rancesca. A man is but weak and foolish, carried
away by the merest trifle, and a coward every time that his senses
are excited or mastered. I clung to this unknown girl, silent and
dissatisfied as she always was. I liked her somewhat ill-tempered face,
the dissatisfied droop of her mouth, the weariness of her look; I liked
her fatigued movements, the contemptuous way in which she let me
kiss her, the very indifference of her caresses. A secret bond, that
mysterious bond of physical love, which does not satisfy, bound me to
her. I told Paul so, quite frankly. He treated me as if I were a fool,
and then said:

"Very well, take her with you."

But she obstinately refused to leave Genoa, without giving any reason.
I besought, I reasoned, I promised, but all was of no avail, and so I
stayed on.

Paul declared that he would go by himself, and went so far as to pack up
his portmanteau; but he remained all the same.

Thus a fortnight passed. Francesca was always silent and irritable,
lived beside me rather than with me, responded to all my requirements
and all my propositions with her perpetual Che mi fa, or with her no
less perpetual Mica.

My friend became more and more furious, but my only answer was, "You can
go if you are tired of staying. I am not detaining you."

Then he called me names, overwhelmed me with reproaches, and exclaimed:
"Where do you think I can go now? We had three weeks at our disposal,
and here is a fortnight gone! I cannot continue my journey now; and, in
any case, I am not going to Venice, Florence and Rome all by myself. But
you will pay for it, and more dearly than you think, most likely. You
are not going to bring a man all the way from Paris in order to shut him
up at a hotel in Genoa with an Italian adventuress."

When I told him, very calmly, to return to Paris, he exclaimed that
he intended to do so the very next day; but the next day he was still
there, still in a rage and swearing.

By this time we began to be known in the streets through which we
wandered from morning till night. Sometimes French people would turn
round astonished at meeting their fellow-countrymen in the company of
this girl with her striking costume, who looked singularly out of place,
not to say compromising, beside us.

She used to walk along, leaning on my arm, without looking at anything.
Why did she remain with me, with us, who seemed to do so little to amuse
her? Who was she? Where did she come from? What