the various masterpieces. Paul followed us,
growling all sorts of disagreeable things. Then we all three took a
silent drive into the country and returned to dinner.

The next day it was the same thing and the next day again; so on the
third Paul said to me: "Look here, I am going to leave you; I am not
going to stop here for three weeks watching you make love to this
creature."

I was perplexed and annoyed, for to my great surprise I had become
singularly attached to Francesca. 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 yielded to my
desires, the very indifference of her caresses. A secret bond, that
mysterious bond of animal love, the secret attachment of that possession
which does not satiate, bound me to her. I told Paul so, quite frankly.
He treated me as if I had been 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 desires, all my
demands, and all my propositions with her perpetual _Che mi fa_, or
with her no less perpetual _Mica_.

My friend got 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 to 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 for, most
likely. You are not going to bring a man all the way from Paris in order
to shut him up at an hotel in Genoa with an Italian adventuress."

When I told him, very calmly, to return to Paris, he exclaimed that he
was going to do so the very next day; but the next day he was still