"'Instinctively, I employed every cunning perfidy, every artful coquetry, every lie, every artifice that can unset the strongest and most sceptical, and place them at our mercy, like submissive animals. He loved me, he really loved me, that lascivious goat, who had never seen anything in a woman except a soft couch, and an instrument of convenience and of forgetfulness. He loved me like old men do love, with frenzy, with degrading transports, and with the prostration of his will and of his strength. I held him as in a leash, and did whatever I liked with him. "'I was much more manageress than he was manager, and the poor wretch wasted away in vain hopes and in useless transports; he had not even touched the tips of my fingers, and was reduced to bestowing his caresses on my columbine shoes, my tights, and my wigs. And I cared not that for it, you understand! Not the slightest familiarity did I allow, and he began to grow thin and ill, and became idiotic. And while he implored me, and promised to marry me, with his eyes full of tears, I shouted with laughter; I reminded him of how he had beaten, abused, and humiliated me, and had often made me wish for death. And as soon as he left me, he would swill bottles of gin and whiskey, and constantly got so abominably drunk that he rolled under the table, and all to drown his sorrow and forget his desire.

"'He covered me with jewels, and tried everything he cculd to tempt me to become his wife. In spite of my inexperience in life, he consulted me with regard to everything he undertook, and one evening, after I had stroked his face with my hand, I persuaded him without any difficulty, to make his will, by which he left me all his savings, and the circus and everything belonging to it.

"'It was in the middle of winter, near Moscow; it snowed continually, and one almost burnt oneself at the stoves in trying to keep warm. Rapha Ginestous had had supper brought into the largest van, which was his, after the performance, and for hours we ate and drank. I was very nice toward him, and filled his glass every moment; I even sat on his knee and kissed him. And all his love, and the fumes of the alcohol of the wine, mounted to his head and gradually made him so helplessly intoxicated, that he fell from his chair inert, as if he had been struck by