Fire in the Blood Read Online Free PDF

some fried eggs and fruit ... Nevertheless, she made no move to invite me inside. Quite the opposite. She blocked the door and, when I got closer to her, I could sense she was shaking all over. I felt sorry for her. "Fried eggs won't do," I said, "I'm hungry. And besides, I
    don't want to keep you out on this footbridge; the wind is freezing cold. Go back to bed, my girl. I'll come some other time."
    What else could I do? I'm neither her father nor her husband. Besides, to tell the truth, I don't have the right to criticise, having committed enough folly in my own youth. And aren't the most beautiful follies the ones linked to love? Quite apart from the fact that we usually pay so dearly for our follies, we should be generous about them, to ourselves and others. Yes, we always pay for them, and sometimes the smallest indiscretions cost as much as the largest. Might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. Of course, it was madness to have another man in your husband's house, but on the other hand what pleasure, on a night like this, to walk arm in arm with your lover while the water flows by and the fear of being caught clutches at your heart. Who was the man she was expecting?
    "At Coudray, old Declos will gladly give me a glass of wine and a piece of cheese," I thought to myself. "And if that young man isn't there any more, there's a good chance that he's the lover in both places. He's a handsome fellow. Declos is old and as for Jean, poor Jean, even on his wedding day he looked like a man who could easily be deceived. Some people are born like that; no way around it."
    Colette wanted to walk me to the wood. Every now and again she stumbled on a stone and held my arm tighter. I touched her hand; it was frozen.
    "Go back home," I said. "Go on, you'll make yourself worse."
    "You're not angry?" she asked.
    She didn't wait for me to answer. "When you see Mama," she said quietly, "I beg you, please don't say anything to her. She'll think I'm seriously ill and she'll worry."
    "I won't even mention I've seen you."
    She threw herself into my arms. "I love you so much, Uncle Silvio! You understand everything."
    It was almost a confession and I felt it was my duty to warn her about the dangers. But as soon as I said the words "your husband, your child, your home," she leapt back.
    "I know! Don't you think I know?" she cried, and you could hear the suffering and hatred in her voice. "But I don't love my husband. I love someone else. Leave us in peace! It's nobody else's business," she said with difficulty, and she ran away so quickly that I didn't have time to finish what I'd started to say. Such madness! When you're twenty, love is like a fever, it makes you almost delirious. When it's over you can hardly remember how it happened . . . Fire in the blood, how quickly it burns itself out. Faced with this blaze of dreams and desires, I felt so old, so cold, so wise .. .
    At Coudray I knocked on the dining-room window and said I'd got lost. The old man couldn't refuse me a room for the night, even though he knows I've wandered around these woods since I was a child. As for dinner, I didn't stand on ceremony. I went into the kitchen and asked the maid for a bowl of soup. She gave me a large hunk of cheese and some crusty bread to go with it. I took it back to the fire to eat. There was no light in the room apart from the flames in the hearth to save on electricity.
    I asked where Marc Ohnet was.
    "Gone."
    "Did he have supper with you?"
    "Yes," the old man grumbled.
    "Do you see him often?"
    He pretended not to hear. His wife was holding some embroidery, but she wasn't working on it. He barked at her, "Don't tire yourself out, now."
    "I can't sew when there's no light," she replied, her voice quiet and distracted.
    "Was anyone home at the Moulin-Neuf?" she asked, turning towards me.
    "I don't know. I didn't go there. It was so dark in the woods that I never made it out. I was afraid of falling into the lake."
    "Is there a lake in the