Chapter 3 - Love at Lent

Summary

One evening during Lent, Rodolphe returned home early intending to get some work done. But as soon as he sat down at the table and dipped his pen into the inkwell, he was distracted by some unusual noises. Putting his ear to the indiscrete wall that separated him from the next room, he listened. There was no mistaking the sounds of conversation alternating with kisses and all the rest of the onomatopoeia of love.

“Damn it!” Rodolphe thought as he looked at his clock. “It's still early … and my neighbour Juliet usually keeps her Romeo long after the song of the lark has been sung. I can't work here tonight.” Dropping his key off downstairs, he came upon the concierge's wife wrapped tightly in the arms of a lover. The poor woman was so flustered that it took her five minutes to pull the cord that unlocked the door.

“Who knew?” thought Rodolphe. “Sometimes a concierge's wife turns back into a woman.”

When he opened the door, he saw a fireman and a cook at the corner, out for the evening together, holding hands and exchanging vows of love.

“Well, well!” said Rodolphe, gazing at the fighter of flames and his robust companion, “these heretics have completely forgotten that it's Lent.”

And he set off down the road to the home of a friend who lived nearby.

“If Marcel is home,” he said to himself, “we can spend the evening saying nasty things about Colline. We have to pass the time somehow.”

He gave the door a vigorous knock and it opened halfway to reveal a young man dressed only in a shirt and a monocle.

“I can't invite you in,” he said to Rodolphe.

“Why not?” he asked.

“Look!” said Marcel, pointing toward a female head that appeared from behind a curtain. “There's my answer.”

“She isn't even all that pretty,” he replied to the door that had already been closed in his face. “Oh well, what now?” he said, once he was back on the street, “If I go to see Colline, we could spend the evening saying nasty things about Marcel.”

Crossing the Rue de l‘Ouest, dark and deserted as usual, Rodolphe was able to make out a shadowy figure pacing back and forth while gloomily and audibly chewing on lines of poetry.