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Beatrix

by Honore de Balzac

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

November, 1999 [Etext #1957]

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Beatrix

by Honore de Balzac

Translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley

NOTE

It is somewhat remarkable that Balzac, dealing as he did with

traits of character and the minute and daily circumstances of

life, has never been accused of representing actual persons in the

two or three thousand portraits which he painted of human nature.

In "The Great Man of the Provinces in Paris" some likenesses were

imagined: Jules Janin in Etienne Lousteau, Armand Carrel in Michel

Chrestien, and, possibly, Berryer in Daniel d'Arthez. But in the

present volume, "Beatrix," he used the characteristics of certain

persons, which were recognized and admitted at the time of

publication. Mademoiselle des Touches (Camille Maupin) is George

Sand in character, and the personal description of her, though

applied by some to the famous Mademoiselle Georges, is easily

recognized from Couture's drawing. Beatrix, Conti, and Claude

Vignon are sketches of the Comtesse d'Agoult, Liszt, and the well-

known critic Gustave Planche.

The opening scene of this volume, representing the manners and

customs of the old Breton family, a social state existing no

longer except in history, and the transition period of the

/vieille roche/ as it passed into the customs and ideas of the

present century, is one of Balzac's remarkable and most famous

pictures in the "Comedy of Human Life."

K.P.W.

BEATRIX

I

A BRETON TOWN AND MANSION

France, especially in Brittany, still possesses certain towns

completely outside of the movement which gives to the nineteenth

century its peculiar characteristics. For lack of quick and regular

communication with Paris, scarcely connected by wretched roads with

the sub-prefecture, or the chief city of their own province, these

towns regard the new civilization as a spectacle to be gazed at; it

amazes them, but they never applaud it; and, whether they fear or

scoff at it, they continue faithful to the old manners and customs

which have come down to them. Whoso would travel as a moral

archaeologist, observing men instead of stones, would find images of

the time of Louis XV. in many a village of Provence, of the time of

Louis XIV. in the depths of Pitou, and of still more ancient times in

the towns of Brittany. Most of these towns have fallen from states of

splendor never mentioned by historians, who are always more concerned

with facts and dates than with the truer history of manners and

customs. The tradition of this splendor still lives in the memory of

the people,--as in Brittany, where the native character allows no

forgetfulness of things which concern its own land. Many of these

towns were once the capitals of a little feudal State,--a county or

duchy conquered by the crown or divided among many heirs, if the male

line failed. Disinherited from active life, these heads became arms;

and arms deprived of nourishment, wither and barely vegetate.

For the last thirty years, however, these pictures of ancient times

are beginning to fade and disappear. Modern industry, working for the

masses, goes on destroying the creations of ancient art, the works of

which were once as personal to the consumer as to the artisan.

Nowadays we have /products/, we no longer have /works/. Public

buildings, monuments of the past, count for much in the phenomena of

retrospection; but the monuments of modern industry are freestone

quarries, saltpetre mines, cotton factories. A few more years and even

these old cities will be transformed and seen no more except in the

pages of this iconography.

One of the towns in which may be found the most correct likeness of

the feudal ages is Guerande. The name alone awakens a thousand

memories in the minds of painters, artists, thinkers who have visited

the slopes on which this splendid jewel of feudality lies proudly

posed to command the flux and reflux of the tides and the dunes,--the

summit, as it were, of a triangle, at the corners of which are two

other jewels not less curious: Croisic, and the village of Batz. There

are no towns after Guerande except Vitre in the centre of Brittany,

and Avignon in the south of France, which preserve so intact, to the

very middle of our epoch, the type and form of the middle ages.

Guerande is still encircled with its doughty walls, its moats are full

of water, its battlements entire, its loopholes unencumbered with

vegetation; even ivy has never cast its mantle over the towers, square

or round. The town has three gates, where may be seen the rings of the

portcullises; it is entered by a drawbridge of iron-clamped wood, no

longer raised but which could be raised at will. The mayoralty was

blamed for having, in 1820, planted poplars along the banks of the

moat to shade the promenade. It excused itself on the ground that the

long and beautiful esplanade of the fortifications facing the dunes

had been converted one hundred years earlier into a mall where the

inhabitants took their pleasure beneath the elms.

The houses of the old town have suffered no change; and they have

neither increased nor diminished. None have suffered upon their

frontage from the hammer of the architect, the brush of the plasterer,

nor have they staggered under the weight of added stories. All retain

their primitive characteristics. Some rest on wooden columns which

form arcades under which foot-passengers circulate, the floor planks

bending beneath them, but never breaking. The houses of the merchants

are small and low; their fronts are veneered with slate. Wood, now

decaying, counts for much in the carved material of the window-casings

and the pillars, above which grotesque faces look down, while shapes

of fantastic beasts climb up the angles, animated by that great

thought of Art, which in those old days gave life to inanimate nature.

These relics, resisting change, present to the eye of painters those

dusky tones and half-blurred features in which the artistic brush

delights.

The streets are what they were four hundred years ago,--with one

exception; population no longer swarms there; the social movement is

now so dead that a traveller wishing to examine the town (as beautiful

as a suit of antique armor) may walk alone, not without sadness,

through a deserted street, where the mullioned windows are plastered

up to avoid the window-tax. This street ends at a postern, flanked

with a wall of masonry, beyond which rises a bouquet of trees planted

by the hands of Breton nature, one of the most luxuriant and fertile

vegetations in France. A painter, a poet would sit there silently, to

taste the quietude which reigns beneath the well-preserved arch of the

postern, where no voice comes from the life of the peaceful city, and

where the landscape is seen in its rich magnificence through the loop-

holes of the casemates once occupied by halberdiers and archers, which

are not unlike the sashes of some belvedere arranged for a point of

view.

It is impossible to walk about the place without thinking at every

step of the habits and usages of long-past times; the very stones tell

of them; the ideas of the middle ages are still there with all their

ancient superstitions. If, by chance, a gendarme passes you, with his

silver-laced hat, his presence is an anachronism against which your

sense of fitness protests; but nothing is so rare as to meet a being

or an object of the present time. There is even very little of the

clothing of the day; and that little the inhabitants adapt in a way to

their immutable customs, their unchangeable physiognomies. The public

square is filled with Breton costumes, which artists flock to draw;

these stand out in wonderful relief upon the scene around them. The

whiteness of the linen worn by the /paludiers/ (the name given to men

who gather salt in the salt-marshes) contrasts vigorously with the

blues and browns of the peasantry and the original and sacredly

preserved jewelry of the women. These two classes, and that of the

sailors in their jerkins and varnished leather caps are as distinct

from one another as the castes of India, and still recognize the

distance that parts them from the bourgeoisie, the nobility, and the

clergy. All lines are clearly marked; there the revolutionary level

found the masses too rugged and too hard to plane; its instrument

would have been notched, if not broken. The character of immutability

which science gives to zoological species is found in Breton human

nature. Even now, after the Revolution of 1830, Guerande is still a

town apart, essentially Breton, fervently Catholic, silent, self-

contained,--a place where modern ideas have little access.

Its geographical position explains this phenomenon. The pretty town

overlooks a salt-marsh, the product of which is called throughout

Brittany the Guerande salt, to which many Bretons attribute the

excellence of their butter and their sardines. It is connected with

the rest of France by two roads only: that coming from Savenay, the

arrondissement to which it belongs, which stops at Saint-Nazaire; and

a second road, leading from Vannes, which connects it with the

Morbihan. The arrondissement road establishes communication by land,

and from Saint-Nazaire by water, with Nantes. The land road is used

only by government; the more rapid and more frequented way being by

water from Saint-Nazaire. Now, between this village and Guerande is a

distance of eighteen miles. which the mail-coach does not serve, and

for good reason; not three coach passengers a year would pass over it.

These, and other obstacles, little fitted to encourage travellers,

still exist. In the first place, government is slow in its

proceedings; and next, the inhabitants of the region put up readily

enough with difficulties which separate them from the rest of France.

Guerande, therefore, being at the extreme end of the continent, leads

nowhere, and no one comes there. Glad to be ignored, she thinks and

cares about herself only. The immense product of her salt-marshes,

which pays a tax of not less than a million to the Treasury, is

chiefly managed at Croisic, a peninsular village which communicates

with Guerande over quicksands, which efface during the night the

tracks made by day, and also by boats which cross the arm of the sea

that makes the port of Croisic.

This fascinating little town is therefore the Herculaneum of

feudality, less its winding sheet of lava. It is afoot, but not

living; it has no other ground of existence except that it has not

been demolished. If you reach Guerande from Croisic, after crossing a

dreary landscape of salt-marshes, you will experience a strong

sensation at sight of that vast fortification, which is still as good

as ever. If you come to it by Saint-Nazaire, the picturesqueness of

its position and the naive grace of its environs will please you no

less. The country immediately surrounding it is ravishing; the hedges

are full of flowers, honeysuckles, roses, box, and many enchanting

plants. It is like an English garden, designed by some great

architect. This rich, coy nature, so untrodden, with all the grace of

a bunch of violets or a lily of the valley in the glade of a forest,

is framed by an African desert banked by the ocean,--a desert without

a tree, an herb, a bird; where, on sunny days, the laboring

/paludiers/, clothed in white and scattered among those melancholy

swamps where the salt is made, remind us of Arabs in their burrows.

Thus Guerande bears no resemblance to any other place in France. The

town produces somewhat the same effect upon the mind as a sleeping-

draught upon the body. It is silent as Venice. There is no other

public conveyance than the springless wagon of a carrier who carries

travellers, merchandise, and occasionally letters from Saint-Nazaire

to Guerande and /vice versa/. Bernus, the carrier, was, in 1829, the

factotum of this large community. He went and came when he pleased;

all the country knew him; and he did the errands of all. The arrival

of a carriage in Guerande, that of a lady or some invalid going to

Croisic for sea-bathing (thought to have greater virtue among those

rocks than at Boulogne or Dieppe) is still an immense event. The

peasants come in on horseback, most of them with commodities for

barter in sacks. They are induced to do so (and so are the

/paludiers/) by the necessity of purchasing the jewels distinctive of

their caste which are given to all Breton brides, and the white linen,

or cloth for their clothing.

For a circuit ten miles round, Guerande is always GUERANDE,--the

illustrious town where the famous treaty was signed in 1365, the key

of the coast, which may boast, not less than the village of Batz, of a

splendor now lost in the night of time. The jewels, linen, cloth,

ribbon, and hats are made elsewhere, but to those who buy them they

are from Guerande and nowhere else. All artists, and even certain

bourgeois, who come to Guerande feel, as they do at Venice, a desire

(soon forgotten) to end their days amid its peace and silence, walking

in fine weather along the beautiful mall which surrounds the town from

gate to gate on the side toward the sea. Sometimes the image of this

town arises in the temple of memory; she enters, crowned with her

towers, clasped with her girdle; her flower-strewn robe floats onward,

the golden mantle of her dunes enfolds her, the fragrant breath of her

briony paths, filled with the flowers of each passing season, exhales

at every step; she fills your mind, she calls to you like some

enchanting woman whom you have met in other climes and whose presence

still lingers in a fold of your heart.

Near the church of Guerande stands a mansion which is to the town what

the town is to the region, an exact image of the past, the symbol of a

grand thing destroyed,--a poem, in short. This mansion belongs to the

noblest family of the province; to the du Guaisnics, who, in the times

of the du Guesclins, were as superior to the latter in antiquity and

fortune as the Trojans were to the Romans. The Guaisqlains (the name

is also spelled in the olden time du Glaicquin), from which comes du

Guesclin, issued from the du Guaisnics.

Old as the granite of Brittany, the Guaisnics are neither Frenchmen

nor Gauls,--they are Bretons; or, to be more exact, they are Celts.

Formerly, they must have been Druids, gathering mistletoe in the

sacred forests and sacrificing men upon their dolmens. Useless to say

what they were! To-day this race, equal to the Rohans without having

deigned to make themselves princes, a race which was powerful before

the ancestors of Hugues Capet were ever heard of, this family, pure of

all alloy, possesses two thousand francs a year, its mansion in

Guerande, and the little castle of Guaisnic. All the lands belonging

to the barony of Guaisnic, the first in Brittany, are pledged to

farmers, and bring in sixty thousand francs a year, in spite of

ignorant culture. The du Gaisnics remain the owners of these lands

although they receive none of the revenues, for the reason that for

the last two hundred years they have been unable to pay off the money

advanced upon them. They are in the position of the crown of France

towards its /engagistes/ (tenants of crown-lands) before the year

1789. Where and when could the barons obtain the million their farmers

have advanced to them? Before 1789 the tenure of the fiefs subject to

the castle of Guaisnic was still worth fifty thousand francs a year;

but a vote of the National Assembly suppressed the seigneurs' dues

levied on inheritance.

In such a situation this family--of absolutely no account in France,

and which would be a subject of laughter in Paris, were it known there

--is to Guerande the whole of Brittany. In Guerande the Baron du

Guaisnic is one of the great barons of France, a man above whom there

is but one man,--the King of France, once elected ruler. To-day the

name of du Guaisnic, full of Breton significances (the roots of which

will be found explained in "The Chouans") has been subjected to the

same alteration which disfigures that of du Guaisqlain. The tax-

gatherer now writes the name, as do the rest of the world, du Guenic.

At the end of a silent, damp, and gloomy lane may be seen the arch of

a door, or rather gate, high enough and wide enough to admit a man on

horseback,--a circumstance which proves of itself that when this

building was erected carriages did not exist. The arch, supported by

two jambs, is of granite. The gate, of oak, rugged as the bark of the

tree itself, is studded with enormous nails placed in geometric

figures. The arch is semicircular. On it are carved the arms of the

Guaisnics as clean-cut and clear as though the sculptor had just laid

down his chisel. This escutcheon would delight a lover of the heraldic

art by a simplicity which proves the pride and the antiquity of the

family. It is as it was in the days when the crusaders of the

Christian world invented these symbols by which to recognize each

other; the Guaisnics have never had it quartered; it is always itself,

like that of the house of France, which connoisseurs find

inescutcheoned in the shields of many of the old families. Here it is,

such as you may see it still at Guerande: Gules, a hand proper

gonfaloned ermine, with a sword argent in pale, and the terrible

motto, FAC. Is not that a grand and noble thing? The circlet of a

baronial coronet surmounts this simple escutcheon, the vertical lines

of which, used in carving to represent gules, are clear as ever. The

artist has given I know not what proud, chivalrous turn to the hand.

With what vigor it holds the sword which served but recently the

present family!

If you go to Guerande after reading this history you cannot fail to

quiver when you see that blazon. Yes, the most confirmed republican

would be moved by the fidelity, the nobleness, the grandeur hidden in

the depths of that dark lane. The du Guaisnics did well yesterday, and

they are ready to do well to-morrow. To DO is the motto of chivalry.

"You did well in the battle" was the praise of the Connetable /par

excellence/, the great du Guesclin who drove the English for a time

from France. The depth of this carving, which has been protected from

the weather by the projecting edges of the arch, is in keeping with

the moral depth of the motto in the soul of this family. To those who

know the Guaisnics this fact is touching.

The gate when open gives a vista into a somewhat vast court-yard, on

the right of which are the stables, on the left the kitchen and

offices. The house is build of freestone from cellar to garret. The

facade on the court-yard has a portico with a double range of steps,

the wall of which is covered with vestiges of carvings now effaced by

time, but in which the eye of an antiquary can still make out in the

centre of the principal mass the Hand bearing the sword. The granite

steps are now disjointed, grasses have forced their way with little

flowers and mosses through the fissures between the stones which

centuries have displaced without however lessening their solidity. The

door of the house must have had a charming character. As far as the

relics of the old designs allow us to judge, it was done by an artist

of the great Venetian school of the thirteenth century. Here is a

mixture, still visible, of the Byzantine and the Saracenic. It is

crowned with a circular pediment, now wreathed with vegetation,--a

bouquet, rose, brown, yellow, or blue, according to the season. The

door, of oak, nail-studded, gives entrance to a noble hall, at the end

of which is another door, opening upon another portico which leads to

the garden.

This hall is marvellously well preserved. The panelled wainscot, about

three feet high, is of chestnut. A magnificent Spanish leather with

figures in relief, the gilding now peeled off or reddened, covers the

walls. The ceiling is of wooden boards artistically joined and painted

and gilded. The gold is scarcely noticeable; it is in the same

condition as that of the Cordova leather, but a few red flowers and

the green foliage can be distinguished. Perhaps a thorough cleaning

might bring out paintings like those discovered on the plank ceilings

of Tristan's house at Tours. If so, it would prove that those planks

were placed or restored in the reign of Louis XI. The chimney-piece is

enormous, of carved stone, and within it are gigantic andirons in

wrought-iron of precious workmanship. It could hold a cart-load of

wood. The furniture of this hall is wholly of oak, each article

bearing upon it the arms of the family. Three English guns equally

suitable for chase or war, three sabres, two game-bags, the utensils

of a huntsman and a fisherman hang from nails upon the wall.

On one side is a dining-room, which connects with the kitchen by a

door cut through a corner tower. This tower corresponds in the design

of the facade toward the court-yard with another tower at the opposite

corner, in which is a spiral staircase leading to the two upper

stories.

The dining-room is hung with tapestries of the fourteenth century; the

style and the orthography of the inscription on the banderols beneath

each figure prove their age, but being, as they are, in the naive

language of the /fabliaux/, it is impossible to transcribe them here.

These tapestries, well preserved in those parts where light has

scarcely penetrated, are framed in bands of oak now black as ebony.

The ceiling has projecting rafters enriched with foliage which is

varied for each rafter; the space between them is filled with planks

painted blue, on which twine garlands of golden flowers. Two old

buffers face each other; on their shelves, rubbed with Breton

persistency by Mariotte the cook, can be seen, as in the days when

kings were as poor in 1200 as the du Guaisnics are in 1830, four old

goblets, an ancient embossed soup-tureen, and two salt-cellars, all of

silver; also many pewter plates and many pitchers of gray and blue

pottery, bearing arabesque designs and the arms of the du Guaisnics,

covered by hinged pewter lids. The chimney-piece is modernized. Its

condition proves that the family has lived in this room for the last

century. It is of carved stone in the style of the Louis XV. period,

and is ornamented with a mirror, let in to the back with gilt beaded

moulding. This anachronism, to which the family is indifferent, would

grieve a poet. On the mantel-shelf, covered with red velvet, is a tall

clock of tortoise-shell inlaid with brass, flanked on each side with a

silver candelabrum of singular design. A large square table, with

solid legs, fills the centre of this room; the chairs are of turned

wood covered with tapestry. On a round table supported by a single leg

made in the shape of a vine-shoot, which stands before a window

looking into the garden, is a lamp of an odd kind. This lamp has a

common glass globe, about the size of an ostrich egg, which is

fastened into a candle-stick by a glass tube. Through a hole at the

top of the globe issues a wick which passes through a sort of reed of

brass, drawing the nut-oil held in the globe through its own length

coiled like a tape-worm in a surgeon's phial. The windows which look

into the garden, like those that look upon the court-yard, are

mullioned in stone with hexagonal leaded panes, and are draped by

curtains, with heavy valances and stout cords, of an ancient stuff of

crimson silk with gold reflections, called in former days either

brocatelle or small brocade.

On each of the two upper stories of the house there are but two rooms.

The first is the bedroom of the head of the family, the second is that

of the children. Guests were lodged in chambers beneath the roof. The

servants slept above the kitchens and stables. The pointed roof,

protected with lead at its angles and edges, has a noble pointed

window on each side, one looking down upon the court-yard, the other

on the garden. These windows, rising almost to the level of the roof,

have slender, delicate casings, the carvings of which have crumbled

under the salty vapors of the atmosphere. Above the arch of each

window with its crossbars of stone, still grinds, as it turns, the

vane of a noble.

Let us not forget a precious detail, full of naivete, which will be of

value in the eyes of an archaeologist. The tower in which the spiral

staircase goes up is placed at the corner of a great gable wall in

which there is no window. The staircase comes down to a little arched

door, opening upon a gravelled yard which separates the house from the

stables. This tower is repeated on the garden side by another of five

sides, ending in a cupola in which is a bell-turret, instead of being

roofed, like the sister-tower, with a pepper-pot. This is how those

charming architects varied the symmetry of their sky-lines. These

towers are connected on the level of the first floor by a stone

gallery, supported by what we must call brackets, each ending in a

grotesque human head. This gallery has a balustrade of exquisite

workmanship. From the gable above depends a stone dais like those that

crown the statues of saints at the portal of churches. Can you not see

a woman walking in the morning along this balcony and gazing over

Guerande at the sunshine, where it gilds the sands and shimmers on the

breast of Ocean? Do you not admire that gable wall flanked at its

angles with those varied towers? The opposite gable of the Guaisnic

mansion adjoins the next house. The harmony so carefully sought by the

architects of those days is maintained in the facade looking on the

court-yard by the tower which communicates between the dining-room and

the kitchen, and is the same as the staircase tower, except that it

stops at the first upper story and its summit is a small open dome,

beneath which stands a now blackened statue of Saint Calyste.

The garden is magnificent for so old a place. It covers half an acre

of ground, its walls are all espaliered, and the space within is

divided into squares for vegetables, bordered with cordons of fruit-

trees, which the man-of-all-work, named Gasselin, takes care of in the

intervals of grooming the horses. At the farther end of the garden is

a grotto with a seat in it; in the middle, a sun-dial; the paths are

gravelled. The facade on the garden side has no towers corresponding

to those on the court-yard; but a slender spiral column rises from the

ground to the roof, which must in former days have borne the banner of

the family, for at its summit may still be seen an iron socket, from

which a few weak plants are straggling. This detail, in harmony with

the vestiges of sculpture, proves to a practised eye that the mansion

was built by a Venetian architect. The graceful staff is like a

signature revealing Venice, chivalry, and the exquisite delicacy of

the thirteenth century. If any doubts remained on this point, a

feature of the ornamentation would dissipate them. The trefoils of the

hotel du Guaisnic have four leaves instead of three. This difference

plainly indicates the Venetian school depraved by its commerce with

the East, where the semi-Saracenic architects, careless of the great

Catholic thought, give four leaves to clover, while Christian art is

faithful to the Trinity. In this respect Venetian art becomes

heretical.

If this ancient dwelling attracts your imagination, you may perhaps

ask yourself why such miracles of art are not renewed in the present

day. Because to-day mansions are sold, pulled down, and the ground

they stood on turned into streets. No one can be sure that the next

generation will possess the paternal dwelling; homes are no more than

inns; whereas in former times when a dwelling was built men worked, or

thought they worked, for a family in perpetuity. Hence the grandeur of

these houses. Faith in self, as well as faith in God, did prodigies.

As for the arrangement of the upper rooms they may be imagined after

this description of the ground-floor, and after reading an account of

the manners, customs, and physiognomy of the family. For the last

fifty years the du Guaisnics have received their friends in the two

rooms just described, in which, as in the court-yard and the external

accessories of the building, the spirit, grace, and candor of the old

and noble Brittany still survives. Without the topography and

description of the town, and without this minute depicting of the

house, the surprising figures of the family might be less understood.

Therefore the frames have preceded the portraits. Every one is aware

that things influence beings. There are public buildings whose effect

is visible upon the persons living in their neighborhood. It would be

difficult indeed to be irreligious in the shadow of a cathedral like

that of Bourges. When the soul is everywhere reminded of its destiny

by surrounding images, it is less easy to fail of it. Such was the

thought of our immediate grandfathers, abandoned by a generation which

was soon to have no signs and no distinctions, and whose manners and

morals were to change every decade. If you do not now expect to find

the Baron du Guaisnic sword in hand, all here written would be

falsehood.

II

THE BARON, HIS WIFE, AND SISTER

Early in the month of May, in the year 1836, the period when this

scene opens, the family of Guenic (we follow henceforth the modern

spelling) consisted of Monsieur and Madame du Guenic, Mademoiselle du

Guenic the baron's elder sister, and an only son, aged twenty-one,

named, after an ancient family usage, Gaudebert-Calyste-Louis. The

father's name was Gaudebert-Calyste-Charles. Only the last name was

ever varied. Saint Gaudebert and Saint Calyste were forever bound to

protect the Guenics.

The Baron du Guenic had started from Guerande the moment that La

Vendee and Brittany took arms; he fought through the war with

Charette, with Cathelineau, La Rochejaquelein, d'Elbee, Bonchamps, and

the Prince de Loudon. Before starting he had, with a prudence unique

in revolutionary annals, sold his whole property of every kind to his

elder and only sister, Mademoiselle Zephirine du Guenic. After the

death of all those heroes of the West, the baron, preserved by a

miracle from ending as they did, refused to submit to Napoleon. He

fought on till 1802, when being at last defeated and almost captured,

he returned to Guerande, and from Guerande went to Croisic, whence he

crossed to Ireland, faithful to the ancient Breton hatred for England.

The people of Guerande feigned utter ignorance of the baron's

existence. In the whole course of twenty years not a single indiscreet

word was ever uttered. Mademoiselle du Guenic received the rents and

sent them to her brother by fishermen. Monsieur du Guenic returned to

Guerande in 1813, as quietly and simply as if he had merely passed a

season at Nantes. During his stay in Dublin the old Breton, despite

his fifty years, had fallen in love with a charming Irish woman,

daughter of one of the noblest and poorest families of that unhappy

kingdom. Fanny O'Brien was then twenty-one years old. The Baron du

Guenic came over to France to obtain the documents necessary for his

marriage, returned to Ireland, and, after about ten months (at the

beginning of 1814), brought his wife to Guerande, where she gave him

Calyste on the very day that Louis XVIII. landed at Calais,--a

circumstance which explains the young man's final name of Louis.

The old and loyal Breton was now a man of seventy-three; but his long-

continued guerilla warfare with the Republic, his exile, the perils of

his five crossings through a turbulent sea in open boats, had weighed

upon his head, and he looked a hundred; therefore, at no period had

the chief of the house of Guenic been more in keeping with the worn-

out grandeur of their dwelling, built in the days when a court reigned

at Guerande.

Monsieur du Guenic was a tall, straight, wiry, lean old man. His oval

face was lined with innumerable wrinkles, which formed a net-work over

his cheek-bones and above his eyebrows, giving to his face a

resemblance to those choice old men whom Van Ostade, Rembrandt,

Mieris, and Gerard Dow so loved to paint, in pictures which need a

microscope to be fully appreciated. His countenance might be said to

be sunken out of sight beneath those innumerable wrinkles, produced by

a life in the open air and by the habit of watching his country in the

full light of the sun from the rising of that luminary to the sinking

of it. Nevertheless, to an observer enough remained of the

imperishable forms of the human face which appealed to the soul, even

though the eye could see no more than a lifeless head. The firm

outline of the face, the shape of the brow, the solemnity of the

lines, the rigidity of the nose, the form of the bony structure which

wounds alone had slightly altered,--all were signs of intrepidity

without calculation, faith without reserve, obedience without

discussion, fidelity without compromise, love without inconstancy. In

him, the Breton granite was made man.

The baron had no longer any teeth. His lips, once red, now violet, and

backed by hard gums only (with which he ate the bread his wife took

care to soften by folding it daily in a damp napkin), drew inward to

the mouth with a sort of grin, which gave him an expression both

threatening and proud. His chin seemed to seek his nose; but in that

nose, humped in the middle, lay the signs of his energy and his Breton

resistance. His skin, marbled with red blotches appearing through his

wrinkles, showed a powerfully sanguine temperament, fitted to resist

fatigue and to preserve him, as no doubt it did, from apoplexy. The

head was crowned with abundant hair, as white as silver, which fell in

curls upon his shoulders. The face, extinguished, as we have said, in

part, lived through the glitter of the black eyes in their brown

orbits, casting thence the last flames of a generous and loyal soul.

The eyebrows and lashes had disappeared; the skin, grown hard, could

not unwrinkle. The difficulty of shaving had obliged the old man to

let his beard grow, and the cut of it was fan-shaped. An artist would

have admired beyond all else in this old lion of Brittany with his

powerful shoulders and vigorous chest, the splendid hands of the

soldier,--hands like those du Guesclin must have had, large, broad,

hairy; hands that once had clasped the sword never, like Joan of Arc,

to relinquish it until the royal standard floated in the cathedral of

Rheims; hands that were often bloody from the thorns and furze of the

Bocage; hands which had pulled an oar in the Marais to surprise the

Blues, or in the offing to signal Georges; the hands of a guerilla, a

cannoneer, a common solder, a leader; hands still white though the

Bourbons of the Elder branch were again in exile. Looking at those

hands attentively, one might have seen some recent marks attesting the

fact that the Baron had recently joined MADAME in La Vendee. To-day

that fact may be admitted. These hands were a living commentary on the

noble motto to which no Guenic had proved recreant: /Fac!/

His forehead attracted attention by the golden tones of the temples,

contrasting with the brown tints of the hard and narrow brow, which

the falling off of the hair had somewhat broadened, giving still more

majesty to that noble ruin. The countenance--a little material,

perhaps, but how could it be otherwise?--presented, like all the

Breton faces grouped about the baron, a certain savagery, a stolid

calm which resembled the impassibility of the Huguenots; something,

one might say, stupid, due perhaps to the utter repose which follows

extreme fatigue, in which the animal nature alone is visible. Thought

was rare. It seemed to be an effort; its seat was in the heart more

than in the head; it led to acts rather than ideas. But, examining

that grand old man with sustained observation, one could penetrate the

mystery of this strange contradiction to the spirit of the century. He

had faiths, sentiments, inborn so to speak, which allowed him to

dispense with thought. His duty, life had taught him. Institutions and

religion thought for him. He reserved his mind, he and his kind, for

action, not dissipating it on useless things which occupied the minds

of other persons. He drew his thought from his heart like his sword

from its scabbard, holding it aloft in his ermined hand, as on his

scutcheon, shining with sincerity. That secret once penetrated, all is

clear. We can comprehend the depth of convictions that are not

thoughts, but living principles,--clear, distinct, downright, and as

immaculate as the ermine itself. We understand that sale made to his

sister before the war; which provided for all, and faced all, death,

confiscation, exile. The beauty of the character of these two old

people (for the sister lived only for and by the brother) cannot be

understood to its full extent by the right of the selfish morals, the

uncertain aims, and the inconstancy of this our epoch. An archangel,

charged with the duty of penetrating to the inmost recesses of their

hearts could not have found one thought of personal interest. In 1814,

when the rector of Guerande suggested to the baron that he should go

to Paris and claim his recompense from the triumphant Bourbons, the

old sister, so saving and miserly for the household, cried out:--

"Oh, fy! does my brother need to hold out his hand like a beggar?"

"It would be thought I served a king from interest," said the old man.

"Besides, it is for him to remember. Poor king! he must be weary

indeed of those who harass him. If he gave them all France in bits,

they still would ask."

This loyal servant, who had spent his life and means on Louis XVIII.,

received the rank of colonel, the cross of Saint-Louis, and a stipend

of two thousand francs a year.

"The king did remember!" he said when the news reached him.

No one undeceived him. The gift was really made by the Duc de Feltre.

But, as an act of gratitude to the king, the baron sustained a siege

at Guerande against the forces of General Travot. He refused to

surrender the fortress, and when it was absolutely necessary to

evacuate it he escaped into the woods with a band of Chouans, who

continued armed until the second restoration of the Bourbons. Guerande

still treasures the memory of that siege.

We must admit that the Baron du Guenic was illiterate as a peasant. He

could read, write, and do some little ciphering; he knew the military

art and heraldry, but, excepting always his prayer-book, he had not

read three volumes in the course of his life. His clothing, which is

not an insignificant point, was invariably the same; it consisted of

stout shoes, ribbed stockings, breeches of greenish velveteen, a cloth

waistcoat, and a loose coat with a collar, from which hung the cross

of Saint-Louis. A noble serenity now reigned upon that face where, for

the last year or so, sleep, the forerunner of death, seemed to be

preparing him for rest eternal. This constant somnolence, becoming

daily more and more frequent, did not alarm either his wife, his blind

sister, or his friends, whose medical knowledge was of the slightest.

To them these solemn pauses of a life without reproach, but very

weary, were naturally explained: the baron had done his duty, that was

all.

In this ancient mansion the absorbing interests were the fortunes of

the dispossessed Elder branch. The future of the exiled Bourbons, that

of the Catholic religion, the influence of political innovations on

Brittany were the exclusive topics of conversation in the baron's

family. There was but one personal interest mingled with these most

absorbing ones: the attachment of all for the only son, for Calyste,

the heir, the sole hope of the great name of the du Guenics.

The old Vendean, the old Chouan, had, some years previously, a return

of his own youth in order to train his son to those manly exercises

which were proper for a gentleman liable to be summoned at any moment

to take arms. No sooner was Calyste sixteen years of age than his

father accompanied him to the marshes and the forest, teaching him

through the pleasures of the chase the rudiments of war, preaching by

example, indifferent to fatigue, firm in his saddle, sure of his shot

whatever the game might be,--deer, hare, or a bird on the wing,--

intrepid in face of obstacles, bidding his son follow him into danger

as though he had ten other sons to take Calyste's place.

So, when the Duchesse de Berry landed in France to conquer back the

kingdom for her son, the father judged it right to take his boy to

join her, and put in practice the motto of their ancestors. The baron

started in the dead of night, saying no word to his wife, who might

perhaps have weakened him; taking his son under fire as if to a fete,

and Gasselin, his only vassal, who followed him joyfully. The three

men of the family were absent for three months without sending news of

their whereabouts to the baroness, who never read the "Quotidienne"

without trembling from line to line, nor to his old blind sister,

heroically erect, whose nerve never faltered for an instance as she

heard that paper read. The three guns hanging to the walls had

therefore seen service recently. The baron, who considered the

enterprise useless, left the region before the affair of La

Penissiere, or the house of Guenic would probably have ended in that

hecatomb.

When, on a stormy night after parting from MADAME, the father, son,

and servant returned to the house in Guerande, they took their friends

and the baroness and old Mademoiselle du Guenic by surprise, although

the latter, by the exercise of senses with which the blind are gifted,

recognized the steps of the three men in the little lane leading to

the house. The baron looked round upon the circle of his anxious

friends, who were seated beside the little table lighted by the

antique lamp, and said in a tremulous voice, while Gasselin replaced

the three guns and the sabres in their places, these words of feudal

simplicity:--

"The barons did not all do their duty."

Then, having kissed his wife and sister, he sat down in his old arm-

chair and ordered supper to be brought for his son, for Gasselin, and

for himself. Gasselin had thrown himself before Calyste on one

occasion, to protect him, and received the cut of a sabre on his

shoulder; but so simple a matter did it seem that even the women

scarcely thanked him. The baron and his guests uttered neither curses

nor complaints of their conquerors. Such silence is a trait of Breton

character. In forty years no one ever heard a word of contumely from

the baron's lips about his adversaries. It was for them to do their

duty as he did his. This utter silence is the surest indication of an

unalterable will.

This last effort, the flash of an energy now waning, had caused the

present weakness and somnolence of the old man. The fresh defeat and

exile of the Bourbons, as miraculously driven out as miraculously

re-established, were to him a source of bitter sadness.

About six o'clock on the evening of the day on which this history

begins, the baron, who, according to ancient custom, had finished

dining by four o'clock, fell asleep as usual while his wife was

reading to him the "Quotidienne." His head rested against the back of

the arm-chair which stood beside the fireplace on the garden side.

Near this gnarled trunk of an ancient tree, and in front of the

fireplace, the baroness, seated on one of the antique chairs,

presented the type of those adorable women who exist in England,

Scotland, or Ireland only. There alone are born those milk-white

creatures with golden hair the curls of which are wound by the hands

of angels, for the light of heaven seems to ripple in their silken

spirals swaying to the breeze. Fanny O'Brien was one of those sylphs,

--strong in tenderness, invincible under misfortune, soft as the music

of her voice, pure as the azure of her eyes, of a delicate, refined

beauty, blessed with a skin that was silken to the touch and caressing

to the eye, which neither painter's brush nor written word can

picture. Beautiful still at forty-two years of age, many a man would

have thought it happiness to marry her as she looked at the splendors

of that autumn coloring, redundant in flowers and fruit, refreshed and

refreshing with the dews of heaven.

The baroness held the paper in the dimpled hand, the fingers of which

curved slightly backward, their nails cut square like those of an

antique statue. Half lying, without ill-grace or affectation, in her

chair, her feet stretched out to warm them, she was dressed in a gown

of black velvet, for the weather was now becoming chilly. The corsage,

rising to the throat, moulded the splendid contour of the shoulders

and the rich bosom which the suckling of her son had not deformed. Her

hair was worn in /ringlets/, after the English fashion, down her

cheeks; the rest was simply twisted to the crown of her head and held

there with a tortoise-shell comb. The color, not undecided in tone as

other blond hair, sparkled to the light like a filagree of burnished

gold. The baroness always braided the short locks curling on the nape

of her neck--which are a sign of race. This tiny braid, concealed in

the mass of hair always carefully put up, allowed the eye to follow

with delight the undulating line by which her neck was set upon her

shoulders. This little detail will show the care which she gave to her

person; it was her pride to rejoice the eyes of the old baron. What a

charming, delicate attention! When you see a woman displaying in her

own home the coquetry which most women spend on a single sentiment,

believe me, that woman is as noble a mother as she is a wife; she is

the joy and the flower of the home; she knows her obligations as a

woman; in her soul, in her tenderness, you will find her outward

graces; she is doing good in secret; she worships, she adores without

a calculation of return; she loves her fellows, as she loves God,--for

their own sakes. And so one might fancy that the Virgin of paradise,

under whose care she lived, had rewarded the chaste girlhood and the

sacred life of the old man's wife by surrounding her with a sort of

halo which preserved her beauty from the wrongs of time. The

alterations of that beauty Plato would have glorified as the coming of

new graces. Her skin, so milk-white once, had taken the warm and

pearly tones which painters adore. Her broad and finely modelled brow

caught lovingly the light which played on its polished surface. Her

eyes, of a turquoise blue, shone with unequalled sweetness; the soft

lashes, and the slightly sunken temples inspired the spectator with I

know now what mute melancholy. The nose, which was aquiline and thin,

recalled the royal origin of the high-born woman. The pure lips,

finely cut, wore happy smiles, brought there by loving-kindness

inexhaustible. Her teeth were small and white; she had gained of late

a slight embonpoint, but her delicate hips and slender waist were none

the worse for it. The autumn of her beauty presented a few perennial

flowers of her springtide among the richer blooms of summer. Her arms

became more nobly rounded, her lustrous skin took a finer grain; the

outlines of her form gained plenitude. Lastly and best of all, her

open countenance, serene and slightly rosy, the purity of her blue

eyes, that a look too eager might have wounded, expressed illimitable

sympathy, the tenderness of angels.

At the other chimney-corner, in an arm-chair, the octogenarian sister,

like in all points save clothes to her brother, sat listening to the

reading of the newspaper and knitting stockings, a work for which

sight is needless. Both eyes had cataracts; but she obstinately

refused to submit to an operation, in spite of the entreaties of her

sister-in-law. The secret reason of that obstinacy was known to

herself only; she declared it was want of courage; but the truth was

that she would not let her brother spend twenty-five louis for her

benefit. That sum would have been so much the less for the good of the

household.

These two old persons brought out in fine relief the beauty of the

baroness. Mademoiselle Zephirine, being deprived of sight, was not

aware of the changes which eighty years had wrought in her features.

Her pale, hollow face, to which the fixedness of the white and

sightless eyes gave almost the appearance of death, and three or four

solitary and projecting teeth made menacing, was framed by a little

hood of brown printed cotton, quilted like a petticoat, trimmed with a

cotton ruche, and tied beneath the chin by strings which were always a

little rusty. She wore a /cotillon/, or short skirt of coarse cloth,

over a quilted petticoat (a positive mattress, in which were secreted

double louis-d'ors), and pockets sewn to a belt which she unfastened

every night and put on every morning like a garment. Her body was

encased in the /casaquin/ of Brittany, a species of spencer made of

the same cloth as the /cotillon/, adorned with a collarette of many

pleats, the washing of which caused the only dispute she ever had with

her sister-in-law,--her habit being to change it only once a week.

From the large wadded sleeves of the /casaquin/ issued two withered

but still vigorous arms, at the ends of which flourished her hands,

their brownish-red color making the white arms look like poplar-wood.

These hands, hooked or contracted from the habit of knitting, might be

called a stocking-machine incessantly at work; the phenomenon would

have been had they stopped. From time to time Mademoiselle du Guenic

took a long knitting needle which she kept in the bosom of her gown,

and passed it between her hood and her hair to poke or scratch her

white locks. A stranger would have laughed to see the careless manner

in which she thrust back the needle without the slightest fear of

wounding herself. She was straight as a steeple. Her erect and

imposing carriage might pass for one of those coquetries of old age

which prove that pride is a necessary passion of life. Her smile was

gay. She, too, had done her duty.

As soon as the baroness saw that her husband was asleep she stopped

reading. A ray of sunshine, stretching from one window to the other,

divided by a golden band the atmosphere of that old room and burnished

the now black furniture. The light touched the carvings of the

ceiling, danced on the time-worn chests, spread its shining cloth on

the old oak table, enlivening the still, brown room, as Fanny's voice

cast into the heart of her octogenarian blind sister a music as

luminous and as cheerful as that ray of sunlight. Soon the ray took on

the ruddy colors which, by insensible gradations, sank into the

melancholy tones of twilight. The baroness also sank into a deep

meditation, one of those total silences which her sister-in-law had

noticed for the last two weeks, trying to explain them to herself, but

making no inquiry. The old woman studied the causes of this unusual

pre-occupation, as blind persons, on whose soul sound lingers like a

divining echo, read books in which the pages are black and the letters

white. Mademoiselle Zephirine, to whom the dark hour now meant

nothing, continued to knit, and the silence at last became so deep

that the clicking of her knitting-needles was plainly heard.

"You have dropped the paper, sister, but you are not asleep," said the

old woman, slyly.

At this moment Mariotte came in to light the lamp, which she placed on

a square table in front of the fire; then she fetched her distaff, her

ball of thread, and a small stool, on which she seated herself in the

recess of a window and began as usual to spin. Gasselin was still busy

about the offices; he looked to the horses of the baron and Calyste,

saw that the stable was in order for the night, and gave the two fine

hunting-dogs their daily meal. The joyful barking of the animals was

the last noise that awakened the echoes slumbering among the darksome

walls of the ancient house. The two dogs and the two horses were the

only remaining vestiges of the splendors of its chivalry. An

imaginative man seated on the steps of the portico and letting himself

fall into the poesy of the still living images of that dwelling, might

have quivered as he heard the baying of the hounds and the trampling

of the neighing horses.

Gasselin was one of those short, thick, squat little Bretons, with

black hair and sun-browned faces, silent, slow, and obstinate as

mules, but always following steadily the path marked out for them. He

was forty-two years old, and had been twenty-five years in the

household. Mademoiselle had hired him when he was fifteen, on hearing

of the marriage and probable return of the baron. This retainer

considered himself as part of the family; he had played with Calyste,

he loved the horses and dogs of the house, and talked to them and

petted them as though they were his own. He wore a blue linen jacket

with little pockets flapping about his hips, waistcoat and trousers of

the same material at all seasons, blue stockings, and stout hob-nailed

shoes. When it was cold or rainy he put on a goat's-skin, after the

fashion of his country.

Mariotte, who was also over forty, was as a woman what Gasselin was as

a man. No team could be better matched,--same complexion, same figure,

same little eyes that were lively and black. It is difficult to

understand why Gasselin and Mariotte had never married; possibly it

might have seemed immoral, they were so like brother and sister.

Mariotte's wages were ninety francs a year; Gasselin's, three hundred.

But thousands of francs offered to them elsewhere would not have

induced either to leave the Guenic household. Both were under the

orders of Mademoiselle, who, from the time of the war in La Vendee to

the period of her brother's return, had ruled the house. When she

learned that the baron was about to bring home a mistress, she had

been moved to great emotion, believing that she must yield the sceptre

of the household and abdicate in favor of the Baronne du Guenic, whose

subject she was now compelled to be.

Mademoiselle Zephirine was therefore agreeably surprised to find in

Fanny O'Brien a young woman born to the highest rank, to whom the

petty cares of a poor household were extremely distasteful,--one who,

like other fine souls, would far have preferred to eat plain bread

rather than the choicest food if she had to prepare it for herself; a

woman capable of accomplishing all the duties, even the most painful,

of humanity, strong under necessary privations, but without courage

for commonplace avocations. When the baron begged his sister in his

wife's name to continue in charge of the household, the old maid

kissed the baroness like a sister; she made a daughter of her, she

adored her, overjoyed to be left in control of the household, which

she managed rigorously on a system of almost inconceivable economy,

which was never relaxed except for some great occasion, such as the

lying-in of her sister, and her nourishment, and all that concerned

Calyste, the worshipped son of the whole household.

Though the two servants were accustomed to this stern regime, and no

orders need ever have been given to them, for the interests of their

masters were greater in their minds than their own,--/were/ their own

in fact,--Mademoiselle Zephirine insisted on looking after everything.

Her attention being never distracted, she knew, without going up to

verify her knowledge, how large was the heap of nuts in the barn; and

how many oats remained in the bin without plunging her sinewy arm into

the depths of it. She carried at the end of a string fastened to the

belt of her /casaquin/, a boatswain's whistle, with which she was wont

to summon Mariotte by one, and Gasselin by two notes.

Gasselin's greatest happiness was to cultivate the garden and produce

fine fruits and vegetables. He had so little work to do that without

this occupation he would certainly have felt lost. After he had

groomed his horses in the morning, he polished the floors and cleaned

the rooms on the ground-floor, then he went to his garden, where weed

or damaging insect was never seen. Sometimes Gasselin was observed

motionless, bare-headed, under a burning sun, watching for a field-

mouse or the terrible grub of the cockchafer; then, as soon as it was

caught, he would rush with the joy of a child to show his masters the

noxious beast that had occupied his mind for a week. He took pleasure

in going to Croisic on fast-days, to purchase a fish to be had for

less money there than at Guerande.

Thus no household was ever more truly one, more united in interests,

more bound together than this noble family sacredly devoted to its

duty. Masters and servants seemed made for one another. For twenty-

five years there had been neither trouble nor discord. The only griefs

were the petty ailments of the little boy, the only terrors were

caused by the events of 1814 and those of 1830. If the same things

were invariably done at the same hours, if the food was subjected to

the regularity of times and seasons, this monotony, like that of

Nature varied only by alterations of cloud and rain and sunshine, was

sustained by the affection existing in the hearts of all,--the more

fruitful, the more beneficent because it emanated from natural causes.

III

THREE BRETON SILHOUETTES

When night had fairly fallen, Gasselin came into the hall and asked

his master respectfully if he had further need of him.

"You can go out, or go to bed, after prayers," replied the baron,

waking up, "unless Madame or my sister--"

The two ladies here made a sign of consent. Gasselin then knelt down,

seeing that his masters rose to kneel upon their chairs; Mariotte also

knelt before her stool. Mademoiselle du Guenic then said the prayer

aloud. After it was over, some one rapped at the door on the lane.

Gasselin went to open it.

"I dare say it is Monsieur le cure; he usually comes first," said

Mariotte.

Every one now recognized the rector's foot on the resounding steps of

the portico. He bowed respectfully to the three occupants of the room,

and addressed them in phrases of that unctuous civility which priests

are accustomed to use. To the rather absent-minded greeting of the

mistress of the house, he replied by an ecclesiastically inquisitive

look.

"Are you anxious or ill, Madame la baronne?" he asked.

"Thank you, no," she replied.

Monsieur Grimont, a man of fifty, of middle height, lost in his

cassock, from which issued two stout shoes with silver buckles,

exhibited above his hands a plump visage, and a generally white skin

though yellow in spots. His hands were dimpled. His abbatial face had

something of the Dutch burgomaster in the placidity of its complexion

and its flesh tones, and of the Breton peasant in the straight black

hair and the vivacity of the brown eyes, which preserved,

nevertheless, a priestly decorum. His gaiety, that of a man whose

conscience was calm and pure, admitted a joke. His manner had nothing

uneasy or dogged about it, like that of many poor rectors whose

existence or whose power is contested by their parishioners, and who

instead of being, as Napoleon sublimely said, the moral leaders of the

population and the natural justices of peace, are treated as enemies.

Observing Monsieur Grimont as he marched through Guerande, the most

irreligious of travellers would have recognized the sovereign of that

Catholic town; but this same sovereign lowered his spiritual

superiority before the feudal supremacy of the du Guenics. In their

salon he was as a chaplain in his seigneur's house. In church, when he

gave the benediction, his hand was always first stretched out toward

the chapel belonging to the Guenics, where their mailed hand and their

device were carved upon the key-stone of the arch.

"I thought that Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel had already arrived," said

the rector, sitting down, and taking the hand of the baroness to kiss

it. "She is getting unpunctual. Can it be that the fashion of

dissipation is contagious? I see that Monsieur le chevalier is again

at Les Touches this evening."

"Don't say anything about those visits before Mademoiselle de Pen-

Hoel," cried the old maid, eagerly.

"Ah! mademoiselle," remarked Mariotte, "you can't prevent the town

from gossiping."

"What do they say?" asked the baroness.

"The young girls and the old women all say that he is in love with

Mademoiselle des Touches."

"A lad of Calyste's make is playing his proper part in making the

women love him," said the baron.

"Here comes Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel," said Mariotte.

The gravel in the court-yard crackled under the discreet footsteps of

the coming lady, who was accompanied by a page supplied with a

lantern. Seeing this lad, Mariotte removed her stool to the great hall

for the purpose of talking with him by the gleam of his rush-light,

which was burned at the cost of his rich and miserly mistress, thus

economizing those of her own masters.

This elderly demoiselle was a thin, dried-up old maid, yellow as the

parchment of a Parliament record, wrinkled as a lake ruffled by the

wind, with gray eyes, large prominent teeth, and the hands of a man.

She was rather short, a little crooked, possibly hump-backed; but no

one had ever been inquisitive enough to ascertain the nature of her

perfections or her imperfections. Dressed in the same style as

Mademoiselle du Guenic, she stirred an enormous quantity of petticoats

and linen whenever she wanted to find one or other of the two

apertures of her gown through which she reached her pockets. The

strangest jingling of keys and money then echoed among her garments.

She always wore, dangling from one side, the bunch of keys of a good

housekeeper, and from the other her silver snuff-box, thimble,

knitting-needles, and other implements that were also resonant.

Instead of Mademoiselle Zephirine's wadded hood, she wore a green

bonnet, in which she may have visited her melons, for it had passed,

like them, from green to yellowish; as for its shape, our present

fashions are just now bringing it back to Paris, after twenty years

absence, under the name of Bibi. This bonnet was constructed under her

own eye and by the hands of her nieces, out of green Florence silk

bought at Guerande, and an old bonnet-shape, renewed every five years

at Nantes,--for Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel allowed her bonnets the

longevity of a legislature. Her nieces also made her gowns, cut by an

immutable pattern. The old lady still used the cane with the short

hook that all women carried in the early days of Marie-Antoinette. She

belonged to the very highest nobility of Brittany. Her arms bore the

ermine of its ancient dukes. In her and in her sister the illustrious

Breton house of the Pen-Hoels ended. Her younger sister had married a

Kergarouet, who, in spite of the deep disapproval of the whole region,

added the name of Pen-Hoel to his own and called himself the Vicomte

de Kergarouet-Pen-Hoel.

"Heaven has punished him," said the old lady; "he has nothing but

daughters, and the Kergarouet-Pen-Hoel name will be wiped out."

Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel possessed about seven thousand francs a year

from the rental of lands. She had come into her property at thirty-six

years of age, and managed it herself, inspecting it on horseback, and

displaying on all points the firmness of character which is noticeable

in most deformed persons. Her avarice was admired by the whole country

round, never meeting with the slightest disapproval. She kept one

woman-servant and the page. Her yearly expenses, not including taxes,

did not amount to over a thousand francs. Consequently, she was the

object of the cajoleries of the Kergarouet-Pen-Hoels, who passed the

winters at Nantes, and the summers at their estate on the banks of the

Loire below l'Indret. She was supposed to be ready to leave her

fortune and her savings to whichever of her nieces pleased her best.

Every three months one or other of the four demoiselles de Kergarouet-

Pen-Hoel, (the youngest of whom was twelve, and the eldest twenty

years of age) came to spend a few days with her.

A friend of Zephirine du Guenic, Jacqueline de Pen-Hoel, brought up to

adore the Breton grandeur of the du Guenics, had formed, ever since

the birth of Calyste, the plan of transmitting her property to the

chevalier by marrying him to whichever of her nieces the Vicomtesse de

Kergarouet-Pen-Hoel, their mother, would bestow upon him. She dreamed

of buying back some of the best of the Guenic property from the farmer

/engagistes/. When avarice has an object it ceases to be a vice; it

becomes a means of virtue; its privations are a perpetual offering; it

has the grandeur of an intention beneath its meannesses. Perhaps

Zephirine was in the secret of Jacqueline's intention. Perhaps even

the baroness, whose whole soul was occupied by love for her son and

tenderness for his father, may have guessed it as she saw with what

wily perseverance Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel brought with her her

favorite niece, Charlotte de Kergarouet, now sixteen years of age. The

rector, Monsieur Grimont, was certainly in her confidence; it was he

who helped the old maid to invest her savings.

But Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel might have had three hundred thousand

francs in gold, she might have had ten times the landed property she

actually possessed, and the du Guenics would never have allowed

themselves to pay her the slightest attention that the old woman could

construe as looking to her fortune. From a feeling of truly Breton

pride, Jacqueline de Pen-Hoel, glad of the supremacy accorded to her

old friend Zephirine and the du Guenics, always showed herself honored

by her relations with Madame du Guenic and her sister-in-law. She even

went so far as to conceal the sort of sacrifice to which she consented

every evening in allowing her page to burn in the Guenic hall that

singular gingerbread-colored candle called an /oribus/ which is still

used in certain parts of western France.

Thus this rich old maid was nobility, pride, and grandeur personified.

At the moment when you are reading this portrait of her, the Abbe

Grimont has just indiscreetly revealed that on the evening when the

old baron, the young chevalier, and Gasselin secretly departed to join

MADAME (to the terror of the baroness and the great joy of all

Bretons) Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel had given the baron ten thousand

francs in gold,--an immense sacrifice, to which the abbe added another

ten thousand, a tithe collected by him,--charging the old hero to

offer the whole, in the name of the Pen-Hoels and of the parish of

Guerande, to the mother of Henri V.

Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel treated Calyste as if she felt that her

intentions gave her certain rights over him; her plans seemed to

authorize a supervision. Not that her ideas were strict in the matter

of gallantry, for she had, in fact, the usual indulgence of the old

women of the old school, but she held in horror the modern ways of

revolutionary morals. Calyste, who might have gained in her estimation

by a few adventures with Breton girls, would have lost it considerably

had she seen him entangled in what she called innovations. She might

have disinterred a little gold to pay for the results of a love-

affair, but if Calyste had driven a tilbury or talked of a visit to

Paris she would have thought him dissipated, and declared him a

spendthrift. Impossible to say what she might not have done had she

found him reading novels or an impious newspaper. To her, novel ideas

meant the overthrow of succession of crops, ruin under the name of

improvements and methods; in short, mortgaged lands as the inevitable

result of experiments. To her, prudence was the true method of making

your fortune; good management consisted in filling your granaries with

wheat, rye, and flax, and waiting for a rise at the risk of being

called a monopolist, and clinging to those grain-sacks obstinately. By

singular chance she had often made lucky sales which confirmed her

principles. She was thought to be maliciously clever, but in fact she

was not quick-witted; on the other hand, being as methodical as a

Dutchman, prudent as a cat, and persistent as a priest, those

qualities in a region of routine like Brittany were, practically, the

equivalent of intellect.

"Will Monsieur du Halga join us this evening?" asked Mademoiselle de

Pen-Hoel, taking off her knitted mittens after the usual exchange of

greetings.

"Yes, mademoiselle; I met him taking his dog to walk on the mall,"

replied the rector.

"Ha! then our /mouche/ will be lively to-night. Last evening we were

only four."

At the word /mouche/ the rector rose and took from a drawer in one of

the tall chests a small round basket made of fine osier, a pile of

ivory counters yellow as a Turkish pipe after twenty years' usage, and

a pack of cards as greasy as those of the custom-house officers at

Saint-Nazaire, who change them only once in two weeks. These the abbe

brought to the table, arranging the proper number of counters before

each player, and putting the basket in the centre of the table beside

the lamp, with infantine eagerness, and the manner of a man accustomed

to perform this little service.

A knock at the outer gate given firmly in military fashion echoed

through the stillness of the ancient mansion. Mademoiselle de Pen-

Hoel's page went gravely to open the door, and presently the long,

lean, methodically-clothed person of the Chevalier du Halga, former

flag-captain to Admiral de Kergarouet, defined itself in black on the

penumbra of the portico.

"Welcome, chevalier!" cried Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel.

"The altar is raised," said the abbe.

The chevalier was a man in poor health, who wore flannel for his

rheumatism, a black-silk skull-cap to protect his head from fog, and a

spencer to guard his precious chest from the sudden gusts which

freshen the atmosphere of Guerande. He always went armed with a gold-

headed cane to drive away the dogs who paid untimely court to a

favorite little bitch who usually accompanied him. This man, fussy as

a fine lady, worried by the slightest /contretemps/, speaking low to

spare his voice, had been in his early days one of the most intrepid

and most competent officers of the old navy. He had won the confidence

of de Suffren in the Indian Ocean, and the friendship of the Comte de

Portenduere. His splendid conduct while flag-captain to Admiral

Kergarouet was written in visible letters on his scarred face. To see

him now no one would have imagined the voice that ruled the storm, the

eye that compassed the sea, the courage, indomitable, of the Breton

sailor.

The chevalier never smoked, never swore; he was gentle and tranquil as

a girl, as much concerned about his little dog Thisbe and her caprices

as though he were an elderly dowager. In this way he gave a high idea

of his departed gallantry, but he never so much as alluded to the

deeds of surpassing bravery which had astonished the doughty old

admiral, Comte d'Estaing. Though his manner was that of an invalid,

and he walked as if stepping on eggs and complained about the

sharpness of the wind or the heat of the sun, or the dampness of the

misty atmosphere, he exhibited a set of the whitest teeth in the

reddest of gums,--a fact reassuring as to his maladies, which were,

however, rather expensive, consisting as they did of four daily meals

of monastic amplitude. His bodily frame, like that of the baron, was

bony, and indestructibly strong, and covered with a parchment glued to

his bones as the skin of an Arab horse on the muscles which shine in

the sun. His skin retained the tawny color it received in India,

whence, however, he did not bring back either facts or ideas. He had

emigrated with the rest of his friends, lost his property, and was now

ending his days with the cross of Saint-Louis and a pension of two

thousand francs, as the legal reward of his services, paid from the

fund of the Invalides de la Marine. The slight hypochondria which made

him invent his imaginary ills is easily explained by his actual

suffering during the emigration. He served in the Russian navy until

the day when the Emperor Alexander ordered him to be employed against

France; he then resigned and went to live at Odessa, near the Duc de

Richelieu, with whom he returned to France. It was the duke who

obtained for this glorious relic of the old Breton navy the pension

which enabled him to live. On the death of Louis XVIII. he returned to

Guerande, and became, after a while, mayor of the city.

The rector, the chevalier, and Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel had regularly

passed their evenings for the last fifteen years at the hotel de

Guenic, where the other noble personages of the neighborhood also

came. It will be readily understood that the du Guenics were at the

head of the faubourg Saint-Germain of the old Breton province, where

no member of the new administration sent down by the government was

ever allowed to penetrate. For the last six years the rector coughed

when he came to the crucial words, /Domine, salvum fac regem/.

Politics were still at that point in Guerande.

IV

A NORMAL EVENING

/Mouche/ is a game played with five cards dealt to each player, and

one turned over. The turned-over card is trumps. At each round the

player is at liberty to run his chances or to abstain from playing his

card. If he abstains he loses nothing but his own stake, for as long

as there are no forfeits in the basket each player puts in a trifling

sum. If he plays and wins a trick he is paid /pro rata/ to the stake;

that is, if there are five sous in the basket, he wins one sou. The

player who fails to win a trick is made /mouche/; he has to pay the

whole stake, which swells the basket for the next game. Those who

decline to play throw down their cards during the game; but their play

is held to be null. The players can exchange their cards with the

remainder of the pack, as in ecarte, but only by order of sequence, so

that the first and second players may, and sometimes do, absorb the

remainder of the pack between them. The turned-over trump card belongs

to the dealer, who is always the last; he has the right to exchange it

for any card in his own hand. One powerful card is of more importance

than all the rest; it is called Mistigris. Mistigris is the knave of

clubs.

This game, simple as it is, is not lacking in interest. The cupidity

natural to mankind develops in it; so does diplomatic wiliness; also

play of countenance. At the hotel du Guenic, each of the players took

twenty counters, representing five sous; which made the sum total of

the stake for each game five farthings, a large amount in the eyes of

this company. Supposing some extraordinary luck, fifty sous might be

won,--more capital than any person in Guerande spent in the course of

any one day. Consequently Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel put into this game

(the innocence of which is only surpassed in the nomenclature of the

Academy by that of La Bataille) a passion corresponding to that of the

hunters after big game. Mademoiselle Zephirine, who went shares in the

game with the baroness, attached no less importance to it. To put up

one farthing for the chance of winning five, game after game, was to

this confirmed hoarder a mighty financial operation, into which she

put as much mental action as the most eager speculator at the Bourse

expends during the rise and fall of consols.

By a certain diplomatic convention, dating from September, 1825, when

Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel lost thirty-five sous, the game was to cease

as soon as a person losing ten sous should express the wish to retire.

Politeness did not allow the rest to give the retiring player the pain

of seeing the game go on without him. But, as all passions have their

Jesuitism, the chevalier and the baron, those wily politicians, had

found a means of eluding this charter. When all the players but one

were anxious to continue an exciting game, the daring sailor, du

Halga, one of those rich fellows prodigal of costs they do not pay,

would offer ten counters to Mademoiselle Zephirine or Mademoiselle

Jacqueline, when either of them, or both of them, had lost their five

sous, on condition of reimbursement in case they won. An old bachelor

could allow himself such gallantries to the sex. The baron also

offered ten counters to the old maids, but under the honest pretext of

continuing the game. The miserly maidens accepted, not, however,

without some pressing, as is the use and wont of maidens. But, before

giving way to this vast prodigality the baron and the chevalier were

required to have won; otherwise the offer would have been taken as an

insult.

/Mouche/ became a brilliant affair when a Demoiselle de Kergarouet was

in transit with her aunt. We use the single name, for the Kergarouets

had never been able to induce any one to call them Kergarouet-Pen-

Hoel,--not even their servants, although the latter had strict orders

so to do. At these times the aunt held out to the niece as a signal

treat the /mouche/ at the du Guenics. The girl was ordered to look

amiable, an easy thing to do in the presence of the beautiful Calyste,

whom the four Kergarouet young ladies all adored. Brought up in the

midst of modern civilization, these young persons cared little for

five sous a game, and on such occasions the stakes went higher. Those

were evenings of great emotion to the old blind sister. The baroness

would give her sundry hints by pressing her foot a certain number of

times, according to the size of the stake it was safe to play. To play

or not to play, if the basket were full, involved an inward struggle,

where cupidity fought with fear. If Charlotte de Kergarouet, who was

usually called giddy, was lucky in her bold throws, her aunt on their

return home (if she had not won herself), would be cold and

disapproving, and lecture the girl: she had too much decision in her

character; a young person should never assert herself in presence of

her betters; her manner of taking the basket and beginning to play was

really insolent; the proper behavior of a young girl demanded much

more reserve and greater modesty; etc.

It can easily be imagined that these games, carried on nightly for

twenty years, were interrupted now and then by narratives of events in

the town, or by discussions on public events. Sometimes the players

would sit for half an hour, their cards held fan-shape on their

stomachs, engaged in talking. If, as a result of these inattentions, a

counter was missing from the basket, every one eagerly declared that

he or she had put in their proper number. Usually the chevalier made

up the deficiency, being accused by the rest of thinking so much of

his buzzing ears, his chilly chest, and other symptoms of invalidism

that he must have forgotten his stake. But no sooner did he supply the

missing counter than Zephirine and Jacqueline were seized with

remorse; they imagined that, possibly, they themselves had forgotten

their stake; they believed--they doubted--but, after all, the

chevalier was rich enough to bear such a trifling misfortune. These

dignified and noble personages had the delightful pettiness of

suspecting each other. Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel would almost

invariably accuse the rector of cheating when he won the basket.

"It is singular," he would reply, "that I never cheat except when I

win the trick."

Often the baron would forget where he was when the talk fell on the

misfortunes of the royal house. Sometimes the evening ended in a

manner that was quite unexpected to the players, who all counted on a

certain gain. After a certain number of games and when the hour grew

late, these excellent people would be forced to separate without

either loss or gain, but not without emotion. On these sad evenings

complaints were made of /mouche/ itself; it was dull, it was long; the

players accused their /mouche/ as Negroes stone the moon in the water

when the weather is bad. On one occasion, after an arrival of the

Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Kergarouet, there was talk of whist and

boston being games of more interest than /mouche/. The baroness, who

was bored by /mouche/, encouraged the innovation, and all the company

--but not without reluctance--adopted it. But it proved impossible to

make them really understand the new games, which, on the departure of

the Kergarouets, were voted head-splitters, algebraic problems, and

intolerably difficult to play. All preferred their /mouche/, their

dear, agreeable /mouche/. /Mouche/ accordingly triumphed over modern

games, as all ancient things have ever triumphed in Brittany over

novelties.

While the rector was dealing the cards the baroness was asking the

Chevalier du Halga the same questions which she had asked him the

evening before about his health. The chevalier made it a point of

honor to have new ailments. Inquiries might be alike, but the nautical

hero had singular advantages in the way of replies. To-day it chanced

that his ribs troubled him. But here's a remarkable thing! never did

the worthy chevalier complain of his wounds. The ills that were really

the matter with him he expected, he knew them and he bore them; but

his fancied ailments, his headaches, the gnawings in his stomach, the

buzzing in his ears, and a thousand other fads and symptoms made him

horribly uneasy; he posed as incurable,--and not without reason, for

doctors up to the present time have found no remedy for diseases that

don't exist.

"Yesterday the trouble was, I believe, in your legs," said the rector.

"It moves about," replied the chevalier.

"Legs to ribs?" asked Mademoiselle Zephirine.

"Without stopping on the way?" said Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, smiling.

The chevalier bowed gravely, making a negative gesture which was not a

little droll, and proved to an observer that in his youth the sailor

had been witty and loving and beloved. Perhaps his fossil life at

Guerande hid many memories. When he stood, solemnly planted on his two

heron-legs in the sunshine on the mall, gazing at the sea or watching

the gambols of his little dog, perhaps he was living again in some

terrestrial paradise of a past that was rich in recollections.

"So the old Duc de Lenoncourt is dead," said the baron, remembering

the paragraph of the "Quotidienne," where his wife had stopped

reading. "Well, the first gentleman of the Bedchamber followed his

master soon. I shall go next."

"My dear, my dear!" said his wife, gently tapping the bony calloused

hand of her husband.

"Let him say what he likes, sister," said Zephirine; "as long as I am

above ground he can't be under it; I am the elder."

A gay smile played on the old woman's lips. Whenever the baron made

reflections of that kind, the players and the visitors present looked

at each other with emotion, distressed by the sadness of the king of

Guerande; and after they had left the house they would say, as they

walked home: "Monsieur du Guenic was sad to-night. Did you notice how

he slept?" And the next day the whole town would talk of the matter.

"The Baron du Guenic fails," was a phrase that opened the conversation

in many houses.

"How is Thisbe?" asked Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel of the chevalier, as

soon as the cards were dealt.

"The poor little thing is like her master," replied the chevalier;

"she has some nervous trouble, she goes on three legs constantly. See,

like this."

In raising and crooking his arm to imitate the dog, the chevalier

exposed his hand to his cunning neighbor, who wanted to see if he had

Mistigris or the trump,--a first wile to which he succumbed.

"Oh!" said the baroness, "the end of Monsieur le cure's nose is

turning white; he has Mistigris."

The pleasure of having Mistigris was so great to the rector--as it was

to the other players--that the poor priest could not conceal it. In

all human faces there is a spot where the secret emotions of the heart

betray themselves; and these companions, accustomed for years to

observe each other, had ended by finding out that spot on the rector's

face: when he had Mistigris the tip of his nose grew pale.

"You had company to-day," said the chevalier to Mademoiselle de Pen-

Hoel.

"Yes, a cousin of my brother-in-law. He surprised me by announcing the

marriage of the Comtesse de Kergarouet, a Demoiselle de Fontaine."

"The daughter of 'Grand-Jacques,'" cried the chevalier, who had lived

with the admiral during his stay in Paris.

"The countess is his heir; she has married an old ambassador. My

visitor told me the strangest things about our neighbor, Mademoiselle

des Touches,--so strange that I can't believe them. If they were true,

Calyste would never be so constantly with her; he has too much good

sense not to perceive such monstrosities--"

"Monstrosities?" said the baron, waked up by the word.

The baroness and the rector exchanged looks. The cards were dealt;

Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel had Mistigris! Impossible to continue the

conversation! But she was glad to hide her joy under the excitement

caused by her last word.

"Your play, monsieur le baron," she said, with an air of importance.

"My nephew is not one of those youths who like monstrosities,"

remarked Zephirine, taking out her knitting-needle and scratching her

head.

"Mistigris!" cried Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, making no reply to her

friend.

The rector, who appeared to be well-informed in the matter of Calyste

and Mademoiselle des Touches, did not enter the lists.

"What does she do that is so extraordinary, Mademoiselle des Touches?"

asked the baron.

"She smokes," replied Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel.

"That's very wholesome," said the chevalier.

"About her property?" asked the baron.

"Her property?" continued the old maid. "Oh, she is running through

it."

"The game is mine!" said the baroness. "See, I have king, queen, knave

of trumps, Mistigris, and a king. We win the basket, sister."

This victory, gained at one stroke, without playing a card, horrified

Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, who ceased to concern herself about Calyste

and Mademoiselle des Touches. By nine o'clock no one remained in the

salon but the baroness and the rector. The four old people had gone to

their beds. The chevalier, according to his usual custom, accompanied

Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel to her house in the Place de Guerande, making

remarks as they went along on the cleverness of the last play, on the

joy with which Mademoiselle Zephirine engulfed her gains in those

capacious pockets of hers,--for the old blind woman no longer

repressed upon her face the visible signs of her feelings. Madame du

Guenic's evident preoccupation was the chief topic of conversation,

however. The chevalier had remarked the abstraction of the beautiful

Irish woman. When they reached Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel's door-step,

and her page had gone in, the old lady answered, confidentially, the

remarks of the chevalier on the strangely abstracted air of the

baroness:--

"I know the cause. Calyste is lost unless we marry him promptly. He

loves Mademoiselle des Touches, an actress!"

"In that case, send for Charlotte."

"I have sent; my sister will receive my letter to-morrow," replied

Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, bowing to the chevalier.

Imagine from this sketch of a normal evening the hubbub excited in

Guerande homes by the arrival, the stay, the departure, or even the

mere passage through the town, of a stranger.

When no sounds echoed from the baron's chamber nor from that of his

sister, the baroness looked at the rector, who was playing pensively

with the counters.

"I see that you begin to share my anxiety about Calyste," she said to

him.

"Did you notice Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel's displeased looks to-night?"

asked the rector.

"Yes," replied the baroness.

"She has, as I know, the best intentions about our dear Calyste; she

loves him as though he were her son, his conduct in Vendee beside his

father, the praises that MADAME bestowed upon his devotion, have only

increased her affection for him. She intends to execute a deed of gift

by which she gives her whole property at her death to whichever of her

nieces Calyste marries. I know that you have another and much richer

marriage in Ireland for your dear Calyste, but it is well to have two

strings to your bow. In case your family will not take charge of

Calyste's establishment, Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel's fortune is not to

be despised. You can always find a match of seven thousand francs a

year for the dear boy, but it is not often that you could come across

the savings of forty years and landed property as well managed, built

up, and kept in repair as that of Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel. That

ungodly woman, Mademoiselle des Touches, has come here to ruin many

excellent things. Her life is now known."

"And what is it?" asked the mother.

"Oh! that of a trollop," replied the rector,--"a woman of questionable

morals, a writer for the stage; frequenting theatres and actors;

squandering her fortune among pamphleteers, painters, musicians, a

devilish society, in short. She writes books herself, and has taken a

false name by which she is better known, they tell me, than by her

own. She seems to be a sort of circus woman who never enters a church

except to look at the pictures. She has spent quite a fortune in

decorating Les Touches in a most improper fashion, making it a

Mohammedan paradise where the houris are not women. There is more wine

drunk there, they say, during the few weeks of her stay than the whole

year round in Guerande. The Demoiselles Bougniol let their lodgings

last year to men with beards, who were suspected of being Blues; they

sang wicked songs which made those virtuous women blush and weep, and

spent their time mostly at Les Touches. And this is the woman our dear

Calyste adores! If that creature wanted to-night one of the infamous

books in which the atheists of the present day scoff at holy things,

Calyste would saddle his horse himself and gallop to Nantes for it. I

am not sure that he would do as much for the Church. Moreover, this

Breton woman is not a royalist! If Calyste were again called upon to

strike a blow for the cause, and Mademoiselle des Touches--the Sieur

Camille Maupin, that is her other name, as I have just remembered--if

she wanted to keep him with her the chevalier would let his old father

go to the field without him."

"Oh, no!" said the baroness.

"I should not like to put him to the proof; you would suffer too

much," replied the rector. "All Guerande is turned upside down about

Calyste's passion for this amphibious creature, who is neither man nor

woman, who smokes like an hussar, writes like a journalist, and has at

this very moment in her house the most venomous of all writers,--so

the postmaster says, and he's a /juste-milieu/ man who reads the

papers. They are even talking about her at Nantes. This morning the

Kergarouet cousin who wants to marry Charlotte to a man with sixty

thousand francs a year, went to see Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, and

filled her mind with tales about Mademoiselle des Touches which lasted

seven hours. It is now striking a quarter to ten, and Calyste is not

home; he is at Les Touches,--perhaps he won't come in all night."

The baroness listened to the rector, who was substituting monologue

for dialogue unconsciously as he looked at this lamb of his fold, on

whose face could be read her anxiety. She colored and trembled. When

the worthy man saw the tears in the beautiful eyes of the mother, he

was moved to compassion.

"I will see Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel to-morrow," he said. "Don't be

too uneasy. The harm may not be as great as they say it is. I will

find out the truth. Mademoiselle Jacqueline has confidence in me.

Besides, Calyste is our child, our pupil,--he will never let the devil

inveigle him; neither will he trouble the peace of his family or

destroy the plans we have made for his future. Therefore, don't weep;

all is not lost, madame; one fault is not vice."

"You are only informing me of details," said the baroness. "Was not I

the first to notice the change in my Calyste? A mother keenly feels

the shock of finding herself second in the heart of her son. She

cannot be deceived. This crisis in a man's life is one of the trials

of motherhood. I have prepared myself for it, but I did not think it

would come so soon. I hoped, at least, that Calyste would take into

his heart some noble and beautiful being,--not a stage-player, a

masquerader, a theatre woman, an author whose business it is to feign

sentiments, a creature who will deceive him and make him unhappy! She

has had adventures--"

"With several men," said the rector. "And yet this impious creature

was born in Brittany! She dishonors her land. I shall preach a sermon

upon her next Sunday."

"Don't do that!" cried the baroness. "The peasants and the /paludiers/

would be capable of rushing to Les Touches. Calyste is worthy of his

name; he is Breton; some dreadful thing might happen to him, for he

would surely defend her as he would the Blessed Virgin."

"It is now ten o'clock; I must bid you good-night," said the abbe,

lighting the wick of his lantern, the glass of which was clear and the

metal shining, which testified to the care his housekeeper bestowed on

the household property. "Who could ever have told me, madame," he

added, "that a young man brought up by you, trained by me to Christian

ideas, a fervent Catholic, a child who has lived as a lamb without

spot, would plunge into such mire?"

"But is it certain?" said the mother. "How could any woman help loving

Calyste?"

"What other proof is needed than her staying on at Les Touches. In all

the twenty-four years since she came of age she has never stayed there

so long as now; her visits to these parts, happily for us, were few

and short."

"A woman over forty years old!" exclaimed the baroness. "I have heard

say in Ireland that a woman of this description is the most dangerous

mistress a young man can have."

"As to that, I have no knowledge," replied the rector, "and I shall

die in my ignorance."

"And I, too, alas!" said the baroness, naively. "I wish now that I had

loved with love, so as to understand and counsel and comfort Calyste."

The rector did not cross the clean little court-yard alone; the

baroness accompanied him to the gate, hoping to hear Calyste's step

coming through the town. But she heard nothing except the heavy tread

of the rector's cautious feet, which grew fainter in the distance, and

finally ceased when the closing of the door of the parsonage echoed

behind him.

V

CALYSTE

The poor mother returned to the salon deeply distressed at finding

that the whole town was aware of what she had thought was known to her

alone. She sat down, trimmed the wick of the lamp by cutting it with a

pair of old scissors, took up once more the worsted-work she was

doing, and awaited Calyste. The baroness fondly hoped to induce her

son by this means to come home earlier and spend less time with

Mademoiselle des Touches. Such calculations of maternal jealousy were

wasted. Day after day, Calyste's visits to Les Touches became more

frequent, and every night he came in later. The night before the day

of which we speak it was midnight when he returned.

The baroness, lost in maternal meditation, was setting her stitches

with the rapidity of one absorbed in thought while engaged in manual

labor. Whoever had seen her bending to the light of the lamp beneath

the quadruply centennial hangings of that ancient room would have

admired the sublimity of the picture. Fanny's skin was so transparent

that it was possible to read the thoughts that crossed her brow

beneath it. Piqued with a curiosity that often comes to a pure woman,

she asked herself what devilish secrets these daughters of Baal

possessed to so charm men as to make them forgetful of mother, family,

country, and self-interests. Sometimes she longed to meet this woman

and judge her soberly for herself. Her mind measured to its full

extent the evils which the innovative spirit of the age--described to

her as so dangerous for young souls by the rector--would have upon her

only child, until then so guileless; as pure as an innocent girl, and

beautiful with the same fresh beauty.

Calyste, that splendid offspring of the oldest Breton race and the

noblest Irish blood, had been nurtured by his mother with the utmost

care. Until the moment when the baroness made over the training of him

to the rector of Guerande, she was certain that no impure word, no

evil thought had sullied the ears or entered the mind of her precious

son. After nursing him at her bosom, giving him her own life twice, as

it were, after guiding his footsteps as a little child, the mother had

put him with all his virgin innocence into the hands of the pastor,

who, out of true reverence for the family, had promised to give him a

thorough and Christian education. Calyste thenceforth received the

instruction which the abbe himself had received at the Seminary. The

baroness taught him English, and a teacher of mathematics was found,

not without difficulty, among the employes at Saint-Nazaire. Calyste

was therefore necessarily ignorant of modern literature, and the

advance and present progress of the sciences. His education had been

limited to geography and the circumspect history of a young ladies'

boarding-school, the Latin and Greek of seminaries, the literature of

the dead languages, and to a very restricted choice of French writers.

When, at sixteen, he began what the Abbe Grimont called his

philosophy, he was neither more nor less than what he was when Fanny

placed him in the abbe's hands. The Church had proved as maternal as

the mother. Without being over-pious or ridiculous, the idolized young

lad was a fervent Catholic.

For this son, so noble, so innocent, the baroness desired to provide a

happy life in obscurity. She expected to inherit some property, two or

three thousand pounds sterling, from an aunt. This sum, joined to the

small present fortune of the Guenics, might enable her to find a wife

for Calyste, who would bring him twelve or even fifteen thousand

francs a year. Charlotte de Kergarouet, with her aunt's fortune, a

rich Irish girl, or any other good heiress would have suited the

baroness, who seemed indifferent as to choice. She was ignorant of

love, having never known it, and, like all the other persons grouped

about her, she saw nothing in marriage but a means of fortune. Passion

was an unknown thing to these Catholic souls, these old people

exclusively concerned about salvation, God, the king, and their

property. No one should be surprised, therefore, at the foreboding

thoughts which accompanied the wounded feelings of the mother, who

lived as much for the future interests of her son as by her love for

him. If the young household would only listen to wisdom, she thought,

the coming generation of the du Guenics, by enduring privations, and

saving, as people do save in the provinces, would be able to buy back

their estates and recover, in the end, the lustre of wealth. The

baroness prayed for a long age that she might see the dawn of this

prosperous era. Mademoiselle du Guenic had understood and fully

adopted this hope which Mademoiselle des Touches now threatened to

overthrow.

The baroness heard midnight strike, with tears; her mind conceived of

many horrors during the next hour, for the clock struck one, and

Calyste was still not at home.

"Will he stay there?" she thought. "It would be the first time. Poor

child!"

At that moment Calyste's step resounded in the lane. The poor mother,

in whose heart rejoicing drove out anxiety, flew from the house to the

gate and opened it for her boy.

"Oh!" cried Calyste, in a grieved voice, "my darling mother, why did

you sit up for me? I have a pass-key and the tinder-box."

"You know very well, my child, that I cannot sleep when you are out,"

she said, kissing him.

When the baroness reached the salon, she looked at her son to

discover, if possible, from the expression of his face the events of

the evening. But he caused her, as usual, an emotion that frequency

never weakened,--an emotion which all loving mothers feel at sight of

a human masterpiece made by them; this sentiment blues their sight and

supersedes all others for the moment.

Except for the black eyes, full of energy and the heat of the sun,

which he derived from his father, Calyste in other respects resembled

his mother; he had her beautiful golden hair, her lovable mouth, the

same curving fingers, the same soft, delicate, and purely white skin.

Though slightly resembling a girl disguised as a man, his physical

strength was Herculean. His muscles had the suppleness and vigor of

steel springs, and the singularity of his black eyes and fair

complexion was by no means without charm. His beard had not yet

sprouted; this delay, it is said, is a promise of longevity. The

chevalier was dressed in a short coat of black velvet like that of his

mother's gown, trimmed with silver buttons, a blue foulard necktie,

trousers of gray jean, and a becoming pair of gaiters. His white brow

bore the signs of great fatigue, caused, to an observer's eye, by the

weight of painful thoughts; but his mother, incapable of supposing

that troubles could wring his heart, attributed his evident weariness

to passing excitement. Calyste was as handsome as a Greek god, and

handsome without conceit; in the first place, he had his mother's

beauty constantly before him, and next, he cared very little for

personal advantages which he found useless.

"Those beautiful pure cheeks," thought his mother, "where the rich

young blood is flowing, belong to another woman! she is the mistress

of that innocent brow! Ah! passion will lead to many evils; it will

tarnish the look of those eyes, moist as the eyes of an infant!"

This bitter thought wrung Fanny's heart and destroyed her pleasure.

It may seem strange to those who calculate expenses that in a family

of six persons compelled to live on three thousand francs a year the

son should have a coat and the mother a gown of velvet; but Fanny

O'Brien had aunts and rich relations in London who recalled themselves

to her remembrance by many presents. Several of her sisters, married

to great wealth, took enough interest in Calyste to wish to find him

an heiress, knowing that he, like Fanny their exiled favorite, was

noble and handsome.

"You stayed at Les Touches longer than you did last night, my dear

one," said the mother at last, in an agitated tone.

"Yes, dear mother," he answered, offering no explanation.

The curtness of this answer brought clouds to his mother's brow, and

she resolved to postpone the explanation till the morrow. When mothers

admit the anxieties which were now torturing the baroness, they

tremble before their sons; they feel instinctively the effect of the

great emancipation that comes with love; they perceive what that

sentiment is about to take from them; but they have, at the same time,

a sense of joy in knowing that their sons are happy; conflicting

feelings battle in their hearts. Though the result may be the

development of their sons into superior men, true mothers do not like

this forced abdication; they would rather keep their children small

and still requiring protection. Perhaps that is the secret of their

predilection for feeble, deformed, or weak-minded offspring.

"You are tired, dear child; go to bed," she said, repressing her

tears.

A mother who does not know all that her son is doing thinks the worst;

that is, if a mother loves as much and is as much beloved as Fanny.

But perhaps all other mothers would have trembled now as she did. The

patient care of twenty years might be rendered worthless. This human

masterpiece of virtuous and noble and religious education, Calyste,

might be destroyed; the happiness of his life, so long and carefully

prepared for, might be forever ruined by this woman.

The next day Calyste slept till mid-day, for his mother would not have

him wakened. Mariotte served the spoiled child's breakfast in his bed.

The inflexible and semi-conventual rules which regulated the hours for

meals yielded to the caprices of the chevalier. If it became desirable

to extract from Mademoiselle du Guenic her array of keys in order to

obtain some necessary article of food outside of the meal hours, there

was no other means of doing it than to make the pretext of its serving

some fancy of Calyste.

About one o'clock the baron, his wife, and Mademoiselle were seated in

the salon, for they dined at three o'clock. The baroness was again

reading the "Quotidienne" to her husband, who was always more awake

before the dinner hour. As she finished a paragraph she heard the

steps of her son on the upper floor, and she dropped the paper,

saying:--

"Calyste must be going to dine again at Les Touches; he has dressed

himself."

"He amuses himself, the dear boy," said the old sister, taking a

silver whistle from her pocket and whistling once.

Mariotte came through the tower and appeared at the door of

communication which was hidden by a silken curtain like the other

doors of the room.

"What is it?" she said; "anything wanted?"

"The chevalier dines at Les Touches; don't cook the fish."

"But we are not sure as yet," said the baroness.

"You seem annoyed, sister; I know it by the tone of your voice."

"Monsieur Grimont has heard some very grave charges against

Mademoiselle des Touches, who for the last year has so changed our

dear Calyste."

"Changed him, how?" asked the baron.

"He reads all sorts of books."

"Ah! ah!" exclaimed the baron, "so that's why he has given up hunting

and riding."

"Her morals are very reprehensible, and she has taken a man's name,"

added Madame du Guenic.

"A war name, I suppose," said the old man. "I was called 'l'Intime,'

the Comte de Fontaine 'Grand-Jacques,' the Marquis de Montauran the

'Gars.' I was the friend of Ferdinand, who never submitted, any more

than I did. Ah! those were the good times; people shot each other, but

what of that? we amused ourselves all the same, here and there."

This war memory, pushing aside paternal anxiety, saddened Fanny for a

moment. The rector's revelations, the want of confidence shown to her

by Calyste, had kept her from sleeping.

"Suppose Monsieur le chevalier does love Mademoiselle des Touches,

where's the harm?" said Mariotte. "She has thirty thousand francs a

year and she is very handsome."

"What is that you say, Mariotte?" exclaimed the old baron. "A Guenic

marry a des Touches! The des Touches were not even grooms in the days

when du Guesclin considered our alliance a signal honor."

"A woman who takes a man's name,--Camille Maupin!" said the baroness.

"The Maupins are an old family," said the baron; "they bear: gules,

three--" He stopped. "But she cannot be a Maupin and a des Touches

both," he added.

"She is called Maupin on the stage."

"A des Touches could hardly be an actress," said the old man. "Really,

Fanny, if I did not know you, I should think you were out of your

head."

"She writes plays, and books," continued the baroness.

"Books?" said the baron, looking at his wife with an air of as much

surprise as though she were telling of a miracle. "I have heard that

Mademoiselle Scudery and Madame de Sevigne wrote books, but it was not

the best thing they did."

"Are you going to dine at Les Touches, monsieur?" said Mariotte, when

Calyste entered.

"Probably," replied the young man.

Mariotte was not inquisitive; she was part of the family; and she left

the room without waiting to hear what the baroness would say to her

son.

"Are you going again to Les Touches, my Calyste?" The baroness

emphasized the /my/. "Les Touches is not a respectable or decent

house. Its mistress leads an irregular life; she will corrupt our

Calyste. Already Camille Maupin has made him read many books; he has

had adventures--You knew all that, my naughty child, and you never

said one word to your best friends!"

"The chevalier is discreet," said his father,--"a virtue of the olden

time."

"Too discreet," said the jealous mother, observing the red flush on

her son's forehead.

"My dear mother," said Calyste, kneeling down beside the baroness, "I

didn't think it necessary to publish my defeat. Mademoiselle des

Touches, or, if you choose to call her so, Camille Maupin, rejected my

love more than eighteen months ago, during her last stay at Les

Touches. She laughed at me, gently; saying she might very well be my

mother; that a woman of forty committed a sort of crime against nature

in loving a minor, and that she herself was incapable of such

depravity. She made a thousand little jokes, which hurt me--for she is

witty as an angel; but when she saw me weep hot tears she tried to

comfort me, and offered me her friendship in the noblest manner. She

has more heart than even talent; she is as generous as you are

yourself. I am now her child. On her return here lately, hearing from

her that she loves another, I have resigned myself. Do not repeat the

calumnies that have been said of her. Camille is an artist, she has

genius, she leads one of those exceptional existences which cannot be

judged like ordinary lives."

"My child," said the religious Fanny, "nothing can excuse a woman for

not conducting herself as the Church requires. She fails in her duty

to God and to society by abjuring the gentle tenets of her sex. A

woman commits a sin in even going to a theatre; but to write the

impieties that actors repeat, to roam about the world, first with an

enemy to the Pope, and then with a musician, ah! Calyste, you can

never persuade me that such acts are deeds of faith, hope, or charity.

Her fortune was given her by God to do good, and what good does she do

with hers?"

Calyste sprang up suddenly, and looked at his mother.

"Mother," he said, "Camille is my friend; I cannot hear her spoken of

in this way; I would give my very life for her."

"Your life!" said the baroness, looking at her son, with startled

eyes. "Your life is our life, the life of all of us."

"My nephew has just said many things I do not understand," said the

old woman, turning toward him.

"Where did he learn them?" said the mother; "at Les Touches."

"Yes, my darling mother; she found me ignorant as a carp, and she has

taught me."

"You knew the essential things when you learned the duties taught us

by religion," replied the baroness. "Ah! this woman is fated to

destroy your noble and sacred beliefs."

The old maid rose, and solemnly stretched forth her hands toward her

brother, who was dozing in his chair.

"Calyste," she said, in a voice that came from her heart, "your father

has never opened books, he speaks Breton, he fought for God and for

the king. Educated people did the evil, educated noblemen deserted

their land,--be educated if you choose!"

So saying, she sat down and began to knit with a rapidity which

betrayed her inward emotion.

"My angel," said the mother, weeping, "I foresee some evil coming down

upon you in that house."

"Who is making Fanny weep?" cried the old man, waking with a start at

the sound of his wife's voice. He looked round upon his sister, his

son, and the baroness. "What is the matter?" he asked.

"Nothing, my friend," replied his wife.

"Mamma," said Calyste, whispering in his mother's ear, "it is

impossible for me to explain myself just now; but to-night you and I

will talk of this. When you know all, you will bless Mademoiselle des

Touches."

"Mothers do not like to curse," replied the baroness. "I could not

curse a woman who truly loved my Calyste."

The young man bade adieu to his father and went out. The baron and his

wife rose to see him pass through the court-yard, open the gate, and

disappear. The baroness did not again take up the newspaper; she was

too agitated. In this tranquil, untroubled life such a discussion was

the equivalent of a quarrel in other homes. Though somewhat calmed,

her motherly uneasiness was not dispersed. Whither would such a

friendship, which might claim the life of Calyste and destroy it, lead

her boy? Bless Mademoiselle des Touches? how could that be? These

questions were as momentous to her simple soul as the fury of

revolutions to a statesman. Camille Maupin was Revolution itself in

that calm and placid home.

"I fear that woman will ruin him," she said, picking up the paper.

"My dear Fanny," said the old baron, with a jaunty air, "you are too

much of an angel to understand these things. Mademoiselle des Touches

is, they say, as black as a crow, as strong as a Turk, and forty years

old. Our dear Calyste was certain to fall in love with her. Of course

he will tell certain honorable little lies to conceal his happiness.

Let him alone to amuse himself with his first illusions."

"If it had been any other woman--" began the baroness.

"But, my dear Fanny, if the woman were a saint she would not accept

your son." The baroness again picked up the paper. "I will go and see

her myself," added the baron, "and tell you all about her."

This speech has no savor at the present moment. But after reading the

biography of Camille Maupin you can then imagine the old baron

entering the lists against that illustrious woman.

VI

BIOGRAPHY OF CAMILLE MAUPIN

The town of Guerande, which for two months past had seen Calyste, its

flower and pride, going, morning or evening, often morning and

evening, to Les Touches, concluded that Mademoiselle Felicite des

Touches was passionately in love with the beautiful youth, and that

she practised upon him all kinds of sorceries. More than one young

girl and wife asked herself by what right an old woman exercised so

absolute an empire over that angel. When Calyste passed along the

Grand' Rue to the Croisic gate many a regretful eye was fastened on

him.

It now became necessary to explain the rumors which hovered about the

person whom Calyste was on his way to see. These rumors, swelled by

Breton gossip, envenomed by public ignorance, had reached the rector.

The receiver of taxes, the /juge de paix/, the head of the Saint-

Nazaire custom-house and other lettered persons had not reassured the

abbe by relating to him the strange and fantastic life of the female

writer who concealed herself under the masculine name of Camille

Maupin. She did not as yet eat little children, nor kill her slaves

like Cleopatra, nor throw men into the river as the heroine of the

Tour de Nesle was falsely accused of doing; but to the Abbe Grimont

this monstrous creature, a cross between a siren and an atheist, was

an immoral combination of woman and philosopher who violated every

social law invented to restrain or utilize the infirmities of

womankind.

Just as Clara Gazul is the female pseudonym of a distinguished male

writer, George Sand the masculine pseudonym of a woman of genius, so

Camille Maupin was the mask behind which was long hidden a charming

young woman, very well-born, a Breton, named Felicite des Touches, the

person who was now causing such lively anxiety to the Baronne du

Guenic and the excellent rector of Guerande. The Breton des Touches

family has no connection with the family of the same name in Touraine,

to which belongs the ambassador of the Regent, even more famous to-day

for his writings than for his diplomatic talents.

Camille Maupin, one of the few celebrated women of the nineteenth

century, was long supposed to be a man, on account of the virility of

her first writings. All the world now knows the two volumes of plays,

not intended for representation on the stage, written after the manner

of Shakespeare or Lopez de Vega, published in 1822, which made a sort

of literary revolution when the great question of the classics and the

romanticists palpitated on all sides,--in the newspapers, at the

clubs, at the Academy, everywhere. Since then, Camille Maupin has

written several plays and a novel, which have not belied the success

obtained by her first publication--now, perhaps, too much forgotten.

To explain by what net-work of circumstances the masculine incarnation

of a young girl was brought about, why Felicite des Touches became a

man and an author, and why, more fortunate than Madame de Stael, she

kept her freedom and was thus more excusable for her celebrity, would

be to satisfy many curiosities and do justice to one of those abnormal

beings who rise in humanity like monuments, and whose fame is promoted

by its rarity,--for in twenty centuries we can count, at most, twenty

famous women. Therefore, although in these pages she stands as a

secondary character, in consideration of the fact that she plays a

great part in the literary history of our epoch, and that her

influence over Calyste was great, no one, we think, will regret being

made to pause before that figure rather longer than modern art

permits.

Mademoiselle Felicite des Touches became an orphan in 1793. Her

property escaped confiscation by reason of the deaths of her father

and brother. The first was killed on the 10th of August, at the

threshold of the palace, among the defenders of the king, near whose

person his rank as major of the guards of the gate had placed him. Her

brother, one of the body-guard, was massacred at Les Carmes.

Mademoiselle des Touches was two years old when her mother died,

killed by grief, a few days after this second catastrophe. When dying,

Madame des Touches confided her daughter to her sister, a nun of

Chelles. Madame de Faucombe, the nun, prudently took the orphan to

Faucombe, a good-sized estate near Nantes, belonging to Madame des

Touches, and there she settled with the little girl and three sisters

of her convent. The populace of Nantes, during the last days of the

Terror, tore down the chateau, seized the nuns and Mademoiselle des

Touches, and threw them into prison on a false charge of receiving

emissaries of Pitt and Coburg. The 9th Thermidor released them.

Felicite's aunt died of fear. Two of the sisters left France, and the

third confided the little girl to her nearest relation, Monsieur de

Faucombe, her maternal great-uncle, who lived in Nantes.

Monsieur de Faucombe, an old man sixty years of age, had married a

young woman to whom he left the management of his affairs. He busied

himself in archaeology,--a passion, or to speak more correctly, one of

those manias which enable old men to fancy themselves still living.

The education of his ward was therefore left to chance. Little cared-

for by her uncle's wife, a young woman given over to the social

pleasures of the imperial epoch, Felicite brought herself up as a boy.

She kept company with Monsieur de Faucombe in his library; where she

read everything it pleased her to read. She thus obtained a knowledge

of life in theory, and had no innocence of mind, though virgin

personally. Her intellect floated on the impurities of knowledge while

her heart was pure. Her learning became extraordinary, the result of a

passion for reading, sustained by a powerful memory. At eighteen years

of age she was as well-informed on all topics as a young man entering

a literary career has need to be in our day. Her prodigious reading

controlled her passions far more than conventual life would have done;

for there the imaginations of young girls run riot. A brain crammed

with knowledge that was neither digested nor classed governed the

heart and soul of the child. This depravity of the intellect, without

action upon the chastity of the body, would have amazed philosophers

and observers, had any one in Nantes even suspected the powers of

Mademoiselle des Touches.

The result of all this was in a contrary direction to the cause.

Felicite had no inclinations toward evil; she conceived everything by

thought, but abstained from deed. Old Faucombe was enchanted with her,

and she helped him in his work,--writing three of his books, which the

worthy old gentleman believed were his own; for his spiritual

paternity was blind. Such mental labor, not agreeing with the

developments of girlhood, had its effect. Felicite fell ill; her blood

was overheated, and her chest seemed threatened with inflammation. The

doctors ordered horseback exercise and the amusements of society.

Mademoiselle des Touches became, in consequence, an admirable

horsewoman, and recovered her health in a few months.

At the age of eighteen she appeared in the world, where she produced

so great a sensation that no one in Nantes called her anything else

than "the beautiful Mademoiselle des Touches." Led to enter society by

one of the imperishable sentiments in the heart of a woman, however

superior she may be, the worship she inspired found her cold and

unresponsive. Hurt by her aunt and her cousins, who ridiculed her

studies and teased her about her unwillingness for society, which they

attributed to a lack of the power of pleasing, Felicite resolved on

making herself coquettish, gay, volatile,--a woman, in short. But she

expected in return an exchange of ideas, seductions, and pleasures in

harmony with the elevation of her own mind and the extent of its

knowledge. Instead of that, she was filled with disgust for the

commonplaces of conversation, the silliness of gallantry; and more

especially was she shocked by the supremacy of military men, to whom

society made obeisance at that period. She had, not unnaturally,

neglected the minor accomplishments. Finding herself inferior to the

pretty dolls who played on the piano and made themselves agreeable by

singing ballads, she determined to be a musician. Retiring into her

former solitude she set to work resolvedly, under the direction of the

best master in the town. She was rich, and she sent for Steibelt when

the time came to perfect herself. The astonished town still talks of

this princely conduct. The stay of that master cost her twelve

thousand francs. Later, when she went to Paris, she studied harmony

and thorough-bass, and composed the music of two operas which have had

great success, though the public has never been admitted to the secret

of their authorship. Ostensibly these operas are by Conti, one of the

most eminent musicians of our day; but this circumstance belongs to

the history of her heart, and will be mentioned later on.

The mediocrity of the society of a provincial town wearied her so

excessively, her imagination was so filled with grandiose ideas that

although she returned to the salons to eclipse other women once more

by her beauty, and enjoy her new triumph as a musician, she again

deserted them; and having proved her power to her cousins, and driven

two lovers to despair, she returned to her books, her piano, the works

of Beethoven, and her old friend Faucombe. In 1812, when she was

twenty-one years of age, the old archaeologist handed over to her his

guardianship accounts. From that year, she took control of her

fortune, which consisted of fifteen thousand francs a year, derived

from Les Touches, the property of her father; twelve thousand a year

from Faucombe (which, however, she increased one-third on renewing the

leases); and a capital of three hundred thousand francs laid by during

her minority by her guardians.

Felicite acquired from her experience of provincial life, an

understanding of money, and that strong tendency to administrative

wisdom which enables the provinces to hold their own under the

ascensional movement of capital towards Paris. She drew her three

hundred thousand francs from the house of business where her guardian

had placed them, and invested them on the Grand-livre at the very

moment of the disasters of the retreat from Moscow. In this way, she

increased her income by thirty thousand francs. All expenses paid, she

found herself with fifty thousand francs a year to invest. At twenty-

one years of age a girl with such force of will is the equal of a man

of thirty. Her mind had taken a wide range; habits of criticism

enabled her to judge soberly of men, and art, and things, and public

questions. Henceforth she resolved to leave Nantes; but old Faucombe

falling ill with his last illness, she, who had been both wife and

daughter to him, remained to nurse him, with the devotion of an angel,

for eighteen months, closing his eyes at the moment when Napoleon was

struggling with all Europe on the corpse of France. Her removal to

Paris was therefore still further postponed until the close of that

crisis.

As a Royalist, she hastened to be present at the return of the

Bourbons to Paris. There the Grandlieus, to whom she was related,

received her as their guest; but the catastrophes of March 20

intervened, and her future was vague and uncertain. She was thus

enabled to see with her own eyes that last image of the Empire, and

behold the Grand Army when it came to the Champ de Mars, as to a Roman

circus, to salute its Caesar before it went to its death at Waterloo.

The great and noble soul of Felicite was stirred by that magic

spectacle. The political commotions, the glamour of that theatrical

play of three months which history has called the Hundred Days,

occupied her mind and preserved her from all personal emotions in the

midst of a convulsion which dispersed the royalist society among whom

she had intended to reside. The Grandlieus followed the Bourbons to

Ghent, leaving their house to Mademoiselle des Touches. Felicite, who

did not choose to take a subordinate position, purchased for one

hundred and thirty thousand francs one of the finest houses in the rue

Mont Blanc, where she installed herself on the return of the Bourbons

in 1815. The garden of this house is to-day worth two millions.

Accustomed to control her own life, Felicite soon familiarized herself

with the ways of thought and action which are held to be exclusively

the province of man. In 1816 she was twenty-five years old. She knew

nothing of marriage; her conception of it was wholly that of thought;

she judged it in its causes instead of its effect, and saw only its

objectionable side. Her superior mind refused to make the abdication

by which a married woman begins that life; she keenly felt the value

of independence, and was conscious of disgust for the duties of

maternity.

It is necessary to give these details to explain the anomalies

presented by the life of Camille Maupin. She had known neither father

nor mother; she had been her own mistress from childhood; her guardian

was an old archaeologist. Chance had flung her into the regions of

knowledge and of imagination, into the world of literature, instead of

holding her within the rigid circle defined by the futile education

given to women, and by maternal instructions as to dress, hypocritical

propriety, and the hunting graces of their sex. Thus, long before she

became celebrated, a glance might have told an observer that she had

never played with dolls.

Toward the close of the year 1817 Felicite des Touches began to

perceive, not the fading of her beauty, but the beginning of a certain

lassitude of body. She saw that a change would presently take place in

her person as the result of her obstinate celibacy. She wanted to

retain her youth and beauty, to which at that time she clung. Science

warned her of the sentence pronounced by Nature upon all her

creations, which perish as much by the misconception of her laws as by

the abuse of them. The macerated face of her aunt returned to her

memory and made her shudder. Placed between marriage and love, her

desire was to keep her freedom; but she was now no longer indifferent

to homage and the admiration that surrounded her. She was, at the

moment when this history begins, almost exactly what she was in 1817.

Eighteen years had passed over her head and respected it. At forty she

might have been thought no more than twenty-five.

Therefore to describe her in 1836 is to picture her as she was in

1817. Women who know the conditions of temperament and happiness in

which a woman should live to resist the ravages of time will

understand how and why Felicite des Touches enjoyed this great

privilege as they study a portrait for which were reserved the

brightest tints of Nature's palette, and the richest setting.

Brittany presents a curious problem to be solved in the predominance

of dark hair, brown eyes, and swarthy complexions in a region so near

England that the atmospheric effects are almost identical. Does this

problem belong to the great question of races? to hitherto unobserved

physical influences? Science may some day find the reason of this

peculiarity, which ceases in the adjoining province of Normandy.

Waiting its solution, this odd fact is there before our eyes; fair

complexions are rare in Brittany, where the women's eyes are as black

and lively as those of Southern women; but instead of possessing the

tall figures and swaying lines of Italy and Spain, they are usually

short, close-knit, well set-up and firm, except in the higher classes

which are crossed by their alliances.

Mademoiselle des Touches, a true Breton, is of medium height, though

she looks taller than she really is. This effect is produced by the

character of her face, which gives height to her form. She has that

skin, olive by day and dazzling by candlelight, which distinguishes a

beautiful Italian; you might, if you pleased, call it animated ivory.

The light glides along a skin of that texture as on a polished

surface; it shines; a violent emotion is necessary to bring the

faintest color to the centre of the cheeks, where it goes away almost

immediately. This peculiarity gives to her face the calm impassibility

of the savage. The face, more long than oval, resembles that of some

beautiful Isis in the Egyptian bas-reliefs; it has the purity of the

heads of sphinxes, polished by the fire of the desert, kissed by a

Coptic sun. The tones of the skin are in harmony with the faultless

modelling of the head. The black and abundant hair descends in heavy

masses beside the throat, like the coif of the statues at Memphis, and

carries out magnificently the general severity of form. The forehead

is full, broad, and swelling about the temples, illuminated by

surfaces which catch the light, and modelled like the brow of the

hunting Diana, a powerful and determined brow, silent and self-

contained. The arch of the eye-brows, vigorously drawn, surmounts a

pair of eyes whose flame scintillates at times like that of a fixed

star. The white of the eye is neither bluish, nor strewn with scarlet

threads, nor is it purely white; it has the texture of horn, but the

tone is warm. The pupil is surrounded by an orange circle; it is of

bronze set in gold, but vivid gold and animated bronze. This pupil

has depth; it is not underlaid, as in certain eyes, by a species of

foil, which sends back the light and makes such eyes resemble those of

cats or tigers; it has not that terrible inflexibility which makes a

sensitive person shudder; but this depth has in it something of the

infinite, just as the external radiance of the eyes suggests the

absolute. The glance of an observer may be lost in that soul, which

gathers itself up and retires with as much rapidity as it gushed for a

second into those velvet eyes. In moments of passion the eyes of

Camille Maupin are sublime; the gold of her glance illuminates them

and they flame. But in repose they are dull; the torpor of meditation

often lends them an appearance of stupidity[*]; in like manner, when

the glow of the soul is absent the lines of the face are sad.

[*] George Sand says of herself, in "L'Histoire de Ma Vie," published

long after the above was written: "The habit of meditation gave me

/l'air bete/ (a stupid air). I say the word frankly, for all my

life I have been told this, and therefore it must be true."--TR.

The lashes of the eyelids are short, but thick and black as the tip of

an ermine's tail; the eyelids are brown and strewn with red fibrils,

which give them grace and strength,--two qualities which are seldom

united in a woman. The circle round the eyes shows not the slightest

blemish nor the smallest wrinkle. There, again, we find the granite of

an Egyptian statue softened by the ages. But the line of the cheek-

bones, though soft, is more pronounced than in other women and

completes the character of strength which the face expresses. The

nose, thin and straight, parts into two oblique nostrils, passionately

dilated at times, and showing the transparent pink of their delicate

lining. This nose is an admirable continuation of the forehead, with

which it blends in a most delicious line. It is perfectly white from

its spring to its tip, and the tip is endowed with a sort of mobility

which does marvels if Camille is indignant, or angry, or rebellious.

There, above all, as Talma once remarked, is seen depicted the anger

or the irony of great minds. The immobility of the human nostril

indicates a certain narrowness of soul; never did the nose of a miser

oscillate; it contracts like the lips; he locks up his face as he does

his money.

Camille's mouth, arching at the corners, is of a vivid red; blood

abounds there, and supplies the living, thinking oxide which gives

such seduction to the lips, reassuring the lover whom the gravity of

that majestic face may have dismayed. The upper lip is thin, the

furrow which unites it with the nose comes low, giving it a centre

curve which emphasizes its natural disdain. Camille has little to do

to express anger. This beautiful lip is supported by the strong red

breadth of its lower mate, adorable in kindness, swelling with love, a

lip like the outer petal of a pomegranate such as Phidias might have

carved, and the color of which it has. The chin is firm and rather

full; but it expresses resolution and fitly ends this profile, royal

if not divine. It is necessary to add that the upper lip beneath the

nose is lightly shaded by a charming down. Nature would have made a

blunder had she not cast that tender mist upon the face. The ears are

delicately convoluted,--a sign of secret refinement. The bust is

large, the waist slim and sufficiently rounded. The hips are not

prominent, but very graceful; the line of the thighs is magnificent,

recalling Bacchus rather than the Venus Callipyge. There we may see

the shadowy line of demarcation which separates nearly every woman of

genius from her sex; there such women are found to have a certain

vague similitude to man; they have neither the suppleness nor the soft

abandonment of those whom Nature destines for maternity; their gait is

not broken by faltering motions. This observation may be called

bi-lateral; it has its counterpart in men, whose thighs are those of

women when they are sly, cunning, false, and cowardly. Camille's neck,

instead of curving inward at the nape, curves out in a line that

unites the head to the shoulders without sinuosity, a most signal

characteristic of force. The neck itself presents at certain moments

an athletic magnificence. The spring of the arms from the shoulders,

superb in outline, seems to belong to a colossal woman. The arms are

vigorously modelled, ending in wrists of English delicacy and charming

hands, plump, dimpled, and adorned with rosy, almond-shaped nails;

these hands are of a whiteness which reveals that the body, so round,

so firm, so well set-up, is of another complexion altogether than the

face. The firm, cold carriage of the head is corrected by the mobility

of the lips, their changing expression, and the artistic play of the

nostrils.

And yet, in spite of all these promises--hidden, perhaps, from the

profane--the calm of that countenance has something, I know not what,

that is vexatious. More sad, more serious than gracious, that face is

marked by the melancholy of constant meditation. For this reason

Mademoiselle des Touches listens more than she talks. She startles by

her silence and by that deep-reaching glance of intense fixity. No

educated person could see her without thinking of Cleopatra, that dark

little woman who almost changed the face of the world. But in Camille

the natural animal is so complete, so self-sufficing, of a nature so

leonine, that a man, however little of a Turk he may be, regrets the

presence of so great a mind in such a body, and could wish that she

were wholly woman. He fears to find the strange distortion of an

abnormal soul. Do not cold analysis and matter-of-fact theory point to

passions in such a woman? Does she judge, and not feel? Or, phenomenon

more terrible, does she not feel and judge at one and the same time?

Able for all things through her brain, ought her course to be

circumscribed by the limitations of other women? Has that intellectual

strength weakened her heart? Has she no charm? Can she descend to

those tender nothings by which a woman occupies, and soothes and

interests the man she loves? Will she not cast aside a sentiment when

it no longer responds to some vision of infinitude which she grasps

and contemplates in her soul? Who can scale the heights to which her

eyes have risen? Yes, a man fears to find in such a woman something

unattainable, unpossessable, unconquerable. The woman of strong mind

should remain a symbol; as a reality she must be feared. Camille

Maupin is in some ways the living image of Schiller's Isis, seated in

the darkness of the temple, at whose feet her priests find the dead

bodies of the daring men who have consulted her.

The adventures of her life declared to be true by the world, and which

Camille has never disavowed, enforce the questions suggested by her

personal appearance. Perhaps she likes those calumnies.

The nature of her beauty has not been without its influence on her

fame; it has served it, just as her fortune and position have

maintained her in society. If a sculptor desires to make a statue of

Brittany let him take Mademoiselle des Touches for his model. That

full-blooded, powerful temperament is the only nature capable of

repelling the action of time. The constant nourishment of the pulp, so

to speak, of that polished skin is an arm given to women by Nature to

resist the invasion of wrinkles; in Camille's case it was aided by the

calm impassibility of her features.

In 1817 this charming young woman opened her house to artists, authors

of renown, learned and scientific men, and publicists,--a society

toward which her tastes led her. Her salon resembled that of Baron

Gerard, where men of rank mingled with men of distinction of all

kinds, and the elite of Parisian women came. The parentage of

Mademoiselle des Touches, and her fortune, increased by that of her

aunt the nun, protected her in the attempt, always very difficult in

Paris, to create a society. Her worldly independence was one reason of

her success. Various ambitious mothers indulged in the hope of

inducing her to marry their sons, whose fortunes were out of

proportion to the age of their escutcheons. Several peers of France,

allured by the prospect of eighty thousand francs a year and a house

magnificently appointed, took their womenkind, even the most

fastidious and intractable, to visit her. The diplomatic world, always

in search of amusements of the intellect, came there and found

enjoyment. Thus Mademoiselle des Touches, surrounded by so many forms

of individual interests, was able to study the different comedies

which passion, covetousness, and ambition make the generality of men

perform,--even those who are highest in the social scale. She saw,

early in life, the world as it is; and she was fortunate enough not to

fall early into absorbing love, which warps the mind and faculties of

a woman and prevents her from judging soberly.

Ordinarily a woman feels, enjoys, and judges, successively; hence

three distinct ages, the last of which coincides with the mournful

period of old age. In Mademoiselle des Touches this order was

reversed. Her youth was wrapped in the snows of knowledge and the ice

of reflection. This transposition is, in truth, an additional

explanation of the strangeness of her life and the nature of her

talent. She observed men at an age when most women can only see one

man; she despised what other women admired; she detected falsehood in

the flatteries they accept as truths; she laughed at things that made

them serious. This contradiction of her life with that of others

lasted long; but it came to a terrible end; she was destined to find

in her soul a first love, young and fresh, at an age when women are

summoned by Nature to renounce all love.

Meantime, a first affair in which she was involved has always remained

a secret from the world. Felicite, like other women, was induced to

believe that beauty of body was that of soul. She fell in love with a

face, and learned, to her cost, the folly of a man of gallantry, who

saw nothing in her but a mere woman. It was some time before she

recovered from the disgust she felt at this episode. Her distress was

perceived by a friend, a man, who consoled her without personal after-

thought, or, at any rate, he concealed any such motive if he had it.

In him Felicite believed she found the heart and mind which were

lacking to her former lover. He did, in truth, possess one of the most

original minds of our age. He, too, wrote under a pseudonym, and his

first publications were those of an adorer of Italy. Travel was the

one form of education which Felicite lacked. A man of genius, a poet

and a critic, he took Felicite to Italy in order to make known to her

that country of all Art. This celebrated man, who is nameless, may be

regarded as the master and maker of "Camille Maupin." He bought into

order and shape the vast amount of knowledge already acquired by

Felicite; increased it by study of the masterpieces with which Italy

teems; gave her the frankness, freedom, and grace, epigrammatic, and

intense, which is the character of his own talent (always rather

fanciful as to form) which Camille Maupin modified by delicacy of

sentiment and the softer terms of thought that are natural to a woman.

He also roused in her a taste for German and English literature and

made her learn both languages while travelling. In Rome, in 1820,

Felicite was deserted for an Italian. Without that misery she might

never have been celebrated. Napoleon called misfortune the midwife of

genius. This event filled Mademoiselle des Touches, and forever, with

that contempt for men which later was to make her so strong. Felicite

died, Camille Maupin was born.

She returned to Paris with Conti, the great musician, for whom she

wrote the librettos of two operas. But she had no more illusions, and

she became, at heart, unknown to the world, a sort of female Don Juan,

without debts and without conquests. Encouraged by success, she

published the two volumes of plays which at once placed the name of

Camille Maupin in the list of illustrious anonymas. Next, she related

her betrayed and deluded love in a short novel, one of the

masterpieces of that period. This book, of a dangerous example, was

classed with "Adolphe," a dreadful lamentation, the counterpart of

which is found in Camille's work. The true secret of her literary

metamorphosis and pseudonym has never been fully understood. Some

delicate minds have thought it lay in a feminine desire to escape fame

and remain obscure, while offering a man's name and work to criticism.

In spite of any such desire, if she had it, her celebrity increased

daily, partly through the influence of her salon, partly from her own

wit, the correctness of her judgments, and the solid worth of her

acquirements. She became an authority; her sayings were quoted; she

could no longer lay aside at will the functions with which Parisian

society invested her. She came to be an acknowledged exception. The

world bowed before the genius and position of this strange woman; it

recognized and sanctioned her independence; women admired her mind,

men her beauty. Her conduct was regulated by all social conventions.

Her friendships seemed purely platonic. There was, moreover, nothing

of the female author about her. Mademoiselle des Touches is charming

as a woman of the world,--languid when she pleases, indolent,

coquettish, concerned about her toilet, pleased with the airy nothings

so seductive to women and to poets. She understands very well that

after Madame de Stael there is no place in this century for a Sappho,

and that Ninon could not exist in Paris without /grands seigneurs/ and

a voluptuous court. She is the Ninon of the intellect; she adores Art

and artists; she goes from the poet to the musician, from the sculptor

to the prose-writer. Her heart is noble, endowed with a generosity

that makes her a dupe; so filled is she with pity for sorrow,--filled

also with contempt for the prosperous. She has lived since 1830, the

centre of a choice circle, surrounded by tried friends who love her

tenderly and esteem each other. Far from the noisy fuss of Madame de

Stael, far from political strifes, she jokes about Camille Maupin,

that junior of George Sand (whom she calls her brother Cain), whose

recent fame has now eclipsed her own. Mademoiselle des Touches admires

her fortunate rival with angelic composure, feeling no jealousy and no

secret vexation.

Until the period when this history begins, she had led as happy a life

as a woman strong enough to protect herself can be supposed to live.

From 1817 to 1834 she had come some five or six times to Les Touches.

Her first stay was after her first disillusion in 1818. The house was

uninhabitable, and she sent her man of business to Guerande and took a

lodging for herself in the village. At that time she had no suspicion

of her coming fame; she was sad, she saw no one; she wanted, as it

were, to contemplate herself after her great disaster. She wrote to

Paris to have the furniture necessary for a residence at Les Touches

sent down to her. It came by a vessel to Nantes, thence by small boats

to Croisic, from which little place it was transported, not without

difficulty, over the sands to Les Touches. Workmen came down from

Paris, and before long she occupied Les Touches, which pleased her

immensely. She wanted to meditate over the events of her life, like a

cloistered nun.

At the beginning of the winter she returned to Paris. The little town

of Guerande was by this time roused to diabolical curiosity; its whole

talk was of the Asiatic luxury displayed at Les Touches. Her man of

business gave orders after her departure that visitors should be

admitted to view the house. They flocked from the village of Batz,

from Croisic, and from Savenay, as well as from Guerande. This public

curiosity brought in an enormous sum to the family of the porter and

gardener, not less, in two years, than seventeen francs.

After this, Mademoiselle des Touches did not revisit Les Touches for

two years, not until her return from Italy. On that occasion she came

by way of Croisic and was accompanied by Conti. It was some time

before Guerande became aware of her presence. Her subsequent

apparitions at Les Touches excited comparatively little interest. Her

Parisian fame did not precede her; her man of business alone knew the

secret of her writings and of her connection with the celebrity of

Camille Maupin. But at the period of which we are now writing the

contagion of the new ideas had made some progress in Guerande, and

several persons knew of the dual form of Mademoiselle des Touches'

existence. Letters came to the post-office, directed to Camille Maupin

at Les Touches. In short, the veil was rent away. In a region so

essentially Catholic, archaic, and full of prejudice, the singular

life of this illustrious woman would of course cause rumors, some of

which, as we have seen, had reached the ears of the Abbe Grimont and

alarmed him; such a life could never be comprehended in Guerande; in

fact, to every mind, it seemed unnatural and improper.

Felicite, during her present stay, was not alone in Les Touches. She

had a guest. That guest was Claude Vignon, a scornful and powerful

writer who, though doing criticism only, has found means to give the

public and literature the impression of a certain superiority.

Mademoiselle des Touches had received this writer for the last seven

years, as she had so many other authors, journalists, artists, and men

of the world. She knew his nerveless nature, his laziness, his utter

penury, his indifference and disgust for all things, and yet by the

way she was now conducting herself she seemed inclined to marry him.

She explained her conduct, incomprehensible to her friends, in various

ways,--by ambition, by the dread she felt of a lonely old age; she

wanted to confide her future to a superior man, to whom her fortune

would be a stepping-stone, and thus increase her own importance in the

literary world.

With these apparent intentions she had brought Claude Vignon from

Paris to Les Touches, as an eagle bears away a kid in its talons,--to

study him, and decide upon some positive course. But, in truth, she

was misleading both Calyste and Claude; she was not even thinking of

marriage; her heart was in the throes of the most violent convulsion

that could agitate a soul as strong as hers. She found herself the

dupe of her own mind; too late she saw life lighted by the sun of

love, shining as love shines in a heart of twenty.

Let us now see Camille's convent where this was happening.

VII

LES TOUCHES

A few hundred yards from Guerande the soil of Brittany comes to an

end; the salt-marshes and the sandy dunes begin. We descend into a

desert of sand, which the sea has left for a margin between herself

and earth, by a rugged road through a ravine that has never seen a

carriage. This desert contains waste tracts, ponds of unequal size,

round the shores of which the salt is made on muddy banks, and a

little arm of the sea which separates the mainland from the island of

Croisic. Geographically, Croisic is really a peninsula; but as it

holds to Brittany only by the beaches which connect it with the

village of Batz (barren quicksands very difficult to cross), it may be

more correct to call it an island.

At the point where the road from Croisic to Guerande turns off from

the main road of /terra firma/, stands a country-house, surrounded by

a large garden, remarkable for its trimmed and twisted pine-trees,

some being trained to the shape of sun-shades, others, stripped of

their branches, showing their reddened trunks in spots where the bark

has peeled. These trees, victims of hurricanes, growing against wind

and tide (for them the saying is literally true), prepare the mind for

the strange and depressing sight of the marshes and dunes, which

resemble a stiffened ocean. The house, fairly well built of a species

of slaty stone with granite courses, has no architecture; it presents

to the eye a plain wall with windows at regular intervals. These

windows have small leaded panes on the ground-floor and large panes on

the upper floor. Above are the attics, which stretch the whole length

of an enormously high pointed roof, with two gables and two large

dormer windows on each side of it. Under the triangular point of each

gable a circular window opens its cyclopic eye, westerly to the sea,

easterly on Guerande. One facade of the house looks on the road to

Guerande, the other on the desert at the end of which is Croisic;

beyond that little town is the open sea. A brook escapes through an

opening in the park wall which skirts the road to Croisic, crosses the

road, and is lost in the sands beyond it.

The grayish tones of the house harmonize admirably with the scene it

overlooks. The park is an oasis in the surrounding desert, at the

entrance of which the traveller comes upon a mud-hut, where the

custom-house officials lie in wait for him. This house without land

(for the bulk of the estate is really in Guerande) derives an income

from the marshes and a few outlying farms of over ten thousand francs

a year. Such is the fief of Les Touches, from which the Revolution

lopped its feudal rights. The /paludiers/, however, continue to call

it "the chateau," and they would still say "seigneur" if the fief were

not now in the female line. When Felicite set about restoring Les

Touches, she was careful, artist that she is, not to change the

desolate exterior which gives the look of a prison to the isolated

structure. The sole change was at the gate, which she enlivened by two

brick columns supporting an arch, beneath which carriages pass into

the court-yard where she planted trees.

The arrangement of the ground-floor is that of nearly all country

houses built a hundred years ago. It was, evidently, erected on the

ruins of some old castle formerly perched there. A large panelled

entrance-hall has been turned by Felicite into a billiard-room; from

it opens an immense salon with six windows, and the dining-room. The

kitchen communicates with the dining-room through an office. Camille

has displayed a noble simplicity in the arrangement of this floor,

carefully avoiding all splendid decoration. The salon, painted gray,

is furnished in old mahogany with green silk coverings. The furniture

of the dining-room comprises four great buffets, also of mahogany,

chairs covered with horsehair, and superb engravings by Audran in

mahogany frames. The old staircase, of wood with heavy balusters, is

covered all over with a green carpet.

On the floor above are two suites of rooms separated by the staircase.

Mademoiselle des Touches has taken for herself the one that looks

toward the sea and the marshes, and arranged it with a small salon, a

large chamber, and two cabinets, one for a dressing-room, the other

for a study and writing-room. The other suite, she has made into two

separate apartments for guests, each with a bedroom, an antechamber,

and a cabinet. The servants have rooms in the attic. The rooms for

guests are furnished with what is strictly necessary, and no more. A

certain fantastic luxury has been reserved for her own apartment. In

that sombre and melancholy habitation, looking out upon the sombre and

melancholy landscape, she wanted the most fantastic creations of art

that she could find. The little salon is hung with Gobelin tapestry,

framed in marvellously carved oak. The windows are draped with the

heavy silken hangings of a past age, a brocade shot with crimson and

gold against green and yellow, gathered into mighty pleats and trimmed

with fringes and cords and tassels worthy of a church. This salon

contains a chest or cabinet worth in these days seven or eight

thousand francs, a carved ebony table, a secretary with many drawers,

inlaid with arabesques of ivory and bought in Venice, with other noble

Gothic furniture. Here too are pictures and articles of choice

workmanship bought in 1818, at a time when no one suspected the

ultimate value of such treasures. Her bedroom is of the period of

Louis XV. and strictly exact to it. Here we see the carved wooden

bedstead painted white, with the arched head-board surmounted by

Cupids scattering flowers, and the canopy above it adorned with

plumes; the hangings of blue silk; the Pompadour dressing-table with

its laces and mirror; together with bits of furniture of singular

shape,--a "duchesse," a chaise-longue, a stiff little sofa,--with

window-curtains of silk, like that of the furniture, lined with pink

satin, and caught back with silken ropes, and a carpet of Savonnerie;

in short, we find here all those elegant, rich, sumptuous, and dainty

things in the midst of which the women of the eighteenth century lived

and made love.

The study, entirely of the present day, presents, in contrast with the

Louis XV. gallantries, a charming collection of mahogany furniture; it

resembles a boudoir; the bookshelves are full, but the fascinating

trivialities of a woman's existence encumber it; in the midst of which

an inquisitive eye perceives with uneasy surprise pistols, a narghile,

a riding-whip, a hammock, a rifle, a man's blouse, tobacco, pipes, a

knapsack,--a bizarre combination which paints Felicite.

Every great soul, entering that room, would be struck with the

peculiar beauty of the landscape which spreads its broad savanna

beyond the park, the last vegetation on the continent. The melancholy

squares of water, divided by little paths of white salt crust, along

which the salt-makers pass (dressed in white) to rake up and gather

the salt into /mulons/; a space which the saline exhalations prevent

all birds from crossing, stifling thus the efforts of botanic nature;

those sands where the eye is soothed only by one little hardy

persistent plant bearing rosy flowers and the Chartreux pansy; that

lake of salt water, the sandy dunes, the view of Croisic, a miniature

town afloat like Venice on the sea; and, finally the mighty ocean

tossing its foaming fringe upon the granite rocks as if the better to

bring out their weird formations--that sight uplifts the mind although

it saddens it; an effect produced at last by all that is sublime,

creating a regretful yearning for things unknown and yet perceived by

the soul on far-off heights. These wild and savage harmonies are for

great spirits and great sorrows only.

This desert scene, where at times the sun rays, reflected by the

water, by the sands, whitened the village of Batz and rippled on the

roofs of Croisic with pitiless brilliancy, filled Camille's dreaming

mind for days together. She seldom looked to the cool, refreshing

scenes, the groves, the flowery meadows around Guerande. Her soul was

struggling to endure a horrible inward anguish.

No sooner did Calyste see the vanes of the two gables shooting up

beyond the furze of the roadside and the distorted heads of the pines,

than the air seemed lighter; Guerande was a prison to him; his life

was at Les Touches. Who will not understand the attraction it

presented to a youth in his position. A love like that of Cherubin,

had flung him at the feet of a person who was a great and grand thing

to him before he thought of her as a woman, and it had survived the

repeated and inexplicable refusals of Felicite. This sentiment, which

was more the need of loving than love itself, had not escaped the

terrible power of Camille for analysis; hence, possibly, her

rejection,--a generosity unperceived, of course, by Calyste.

At Les Touches were displayed to the ravished eyes of the ignorant

young countryman, the riches of a new world; he heard, as it were,

another language, hitherto unknown to him and sonorous. He listened to

the poetic sounds of the finest music, that surpassing music of the

nineteenth century, in which melody and harmony blend or struggle on

equal terms,--a music in which song and instrumentation have reached a

hitherto unknown perfection. He saw before his eyes the works of

modern painters, those of the French school, to-day the heir of Italy,

Spain, and Flanders, in which talent has become so common that hearts,

weary of talent, are calling aloud for genius. He read there those

works of imagination, those amazing creations of modern literature

which produced their full effect upon his unused heart. In short, the

great Nineteenth Century appeared to him, in all its collective

magnificence, its criticising spirit, its desires for renovation in

all directions, and its vast efforts, nearly all of them on the scale

of the giant who cradled the infancy of the century in his banners and

sang to it hymns with the lullaby of cannon.

Initiated by Felicite into the grandeur of all these things, which

may, perhaps, escape the eyes of those who work them, Calyste

gratified at Les Touches the taste for the glorious, powerful at his

age, and that artless admiration, the first love of adolescence, which

is always irritated by criticism. It is so natural that flame should

rise! He listened to that charming Parisian raillery, that graceful

satire which revealed to him French wit and the qualities of the

French mind, and awakened in him a thousand ideas, which might have

slumbered forever in the soft torpor of his family life. For him,

Mademoiselle des Touches was the mother of his intellect. She was so

kind to him; a woman is always adorable to a man in whom she inspires

love, even when she seems not to share it.

At the present time Felicite was giving him music-lessons. To him the

grand apartments on the lower floor, and her private rooms above, so

coquettish, so artistic, were vivified, were animated by a light, a

spirit, a supernatural atmosphere, strange and undefinable. The modern

world with its poesy was sharply contrasted with the dull and

patriarchal world of Guerande, in the two systems brought face to face

before him. On one side all the thousand developments of Art, on the

other the sameness of uncivilized Brittany. No one will therefore ask

why the poor lad, bored like his mother with the pleasures of

/mouche/, quivered as he approached the house, and rang the bell, and

crossed the court-yard. Such emotions, we may remark, do not assail a

mature man, trained to the ups and downs of life, whom nothing

surprises, being prepared for all.

As the door opened, Calyste, hearing the sound of the piano, supposed

that Camille was in the salon; but when he entered the billiard-hall

he no longer heard it. Camille, he thought, must be playing on a small

upright piano brought by Conti from England and placed by her in her

own little salon. He began to run up the stairs, where the thick

carpet smothered the sound of his steps; but he went more slowly as he

neared the top, perceiving something unusual and extraordinary about

the music. Felicite was playing for herself only; she was communing

with her own being.

Instead of entering the room, the young man sat down upon a Gothic

seat covered with green velvet, which stood on the landing beneath a

window artistically framed in carved woods stained and varnished.

Nothing was ever more mysteriously melancholy than Camille's

improvisation; it seemed like the cry of a soul /de profundis/ to God

--from the depths of a grave! The heart of the young lover recognized

the cry of despairing love, the prayer of a hidden plaint, the groan

of repressed affliction. Camille had varied, modified, and lengthened

the introduction to the cavatina: "Mercy for thee, mercy for me!"

which is nearly the whole of the fourth act of "Robert le Diable." She

now suddenly sang the words in a heart-rending manner, and then as

suddenly interrupted herself. Calyste entered, and saw the reason.

Poor Camille Maupin! poor Felicite! She turned to him a face bathed

with tears, took out her handkerchief and dried them, and said,

simply, without affectation, "Good-morning." She was beautiful as she

sat there in her morning gown. On her head was one of those red

chenille nets, much worn in those days, through which the coils of her

black hair shone, escaping here and there. A short upper garment made

like a Greek peplum gave to view a pair of cambric trousers with

embroidered frills, and the prettiest of Turkish slippers, red and

gold.

"What is the matter?" cried Calyste.

"He has not returned," she replied, going to a window and looking out

upon the sands, the sea and the marshes.

This answer explained all. Camille was awaiting Claude Vignon.

"You are anxious about him?" asked Calyste.

"Yes," she answered, with a sadness the lad was too ignorant to

analyze.

He started to leave the room.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"To find him," he replied.

"Dear child!" she said, taking his hand and drawing him toward her

with one of those moist glances which are to a youthful soul the best

of recompenses. "You are distracted! Where could you find him on that

wide shore?"

"I will find him."

"Your mother would be in mortal terror. Stay. Besides, I choose it,"

she said, making him sit down upon the sofa. "Don't pity me. The tears

you see are the tears a woman likes to shed. We have a faculty that is

not in man,--that of abandoning ourselves to our nervous nature and

driving our feelings to an extreme. By imagining certain situations

and encouraging the imagination we end in tears, and sometimes in

serious states of illness or disorder. The fancies of women are not

the action of the mind; they are of the heart. You have come just in

time; solitude is bad for me. I am not the dupe of his professed

desire to go to Croisic and see the rocks and the dunes and the salt-

marshes without me. He meant to leave us alone together; he is

jealous, or, rather, he pretends jealousy, and you are young, you are

handsome."

"Why not have told me this before? What must I do? must I stay away?"

asked Calyste, with difficulty restraining his tears, one of which

rolled down his cheek and touched Felicite deeply.

"You are an angel!" she cried. Then she gaily sang the "Stay! stay!"

of Matilde in "Guillaume Tell," taking all gravity from that

magnificent answer of the princess to her subject. "He only wants to

make me think he loves me better than he really does," she said. "He

knows how much I desire his happiness," she went on, looking

attentively at Calyste. "Perhaps he feels humiliated to be inferior to

me there. Perhaps he has suspicions about you and means to surprise

us. But even if his only crime is to take his pleasure without me, and

not to associate me with the ideas this new place gives him, is not

that enough? Ah! I am no more loved by that great brain than I was by

the musician, by the poet, by the soldier! Sterne is right; names

signify much; mine is a bitter sarcasm. I shall die without finding in

any man the love which fills my heart, the poesy that I have in my

soul--"

She stopped, her arms pendant, her head lying back on the cushions,

her eyes, stupid with thought, fixed on a pattern of the carpet. The

pain of great minds has something grandiose and imposing about it; it

reveals a vast extent of soul which the thought of the spectator

extends still further. Such souls share the privileges of royalty

whose affections belong to a people and so affect a world.

"Why did you reject my--" said Calyste; but he could not end his

sentence. Camille's beautiful hand laid upon his eloquently

interrupted him.

"Nature changed her laws in granting me a dozen years of youth beyond

my due," she said. "I rejected your love from egotism. Sooner or later

the difference in our ages must have parted us. I am thirteen years

older than /he/, and even that is too much."

"You will be beautiful at sixty," cried Calyste, heroically.

"God grant it," she answered, smiling. "Besides, dear child, I /want/

to love. In spite of his cold heart, his lack of imagination, his

cowardly indifference, and the envy which consumes him, I believe

there is greatness behind those tatters; I hope to galvanize that

heart, to save him from himself, to attach him to me. Alas! alas! I

have a clear-seeing mind, but a blind heart."

She was terrible in her knowledge of herself. She suffered and

analyzed her feelings as Cuvier and Dupuytren explained to friends the

fatal advance of their disease and the progress that death was making

in their bodies. Camille Maupin knew the passion within her as those

men of science knew their own anatomy.

"I have brought him here to judge him, and he is already bored," she

continued. "He pines for Paris, I tell him; the nostalgia of criticism

is on him; he has no author to pluck, no system to undermine, no poet

to drive to despair, and he dares not commit some debauch in this

house which might lift for a moment the burden of his ennui. Alas! my

love is not real enough, perhaps, to soothe his brain; I don't

intoxicate him! Make him drunk at dinner to-night and I shall know if

I am right. I will say I am ill, and stay in my own room."

Calyste turned scarlet from his neck to his forehead; even his ears

were on fire.

"Oh! forgive me," she cried. "How can I heedlessly deprave your

girlish innocence! Forgive me, Calyste--" She paused. "There are some

superb, consistent natures who say at a certain age: 'If I had my life

to live over again, I would so the same things.' I who do not think

myself weak, I say, 'I would be a woman like your mother, Calyste.' To

have a Calyste, oh! what happiness! I could be a humble and submissive

woman--And yet, I have done no harm except to myself. But alas! dear

child, a woman cannot stand alone in society except it be in what is

called a primitive state. Affections which are not in harmony with

social or with natural laws, affections that are not obligatory, in

short, escape us. Suffering for suffering, as well be useful where we

can. What care I for those children of my cousin Faucombe? I have not

seen them these twenty years, and they are married to merchants. You

are my son, who have never cost me the miseries of motherhood; I shall

leave you my fortune and make you happy--at least, so far as money can

do so, dear treasure of beauty and grace that nothing should ever

change or blast."

"You would not take my love," said Calyste, "and I shall return your

fortune to your heirs."

"Child!" answered Camille, in a guttural voice, letting the tears roll

down her cheeks. "Will nothing save me from myself?" she added,

presently.

"You said you had a history to tell me, and a letter to--" said the

generous youth, wishing to divert her thoughts from her grief; but she

did not let him finish.

"You are right to remind me of that. I will be an honest woman before

all else. I will sacrifice no one--Yes, it was too late, yesterday,

but to-day we have time," she said, in a cheerful tone. "I will keep

my promise; and while I tell you that history I will sit by the window

and watch the road to the marshes."

Calyste arranged a great Gothic chair for her near the window, and

opened one of the sashes. Camille Maupin, who shared the oriental

taste of her illustrious sister-author, took a magnificent Persian

narghile, given to her by an ambassador. She filled the nipple with

patchouli, cleaned the /bochettino/, perfumed the goose-quill, which

she attached to the mouthpiece and used only once, set fire to the

yellow leaves, placing the vase with its long neck enamelled in blue

and gold at some distance from her, and rang the bell for tea.

"Will you have cigarettes?--Ah! I am always forgetting that you do not

smoke. Purity such as yours is so rare! The hand of Eve herself, fresh

from the hand of her Maker, is alone innocent enough to stroke your

cheek."

Calyste colored; sitting down on a stool at Camille's feet, he did not

see the deep emotion that seemed for a moment to overcome her.

VIII

LA MARQUISE BEATRIX

"I promised you this tale of the past, and here it is," said Camille.

"The person from whom I received that letter yesterday, and who may be

here to-morrow, is the Marquise de Rochefide. The old marquis (whose

family is not as old as yours), after marrying his eldest daughter to

a Portuguese grandee, was anxious to find an alliance among the higher

nobility for his son, in order to obtain for him the peerage he had

never been able to get for himself. The Comtesse de Montcornet told

him of a young lady in the department of the Orne, a Mademoiselle

Beatrix-Maximilienne-Rose de Casteran, the youngest daughter of the

Marquis de Casteran, who wished to marry his two daughters without

dowries in order to reserve his whole fortune for the Comte de

Casteran, his son. The Casterans are, it seems, of the bluest blood.

Beatrix, born and brought up at the chateau de Casteran, was twenty

years old at the time of her marriage in 1828. She was remarkable for

what you provincials call originality, which is simply independence of

ideas, enthusiasm, a feeling for the beautiful, and a certain impulse

and ardor toward the things of Art. You may believe a poor woman who

has allowed herself to be drawn along the same lines, there is nothing

more dangerous for a woman. If she follows them, they lead her where

you see me, and where the marquise came,--to the verge of abysses. Men

alone have the staff on which to lean as they skirt those precipices,

--a force which is lacking to most women, but which, if we do possess

it, makes abnormal beings of us. Her old grandmother, the dowager de

Casteran, was well pleased to see her marry a man to whom she was

superior in every way. The Rochefides were equally satisfied with the

Casterans, who connected them with the Verneuils, the d'Esgrignons,

the Troisvilles, and gave them a peerage for their son in that last

big batch of peers made by Charles X., but revoked by the revolution

of July. The first days of marriage are perilous for little minds as

well as for great loves. Rochefide, being a fool, mistook his wife's

ignorance for coldness; he classed her among frigid, lymphatic women,

and made that an excuse to return to his bachelor life, relying on the

coldness of the marquise, her pride, and the thousand barriers that

the life of a great lady sets up about a woman in Paris. You'll know

what I mean when you go there. People said to Rochefide: 'You are very

lucky to possess a cold wife who will never have any but head

passions. She will always be content if she can shine; her fancies are

purely artistic, her desires will be satisfied if she can make a

salon, and collect about her distinguished minds; her debauches will

be in music and her orgies literary.' Rochefide, however, is not an

ordinary fool; he has as much conceit and vanity as a clever man,

which gives him a mean and squinting jealousy, brutal when it comes to

the surface, lurking and cowardly for six months, and murderous the

seventh. He thought he was deceiving his wife, and yet he feared her,

--two causes for tyranny when the day came on which the marquise let

him see that she was charitably assuming indifference to his

unfaithfulness. I analyze all this in order to explain her conduct.

Beatrix had the keenest admiration for me; there is but one step,

however, from admiration to jealousy. I have one of the most

remarkable salons in Paris; she wished to make herself another; and in

order to do so she attempted to draw away my circle. I don't know how

to keep those who wish to leave me. She obtained the superficial

people who are friends with every one from mere want of occupation,

and whose object is to get out of a salon as soon as they have entered

it; but she did not have time to make herself a real society. In those

days I thought her consumed with a desire for celebrity of one kind or

another. Nevertheless, she has really much grandeur of soul, a regal

pride, distinct ideas, and a marvellous facility for apprehending and

understanding all things; she can talk metaphysics and music, theology

and painting. You will see her, as a mature woman, what the rest of us

saw her as a bride. And yet there is something of affectation about

her in all this. She has too much the air of knowing abstruse things,

--Chinese, Hebrew, hieroglyphics perhaps, or the papyrus that they

wrapped round mummies. Personally, Beatrix is one of those blondes

beside whom Eve the fair would seem a Negress. She is slender and

straight and white as a church taper; her face is long and pointed;

the skin is capricious, to-day like cambric, to-morrow darkened with

little speckles beneath its surface, as if her blood had left a

deposit of dust there during the night. Her forehead is magnificent,

though rather daring. The pupils of her eyes are pale sea-green,

floating on their white balls under thin lashes and lazy eyelids. Her

eyes have dark rings around them often; her nose, which describes one-

quarter of a circle, is pinched about the nostrils; very shrewd and

clever, but supercilious. She has an Austrian mouth; the upper lip has

more character than the lower, which drops disdainfully. Her pale

cheeks have no color unless some very keen emotion moves her. Her chin

is rather fat; mine is not thin, and perhaps I do wrong to tell you

that women with fat chins are exacting in love. She has one of the

most exquisite waists I ever saw; the shoulders are beautiful, but the

bust has not developed as well, and the arms are thin. She has,

however, an easy carriage and manner, which redeems all such defects

and sets her beauties in full relief. Nature has given her that

princess air which can never be acquired; it becomes her, and reveals

at sudden moments the woman of high birth. Without being faultlessly

beautiful, or prettily pretty, she produces, when she chooses,

ineffaceable impressions. She has only to put on a gown of cherry

velvet with clouds of lace, and wreathe with roses that angelic hair

of hers, which resembles floods of light, and she becomes divine. If,

on some excuse or other, she could wear the costume of the time when

women had long, pointed bodices, rising, slim and slender, from

voluminous brocaded skirts with folds so heavy that they stood alone,

and could hide her arms in those wadded sleeves with ruffles, from

which the hand comes out like a pistil from a calyx, and could fling

back the curls of her head into the jewelled knot behind her head,

Beatrix would hold her own victoriously with ideal beauties like

/that/--"

And Felicite showed Calyste a fine copy of a picture by Mieris, in

which was a woman robed in white satin, standing with a paper in her

hand, and singing with a Brabancon seigneur, while a Negro beside them

poured golden Spanish wine into a goblet, and the old housekeeper in

the background arranged some biscuits.

"Fair women, blonds," said Camille, "have the advantage over us poor

brown things of a precious diversity; there are a hundred ways for a

blonde to charm, and only one for a brunette. Besides, blondes are

more womanly; we are too like men, we French brunettes--Well, well!"

she cried, "pray don't fall in love with Beatrix from the portrait I

am making of her, like that prince, I forget his name, in the Arabian

Nights. You would be too late, my dear boy."

These words were said pointedly. The admiration depicted on the young

man's face was more for the picture than for the painter whose /faire/

was failing of its purpose. As she spoke, Felicite was employing all

the resources of her eloquent physiognomy.

"Blond as she is, however," she went on, "Beatrix has not the grace of

her color; her lines are severe; she is elegant, but hard; her face

has a harsh contour, though at times it reveals a soul with Southern

passions; an angel flashes out and then expires. Her eyes are thirsty.

She looks best when seen full face; the profile has an air of being

squeezed between two doors. You will see if I am mistaken. I will tell

you now what made us intimate friends. For three years, from 1828 to

1831, Beatrix, while enjoying the last fetes of the Restoration,

making the round of the salons, going to court, taking part in the

fancy-balls of the Elysee-Bourbon, was all the while judging men, and

things, events, and life itself, from the height of her own thought.

Her mind was busy. These first years of the bewilderment the world

caused her prevented her heart from waking up. From 1830 to 1831 she

spent the time of the revolutionary disturbance at her husband's

country-place, where she was bored like a saint in paradise. On her

return to Paris she became convinced, perhaps justly, that the

revolution of July, in the minds of some persons purely political,

would prove to be a moral revolution. The social class to which she

belonged, not being able, during its unhoped-for triumph in the

fifteen years of the Restoration to reconstruct itself, was about to

go to pieces, bit by bit, under the battering-ram of the bourgeoisie.

She heard the famous words of Monsieur Laine: 'Kings are departing!'

This conviction, I believe was not without its influence on her

conduct. She took an intellectual part in the new doctrines, which

swarmed, during the three years succeeding July, 1830, like gnats in

the sunshine, and turned some female heads. But, like all nobles,

Beatrix, while thinking these novel ideals superb, wanted always to

protect the nobility. Finding before long that there was no place in

this new regime for individual superiority, seeing that the higher

nobility were beginning once more the mute opposition it had formerly

made to Napoleon,--which was, in truth, its wisest course under an

empire of deeds and facts, but which in an epoch of moral causes was

equivalent to abdication,--she chose personal happiness rather than

such eclipse. About the time we were all beginning to breathe again,

Beatrix met at my house a man with whom I had expected to end my days,

--Gennaro Conti, the great composer, a man of Neapolitan origin,

though born in Marseilles. Conti has a brilliant mind; as a composer

he has talent, though he will never attain to the first rank. Without

Rossini, without Meyerbeer, he might perhaps have been taken for a man

of genius. He has one advantage over those men,--he is in vocal music

what Paganini is on the violin, Liszt on the piano, Taglioni in the

ballet, and what the famous Garat was; at any rate he recalls that

great singer to those who knew him. His is not a voice, my friend, it

is a soul. When its song replies to certain ideas, certain states of

feeling difficult to describe in which a woman sometimes finds

herself, that woman is lost. The marquise conceived the maddest

passion for him, and took him from me. The act was provincial, I

allow, but it was all fair play. She won my esteem and friendship by

the way she behaved to me. She thought me a woman who was likely to

defend her own; she did not know that to me the most ridiculous thing

in the world is such a struggle. She came to see me. That woman, proud

as she is, was so in love that she told me her secret and made me the

arbiter of her destiny. She was really adorable, and she kept her

place as woman and as marquise in my eyes. I must tell you, dear

friend, that while women are sometimes bad, they have hidden grandeurs

in their souls that men can never appreciate. Well, as I seem to be

making my last will and testament like a woman on the verge of old

age, I shall tell you that I was ever faithful to Conti, and should

have been till death, and yet I /know him/. His nature is charming,

apparently, and detestable beneath its surface. He is a charlatan in

matters of the heart. There are some men, like Nathan, of whom I have

already spoken to you, who are charlatans externally, and yet honest.

Such men lie to themselves. Mounted on their stilts, they think they

are on their feet, and perform their jugglery with a sort of

innocence; their humbuggery is in their blood; they are born

comedians, braggarts; extravagant in form as a Chinese vase; perhaps

they even laugh at themselves. Their personality is generous; like

Murat's kingly garments, it attracts danger. But Conti's duplicity

will be known only to the women who love him. In his art he has that

deep Italian jealousy which led the Carlone to murder Piola, and stuck

a stiletto into Paesiello. That terrible envy lurks beneath the

warmest comradeship. Conti has not the courage of his vice; he smiles

at Meyerbeer and flatters him, when he fain would tear him to bits. He

knows his weakness, and cultivates an appearance of sincerity; his

vanity still further leads him to play at sentiments which are far

indeed from his real heart. He represents himself as an artist who

receives his inspirations from heaven; Art is something saintly and

sacred to him; he is fanatic; he is sublime in his contempt for

worldliness; his eloquence seems to come from the deepest convictions.

He is a seer, a demon, a god, an angel. Calyste, although I warn you

about him, you will be his dupe. That Southern nature, that

impassioned artist is cold as a well-rope. Listen to him: the artist

is a missionary. Art is a religion, which has its priests and ought to

have its martyrs. Once started on that theme, Gennaro reaches the most

dishevelled pathos that any German professor of philosophy ever

spluttered to his audience. You admire his convictions, but he hasn't

any. Bearing his hearers to heaven on a song which seems a mysterious

fluid shedding love, he casts an ecstatic glance upon them; he is

examining their enthusiasm; he is asking himself: 'Am I really a god

to them?' and he is also thinking: 'I ate too much macaroni to-day.'

He is insatiable of applause, and he wins it. He delights, he is

beloved; he is admired whensoever he will. He owes his success more to

his voice than to his talent as a composer, though he would rather be

a man of genius like Rossini than a performer like Rubini. I had

committed the folly of attaching myself to him, and I was determined

and resigned to deck this idol to the end. Conti, like a great many

artists, is dainty in all his ways; he likes his ease, his enjoyments;

he is always carefully, even elegantly dressed. I do respect his

courage; he is brave; bravery, they say, is the only virtue into which

hypocrisy cannot enter. While we were travelling I saw his courage

tested; he risked the life he loved; and yet, strange contradiction! I

have seen him, in Paris, commit what I call the cowardice of thought.

My friend, all this was known to me. I said to the poor marquise: 'You

don't know into what a gulf you are plunging. You are the Perseus of a

poor Andromeda; you release me from my rock. If he loves you, so much

the better! but I doubt it; he loves no one but himself.' Gennaro was

transported to the seventh heaven of pride. I was not a marquise, I

was not born a Casteran, and he forgot me in a day. I then gave myself

the savage pleasure of probing that nature to the bottom. Certain of

the result, I wanted to see the twistings and turnings Conti would

perform. My dear child, I saw in one week actual horrors of sham

sentiment, infamous buffooneries of feeling. I will not tell you about

them; you shall see the man here in a day or two. He now knows that I

know him, and he hates me accordingly. If he could stab me with safety

to himself I shouldn't be alive two seconds. I have never said one

word of all this to Beatrix. The last and constant insult Geranno

offers me is to suppose that I am capable of communicating my sad

knowledge of him to her; but he has no belief in the good feeling of

any human being. Even now he is playing a part with me; he is posing

as a man who is wretched at having left me. You will find what I may

call the most penetrating cordiality about him; he is winning; he is

chivalrous. To him, all women are madonnas. One must live with him

long before we get behind the veil of this false chivalry and learn

the invisible signs of his humbug. His tone of conviction about

himself might almost deceive the Deity. You will be entrapped, my dear

child, by his catlike manners, and you will never believe in the

profound and rapid arithmetic of his inmost thought. But enough; let

us leave him. I pushed indifference so far as to receive them together

in my house. This circumstance kept that most perspicacious of all

societies, the great world of Paris, ignorant of the affair. Though

intoxicated with pride, Gennaro was compelled to dissimulate; and he

did it admirably. But violent passions will have their freedom at any

cost. Before the end of the year, Beatrix whispered in my ear one

evening: 'My dear Felicite, I start to-morrow for Italy with Conti.' I

was not surprised; she regarded herself as united for life to Gennaro,

and she suffered from the restraints imposed upon her; she escaped one

evil by rushing into a greater. Conti was wild with happiness,--the

happiness of vanity alone. 'That's what it is to love truly,' he said

to me. 'How many women are there who would sacrifice their lives,

their fortune, their reputation?'--'Yes, she loves you,' I replied,

'but you do not love her.' He was furious, and made me a scene; he

stormed, he declaimed, he depicted his love, declaring that he had

never supposed it possible to love as much. I remained impassible, and

lent him money for his journey, which, being unexpected, found him

unprepared. Beatrix left a letter for her husband and started the next

day for Italy. There she has remained two years; she has written to me

several times, and her letters are enchanting. The poor child attaches

herself to me as the only woman who will comprehend her. She says she

adores me. Want of money has compelled Gennaro to accept an offer to

write a French opera; he does not find in Italy the pecuniary gains

which composers obtain in Paris. Here's the letter I received

yesterday from Beatrix. Take it and read it; you can now understand

it,--that is, if it is possible, at your age, to analyze the things of

the heart."

So saying, she held out the letter to him.

At this moment Claude Vignon entered the room. At his unexpected

apparition Calyste and Felicite were both silent for a moment,--she

from surprise, he from a vague uneasiness. The vast forehead, broad

and high, of the new-comer, who was bald at the age of thirty-seven,

now seemed darkened by annoyance. His firm, judicial mouth expressed a

habit of chilling sarcasm. Claude Vignon is imposing, in spite of the

precocious deteriorations of a face once magnificent, and now grown

haggard. Between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five he strongly

resembled the divine Raffaelle. But his nose, that feature of the

human face that changes most, is growing to a point; the countenance

is sinking into mysterious depressions, the outlines are thickening;

leaden tones predominate in the complexion, giving tokens of

weariness, although the fatigues of this young man are not apparent;

perhaps some bitter solitude has aged him, or the abuse of his gift of

comprehension. He scrutinizes the thought of every one, yet without

definite aim or system. The pickaxe of his criticism demolishes, it

never constructs. Thus his lassitude is that of a mechanic, not of an

architect. The eyes, of a pale blue, once brilliant, are clouded now

by some hidden pain, or dulled by gloomy sadness. Excesses have laid

dark tints above the eyelids; the temples have lost their freshness.

The chin, of incomparable distinction, is getting doubled, but without

dignity. His voice, never sonorous, is weakening; without being either

hoarse or extinct, it touches the confines of hoarseness and

extinction. The impassibility of that fine head, the fixity of that

glance, cover irresolution and weakness, which the keenly intelligent

and sarcastic smile belies. The weakness lies wholly in action, not in

thought; there are traces of an encyclopedic comprehension on that

brow, and in the habitual movement of a face that is childlike and

splendid both. The man is tall, slightly bent already, like all those

who bear the weight of a world of thought. Such long, tall bodies are

never remarkable for continuous effort or creative activity.

Charlemagne, Belisarious, and Constantine are noted exceptions to this

rule.

Certainly Claude Vignon presents a variety of mysteries to be solved.

In the first place, he is very simple and very wily. Though he falls

into excesses with the readiness of a courtesan, his powers of thought

remain untouched. Yet his intellect, which is competent to criticise

art, science, literature, and politics, is incompetent to guide his

external life. Claude contemplates himself within the domain of his

intellectual kingdom, and abandons his outer man with Diogenic

indifference. Satisfied to penetrate all, to comprehend all by

thought, he despises materialities; and yet, if it becomes a question

of creating, doubt assails him; he sees obstacles, he is not inspired

by beauties, and while he is debating means, he sits with his arms

pendant, accomplishing nothing. He is the Turk of the intellect made

somnolent by meditation. Criticism is his opium; his harem of books to

read disgusts him with real work. Indifferent to small things as well

as great things, he is sometimes compelled, by the very weight of his

head, to fall into a debauch, and abdicate for a few hours the fatal

power of omnipotent analysis. He is far too preoccupied with the wrong

side of genius, and Camille Maupin's desire to put him back on the

right side is easily conceivable. The task was an attractive one.

Claude Vignon thinks himself a great politician as well as a great

writer; but this unpublished Machiavelli laughs within himself at all

ambitions; he knows what he can do; he has instinctively taken the

measure of his future on his faculties; he sees his greatness, but he

also sees obstacles, grows alarmed or disgusted, lets the time roll

by, and does not go to work. Like Etienne Lousteau the feuilletonist,

like Nathan the dramatic author, like Blondet, another journalist, he

came from the ranks of the bourgeoisie, to which we owe the greater

number of our writers.

"Which way did you come?" asked Mademoiselle des Touches, coloring

with either pleasure or surprise.'

"By the door," replied Claude Vignon, dryly.

"Oh," she cried, shrugging her shoulders, "I am aware that you are not

a man to climb in by a window."

"Scaling a window is a badge of honor for a beloved woman."

"Enough!" said Felicite.

"Am I in the way?" asked Claude.

"Monsieur," said Calyste, artlessly, "this letter--"

"Pray keep it; I ask no questions; at our age we understand such

affairs," he answered, interrupting Calyste with a sardonic air.

"But, monsieur," began Calyste, much provoked.

"Calm yourself, young man; I have the utmost indulgence for

sentiments."

"My dear Calyste," said Camille, wishing to speak.

"'Dear'?" said Vignon, interrupting her.

"Claude is joking," said Camille, continuing her remarks to Calyste.

"He is wrong to do it with you, who know nothing of Parisian ways."

"I did not know that I was joking," said Claude Vignon, very gravely.

"Which way did you come?" asked Felicite again. "I have been watching

the road to Croisic for the last two hours."

"Not all the time," replied Vignon.

"You are too bad to jest in this way."

"Am I jesting?"

Calyste rose.

"Why should you go so soon? You are certainly at your ease here," said

Vignon.

"Quite the contrary," replied the angry young Breton, to whom Camille

Maupin stretched out a hand, which he took and kissed, dropping a tear

upon it, after which he took his leave.

"I should like to be that little young man," said the critic, sitting

down, and taking one end of the hookah. "How he will love!"

"Too much; for then he will not be loved in return," replied

Mademoiselle des Touches. "Madame de Rochefide is coming here," she

added.

"You don't say so!" exclaimed Claude. "With Conti?"

"She will stay here alone, but he accompanies her."

"Have they quarrelled?"

"No."

"Play me a sonata of Beethoven's; I know nothing of the music he wrote

for the piano."

Claude began to fill the tube of the hookah with Turkish tobacco, all

the while examining Camille much more attentively than she observed. A

dreadful thought oppressed him; he fancied he was being used for a

blind by this woman. The situation was a novel one.

Calyste went home thinking no longer of Beatrix de Rochefide and her

letter; he was furious against Claude Vignon for what he considered

the utmost indelicacy, and he pitied poor Felicite. How was it

possible to be beloved by that sublime creature and not adore her on

his knees, not believe her on the faith of a glance or a smile? He

felt a desire to turn and rend that cold, pale spectre of a man.

Ignorant he might be, as Felicite had told him, of the tricks of

thought of the jesters of the press, but one thing he knew--Love was

the human religion.

When his mother saw him entering the court-yard she uttered an

exclamation of joy, and Zephirine whistled for Mariotte.

"Mariotte, the boy is coming! cook the fish!"

"I see him, mademoiselle," replied the woman.

Fanny, uneasy at the sadness she saw on her son's brow, picked up her

worsted-work; the old aunt took out her knitting. The baron gave his

arm-chair to his son and walked about the room, as if to stretch his

legs before going out to take a turn in the garden. No Flemish or

Dutch picture ever presented an interior in tones more mellow, peopled

with faces and forms so harmoniously blending. The handsome young man

in his black velvet coat, the mother, still so beautiful, and the aged

brother and sister framed by that ancient hall, were a moving domestic

harmony.

Fanny would fain have questioned Calyste, but he had already pulled a

letter from his pocket,--that letter of the Marquise Beatrix, which

was, perhaps, destined to destroy the happiness of this noble family.

As he unfolded it, Calyste's awakened imagination showed him the

marquise dressed as Camille Maupin had fancifully depicted her.

From the Marquise de Rochefide to Mademoiselle des Touches.

Genoa, July 2.

I have not written to you since our stay in Florence, my dear

friend, for Venice and Rome have absorbed my time, and, as you

know, happiness occupies a large part of life; so far, we have

neither of us dropped from its first level. I am a little

fatigued; for when one has a soul not easy to /blaser/, the

constant succession of enjoyments naturally causes lassitude.

Our friend has had a magnificent triumph at the Scala and the

Fenice, and now at the San Carlo. Three Italian operas in two

years! You cannot say that love has made him idle. We have been

warmly received everywhere,--though I myself would have preferred

solitude and silence. Surely that is the only suitable manner of

life for women who have placed themselves in direct opposition to

society? I expected such a life; but love, my dear friend, is a

more exacting master than marriage,--however, it is sweet to obey

him; though I did not think I should have to see the world again,

even by snatches, and the attentions I receive are so many stabs.

I am no longer on a footing of equality with the highest rank of

women; and the more attentions are paid to me, the more my

inferiority is made apparent.

Gennaro could not comprehend this sensitiveness; but he has been

so happy that it would ill become me not to have sacrificed my

petty vanity to that great and noble thing,--the life of an

artist. We women live by love, whereas men live by love and

action; otherwise they would not be men. Still, there are great

disadvantages for a woman in the position in which I have put

myself. You have escaped them; you continue to be a person in the

eyes of the world, which has no rights over you; you have your own

free will, and I have lost mine. I am speaking now of the things

of the heart, not those of social life, which I have utterly

renounced. You can be coquettish and self-willed, and have all the

graces of a woman who loves, a woman who can give or refuse her

love as she pleases; you have kept the right to have caprices, in

the interests even of your love. In short, to-day you still

possess your right of feeling, while I, I have no longer any

liberty of heart, which I think precious to exercise in love, even

though the love itself may be eternal. I have no right now to that

privilege of quarrelling in jest to which so many women cling, and

justly; for is it not the plummet line with which to sound the

hearts of men? I have no threat at my command. I must draw my

power henceforth from obedience, from unlimited gentleness; I must

make myself imposing by the greatness of my love. I would rather

die than leave Gennaro, and my pardon lies in the sanctity of my

love. Between social dignity and my petty personal dignity, I did

right not to hesitate. If at times I have a few melancholy

feelings, like clouds that pass through a clear blue sky, and to

which all women like to yield themselves, I keep silence about

them; they might seem like regrets. Ah me! I have so fully

understood the obligations of my position that I have armed myself

with the utmost indulgence; but so far, Gennaro has not alarmed my

susceptible jealousy. I don't as yet see where that dear great

genius may fail.

Dear angel, I am like those pious souls who argue with their God,

for are not you my Providence? do I not owe my happiness to you?

You must never doubt, therefore, that you are constantly in my

thoughts.

I have seen Italy at last; seen it as you saw it, and as it ought

to be seen,--lighted to our souls by love, as it is by its own

bright sun and its masterpieces. I pity those who, being moved to

adoration at every step, have no hand to press, no heart in which

to shed the exuberance of emotions which calm themselves when

shared. These two years have been to me a lifetime, in which my

memory has stored rich harvests. Have you made plans, as I do, to

stay forever at Chiavari, to buy a palazzo in Venice, a summer-

house at Sorrento, a villa in Florence? All loving women dread

society; but I, who am cast forever outside of it, ought I not to

bury myself in some beautiful landscape, on flowery slopes, facing

the sea, or in a valley that equals a sea, like that of Fiesole?

But alas! we are only poor artists, and want of money is bringing

these two bohemians back to Paris. Gennaro does not want me to

feel that I have lost my luxury, and he wishes to put his new

work, a grand opera, into rehearsal at once. You will understand,

of course, my dearest, that I cannot set foot in Paris. I could

not, I would not, even if it costs me my love, meet one of those

glances of women, or of men, which would make me think of murder

or suicide. Yes, I could hack in pieces whoever insulted me with

pity; like Chateauneuf, who, in the time of Henri III., I think,

rode his horse at the Provost of Paris for a wrong of that kind,

and trampled him under hoof.

I write, therefore, to say that I shall soon pay you a visit at

Les Touches. I want to stay there, in that Chartreuse, while

awaiting the success of our Gennaro's opera. You will see that I

am bold with my benefactress, my sister; but I prove, at any rate,

that the greatness of obligations laid upon me has not led me, as

it does so many people, to ingratitude. You have told me so much

of the difficulties of the land journey that I shall go to Croisic

by water. This idea came to me on finding that there is a little

Danish vessel now here, laden with marble, which is to touch at

Croisic for a cargo of salt on its way back to the Baltic. I shall

thus escape the fatigue and the cost of the land journey. Dear

Felicite, you are the only person with whom I could be alone

without Conti. Will it not be some pleasure to have a woman with

you who understands your heart as fully as you do hers?

Adieu, /a bientot/. The wind is favorable, and I set sail, wafting

you a kiss.

Beatrix.

"Ah! she loves, too!" thought Calyste, folding the letter sadly.

That sadness flowed to the heart of the mother as if some gleam had

lighted up a gulf to her. The baron had gone out; Fanny went to the

door of the tower and pushed the bolt, then she returned, and leaned

upon the back of her boy's chair, like the sister of Dido in Guerin's

picture, and said,--

"What is it, my Calyste? what makes you so sad? You promised to

explain to me these visits to Les Touches; I am to bless its mistress,

--at least, you said so."

"Yes, indeed you will, dear mother," he replied. "She has shown me the

insufficiency of my education at an epoch when the nobles ought to

possess a personal value in order to give life to their rank. I was as

far from the age we live in as Guerande is from Paris. She has been,

as it were, the mother of my intellect."

"I cannot bless her for that," said the baroness, with tears in her

eyes.

"Mamma!" cried Calyste, on whose forehead those hot tears fell, two

pearls of sorrowful motherhood, "mamma, don't weep! Just now, when I

wanted to do her a service, and search the country round, she said,

'It will make your mother so uneasy.'"

"Did she say that? Then I can forgive her many things," replied Fanny.

"Felicite thinks only of my good," continued Calyste. "She often

checks the lively, venturesome language of artists so as not to shake

me in a faith which is, though she knows it not, unshakable. She has

told me of the life in Paris of several young men of the highest

nobility coming from their provinces, as I might do,--leaving families

without fortune, but obtaining in Paris, by the power of their will

and their intellect, a great career. I can do what the Baron de

Rastignac, now a minister of State, has done. Felicite has taught me;

I read with her; she gives me lessons on the piano; she is teaching me

Italian; she has initiated me into a thousand social secrets, about

which no one in Guerande knows anything at all. She could not give me

the treasures of her love, but she has given me those of her vast

intellect, her mind, her genius. She does not want to be a pleasure,

but a light to me; she lessens not one of my faiths; she herself has

faith in the nobility, she loves Brittany, she--"

"She has changed our Calyste," said his blind old aunt, interrupting

him. "I do not understand one word he has been saying. You have a

solid roof over your head, my good nephew; you have parents and

relations who adore you, and faithful servants; you can marry some

good little Breton girl, religious and accomplished, who will make you

happy. Reserve your ambitions for your eldest son, who may be four

times as rich as you, if you choose to live tranquilly, thriftily, in

obscurity,--but in the peace of God,--in order to release the burdens

on your estate. It is all as simple as a Breton heart. You will be,

not so rapidly perhaps, but more solidly, a rich nobleman."

"Your aunt is right, my darling; she plans for your happiness with as

much anxiety as I do myself. If I do not succeed in marrying you to my

niece, Margaret, the daughter of your uncle, Lord Fitzwilliam, it is

almost certain that Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel will leave her fortune to

whichever of her nieces you may choose."

"And besides, there's a little gold to be found here," added the old

aunt in a low voice, with a mysterious glance about her.

"Marry! at my age!" he said, casting on his mother one of those looks

which melt the arguments of mothers. "Am I to live without my

beautiful fond loves? Must I never tremble or throb or fear or gasp,

or lie beneath implacable looks and soften them? Am I never to know

beauty in its freedom, the fantasy of the soul, the clouds that course

through the azure of happiness, which the breath of pleasure

dissipates? Ah! shall I never wander in those sweet by-paths moist

with dew; never stand beneath the drenching of a gutter and not know

it rains, like those lovers seen by Diderot; never take, like the Duc

de Lorraine, a live coal in my hand? Are there no silken ladders for

me, no rotten trellises to cling to and not fall? Shall I know nothing

of woman but conjugal submission; nothing of love but the flame of its

lamp-wick? Are my longings to be satisfied before they are roused?

Must I live out my days deprived of that madness of the heart that

makes a man and his power? Would you make me a married monk? No! I

have eaten of the fruit of Parisian civilization. Do you not see that

you have, by the ignorant morals of this family, prepared the fire

that consumes me, that /will/ consume me utterly, unless I can adore

the divineness I see everywhere,--in those sands gleaming in the sun,

in the green foliage, in all the women, beautiful, noble, elegant,

pictured in the books and in the poems I have read with Camille? Alas!

there is but one such woman in Guerande, and it is you, my mother! The

birds of my beautiful dream, they come from Paris, they fly from the

pages of Scott, of Byron,--Parisina, Effie, Minna! yes, and that royal

duchess, whom I saw on the moors among the furze and the ferns, whose

very aspect sent the blood to my heart."

The baroness saw these thoughts flaming in the eyes of her son,

clearer, more beautiful, more living than art can tell to those who

read them. She grasped them rapidly, flung to her as they were in

glances like arrows from an upset quiver. Without having read

Beaumarchais, she felt, as other women would have felt, that it would

be a crime to marry Calyste.

"Oh! my child!" she said, taking him in her arms, and kissing the

beautiful hair that was still hers, "marry whom you will, and when you

will, but be happy! My part in life is not to hamper you."

Mariotte came to lay the table. Gasselin was out exercising Calyste's

horse, which the youth had not mounted for two months. The three

women, mother, aunt, and Mariotte, shared in the tender feminine

wiliness, which taught them to make much of Calyste when he dined at

home. Breton plainness fought against Parisian luxury, now brought to

the very doors of Guerande. Mariotte endeavored to wean her young

master from the accomplished service of Camille Maupin's kitchen, just

as his mother and aunt strove to hold him in the net of their

tenderness and render all comparison impossible.

"There's a salmon-trout for dinner, Monsieur Calyste, and snipe, and

pancakes such as I know you can't get anywhere but here," said

Mariotte, with a sly, triumphant look as she smoothed the cloth, a

cascade of snow.

After dinner, when the old aunt had taken up her knitting, and the

rector and Monsieur du Halga had arrived, allured by their precious

/mouche/, Calyste went back to Les Touches on the pretext of returning

the letter.

Claude Vignon and Felicite were still at table. The great critic was

something of a gourmand, and Felicite pampered the vice, knowing how

indispensable a woman makes herself by such compliance. The dinner-

table presented that rich and brilliant aspect which modern luxury,

aided by the perfecting of handicrafts, now gives to its service. The

poor and noble house of Guenic little knew with what an adversary it

was attempting to compete, or what amount of fortune was necessary to

enter the lists against the silverware, the delicate porcelain, the

beautiful linen, the silver-gilt service brought from Paris by

Mademoiselle des Touches, and the science of her cook. Calyste

declined the liqueurs contained in one of those superb cases of

precious woods, which are something like tabernacles.

"Here's the letter," he said, with innocent ostentation, looking at

Claude, who was slowly sipping a glass of /liqueur-des-iles/.

"Well, what did you think of it?" asked Mademoiselle des Touches,

throwing the letter across the table to Vignon, who began to read it,

taking up and putting down at intervals his little glass.

"I thought--well, that Parisian women were very fortunate to have men

of genius to adore who adore them."

"Ah! you are still in your village," said Felicite, laughing. "What!

did you not see that she loves him less, and--"

"That is evident," said Claude Vignon, who had only read the first

page. "Do people reason on their situation when they really love; are

they as shrewd as the marquise, as observing, as discriminating? Your

dear Beatrix is held to Conti now by pride only; she is condemned to

love him /quand meme/."

"Poor woman!" said Camille.

Calyste's eyes were fixed on the table; he saw nothing about him. The

beautiful woman in the fanciful dress described that morning by

Felicite appeared to him crowned with light; she smiled to him, she

waved her fan; the other hand, issuing from its ruffle of lace, fell

white and pure on the heavy folds of her crimson velvet robe.

"She is just the thing for you," said Claude Vignon, smiling

sardonically at Calyste.

The young man was deeply wounded by the words, and by the manner in

which they were said.

"Don't put such ideas into Calyste's mind; you don't know how

dangerous such jokes may prove to be," said Mademoiselle des Touches,

hastily. "I know Beatrix, and there is something too grandiose in her

nature to allow her to change. Besides, Conti will be here."

"Ha!" said Claude Vignon, satirically, "a slight touch of jealousy,

eh?"

"Can you really think so?" said Camille, haughtily.

"You are more perspicacious than a mother," replied Claude Vignon,

still sarcastically.

"But it would be impossible," said Camille, looking at Calyste.

"They are very well matched," remarked Vignon. "She is ten years older

than he; and it is he who appears to be the girl--"

"A girl, monsieur," said Calyste, waking from his reverie, "who has

been twice under fire in La Vendee! If the Cause had had twenty

thousand more such girls--"

"I was giving you some well-deserved praise, and that is easier than

to give you a beard," remarked Vignon.

"I have a sword for those who wear their beards too long," cried

Calyste.

"And I am very good at an epigram," said the other, smiling. "We are

Frenchmen; the affair can easily be arranged."

Mademoiselle des Touches cast a supplicating look on Calyste, which

calmed him instantly.

"Why," said Felicite, as if to break up the discussion, "do young men

like my Calyste, begin by loving women of a certain age?"

"I don't know any sentiment more artless or more generous," replied

Vignon. "It is the natural consequence of the adorable qualities of

youth. Besides, how would old women end if it were not for such love?

You are young and beautiful, and will be for twenty years to come, so

I can speak of this matter before you," he added, with a keen look at

Mademoiselle des Touches. "In the first place the semi-dowagers, to

whom young men pay their first court, know much better how to make

love than younger women. An adolescent youth is too like a young woman

himself for a young woman to please him. Such a passion trenches on

the fable of Narcissus. Besides that feeling of repugnance, there is,

as I think, a mutual sense of inexperience which separates them. The

reason why the hearts of young women are only understood by mature

men, who conceal their cleverness under a passion real or feigned, is

precisely the same (allowing for the difference of minds) as that

which renders a woman of a certain age more adroit in attracting

youth. A young man feels that he is sure to succeed with her, and the

vanities of the woman are flattered by his suit. Besides, isn't it

natural for youth to fling itself on fruits? The autumn of a woman's

life offers many that are very toothsome,--those looks, for instance,

bold, and yet reserved, bathed with the last rays of love, so warm, so

sweet; that all-wise elegance of speech, those magnificent shoulders,

so nobly developed, the full and undulating outline, the dimpled

hands, the hair so well arranged, so cared for, that charming nape of

the neck, where all the resources of art are displayed to exhibit the

contrast between the hair and the flesh-tones, and to set in full

relief the exuberance of life and love. Brunettes themselves are fair

at such times, with the amber colors of maturity. Besides, such women

reveal in their smiles and display in their words a knowledge of the

world; they know how to converse; they can call up the whole of social

life to make a lover laugh; their dignity and their pride are

stupendous; or, in other moods, they can utter despairing cries which

touch his soul, farewells of love which they take care to render

useless, and only make to intensify his passion. Their devotions are

absolute; they listen to us; they love us; they catch, they cling to

love as a man condemned to death clings to the veriest trifles of

existence,--in short, love, absolute love, is known only through them.

I think such women can never be forgotten by a man, any more than he

can forget what is grand and sublime. A young woman has a thousand

distractions; these women have none. No longer have they self-love,

pettiness, or vanity; their love--it is the Loire at its mouth, it is

vast, it is swelled by all the illusions, all the affluents of life,

and this is why--but my muse is dumb," he added, observing the

ecstatic attitude of Mademoiselle des Touches, who was pressing

Calyste's hand with all her strength, perhaps to thank him for having

been the occasion of such a moment, of such an eulogy, so lofty that

she did not see the trap that it laid for her.

During the rest of the evening Claude Vignon and Felicite sparkled

with wit and happy sayings; they told anecdotes, and described

Parisian life to Calyste, who was charmed with Claude, for mind has

immense seductions for persons who are all heart.

"I shouldn't be surprised to see the Marquise de Rochefide and Conti,

who, of course, will accompany her, at the landing-place to-morrow,"

said Claude Vignon, as the evening ended. "When I was at Croisic this

afternoon, the fishermen were saying that they had seen a little

vessel, Danish, Swedish, or Norwegian, in the offing."

This speech brought a flush to the cheeks of the impassible Camille.

Again Madame du Guenic sat up till one o'clock that night, waiting for

her son, unable to imagine why he should stay so late if Mademoiselle

des Touches did not love him.

"He must be in their way," said this adorable mother. "What were you

talking about?" she asked, when at last he came in.

"Oh, mother, I have never before spent such a delightful evening.

Genius is a great, a sublime thing! Why didn't you give me genius?

With genius we can make our lives, we can choose among all women the

woman to love, and she must be ours."

"How handsome you are, my Calyste!"

"Claude Vignon is handsome. Men of genius have luminous foreheads and

eyes, through which the lightnings flash--but I, alas! I know nothing

--only to love."

"They say that suffices, my angel," she said, kissing him on the

forehead.

"Do you believe it?"

"They say so, but I have never known it."

Calyste kissed his mother's hand as if it was a sacred thing.

"I will love you for all those that would have adored you," he said.

"Dear child! perhaps it is a little bit your duty to do so, for you

inherit my nature. But, Calyste, do not be unwise, imprudent; try to

love only noble women, if love you must."

IX

A FIRST MEETING

What young man full of abounding but restrained life and emotion would

not have had the glorious idea of going to Croisic to see Madame de

Rochefide land, and examine her incognito? Calyste greatly surprised

his father and mother by going off in the morning without waiting for

the mid-day breakfast. Heaven knows with what agility the young

Breton's feet sped along. Some unknown vigor seemed lent to him; he

walked on air, gliding along by the walls of Les Touches that he might

not be seen from the house. The adorable boy was ashamed of his ardor,

and afraid of being laughed at; Felicite and Vignon were so

perspicacious! besides, in such cases young fellows fancy that their

foreheads are transparent.

He reached the shore, strengthened by a stone embankment, at the foot

of which is a house where travellers can take shelter in storms of

wind or rain. It is not always possible to cross the little arm of the

sea which separates the landing-place of Guerande from Croisic; the

weather may be bad, or the boats not ready; and during this time of

waiting, it is necessary to put not only the passengers but their

horses, donkeys, baggages, and merchandise under cover.

Calyste presently saw two boats coming over from Croisic, laden with

baggage,--trunks, packages, bags, and chests,--the shape and

appearance of which proved to a native of these parts that such

extraordinary articles must belong to travellers of distinction. In

one of the boats was a young woman in a straw bonnet with a green

veil, accompanied by a man. This boat was the first to arrive. Calyste

trembled until on closer view he saw they were a maid and a man-

servant.

"Are you going over to Croisic, Monsieur Calyste?" said one of the

boatmen; to whom he replied with a shake of the head, annoyed at being

called by his name.

He was captivated by the sight of a chest covered with tarred cloth on

which were painted the words, MME. LA MARQUISE DE ROCHEFIDE. The name

shone before him like a talisman; he fancied there was something

fateful in it. He knew in some mysterious way, which he could not

doubt, that he should love that woman. Why? In the burning desert of

his new and infinite desires, still vague and without an object, his

fancy fastened with all its strength on the first woman that presented

herself. Beatrix necessarily inherited the love which Camille had

rejected.

Calyste watched the landing of the luggage, casting from time to time

a glance at Croisic, from which he hoped to see another boat put out

to cross to the little promontory, and show him Beatrix, already to

his eyes what Beatrice was to Dante, a marble statue on which to hang

his garlands and his flowers. He stood with arms folded, lost in

meditation. Here is a fact worthy of remark, which, nevertheless, has

never been remarked: we often subject ourselves to sentiments by our

own volition,--deliberately bind ourselves, and create our own fate;

chance has not as much to do with it as we believe.

"I don't see any horses," said the maid, sitting on a trunk.

"And I don't see any road," said the footman.

"Horses have been here, though," replied the woman, pointing to the

proofs of their presence. "Monsieur," she said, addressing Calyste,

"is this really the way to Guerande?"

"Yes," he replied, "are you expecting some one to meet you?"

"We were told that they would fetch us from Les Touches. If they don't

come," she added to the footman, "I don't know how Madame la marquise

will manage to dress for dinner. You had better go and find

Mademoiselle des Touches. Oh! what a land of savages!"

Calyste had a vague idea of having blundered.

"Is your mistress going to Les Touches?" he inquired.

"She is there; Mademoiselle came for her this morning at seven

o'clock. Ah! here come the horses."

Calyste started toward Guerande with the lightness and agility of a

chamois, doubling like a hare that he might not return upon his tracks

or meet any of the servants of Les Touches. He did, however, meet two

of them on the narrow causeway of the marsh along which he went.

"Shall I go in, or shall I not?" he thought when the pines of Les

Touches came in sight. He was afraid; and continued his way rather

sulkily to Guerande, where he finished his excursion on the mall and

continued his reflections.

"She has no idea of my agitation," he said to himself.

His capricious thoughts were so many grapnels which fastened his heart

to the marquise. He had known none of these mysterious terrors and

joys in his intercourse with Camille. Such vague emotions rise like

poems in the untutored soul. Warmed by the first fires of imagination,

souls like his have been known to pass through all phases of

preparation and to reach in silence and solitude the very heights of

love, without having met the object of so many efforts.

Presently Calyste saw, coming toward him, the Chevalier du Halga and

Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, who were walking together on the mall. He

heard them say his name, and he slipped aside out of sight, but not

out of hearing. The chevalier and the old maid, believing themselves

alone, were talking aloud.

"If Charlotte de Kergarouet comes," said the chevalier, "keep her four

or five months. How can you expect her to coquette with Calyste? She

is never here long enough to undertake it. Whereas, if they see each

other every day, those two children will fall in love, and you can

marry them next winter. If you say two words about it to Charlotte

she'll say four to Calyste, and a girl of sixteen can certainly carry

off the prize from a woman of forty."

Here the old people turned to retrace their steps and Calyste heard no

more. But remembering what his mother had told him, he saw

Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel's intention, and, in the mood in which he

then was, nothing could have been more fatal. The mere idea of a girl

thus imposed upon him sent him with greater ardor into his imaginary

love. He had never had a fancy for Charlotte de Kergarouet, and he now

felt repugnance at the very thought of her. Calyste was quite

unaffected by questions of fortune; from infancy he had accustomed his

life to the poverty and the restricted means of his father's house. A

young man brought up as he had been, and now partially emancipated,

was likely to consider sentiments only, and all his sentiments, all

his thought now belonged to the marquise. In presence of the portrait

which Camille had drawn for him of her friend, what was that little

Charlotte? the companion of his childhood, whom he thought of as a

sister.

He did not go home till five in the afternoon. As he entered the hall

his mother gave him, with a rather sad smile, the following letter

from Mademoiselle des Touches:--

My dear Calyste,--The beautiful marquise has come; we count on you

to help us celebrate her arrival. Claude, always sarcastic,

declares that you will play Bice and that she will be Dante. It is

for our honor as Bretons, and yours as a du Guenic to welcome a

Casteran. Come soon.

Your friend, Camille Maupin.

Come as you are, without ceremony; otherwise you will put us to

the blush.

Calyste gave the letter to his mother and departed.

"Who are the Casterans?" said Fanny to the baron.

"An old Norman family, allied to William the Conqueror," he replied.

"They bear on a shield tierce fessed azure, gules and sable, a horse

rearing argent, shod with gold. That beautiful creature for whom the

Gars was killed at Fougeres in 1800 was the daughter of a Casteran who

made herself a nun, and became an abbess after the Duc de Verneuil

deserted her."

"And the Rochefides?"

"I don't know that name. I should have to see the blazon," he replied.

The baroness was somewhat reassured on hearing that the Marquise de

Rochefide was born of a noble family, but she felt that her son was

now exposed to new seductions.

Calyste as he walked along felt all sorts of violent and yet soft

inward movements; his throat was tight, his heart swelled, his brain

was full, a fever possessed him. He tried to walk slowly, but some

superior power hurried him. This impetuosity of the several senses

excited by vague expectation is known to all young men. A subtle fire

flames within their breasts and darts outwardly about them, like the

rays of a nimbus around the heads of divine personages in works of

religious art; through it they see all Nature glorious, and woman

radiant. Are they not then like those haloed saints, full of faith,

hope, ardor, purity?

The young Breton found the company assembled in the little salon of

Camille's suite of rooms. It was then about six o'clock; the sun, in

setting, cast through the windows its ruddy light chequered by the

trees; the air was still; twilight, beloved of women, was spreading

through the room.

"Here comes the future deputy of Brittany," said Camille Maupin,

smiling, as Calyste raised the tapestry portiere,--"punctual as a

king."

"You recognized his step just now," said Claude to Felicite in a low

voice.

Calyste bowed low to the marquise, who returned the salutation with an

inclination of her head; he did not look at her; but he took the hand

Claude Vignon held out to him and pressed it.

"This is the celebrated man of whom we have talked so much, Gennaro

Conti," said Camille, not replying to Claude Vignon's remark.

She presented to Calyste a man of medium height, thin and slender,

with chestnut hair, eyes that were almost red, and a white skin,

freckled here and there, whose head was so precisely the well-known

head of Lord Byron (though rather better carried on his shoulders)

that description is superfluous. Conti was rather proud of this

resemblance.

"I am fortunate," he said, "to meet Monsieur du Guenic during the one

day that I spend at Les Touches."

"It was for me to say that to you," replied Calyste, with a certain

ease.

"He is handsome as an angel," said the marquise in an under tone to

Felicite.

Standing between the sofa and the two ladies, Calyste heard the words

confusedly. He seated himself in an arm-chair and looked furtively

toward the marquise. In the soft half-light he saw, reclining on a

divan, as if a sculptor had placed it there, a white and serpentine

shape which thrilled him. Without being aware of it, Felicite had done

her friend a service; the marquise was much superior to the

unflattered portrait Camille had drawn of her the night before. Was it

to do honor to the guest that Beatrix had wound into her hair those

tufts of blue-bells that gave value to the pale tints of her creped

curls, so arranged as to fall around her face and play upon the

cheeks? The circle of her eyes, which showed fatigue, was of the

purest mother-of-pearl, her skin was as dazzling as the eyes, and

beneath its whiteness, delicate as the satiny lining of an egg, life

abounded in the beautiful blue veins. The delicacy of the features was

extreme; the forehead seemed diaphanous. The head, so sweet and

fragrant, admirably joined to a long neck of exquisite moulding, lent

itself to many and most diverse expressions. The waist, which could be

spanned by the hands, had a charming willowy ease; the bare shoulders

sparkled in the twilight like a white camellia. The throat, visible to

the eye though covered with a transparent fichu, allowed the graceful

outlines of the bosom to be seen with charming roguishness. A gown of

white muslin, strewn with blue flowers, made with very large sleeves,

a pointed body and no belt, shoes with strings crossed on the instep

over Scotch thread stockings, showed a charming knowledge of the art

of dress. Ear-rings of silver filagree, miracles of Genoese jewelry,

destined no doubt to become the fashion, were in perfect harmony with

the delightful flow of the soft curls starred with blue-bells.

Calyste's eager eye took in these beauties at a glance, and carved

them on his soul. The fair Beatrix and the dark Felicite might have

sat for those contrasting portraits in "keepsakes" which English

designers and engravers seek so persistently. Here were the force and

the feebleness of womanhood in full development, a perfect antithesis.

These two women could never be rivals; each had her own empire. Here

was the delicate campanula, or the lily, beside the scarlet poppy; a

turquoise near a ruby. In a moment, as it were,--at first sight, as

the saying is,--Calyste was seized with a love which crowned the

secret work of his hopes, his fears, his uncertainties. Mademoiselle

des Touches had awakened his nature; Beatrix inflamed both his heart

and thoughts. The young Breton suddenly felt within him a power to

conquer all things, and yield to nothing that stood in his way. He

looked at Conti with an envious, gloomy, savage rivalry he had never

felt for Claude Vignon. He employed all his strength to control

himself; but the inward tempest went down as soon as the eyes of

Beatrix turned to him, and her soft voice sounded in his ear. Dinner

was announced.

"Calyste, give your arm to the marquise," said Mademoiselle des

Touches, taking Conti with her right hand, and Claude Vignon with her

left, and drawing back to let the marquise pass.

The descent of that ancient staircase was to Calyste like the moment

of going into battle for the first time. His heart failed him, he had

nothing to say; a slight sweat pearled upon his forehead and wet his

back; his arm trembled so much that as they reached the lowest step

the marquise said to him: "Is anything the matter?"

"Oh!" he replied, in a muffled tone, "I have never seen any woman so

beautiful as you, except my mother, and I am not master of my

emotions."

"But you have Camille Maupin before your eyes."

"Ah! what a difference!" said Calyste, ingenuously.

"Calyste," whispered Felicite, who was just behind him, "did I not

tell you that you would forget me as if I had never existed? Sit

there," she said aloud, "beside the marquise, on her right, and you,

Claude, on her left. As for you, Gennaro, I retain you by me; we will

keep a mutual eye on their coquetries."

The peculiar accept which Camille gave to the last word struck Claude

Vignon's ear, and he cast that sly but half-abstracted look upon

Camille which always denoted in him the closest observation. He never

ceased to examine Mademoiselle des Touches throughout the dinner.

"Coquetries!" replied the marquis, taking off her gloves, and showing

her beautiful hands; "the opportunity is good, with a poet," and she

motioned to Claude, "on one side, and poesy the other."

At these words Conti turned and gave Calyste a look that was full of

flattery.

By artificial light, Beatrix seemed more beautiful than before. The

white gleam of the candles laid a satiny lustre on her forehead,

lighted the spangles of her eyes, and ran through her swaying curls,

touching them here and there into gold. She threw back the thin gauze

scarf she was wearing and disclosed her neck. Calyste then saw its

beautiful nape, white as milk, and hollowed near the head, until its

lines were lost toward the shoulders with soft and flowing symmetry.

This neck, so dissimilar to that of Camille, was the sign of a totally

different character in Beatrix.

Calyste found much trouble in pretending to eat; nervous motions

within him deprived him of appetite. Like other young men, his nature

was in the throes and convulsions which precede love, and carve it

indelibly on the soul. At his age, the ardor of the heart, restrained

by moral ardor, leads to an inward conflict, which explains the long

and respectful hesitations, the tender debatings, the absence of all

calculation, characteristic of young men whose hearts and lives are

pure. Studying, though furtively, so as not to attract the notice of

Conti, the various details which made the marquise so purely

beautiful, Calyste became, before long, oppressed by a sense of her

majesty; he felt himself dwarfed by the hauteur of certain of her

glances, by the imposing expression of a face that was wholly

aristocratic, by a sort of pride which women know how to express in

slight motions, turns of the head, and slow gestures, effects less

plastic and less studied than we think. The false situation in which

Beatrix had placed herself compelled her to watch her own behavior,

and to keep herself imposing without being ridiculously so. Women of

the great world know how to succeed in this, which proves a fatal reef

to vulgar women.

The expression of Felicite's eyes made Beatrix aware of the inward

adoration she inspired in the youth beside her, and also that it would

be most unworthy on her part to encourage it. She therefore took

occasion now and then to give him a few repressive glances, which fell

upon his heart like an avalanche of snow. The unfortunate young fellow

turned on Felicite a look in which she could read the tears he was

suppressing by superhuman efforts. She asked him in a friendly tone

why he was eating nothing. The question piqued him, and he began to

force himself to eat and to take part in the conversation.

But whatever he did, Madame de Rochefide paid little attention to him.

Mademoiselle des Touches having started the topic of her journey to

Italy she related, very wittily, many of its incidents, which made

Claude Vignon, Conti, and Felicite laugh.

"Ah!" thought Calyste, "how far such a woman is from me! Will she ever

deign to notice me?"

Mademoiselle des Touches was struck with the expression she now saw on

Calyste's face, and tried to console him with a look of sympathy.

Claude Vignon intercepted that look. From that moment the great critic

expanded into gaiety that overflowed in sarcasm. He maintained to

Beatrix that love existed only by desire; that most women deceived

themselves in loving; that they loved for reasons unknown to men and

to themselves; that they wanted to deceive themselves, and that the

best among them were artful.

"Keep to books, and don't criticise our lives," said Camille, glancing

at him imperiously.

The dinner ceased to be gay. Claude Vignon's sarcasm had made the two

women pensive. Calyste was conscious of pain in the midst of the

happiness he found in looking at Beatrix. Conti looked into the eyes

of the marquise to guess her thoughts. When dinner was over

Mademoiselle des Touches took Calyste's arm, gave the other two men to

the marquise, and let them pass before her, that she might be alone

with the young Breton for a moment.

"My dear Calyste," she said, "you are acting in a manner that

embarrasses the marquise; she may be delighted with your admiration,

but she cannot accept it. Pray control yourself."

"She was hard to me, she will never care for me," said Calyste, "and

if she does not I shall die."

"Die! you! My dear Calyste, you are a child. Would you have died for

me?"

"You have made yourself my friend," he answered.

After the talk that follows coffee, Vignon asked Conti to sing

something. Mademoiselle des Touches sat down to the piano. Together

she and Gennaro sang the /Dunque il mio bene tu mia sarai/, the last

duet of Zingarelli's "Romeo e Giulietta," one of the most pathetic

pages of modern music. The passage /Di tanti palpiti/ expresses love

in all its grandeur. Calyste, sitting in the same arm-chair in which

Felicite had told him the history of the marquise, listened in rapt

devotion. Beatrix and Vignon were on either side of the piano. Conti's

sublime voice knew well how to blend with that of Felicite. Both had

often sung this piece; they knew its resources, and they put their

whole marvellous gift into bringing them out. The music was at this

moment what its creator intended, a poem of divine melancholy, the

farewell of two swans to life. When it was over, all present were

under the influence of feelings such as cannot express themselves by

vulgar applause.

"Ah! music is the first of arts!" exclaimed the marquise.

"Camille thinks youth and beauty the first of poesies," said Claude

Vignon.

Mademoiselle des Touches looked at Claude with vague uneasiness.

Beatrix, not seeing Calyste, turned her head as if to know what effect

the music had produced upon him, less by way of interest in him than

for the gratification of Conti; she saw a white face bathed in tears.

At the sight, and as if some sudden pain had seized her, she turned

back quickly and looked at Gennaro. Not only had Music arisen before

the eyes of Calyste, touching him with her divine wand until he stood

in presence of Creation from which she rent the veil, but he was

dumfounded by Conti's genius. In spite of what Camille had told him of

the musician's character, he now believed in the beauty of the soul,

in the heart that expressed such love. How could he, Calyste, rival

such as an artist? What woman could ever cease to adore such genius?

That voice entered the soul like another soul. The poor lad was

overwhelmed by poesy, and his own despair. He felt himself of no

account. This ingenuous admission of his nothingness could be read

upon his face mingled with his admiration. He did not observe the

gesture with which Beatrix, attracted to Calyste by the contagion of a

true feeling, called Felicite's attention to him.

"Oh! the adorable heart!" cried Camille. "Conti, you will never obtain

applause of one-half the value of that child's homage. Let us sing this

trio. Beatrix, my dear, come."

When the marquise, Camille, and Conti had arranged themselves at the

piano, Calyste rose softly, without attracting their attention, and

flung himself on one of the sofas in the bedroom, the door of which

stood open, where he sat with his head in his hands, plunged in

meditation.

X

DRAMA

"What is it, my child?" said Claude Vignon, who had slipped silently

into the bedroom after Calyste, and now took him by the hand. "You

love; you think you are disdained; but it is not so. The field will be

free to you in a few days and you will reign--beloved by more than

one."

"Loved!" cried Calyste, springing up, and beckoning Claude into the

library, "Who loves me here?"

"Camille," replied Claude.

"Camille loves me? And you!--what of you?"

"I?" answered Claude, "I--" He stopped; sat down on a sofa and rested

his head with weary sadness on a cushion. "I am tired of life, but I

have not the courage to quit it," he went on, after a short silence.

"I wish I were mistaken in what I have just told you; but for the last

few days more than one vivid light has come into my mind. I did not

wander about the marshes for my pleasure; no, upon my soul I did not!

The bitterness of my words when I returned and found you with Camille

were the result of wounded feeling. I intend to have an explanation

with her soon. Two minds as clear-sighted as hers and mine cannot

deceive each other. Between two such professional duellists the combat

cannot last long. Therefore I may as well tell you now that I shall

leave Les Touches; yes, to-morrow perhaps, with Conti. After we are

gone strange things will happen here. I shall regret not witnessing

conflicts of passion of a kind so rare in France, and so dramatic. You

are very young to enter such dangerous lists; you interest me; were it

not for the profound disgust I feel for women, I would stay and help

you play this game. It is difficult; you may lose it; you have to do

with two extraordinary women, and you feel too much for one to use the

other judiciously. Beatrix is dogged by nature; Camille has grandeur.

Probably you will be wrecked between those reefs, drawn upon them by

the waves of passion. Beware!"

Calyste's stupefaction on hearing these words enabled Claude to say

them without interruption and leave the young Breton, who remained

like a traveller among the Alps to whom a guide has shown the depth of

some abyss by flinging a stone into it. To hear from the lips of

Claude himself that Camille loved him, at the very moment when he felt

that he loved Beatrix for life, was a weight too heavy for his untried

soul to bear. Goaded by an immense regret which now filled all the

past, overwhelmed with a sight of his position between Beatrix whom he

loved and Camille whom he had ceased to love, the poor boy sat

despairing and undecided, lost in thought. He sought in vain for the

reasons which had made Felicite reject his love and bring Claude

Vignon from Paris to oppose it. Every now and then the voice of

Beatrix came fresh and pure to his ears from the little salon; a

savage desire to rush in and carry her off seized him at such moments.

What would become of him? What must he do? Could he come to Les

Touches? If Camille loved him how could he come there to adore

Beatrix? He saw no solution to these difficulties.

Insensibly to him silence now reigned in the house; he heard, but

without noticing, the opening and shutting of doors. Then suddenly

midnight sounded on the clock of the adjoining bedroom, and the voices

of Claude and Camille roused him fully from his torpid contemplation

of the future. Before he could rise and show himself, he heard the

following terrible words in the voice of Claude Vignon.

"You came to Paris last year desperately in love with Calyste," Claude

was saying to Felicite, "but you were horrified at the thought of the

consequences of such a passion at your age; it would lead you to a

gulf, to hell, to suicide perhaps. Love cannot exist unless it thinks

itself eternal, and you saw not far before you a horrible parting; old

age you knew would end the glorious poem soon. You thought of

'Adolphe,' that dreadful finale of the loves of Madame de Stael and

Benjamin Constant, who, however, were nearer of an age than you and

Calyste. Then you took me, as soldiers use fascines to build

entrenchments between the enemy and themselves. You brought me to Les

Touches to mask your real feelings and leave you safe to follow your

own secret adoration. The scheme was grand and ignoble both; but to

carry it out you should have chosen either a common man or one so

preoccupied by noble thoughts that you could easily deceive him. You

thought me simple and easy to mislead as a man of genius. I am not a

man of genius, I am a man of talent, and as such I have divined you.

When I made that eulogy yesterday on women of your age, explaining to

you why Calyste had loved you, do you suppose I took to myself your

ravished, fascinated, fazzling glance? Had I not read into your soul?

The eyes were turned on me, but the heart was throbbing for Calyste.

You have never been loved, my poor Maupin, and you never will be after

rejecting the beautiful fruit which chance has offered to you at the

portals of that hell of woman, the lock of which is the numeral 50!"

"Why has love fled me?" she said in a low voice. "Tell me, you who

know all."

"Because you are not lovable," he answered. "You do not bend to love;

love must bend to you. You may perhaps have yielded to some follies of

youth, but there was no youth in your heart; your mind has too much

depth; you have never been naive and artless, and you cannot begin to

be so now. Your charm comes from mystery; it is abstract, not active.

Your strength repulses men of strength who fear a struggle. Your power

may please young souls, like that of Calyste, which like to be

protected; though, even them it wearies in the long run. You are

grand, and you are sublime; bear with the consequence of those two

qualities--they fatigue."

"What a sentence!" cried Camille. "Am I not a woman? Do you think me

an anomaly?"

"Possibly," said Claude.

"We will see!" said the woman, stung to the quick.

"Farewell, my dear Camille; I leave to-morrow. I am not angry with

you, my dear; I think you the greatest of women, but if I continued to

serve you as a screen, or a shield," said Claude, with two significant

inflections of his voice, "you would despise me. We can part now

without pain or remorse; we have neither happiness to regret nor hopes

betrayed. To you, as with some few but rare men of genius, love is not

what Nature made it,--an imperious need, to the satisfaction of which

she attaches great and passing joys, which die. You see love such as

Christianity has created it,--an ideal kingdom, full of noble

sentiments, of grand weaknesses, poesies, spiritual sensations,

devotions of moral fragrance, entrancing harmonies, placed high above

all vulgar coarseness, to which two creatures as one angel fly on the

wings of pleasure. This is what I hoped to share; I thought I held in

you a key to that door, closed to so many, by which we may advance

toward the infinite. You were there already. In this you have misled

me. I return to my misery,--to my vast prison of Paris. Such a

deception as this, had it come to me earlier in life, would have made

me flee from existence; to-day it puts into my soul a disenchantment

which will plunge me forever into an awful solitude. I am without the

faith which helped the Fathers to people theirs with sacred images. It

is to this, my dear Camille, to this that the superiority of our mind

has brought us; we may, both of us, sing that dreadful hymn which a

poet has put into the mouth of Moses speaking to the Almighty: 'Lord

God, Thou hast made me powerful and solitary.'"

At this moment Calyste appeared.

"I ought not to leave you ignorant that I am here," he said.

Mademoiselle des Touches showed the utmost fear; a sudden flush

colored her impassible face with tints of fire. During this strange

scene she was more beautiful than at any other moment of her life.

"We thought you gone, Calyste," said Claude. "But this involuntary

discretion on both sides will do no harm; perhaps, indeed, you may be

more at your ease at Les Touches by knowing Felicite as she is. Her

silence shows me I am not mistaken as to the part she meant me to

play. As I told you before, she loves you, but it is for yourself, not

for herself,--a sentiment that few women are able to conceive and

practise; few among them know the voluptuous pleasure of sufferings

born of longing,--that is one of the magnificent passions reserved for

man. But she is in some sense a man," he added, sardonically. "Your

love for Beatrix will make her suffer and make her happy too."

Tears were in the eyes of Mademoiselle des Touches, who was unable to

look either at the terrible Vignon or the ingenuous Calyste. She was

frightened at being understood; she had supposed to impossible for a

man, however keen his perception, to perceive a delicacy so self-

immolating, a heroism so lofty as her own. Her evident humiliation at

this unveiling of her grandeur made Calyste share the emotion of the

woman he had held so high, and now beheld so stricken down. He threw

himself, from an irresistible impulse, at her feet, and kissed her

hands, laying his face, covered with tears, upon them.

"Claude," she said, "do not abandon me, or what will become of me?"

"What have you to fear?" replied the critic. "Calyste has fallen in

love at first sight with the marquise; you cannot find a better

barrier between you than that. This passion of his is worth more to

you than I. Yesterday there might have been some danger for you and

for him; to-day you can take a maternal interest in him," he said,

with a mocking smile, "and be proud of his triumphs."

Mademoiselle des Touches looked at Calyste, who had raised his head

abruptly at these words. Claude Vignon enjoyed, for his sole

vengeance, the sight of their confusion.

"You yourself have driven him to Madame de Rochefide," continued

Claude, "and he is now under the spell. You have dug your own grave.

Had you confided in me, you would have escaped the sufferings that

await you."

"Sufferings!" cried Camille Maupin, taking Calyste's head in her

hands, and kissing his hair, on which her tears fell plentifully. "No,

Calyste; forget what you have heard; I count for nothing in all this."

She rose and stood erect before the two men, subduing both with the

lightning of her eyes, from which her soul shone out.

"While Claude was speaking," she said, "I conceived the beauty and the

grandeur of love without hope; it is the sentiment that brings us

nearest God. Do not love me, Calyste; but I will love you as no woman

will!"

It was the cry of a wounded eagle seeking its eyrie. Claude himself

knelt down, took Camille's hand, and kissed it.

"Leave us now, Calyste," she said, "it is late, and your mother will

be uneasy."

Calyste returned to Guerande with lagging steps, turning again and

again, to see the light from the windows of the room in which was

Beatrix. He was surprised himself to find how little pity he felt for

Camille. But presently he felt once more the agitations of that scene,

the tears she had left upon his hair; he suffered with her suffering;

he fancied he heard the moans of that noble woman, so beloved, so

desired but a few short days before.

When he opened the door of his paternal home, where total silence

reigned, he saw his mother through the window, as she sat sewing by

the light of the curiously constructed lamp while she awaited him.

Tears moistened the lad's eyes as he looked at her.

"What has happened?" cried Fanny, seeing his emotion, which filled her

with horrible anxiety.

For all answer, Calyste took his mother in his arms, and kissed her on

her cheeks, her forehead and hair, with one of those passionate

effusions of feeling that comfort mothers, and fill them with the

subtle flames of the life they have given.

"It is you I love, you!" cried Calyste,--"you, who live for me; you,

whom I long to render happy!"

"But you are not yourself, my child," said the baroness, looking at

him attentively. "What has happened to you?"

"Camille loves me, but I love her no longer," he answered.

The next day, Calyste told Gasselin to watch the road to Saint-

Nazaire, and let him know if the carriage of Mademoiselle des Touches

passed over it. Gasselin brought word that the carriage had passed.

"How many persons were in it?" asked Calyste.

"Four,--two ladies and two gentlemen."

"Then saddle my horse and my father's."

Gasselin departed.

"My, nephew, what mischief is in you now?" said his Aunt Zephirine.

"Let the boy amuse himself, sister," cried the baron. "Yesterday he

was dull as an owl; to-day he is gay as a lark."

"Did you tell him that our dear Charlotte was to arrive to-day?" said

Zephirine, turning to her sister-in-law.

"No," replied the baroness.

"I thought perhaps he was going to meet her," said Mademoiselle du

Guenic, slyly.

"If Charlotte is to stay three months with her aunt, he will have

plenty of opportunities to see her," said his mother.

"Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel wants me to marry Charlotte, to save me from

perdition," said Calyste, laughing. "I was on the mall when she and

the Chevalier du Halga were talking about it. She can't see that it

would be greater perdition for me to marry at my age--"

"It is written above," said the old maid, interrupting Calyste, "that

I shall not die tranquil or happy. I wanted to see our family

continued, and some, at least, of the estates brought back; but it is

not to be. What can you, my fine nephew, put in the scale against such

duties? Is it that actress at Les Touches?"

"What?" said the baron; "how can Mademoiselle des Touches hinder

Calyste's marriage, when it becomes necessary for us to make it? I

shall go and see her."

"I assure you, father," said Calyste, "that Felicite will never be an

obstacle to my marriage."

Gasselin appeared with the horses.

"Where are you going, chevalier?" said his father.

"To Saint-Nazaire."

"Ha, ha! and when is the marriage to be?" said the baron, believing

that Calyste was really in a hurry to see Charlotte de Kergarouet. "It

is high time I was a grandfather. Spare the horses," he continued, as

he went on the portico with Fanny to see Calyste mount; "remember that

they have more than thirty miles to go."

Calyste started with a tender farewell to his mother.

"Dear treasure!" she said, as she saw him lower his head to ride

through the gateway.

"God keep him!" replied the baron; "for we cannot replace him."

The words made the baroness shudder.

"My nephew does not love Charlotte enough to ride to Saint-Nazaire

after her," said the old blind woman to Mariotte, who was clearing the

breakfast-table.

"No; but a fine lady, a marquise, has come to Les Touches, and I'll

warrant he's after her; that's the way at his age," said Mariotte.

"They'll kill him," said Mademoiselle du Guenic.

"That won't kill him, mademoiselle; quite the contrary," replied

Mariotte, who seemed to be pleased with Calyste's behavior.

The young fellow started at a great pace, until Gasselin asked him if

he was trying to catch the boat, which, of course, was not at all his

desire. He had no wish to see either Conti or Claude again; but he did

expect to be invited to drive back with the ladies, leaving Gasselin

to lead his horse. He was gay as a bird, thinking to himself,--

"/She/ has just passed here; /her/ eyes saw those trees!--What a

lovely road!" he said to Gasselin.

"Ah! monsieur, Brittany is the most beautiful country in all the

world," replied the Breton. "Where could you find such flowers in the

hedges, and nice cool roads that wind about like these?"

"Nowhere, Gasselin."

"/Tiens/! here comes the coach from Nazaire," cried Gasselin

presently.

"Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel and her niece will be in it. Let us hide,"

said Calyste.

"Hide! are you crazy, monsieur? Why, we are on the moor!"

The coach, which was coming up the sandy hill above Saint-Nazaire, was

full, and, much to the astonishment of Calyste, there were no signs of

Charlotte.

"We had to leave Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, her sister and niece; they

are dreadfully worried; but all my seats were engaged by the custom-

house," said the conductor to Gasselin.

"I am lost!" thought Calyste; "they will meet me down there."

When Calyste reached the little esplanade which surrounds the church

of Saint-Nazaire, and from which is seen Paimboeuf and the magnificent

Mouths of the Loire as they struggle with the sea, he found Camille

and the marquise waving their handkerchiefs as a last adieu to two

passengers on the deck of the departing steamer. Beatrix was charming

as she stood there, her features softened by the shadow of a rice-

straw hat, on which were tufts and knots of scarlet ribbon. She wore a

muslin gown with a pattern of flowers, and was leaning with one well-

gloved hand on a slender parasol. Nothing is finer to the eyes than a

woman poised on a rock like a statue on its pedestal. Conti could see

Calyste from the vessel as he approached Camille.

"I thought," said the young man, "that you would probably come back

alone."

"You have done right, Calyste," she replied, pressing his hand.

Beatrix turned round, saw her young lover, and gave him the most

imperious look in her repertory. A smile, which the marquise detected

on the eloquent lips of Mademoiselle des Touches, made her aware of

the vulgarity of such conduct, worthy only of a bourgeoise. She then

said to Calyste, smiling,--

"Are you not guilty of a slight impertinence in supposing that I

should bore Camille, if left alone with her?"

"My dear, one man to two widows is none too much," said Mademoiselle

des Touches, taking Calyste's arm, and leaving Beatrix to watch the

vessel till it disappeared.

At this moment Calyste heard the approaching voices of Mademoiselle de

Pen-Hoel, the Vicomtesse de Kergarouet, Charlotte, and Gasselin, who

were all talking at once, like so many magpies. The old maid was

questioning Gasselin as to what had brought him and his master to

Saint-Nazaire; the carriage of Mademoiselle des Touches had already

caught her eye. Before the young Breton could get out of sight,

Charlotte had seen him.

"Why, there's Calyste!" she exclaimed eagerly.

"Go and offer them seats in my carriage," said Camille to Calyste;

"the maid can sit with the coachman. I saw those ladies lose their

places in the mail-coach."

Calyste, who could not help himself, carried the message. As soon as

Madame de Kergarouet learned that the offer came from the celebrated

Camille Maupin, and that the Marquise de Rochefide was of the party,

she was much surprised at the objections raised by her elder sister,

who refused positively to profit by what she called the devil's

carryall. At Nantes, which boasted of more civilization than Guerande,

Camille was read and admired; she was thought to be the muse of

Brittany and an honor to the region. The absolution granted to her in

Paris by society, by fashion, was there justified by her great fortune

and her early successes in Nantes, which claimed the honor of having

been, if not her birthplace, at least her cradle. The viscountess,

therefore, eager to see her, dragged her old sister forward, paying no

attention to her jeremiads.

"Good-morning, Calyste," said Charlotte.

"Oh! good-morning, Charlotte," replied Calyste, not offering his arm.

Both were confused; she by his coldness, he by his cruelty, as they

walked up the sort of ravine, which is called in Saint-Nazaire a

street, following the two sisters in silence. In a moment the little

girl of sixteen saw her castle in Spain, built and furnished with

romantic hopes, a heap of ruins. She and Calyste had played together

so much in childhood, she was so bound up with him, as it were, that

she had quietly supposed her future unassailable; she arrived now,

swept along by thoughtless happiness, like a circling bird darting

down upon a wheat-field, and lo! she was stopped in her flight, unable

to imagine the obstacle.

"What is the matter, Calyste?" she said, taking his hand.

"Nothing," replied the young man, releasing himself with cruel haste

as he remembered the projects of his aunt and her friend.

Tears came into Charlotte's eyes. She looked at the handsome Calyste

without ill-humor; but a first spasm of jealousy seized her, and she

felt the dreadful madness of rivalry when she came in sight of the two

Parisian women, and suspected the cause of his coldness.

Charlotte de Kergarouet was a girl of ordinary height, and commonplace

coloring; she had a little round face, made lively by a pair of black

eyes which sparkled with cleverness, abundant brown hair, a round

waist, a flat back, thin arms, and the curt, decided manner of a

provincial girl, who did not want to be taken for a little goose. She

was the petted child of the family on account of the preference her

aunt showed for her. At this moment she was wrapped in a mantle of

Scotch merino in large plaids, lined with green silk, which she had

worn on the boat. Her travelling-dress, of some common stuff, chastely

made with a chemisette body and a pleated collar, was fated to appear,

even to her own eyes, horrible in comparison with the fresh toilets of

Beatrix and Camille. She was painfully aware of the stockings soiled

among the rocks as she had jumped from the boat, of shabby leather

shoes, chosen for the purpose of not spoiling better ones on the

journey,--a fixed principle in the manners and customs of provincials.

As for the Vicomtesse de Kergarouet, she might stand as the type of a

provincial woman. Tall, hard, withered, full of pretensions, which did

not show themselves until they were mortified, talking much, and

catching, by dint of talking (as one cannons at billiards), a few

ideas, which gave her the reputation of wit, endeavoring to humiliate

Parisians, whenever she met them, with an assumption of country wisdom

and patronage, humbling herself to be exalted and furious at being

left upon her knees; fishing, as the English say, for compliments,

which she never caught; dressed in clothes that were exaggerated in

style, and yet ill cared for; mistaking want of good manners for

dignity, and trying to embarrass others by paying no attention to

them; refusing what she desired in order to have it offered again, and

to seem to yield only to entreaty; concerned about matters that others

have done with, and surprised at not being in the fashion; and

finally, unable to get through an hour without reference to Nantes,

matters of social life in Nantes, complaints of Nantes, criticism of

Nantes, and taking as personalities the remarks she forced out of

absent-minded or wearied listeners.

Her manners, language, and ideas had, more or less, descended to her

four daughters. To know Camille Maupin and Madame de Rochefide would

be for her a future, and the topic of a hundred conversations.

Consequently, she advanced toward the church as if she meant to take

it by assault, waving her handkerchief, unfolded for the purpose of

displaying the heavy corners of domestic embroidery, and trimmed with

flimsy lace. Her gait was tolerably bold and cavalier, which, however,

was of no consequence in a woman forty-seven years of age.

"Monsieur le chevalier," she said to Camille and Beatrix, pointing to

Calyste, who was mournfully following with Charlotte, "has conveyed to

me your friendly proposal, but we fear--my sister, my daughter, and

myself--to inconvenience you."

"Sister, I shall not put these ladies to inconvenience," said

Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, sharply; "I can very well find a horse in

Saint-Nazaire to take me home."

Camille and Beatrix exchanged an oblique glance, which Calyste

intercepted, and that glance sufficed to annihilate all the memories

of his childhood, all his beliefs in the Kergarouets and Pen-Hoels,

and to put an end forever to the projects of the three families.

"We can very well put five in the carriage," replied Mademoiselle des

Touches, on whom Jacqueline turned her back, "even if we were

inconvenienced, which cannot be the case, with your slender figures.

Besides, I should enjoy the pleasure of doing a little service to

Calyste's friends. Your maid, madame, will find a seat by the

coachman, and your luggage, if you have any, can go behind the

carriage; I have no footman with me."

The viscountess was overwhelming in thanks, and complained that her

sister Jacqueline had been in such a hurry to see her niece that she

would not give her time to come properly in her own carriage with

post-horses, though, to be sure, the post-road was not only longer,

but more expensive; she herself was obliged to return almost

immediately to Nantes, where she had left three other little kittens,

who were anxiously awaiting her. Here she put her arm round

Charlotte's neck. Charlotte, in reply, raised her eyes to her mother

with the air of a little victim, which gave an impression to onlookers

that the viscountess bored her four daughters prodigiously by dragging

them on the scene very much as Corporal Trim produces his cap in

"Tristram Shandy."

"You are a fortunate mother and--" began Camille, stopping short as

she remembered that Beatrix must have parted from her son when she

left her husband's house.

"Oh, yes!" said the viscountess; "if I have the misfortune of spending

my life in the country, and, above all, at Nantes, I have at least the

consolation of being adored by my children. Have you children?" she

said to Camille.

"I am Mademoiselle des Touches," replied Camille. "Madame is the

Marquise de Rochefide."

"Then I must pity you for not knowing the greatest happiness that

there is for us poor, simple women--is not that so, madame?" said the

viscountess, turning to Beatrix. "But you, mademoiselle, have so many

compensations."

The tears came into Madame de Rochefide's eyes, and she turned away

toward the parapet to hide them. Calyste followed her.

"Madame," said Camille, in a low voice to the viscountess, "are you

not aware that the marquise is separated from her husband? She has not

seen her son for two years, and does not know when she will see him."

"You don't say so!" said Madame de Kergarouet. "Poor lady! is she

legally separated?"

"No, by mutual consent," replied Camille.

"Ah, well! I understand that," said the viscountess boldly.

Old Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, furious at being thus dragged into the

enemy's camp, had retreated to a short distance with her dear

Charlotte. Calyste, after looking about him to make sure that no one

could see him, seized the hand of the marquise, kissed it, and left a

tear upon it. Beatrix turned round, her tears dried by anger; she was

about to utter some terrible word, but it died upon her lips as she

saw the grief on the angelic face of the youth, as deeply touched by

her present sorrow as she was herself.

"Good heavens, Calyste!" said Camille in his ear, as he returned with

Madame de Rochefide, "are you to have /that/ for a mother-in-law, and

the little one for a wife?"

"Because her aunt is rich," replied Calyste, sarcastically.

The whole party now moved toward the inn, and the viscountess felt

herself obliged to make Camille a speech on the savages of Saint-

Nazaire.

"I love Brittany, madame," replied Camille, gravely. "I was born at

Guerande."

Calyste could not help admiring Mademoiselle des Touches, who, by the

tone of her voice, the tranquillity of her look, and her quiet manner,

put him at his ease, in spite of the terrible declarations of the

preceding night. She seemed, however, a little fatigued; her eyes were

enlarged by dark circles round them, showing that he had not slept;

but the brow dominated the inward storm with cold placidity.

"What queens!" he said to Charlotte, calling her attention to the

marquise and Camille as he gave the girl his arm, to Mademoiselle de

Pen-Hoel's great satisfaction.

"What an idea your mother has had," said the old maid, taking her

niece's other arm, "to put herself in the company of that reprobate

woman!"

"Oh, aunt, a woman who is the glory of Brittany!"

"The shame, my dear. Mind that you don't fawn upon her in that way."

"Mademoiselle Charlotte is right," said Calyste; "you are not just."

"Oh, you!" replied Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, "she has bewitched you."

"I regard her," said Calyste, "with the same friendship that I feel

for you."

"Since when have the du Guenics taken to telling lies?" asked the old

maid.

"Since the Pen-Hoels have grown deaf," replied Calyste.

"Are you not in love with her?" demanded the old maid.

"I have been, but I am so no longer," he said.

"Bad boy! then why have you given us such anxiety? I know very well

that love is only foolishness; there is nothing solid but marriage,"

she remarked, looking at Charlotte.

Charlotte, somewhat reassured, hoped to recover her advantages by

recalling the memories of childhood. She leaned affectionately on

Calyste's arm, who resolved in his own mind to have a clear

explanation with the little heiress.

"Ah! what fun we shall have at /mouche/, Calyste!" she said; "what

good laughs we used to have over it!"

The horses were now put in; Camille placed Madame de Kergarouet and

Charlotte on the back seat. Jacqueline having disappeared, she

herself, with the marquise, sat forward. Calyste was, of course,

obliged to relinquish the pleasure on which he had counted, of driving

back with Camille and Beatrix, but he rode beside the carriage all the

way; the horses, being tired with the journey, went slowly enough to

allow him to keep his eyes on Beatrix.

History must lose the curious conversations that went on between these

four persons whom accident had so strangely united in this carriage,

for it is impossible to report the hundred and more versions which

went the round of Nantes on the remarks, replies, and witticisms which

the viscountess heard from the lips of the celebrated Camille Maupin

/herself/. She was, however, very careful not to repeat, not even to

comprehend, the actual replies made by Mademoiselle des Touches to her

absurd questions about Camille's authorship,--a penance to which all

authors are subjected, and which often make them expiate the few and

rare pleasures that they win.

"How do you write your books?" she began.

"Much as you do your worsted-work or knitting," replied Camille.

"But where do you find those deep reflections, those seductive

pictures?"

"Where you find the witty things you say, madame; there is nothing so

easy as to write books, provided you will--"

"Ah! does it depend wholly on the will? I shouldn't have thought it.

Which of your compositions do you prefer?"

"I find it difficult to prefer any of my little kittens."

"I see you are /blasee/ on compliments; there is really nothing new

that one can say."

"I assure you, madame, that I am very sensible to the form which you

give to yours."

The viscountess, anxious not to seem to neglect the marquise,

remarked, looking at Beatrix with a meaning air,--

"I shall never forget this journey made between Wit and Beauty."

"You flatter me, madame," said the marquise, laughing. "I assure you

that my wit is but a small matter, not to be mentioned by the side of

genius; besides, I think I have not said much as yet."

Charlotte, who keenly felt her mother's absurdity, looked at her,

endeavoring to stop its course; but Madame de Kergarouet went bravely

on in her tilt with the satirical Parisians.

Calyste, who was trotting slowly beside the carriage, could only see

the faces of the two ladies on the front seat, and his eyes expressed,

from time to time, rather painful thoughts. Forced, by her position,

to let herself be looked at, Beatrix constantly avoided meeting the

young man's eyes, and practised a manoeuvre most exasperating to

lovers; she held her shawl crossed and her hands crossed over it,

apparently plunged in the deepest meditation.

At a part of the road which is shaded, dewy, and verdant as a forest

glade, where the wheels of the carriage scarcely sounded, and the

breeze brought down balsamic odors and waved the branches above their

heads, Camille called Madame de Rochefide's attention to the harmonies

of the place, and pressed her knee to make her look at Calyste.

"How well he rides!" she said.

"Oh! Calyste does everything well," said Charlotte.

"He rides like an Englishman," said the marquise, indifferently.

"His mother is Irish,--an O'Brien," continued Charlotte, who thought

herself insulted by such indifference.

Camille and the marquise drove through Guerande with the viscountess

and her daughter, to the great astonishment of the inhabitants of the

town. They left the mother and daughter at the end of the lane leading

to the Guenic mansion, where a crowd came near gathering, attracted by

so unusual a sight. Calyste had ridden on to announce the arrival of

the company to his mother and aunt, who expected them to dinner, that

meal having been postponed till four o'clock. Then he returned to the

gate to give his arm to the two ladies, and bid Camille and Beatrix

adieu.

He kissed the hand of Felicite, hoping thereby to be able to do the

same to that of the marquise; but she still kept her arms crossed

resolutely, and he cast moist glances of entreaty at her uselessly.

"You little ninny!" whispered Camille, lightly touching his ear with a

kiss that was full of friendship.

"Quite true," thought Calyste to himself as the carriage drove away.

"I am forgetting her advice--but I shall always forget it, I'm

afraid."

Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel (who had intrepidly returned to Guerande on

the back of a hired horse), the Vicomtesse de Kergarouet, and

Charlotte found dinner ready, and were treated with the utmost

cordiality, if luxury were lacking, by the du Guenics. Mademoiselle

Zephirine had ordered the best wine to be brought from the cellar, and

Mariotte had surpassed herself in her Breton dishes.

The viscountess, proud of her trip with the illustrious Camille

Maupin, endeavored to explain to the assembled company the present

condition of modern literature, and Camille's place in it. But the

literary topic met the fate of whist; neither the du Guenics, nor the

abbe, nor the Chevalier du Halga understood one word of it. The rector

and the chevalier had arrived in time for the liqueurs at dessert.

As soon as Mariotte, assisted by Gasselin and Madame de Kergarouet's

maid, had cleared the table, there was a general and enthusiastic cry

for /mouche/. Joy appeared to reign in the household. All supposed

Calyste to be free of his late entanglement, and almost as good as

married to the little Charlotte. The young man alone kept silence. For

the first time in his life he had instituted comparisons between his

life-long friends and the two elegant women, witty, accomplished, and

tasteful, who, at the present moment, must be laughing heartily at the

provincial mother and daughter, judging by the look he intercepted

between them.

He was seeking in vain for some excuse to leave his family on this

occasion, and go up as usual to Les Touches, when Madame de Kergarouet

mentioned that she regretted not having accepted Mademoiselle des

Touches' offer of her carriage for the return journey to Saint-

Nazaire, which for the sake of her three other "dear kittens," she

felt compelled to make on the following day.

Fanny, who alone saw her son's uneasiness, and the little hold which

Charlotte's coquetries and her mother's attentions were gaining on

him, came to his aid.

"Madame," she said to the viscountess, "you will, I think, be very

uncomfortable in the carrier's vehicle, and especially at having to

start so early in the morning. You would certainly have done better to

take the offer made to you by Mademoiselle des Touches. But it is not

too late to do so now. Calyste, go up to Les Touches and arrange the

matter; but don't be long; return to us soon."

"It won't take me ten minutes," cried Calyste, kissing his mother

violently as she followed him to the door.

XI

FEMALE DIPLOMACY

Calyste ran with the lightness of a young fawn to Les Touches and

reached the portico just as Camille and Beatrix were leaving the grand

salon after their dinner. He had the sense to offer his arm to

Felicite.

"So you have abandoned your viscountess and her daughter for us," she

said, pressing his arm; "we are able now to understand the full merit

of that sacrifice."

"Are these Kergarouets related to the Portendueres, and to old Admiral

de Kergarouet, whose widow married Charles de Vandenesse?" asked

Madame de Rochefide.

"The viscountess is the admiral's great-niece," replied Camille.

"Well, she's a charming girl," said Beatrix, placing herself

gracefully in a Gothic chair. "She will just do for you, Monsieur du

Guenic."

"The marriage will never take place," said Camille hastily.

Mortified by the cold, calm air with which the marquise seemed to

consider the Breton girl as the only creature fit to mate him, Calyste

remained speechless and even mindless.

"Why so, Camille?" asked Madame de Rochefide.

"Really, my dear," said Camille, seeing Calyste's despair, "you are

not generous; did I advise Conti to marry?"

Beatrix looked at her friend with a surprise that was mingled with

indefinable suspicions.

Calyste, unable to understand Camille's motive, but feeling that she

came to his assistance and seeing in her cheeks that faint spot of

color which he knew to mean the presence of some violent emotion, went

up to her rather awkwardly and took her hand. But she left him and

seated herself carelessly at the piano, like a woman so sure of her

friend and lover that she can afford to leave him with another woman.

She played variations, improvising them as she played, on certain

themes chosen, unconsciously to herself, by the impulse of her mind;

they were melancholy in the extreme.

Beatrix seemed to listen to the music, but she was really observing

Calyste, who, much too young and artless for the part which Camille

was intending him to play, remained in rapt adoration before his real

idol.

After about an hour, during which time Camille continued to play,

Beatrix rose and retired to her apartments. Camille at once took

Calyste into her chamber and closed the door, fearing to be overheard;

for women have an amazing instinct of distrust.

"My child," she said, "if you want to succeed with Beatrix, you must

seem to love me still, or you will fail. You are a child; you know

nothing of women; all you know is how to love. Now loving and making

one's self beloved are two very different things. If you go your own

way you will fall into horrible suffering, and I wish to see you

happy. If you rouse, not the pride, but the self-will, the obstinacy

which is a strong feature in her character, she is capable of going

off at any moment to Paris and rejoining Conti; and what will you do

then?"

"I shall love her."

"You won't see her again."

"Oh! yes, I shall," he said.

"How?"

"I shall follow her."

"Why, you are as poor as Job, my dear boy."

"My father, Gasselin, and I lived for three months in Vendee on one

hundred and fifty francs, marching night and day."

"Calyste," said Mademoiselle des Touches, "now listen to me. I know

that you have too much candor to play a part, too much honesty to

deceive; and I don't want to corrupt such a nature as yours. Yet

deception is the only way by which you can win Beatrix; I take it

therefore upon myself. In a week from now she shall love you."

"Is it possible?" he said clasping his hands.

"Yes," replied Camille, "but it will be necessary to overcome certain

pledges which she has made to herself. I will do that for you. You

must not interfere in the rather arduous task I shall undertake. The

marquise has a true aristocratic delicacy of perception; she is keenly

distrustful; no hunter could meet with game more wary or more

difficult to capture. You are wholly unable to cope with her; will you

promise me a blind obedience?"

"What must I do?" replied the youth.

"Very little," said Camille. "Come here every day and devote yourself

to me. Come to my rooms; avoid Beatrix if you meet her. We will stay

together till four o'clock; you shall employ the time in study, and I

in smoking. It will be hard for you not to see her, but I will find

you a number of interesting books. You have read nothing as yet of

George Sand. I will send one of my people this very evening to Nantes

to buy her works and those of other authors whom you ought to know.

The evenings we will spend together, and I permit you to make love to

me if you can--it will be for the best."

"I know, Camille, that your affection for me is great and so rare that

it makes me wish I had never met Beatrix," he replied with simple good

faith; "but I don't see what you hope from all this."

"I hope to make her love you."

"Good heavens! it cannot be possible!" he cried, again clasping his

hands toward Camille, who was greatly moved on seeing the joy that she

gave him at her own expense.

"Now listen to me carefully," she said. "If you break the agreement

between us, if you have--not a long conversation--but a mere exchange

of words with the marquise in private, if you let her question you, if

you fail in the silent part I ask you to play, which is certainly not

a very difficult one, I do assure you," she said in a serious tone,

"you will lose her forever."

"I don't understand the meaning of what you are saying to me," cried

Calyste, looking at Camille with adorable naivete.

"If you did understand it, you wouldn't be the noble and beautiful

Calyste that you are," she replied, taking his hand and kissing it.

Calyste then did what he had never before done; he took Camille round

the waist and kissed her gently, not with love but with tenderness, as

he kissed his mother. Mademoiselle des Touches did not restrain her

tears.

"Go now," she said, "my child; and tell your viscountess that my

carriage is at her command."

Calyste wanted to stay longer, but he was forced to obey her imperious

and imperative gesture.

He went home gaily; he believed that in a week the beautiful Beatrix

would love him. The players at /mouche/ found him once more the

Calyste they had missed for the last two months. Charlotte attributed

this change to herself. Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel was charming to him.

The Abbe Grimont endeavored to make out what was passing in the

mother's mind. The Chevalier du Halga rubbed his hands. The two old

maids were as lively as lizards. The viscountess lost one hundred sous

by accumulated /mouches/, which so excited the cupidity of Zephirine

that she regretted not being able to see the cards, and even spoke

sharply to her sister-in-law, who acted as the proxy of her eyes.

The party lasted till eleven o'clock. There were two defections, the

baron and the chevalier, who went to sleep in their respective chairs.

Mariotte had made galettes of buckwheat, the baroness produced a tea-

caddy. The illustrious house of du Guenic served a little supper

before the departure of its guests, consisting of fresh butter,

fruits, and cream, in addition to Mariotte's cakes; for which festal

event issued from their wrappings a silver teapot and some beautiful

old English china sent to the baroness by her aunts. This appearance

of modern splendor in the ancient hall, together with the exquisite

grace of its mistress, brought up like a true Irish lady to make and

pour out tea (that mighty affair to Englishwomen), had something

charming about them. The most exquisite luxury could never have

attained to the simple, modest, noble effect produced by this

sentiment of joyful hospitality.

A few moments after Calyste's departure from Les Touches, Beatrix, who

had heard him go, returned to Camille, whom she found with humid eyes

lying back on her sofa.

"What is it, Felicite?" asked the marquise.

"I am forty years old, and I love him!" said Mademoiselle des Touches,

with dreadful tones of agony in her voice, her eyes becoming hard and

brilliant. "If you knew, Beatrix, the tears I have shed over the lost

years of my youth! To be loved out of pity! to know that one owes

one's happiness only to perpetual care, to the slyness of cats, to

traps laid for innocence and all the youthful virtues--oh, it is

infamous! If it were not that one finds absolution in the magnitude of

love, in the power of happiness, in the certainty of being forever

above all other women in his memory, the first to carve on that young

heart the ineffaceable happiness of an absolute devotion, I would--

yes, if he asked it,--I would fling myself into the sea. Sometimes I

find myself wishing that he would ask it; it would then be an

oblation, not a suicide. Ah, Beatrix, by coming here you have,

unconsciously, set me a hard task. I know it will be difficult to keep

him against you; but you love Conti, you are noble and generous, you

will not deceive me; on the contrary, you will help me to retain my

Calyste's love. I expected the impression you would make upon him, but

I have not committed the mistake of seeming jealous; that would only

have added fuel to the flame. On the contrary, before you came, I

described you in such glowing colors that you hardly realize the

portrait, although you are, it seems to me, more beautiful than ever."

This vehement elegy, in which truth was mingled with deception,

completely duped the marquise. Claude Vignon had told Conti the

reasons for his departure, and Beatrix was, of course, informed of

them. She determined therefore to behave with generosity and give the

cold shoulder to Calyste; but at the same instant there came into her

soul that quiver of joy which vibrates in the heart of every woman

when she finds herself beloved. The love a woman inspires in any man's

heart is flattery without hypocrisy, and it is impossible for some

women to forego it; but when that man belongs to a friend, his homage

gives more than pleasure,--it gives delight. Beatrix sat down beside

her friend and began to coax her prettily.

"You have not a white hair," she said; "you haven't even a wrinkle;

your temples are just as fresh as ever; whereas I know more than one

woman of thirty who is obliged to cover hers. Look, dear," she added,

lifting her curls, "see what that journey to Italy has cost me."

Her temples showed an almost imperceptible withering of the texture of

the delicate skin. She raised her sleeves and showed Camille the same

slight withering of the wrists, where the transparent tissue suffered

the blue network of swollen veins to be visible, and three deep lines

made a bracelet of wrinkles.

"There, my dear, are two spots which--as a certain writer ferreting

for the miseries of women, has said--never lie," she continued. "One

must needs have suffered to know the truth of his observation. Happily

for us, most men know nothing about it; they don't read us like that

dreadful author."

"Your letter told me all," replied Camille; "happiness ignores

everything but itself. You boasted too much of yours to be really

happy. Truth is deaf, dumb, and blind where love really is.

Consequently, seeing very plainly that you have your reasons for

abandoning Conti, I have feared to have you here. My dear, Calyste is

an angel; he is as good as he is beautiful; his innocent heart will

not resist your eyes; already he admires you too much not to love you

at the first encouragement; your coldness can alone preserve him to

me. I confess to you, with the cowardice of true passion, that if he

were taken from me I should die. That dreadful book of Benjamin

Constant, 'Adolphe,' tells us only of Adolphe's sorrows; but what

about those of the woman, hey? The man did not observe them enough to

describe them; and what woman would have dared to reveal them? They

would dishonor her sex, humiliate its virtues, and pass into vice. Ah!

I measure the abyss before me by my fears, by these sufferings that

are those of hell. But, Beatrix, I will tell you this: in case I am

abandoned, my choice is made."

"What is it?" cried Beatrix, with an eagerness that made Camille

shudder.

The two friends looked at each other with the keen attention of

Venetian inquisitors; their souls clashed in that rapid glance, and

struck fire like flints. The marquise lowered her eyes.

"After man, there is nought but God," said the celebrated woman. "God

is the Unknown. I shall fling myself into that as into some vast

abyss. Calyste has sworn to me that he admires you only as he would a

picture; but alas! you are but twenty-eight, in the full magnificence

of your beauty. The struggle thus begins between him and me by

falsehood. But I have one support; happily I know a means to keep him

true to me, and I shall triumph."

"What means?"

"That is my secret, dear. Let me have the benefits of my age. If

Claude Vignon, as Conti has doubtless told you, flings me back into

the gulf, I, who had climbed to a rock which I thought inaccessible,--

I will at least gather the pale and fragile, but delightful flowers

that grow in its depths."

Madame de Rochefide was moulded like wax in those able hands. Camille

felt an almost savage pleasure in thus entrapping her rival in her

toils. She sent her to bed that night piqued by curiosity, floating

between jealousy and generosity, but most assuredly with her mind full

of the beautiful Calyste.

"She will be enchanted to deceive me," thought Camille, as she kissed

her good-night.

Then, when she was alone, the author, the constructor of dramas, gave

place to the woman, and she burst into tears. Filling her hookah with

tobacco soaked in opium, she spent the greater part of the night in

smoking, dulling thus the sufferings of her soul, and seeing through

the clouds about her the beautiful young head of her late lover.

"What a glorious book to write, if I were only to express my pain!"

she said to herself. "But it is written already; Sappho lived before

me. And Sappho was young. A fine and touching heroine truly, a woman

of forty! Ah! my poor Camille, smoke your hookah; you haven't even the

resource of making a poem of your misery--that's the last drop of

anguish in your cup!"

The next morning Calyste came before mid-day and slipped upstairs, as

he was told, into Camille's own room, where he found the books.

Felicite sat before the window, smoking, contemplating in turn the

marshes, the sea, and Calyste, to whom she now and then said a few

words about Beatrix. At one time, seeing the marquise strolling about

the garden, she raised a curtain in a way to attract her attention,

and also to throw a band of light across Calyste's book.

"To-day, my child, I shall ask you to stay to dinner; but you must

refuse, with a glance at the marquise, which will show her how much

you regret not staying."

When the three actors met in the salon, and this comedy was played,

Calyste felt for a moment his equivocal position, and the glance that

he cast on Beatrix was far more expressive than Felicite expected.

Beatrix had dressed herself charmingly.

"What a bewitching toilet, my dearest!" said Camille, when Calyste had

departed.

These manoeuvres lasted six days, during which time many conversations,

into which Camille Maupin put all her ability, took place, unknown to

Calyste, between herself and the marquise. They were like the

preliminaries of a duel between two women,--a duel without truce, in

which the assault was made on both sides with snares, feints, false

generosities, deceitful confessions, crafty confidences, by which one

hid and the other bared her love; and in which the sharp steel of

Camille's treacherous words entered the heart of her friend, and left

its poison there. Beatrix at last took offence at what she thought

Camille's distrust; she considered it out of place between them. At

the same time she was enchanted to find the great writer a victim to

the pettiness of her sex, and she resolved to enjoy the pleasure of

showing her where her greatness ended, and how even she could be

humiliated.

"My dear, what is to be the excuse to-day for Monsieur du Guenic's not

dining with us?" she asked, looking maliciously at her friend. "Monday

you said we had engagements; Tuesday the dinner was poor; Wednesday

you were afraid his mother would be angry; Thursday you wanted to take

a walk with me; and yesterday you simply dismissed him without a

reason. To-day I shall have my way, and I mean that he shall stay."

"Already, my dear!" said Camille, with cutting irony. The marquise

blushed. "Stay, Monsieur du Guenic," said Camille, in the tone of a

queen.

Beatrix became cold and hard, contradictory in tone, epigrammatic, and

almost rude to Calyste, whom Felicite sent home to play /mouche/ with

Charlotte de Kergarouet.

"/She/ is not dangerous at any rate," said Beatrix, sarcastically.

Young lovers are like hungry men; kitchen odors will not appease their

hunger; they think too much of what is coming to care for the means

that bring it. As Calyste walked back to Guerande, his soul was full

of Beatrix; he paid no heed to the profound feminine cleverness which

Felicite was displaying on his behalf. During this week the marquise

had only written once to Conti, a symptom of indifference which had

not escaped the watchful eyes of Camille, who imparted it to Calyste.

All Calyste's life was concentrated in the short moment of the day

during which he was allowed to see the marquise. This drop of water,

far from allaying his thirst, only redoubled it. The magic promise,

"Beatrix shall love you," made by Camille, was the talisman with which

he strove to restrain the fiery ardor of his passion. But he knew not

how to consume the time; he could not sleep, and spent the hours of

the night in reading; every evening he brought back with him, as

Mariotte remarked, cartloads of books.

His aunt called down maledictions on the head of Mademoiselle des

Touches; but his mother, who had gone on several occasions to his room

on seeing his light burning far into the night, knew by this time the

secret of his conduct. Though for her love was a sealed book, and she

was even unaware of her own ignorance, Fanny rose through maternal

tenderness into certain ideas of it; but the depths of such sentiment

being dark and obscured by clouds to her mind, she was shocked at the

state in which she saw him; the solitary uncomprehended desire of his

soul, which was evidently consuming him, simply terrified her. Calyste

had but one thought; Beatrix was always before him. In the evenings,

while cards were being played, his abstraction resembled his father's

somnolence. Finding him so different from what he was when he loved

Camille, the baroness became aware, with a sort of horror, of the

symptoms of real love,--a species of possession which had seized upon

her son,--a love unknown within the walls of that old mansion.

Feverish irritability, a constant absorption in thought, made Calyste

almost doltish. Often he would sit for hours with his eyes fixed on

some figure in the tapestry. One morning his mother implored him to

give up Les Touches, and leave the two women forever.

"Not go to Les Touches!" he cried.

"Oh! yes, yes, go! do not look so, my darling!" she cried, kissing him

on the eyes that had flashed such flames.

Under these circumstances Calyste often came near losing the fruit of

Camille's plot through the Breton fury of his love, of which he was

ceasing to be the master. Finally, he swore to himself, in spite of

his promise to Felicite, to see Beatrix, and speak to her. He wanted

to read her eyes, to bathe in their light, to examine every detail of

her dress, breathe its perfume, listen to the music of her voice,

watch the graceful composition of her movements, embrace at a glance

the whole figure, and study her as a general studies the field where

he means to win a decisive battle. He willed as lovers will; he was

grasped by desires which closed his ears and darkened his intellect,

and threw him into an unnatural state in which he was conscious of

neither obstacles, nor distances, nor the existence even of his own

body.

One morning he resolved to go to Les Touches at an earlier hour than

that agreed upon, and endeavor to meet Beatrix in the garden. He knew

she walked there daily before breakfast.

Mademoiselle des Touches and the marquise had gone, as it happened, to

see the marshes and the little bay with its margin of fine sand, where

the sea penetrates and lies like a lake in the midst of the dunes.

They had just returned, and were walking up a garden path beside the

lawn, conversing as they walked.

"If the scenery pleases you," said Camille, "we must take Calyste and

make a trip to Croisic. There are splendid rocks there, cascades of

granite, little bays with natural basins, charmingly unexpected and

capricious things, besides the sea itself, with its store of marble

fragments,--a world of amusement. Also you will see women making fuel

with cow-dung, which they nail against the walls of their houses to

dry in the sun, after which they pile it up as we do peat in Paris."

"What! will you really risk Calyste?" cried the marquise, laughing, in

a tone which proved that Camille's ruse had answered its purpose.

"Ah, my dear," she replied, "if you did but know the angelic soul of

that dear child, you would understand me. In him, mere beauty is

nothing; one must enter that pure heart, which is amazed at every step

it takes into the kingdom of love. What faith! what grace! what

innocence! The ancients were right enough in the worship they paid to

sacred beauty. Some traveller, I forget who, relates that when wild

horses lose their leader they choose the handsomest horse in the herd

for his successor. Beauty, my dear, is the genius of things; it is the

ensign which Nature hoists over her most precious creations; it is the

trust of symbols as it is the greatest of accidents. Did any one ever

suppose that angels could be deformed? are they not necessarily a

combination of grace and strength? What is it that makes us stand for

hours before some picture in Italy, where genius has striven through

years of toil to realize but one of those accidents of Nature? Come,

call up your sense of the truth of things and answer me; is it not the

Idea of Beauty which our souls associate with moral grandeur? Well,

Calyste is one of those dreams, those visions, realized. He has the

regal power of a lion, tranquilly unsuspicious of its royalty. When he

feels at his ease, he is witty; and I love his girlish timidity. My

soul rests in his heart away from all corruptions, all ideas of

knowledge, literature, the world, society, politics,--those useless

accessories under which we stifle happiness. I am what I have never

been,--a child! I am sure of him, but I like to play at jealousy; he

likes it too. Besides, that is part of my secret."

Beatrix walked on pensively, in silence. Camille endured unspeakable

martyrdom, and she cast a sidelong look at her companion which looked

like flame.

"Ah, my dear; but /you/ are happy," said Beatrix presently, laying her

hand on Camille's arm like a woman wearied out with some inward

struggle.

"Yes, happy indeed!" replied Felicite, with savage bitterness.

The two women dropped upon a bench from a sense of exhaustion. No

creature of her sex was ever played upon like an instrument with more

Machiavellian penetration than the marquise throughout this week.

"Yes, you are happy, but I!" she said,--"to know of Conti's

infidelities, and have to bear them!"

"Why not leave him?" said Camille, seeing the hour had come to strike

a decisive blow.

"Can I?"

"Oh! poor boy!"

Both were gazing into a clump of trees with a stupefied air.

Camille rose.

"I will go and hasten breakfast; my walk has given me an appetite,"

she said.

"Our conversation has taken away mine," remarked Beatrix.

The marquise in her morning dress was outlined in white against the

dark greens of the foliage. Calyste, who had slipped through the salon

into the garden, took a path, along which he sauntered as though he

were meeting her by accident. Beatrix could not restrain a quiver as

he approached her.

"Madame, in what way did I displease you yesterday?" he said, after

the first commonplace sentences had been exchanged.

"But you have neither pleased me nor displeased me," she said, in a

gentle voice.

The tone, air, and manner in which the marquise said these words

encouraged Calyste.

"Am I so indifferent to you?" he said in a troubled voice, as the

tears came into his eyes.

"Ought we not to be indifferent to each other?" replied the marquise.

"Have we not, each of us, another, and a binding attachment?"

"Oh!" cried Calyste, "if you mean Camille, I did love her, but I love

her no longer."

"Then why are you shut up together every morning?" she said, with a

treacherous smile. "I don't suppose that Camille, in spite of her

passion for tobacco, prefers her cigar to you, or that you, in your

admiration for female authors, spend four hours a day in reading their

romances."

"So then you know--" began the guileless young Breton, his face

glowing with the happiness of being face to face with his idol.

"Calyste!" cried Camille, angrily, suddenly appearing and interrupting

him. She took his arm and drew him away to some distance. "Calyste, is

this what you promised me?"

Beatrix heard these words of reproach as Mademoiselle des Touches

disappeared toward the house, taking Calyste with her. She was

stupefied by the young man's assertion, and could not comprehend it;

she was not as strong as Claude Vignon. In truth, the part being

played by Camille Maupin, as shocking as it was grand, is one of those

wicked grandeurs which women only practise when driven to extremity.

By it their hearts are broken; in it the feelings of their sex are

lost to them; it begins an abnegation which ends by either plunging

them to hell, or lifting them to heaven.

During breakfast, which Calyste was invited to share, the marquise,

whose sentiments could be noble and generous, made a sudden return

upon herself, resolving to stifle the germs of love which were rising

in her heart. She was neither cold nor hard to Calyste, but gently

indifferent,--a course which tortured him. Felicite brought forward a

proposition that they should make, on the next day but one, an

excursion into the curious and interesting country lying between Les

Touches, Croisic, and the village of Batz. She begged Calyste to

employ himself on the morrow in hiring a boat and sailors to take them

across the little bay, undertaking herself to provide horses and

provisions, and all else that was necessary for a party of pleasure,

in which there was to be no fatigue. Beatrix stopped the matter short,

however, by saying that she did not wish to make excursions round the

country. Calyste's face, which had beamed with delight at the

prospect, was suddenly overclouded.

"What are you afraid of, my dear?" asked Camille.

"My position is so delicate I do not wish to compromise--I will not

say my reputation, but my happiness," she said, meaningly, with a

glance at the young Breton. "You know very well how suspicious Conti

can be; if he knew--"

"Who will tell him?"

"He is coming back here to fetch me," said Beatrix.

Calyste turned pale. In spite of all that Camille could urge, in spite

of Calyste's entreaties, Madame de Rochefide remained inflexible, and

showed what Camille had called her obstinacy. Calyste left Les Touches

the victim of one of those depressions of love which threaten, in

certain men, to turn into madness. He began to revolve in his mind

some decided means of coming to an explanation with Beatrix.

XII

CORRESPONDENCE

When Calyste reached home, he did not leave his room until dinner

time; and after dinner he went back to it. At ten o'clock his mother,

uneasy at his absence, went to look for him, and found him writing in

the midst of a pile of blotted and half-torn paper. He was writing to

Beatrix, for distrust of Camille had come into his mind. The air and

manner of the marquise during their brief interview in the garden had

singularly encouraged him.

No first love-letter ever was or ever will be, as may readily be

supposed, a brilliant effort of the mind. In all young men not tainted

by corruption such a letter is written with gushings from the heart,

too overflowing, too multifarious not to be the essence, the elixir of

many other letters begun, rejected, and rewritten.

Here is the one that Calyste finally composed and which he read aloud

to his poor, astonished mother. To her the old mansion seemed to have

taken fire; this love of her son flamed up in it like the glare of a

conflagration.

Calyste to Madame la Marquise de Rochefide.

Madame,--I loved you when you were to me but a dream; judge,

therefore, of the force my love acquired when I saw you. The dream

was far surpassed by the reality. It is my grief and my misfortune

to have nothing to say to you that you do not know already of your

beauty and your charms; and yet, perhaps, they have awakened in no

other heart so deep a sentiment as they have in me.

In so many ways you are beautiful; I have studied you so much

while thinking of you day and night that I have penetrated the

mysteries of your being, the secrets of your heart, and your

delicacy, so little appreciated. Have you ever been loved,

understood, adored as you deserve to be?

Let me tell you now that there is not a trait in your nature which

my heart does not interpret; your pride is understood by mine; the

grandeur of your glance, the grace of your bearing, the

distinction of your movements,--all things about your person are

in harmony with the thoughts, the hopes, the desires hidden in the

depths of your soul; it is because I have divined them all that I

think myself worthy of your notice. If I had not become, within

the last few days, another yourself, I could not speak to you of

myself; this letter, indeed, relates far more to you than it does

to me.

Beatrix, in order to write to you, I have silenced my youth, I

have laid aside myself, I have aged my thoughts,--or, rather, it

is you who have aged them, by this week of dreadful sufferings

caused, innocently indeed, by you.

Do not think me one of those common lovers at whom I have heard

you laugh so justly. What merit is there in loving a young and

beautiful and wise and noble woman. Alas! I have no merit! What

can I be to you? A child, attracted by effulgence of beauty and by

moral grandeur, as the insects are attracted to the light. You

cannot do otherwise than tread upon the flowers of my soul; they

are there at your feet, and all my happiness consists in your

stepping on them.

Absolute devotion, unbounded faith, love unquenchable,--all these

treasures of a true and tender heart are nothing, nothing! they

serve only to love with, they cannot win the love we crave.

Sometimes I do not understand why a worship so ardent does not

warm its idol; and when I meet your eye, so cold, so stern, I turn

to ice within me. Your disdain, /that/ is the acting force between

us, not my worship. Why? You cannot hate me as much as I love you;

why, then, does the weaker feeling rule the stronger? I loved

Felicite with all the powers of my heart; yet I forgot her in a

day, in a moment, when I saw you. She was my error; you are my

truth.

You have, unknowingly, destroyed my happiness, and yet you owe me

nothing in return. I loved Camille without hope, and I have no

hope from you; nothing is changed but my divinity. I was a pagan;

I am now a Christian, that is all--

Except this: you have taught me that to love is the greatest of

all joys; the joy of being loved comes later. According to

Camille, it is not loving to love for a short time only; the love

that does not grow from day to day, from hour to hour, is a mere

wretched passion. In order to grow, love must not see its end; and

she saw the end of ours, the setting of our sun of love. When I

beheld you, I understood her words, which, until then, I had

disputed with all my youth, with all the ardor of my desires, with

the despotic sternness of twenty years. That grand and noble

Camille mingled her tears with mine, and yet she firmly rejected

the love she saw must end. Therefore I am free to love you here on

earth and in the heaven above us, as we love God. If you loved me,

you would have no such arguments as Camille used to overthrow my

love. We are both young; we could fly on equal wing across our

sunny heaven, not fearing storms as that grand eagle feared them.

But ha! what am I saying? my thoughts have carried me beyond the

humility of my real hopes. Believe me, believe in the submission,

the patience, the mute adoration which I only ask you not to wound

uselessly. I know, Beatrix, that you cannot love me without the

loss of your self-esteem; therefore I ask for no return. Camille

once said there was some hidden fatality in names, /a propos/ of

hers. That fatality I felt for myself on the jetty of Guerande,

when I read on the shores of the ocean your name. Yes, you will

pass through my life as Beatrice passed through that of Dante. My

heart will be a pedestal for that white statue, cold, distant,

jealous, and oppressive.

It is forbidden to you to love me; I know that. You will suffer a

thousand deaths, you will be betrayed, humiliated, unhappy; but

you have in you a devil's pride, which binds you to that column

you have once embraced,--you are like Samson, you will perish by

holding to it. But this I have not divined; my love is too blind

for that; Camille has told it to me. It is not my mind that speaks

to you of this, it is hers. I have no mind with which to reason

when I think of you; blood gushes from my heart, and its hot wave

darkens my intellect, weakens my strength, paralyzes my tongue,

and bends my knees. I can only adore you, whatever you may do to

me.

Camille calls your resolution obstinacy; I defend you, and I call

it virtue. You are only the more beautiful because of it. I know

my destiny, and the pride of a Breton can rise to the height of

the woman who makes her pride a virtue.

Therefore, dear Beatrix, be kind, be consoling to me. When victims

were selected, they crowned them with flowers; so do you to me;

you owe me the flowers of pity, the music of my sacrifice. Am I

not a proof of your grandeur? Will you not rise to the level of my

disdained love,--disdained in spite of its sincerity, in spite of

its immortal passion?

Ask Camille how I behaved to her after the day she told me, on her

return to Les Touches, that she loved Claude Vignon. I was mute; I

suffered in silence. Well, for you I will show even greater

strength,--I will bury my feelings in my heart, if you will not

drive me to despair, if you will only understand my heroism. A

single word of praise from you is enough to make me bear the pains

of martyrdom.

But if you persist in this cold silence, this deadly disdain, you

will make me think you fear me. Ah, Beatrix, be with me what you

are,--charming, witty, gay, and tender. Talk to me of Conti, as

Camille has talked to me of Claude. I have no other spirit in my

soul, no other genius but that of love; nothing is there that can

make you fear me; I will be in your presence as if I loved you

not.

Can you reject so humble a prayer?--the prayer of a child who only

asks that his Light shall lighten him, that his Sun may warm him.

He whom you love can be with you at all times, but I, poor

Calyste! have so few days in which to see you; you will soon be

freed from me. Therefore I may return to Les Touches to-morrow,

may I not? You will not refuse my arm for that excursion? We shall

go together to Croisic and to Batz? If you do not go I shall take

it for an answer,--Calyste will understand it!

There were four more pages of the same sort in close, fine writing,

wherein Calyste explained the sort of threat conveyed in the last

words, and related his youth and life; but the tale was chiefly told

in exclamatory phrases, with many of those points and dashes of which

modern literature is so prodigal when it comes to crucial passages,--

as though they were planks offered to the reader's imagination, to

help him across crevasses. The rest of this artless letter was merely

repetition. But if it was not likely to touch Madame de Rochefide, and

would very slightly interest the admirers of strong emotions, it made

the mother weep, as she said to her son, in her tender voice,--

"My child, you are not happy."

This tumultuous poem of sentiments which had arisen like a storm in

Calyste's heart, terrified the baroness; for the first time in her

life she read a love-letter.

Calyste was standing in deep perplexity; how could he send that

letter? He followed his mother back into the salon with the letter in

his pocket and burning in his heart like fire. The Chevalier du Halga

was still there, and the last deal of a lively /mouche/ was going on.

Charlotte de Kergarouet, in despair at Calyste's indifference, was

paying attention to his father as a means of promoting her marriage.

Calyste wandered hither and thither like a butterfly which had flown

into the room by mistake. At last, when /mouche/ was over, he drew the

Chevalier du Halga into the great salon, from which he sent away

Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel's page and Mariotte.

"What does he want of the chevalier?" said old Zephirine, addressing

her friend Jacqueline.

"Calyste strikes me as half-crazy," replied Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel.

"He pays Charlotte no more attention than if she were a /paludiere/."

Remembering that the Chevalier du Halga had the reputation of having

navigated in his youth the waters of gallantry, it came into Calyste's

head to consult him.

"What is the best way to send a letter secretly to one's mistress," he

said to the old gentleman in a whisper.

"Well, you can slip it into the hand of her maid with a louis or two

underneath it; for sooner or later the maid will find out the secret,

and it is just as well to let her into it at once," replied the

chevalier, on whose face was the gleam of a smile. "But, on the whole,

it is best to give the letter yourself."

"A louis or two!" exclaimed Calyste.

He snatched up his hat and ran to Les Touches, where he appeared like

an apparition in the little salon, guided thither by the voices of

Camille and Beatrix. They were sitting on the sofa together,

apparently on the best of terms. Calyste, with the headlong impulse of

love, flung himself heedlessly on the sofa beside the marquise, took

her hand, and slipped the letter within it. He did this so rapidly

that Felicite, watchful as she was, did not perceive it. Calyste's

heart was tingling with an emotion half sweet, half painful, as he

felt the hand of Beatrix press his own, and saw her, without

interrupting her words, or seeming in the least disconcerted, slip the

letter into her glove.

"You fling yourself on a woman's dress without mercy," she said,

laughing.

"Calyste is a boy who is wanting in common-sense," said Felicite, not

sparing him an open rebuke.

Calyste rose, took Camille's hand, and kissed it. Then he went to the

piano and ran his finger-nail over the notes, making them all sound at

once, like a rapid scale. This exuberance of joy surprised Camille,

and made her thoughtful; she signed to Calyste to come to her.

"What is the matter with you?" she whispered in his ear.

"Nothing," he replied.

"There is something between them," thought Mademoiselle des Touches.

The marquise was impenetrable. Camille tried to make Calyste talk,

hoping that his artless mind would betray itself; but the youth

excused himself on the ground that his mother expected him, and he

left Les Touches at eleven o'clock,--not, however, without having

faced the fire of a piercing glance from Camille, to whom that excuse

was made for the first time.

After the agitations of a wakeful night filled with visions of

Beatrix, and after going a score of times through the chief street of

Guerande for the purpose of meeting the answer to his letter, which

did not come, Calyste finally received the following reply, which the

marquise's waiting-woman, entering the hotel du Guenic, presented to

him. He carried it to the garden, and there, in the grotto, he read as

follows:--

Madame de Rochefide to Calyste.

You are a noble child, but you are only a child. You are bound to

Camille, who adores you. You would not find in me either the

perfections that distinguish her or the happiness that she can

give you. Whatever you may think, she is young and I am old; her

heart is full of treasures, mine is empty; she has for you a

devotion you ill appreciate; she is unselfish; she lives only for

you and in you. I, on the other hand, am full of doubts; I should

drag you down to a wearisome life, without grandeur of any kind,--

a life ruined by my own conduct. Camille is free; she can go and

come as she will; I am a slave.

You forget that I love and am beloved. The situation in which I

have placed myself forbids my accepting homage. That a man should

love me, or say he loves me, is an insult. To turn to another

would be to place myself at the level of the lowest of my sex.

You, who are young and full of delicacy, how can you oblige me to

say these things, which rend my heart as they issue from it?

I preferred the scandal of an irreparable deed to the shame of

constant deception; my own loss of station to a loss of honesty.

In the eyes of many persons whose esteem I value, I am still

worthy; but if I permitted another man to love me, I should fall

indeed. The world is indulgent to those whose constancy covers, as

with a mantle, the irregularity of their happiness; but it is

pitiless to vice.

You see I feel neither disdain nor anger; I am answering your

letter frankly and with simplicity. You are young; you are

ignorant of the world; you are carried away by fancy; you are

incapable, like all whose lives are pure, of making the

reflections which evil suggests. But I will go still further.

Were I destined to be the most humiliated of women, were I forced

to hide fearful sorrows, were I betrayed, abandoned,--which, thank

God, is wholly impossible,--no one in this world would see me

more. Yes, I believe I should find courage to kill a man who,

seeing me in that situation, should talk to me of love.

You now know my mind to its depths. Perhaps I ought to thank you

for having written to me. After receiving your letter, and, above

all, after making you this reply, I could be at my ease with you

in Camille's house, I could act out my natural self, and be what

you ask of me; but I hardly need speak to you of the bitter

ridicule that would overwhelm me if my eyes or my manner ceased to

express the sentiments of which you complain. A second robbery

from Camille would be a proof of her want of power which no woman

could twice forgive. Even if I loved you, if I were blind to all

else, if I forgot all else, I should still see Camille! Her love

for you is a barrier too high to be o'erleaped by any power, even

by the wings of an angel; none but a devil would fail to recoil

before such treachery. In this, my dear Calyste, are many motives

which delicate and noble women keep to themselves, of which you

men know nothing; nor could you understand them, even though you

were all as like our sex as you yourself appear to be at this

moment.

My child, you have a mother who has shown you what you ought to be

in life. She is pure and spotless; she fulfils her destiny nobly;

what I have heard of her has filled my eyes with tears, and in the

depths of my heart I envy her. I, too, might have been what she

is! Calyste, that is the woman your wife should be, and such

should be her life. I will never send you back, in jest, as I have

done, to that little Charlotte, who would weary you to death; but

I do commend you to some divine young girl who is worthy of your

love.

If I were yours, your life would be blighted. You would have given

me your whole existence, and I--you see, I am frank--I should have

taken it; I should have gone with you, Heaven knows where, far

from the world! But I should have made you most unhappy; for I am

jealous. I see lions lurking in the path, and monsters in drops of

water. I am made wretched by trifles that most women put up with;

inexorable thoughts--from my heart, not yours--would poison our

existence and destroy my life. If a man, after ten years'

happiness, were not as respectful and as delicate as he was to me

at first, I should resent the change; it would abase me in my own

eyes! Such a lover could not believe in the Amadis and the Cyrus

of my dreams. To-day true love is but a dream, not a reality. I

see in yours only the joy of a desire the end of which is, as yet,

unperceived by you.

For myself, I am not forty years old; I have not bent my pride

beneath the yoke of experience,--in short, I am a woman too young

to be anything but odious. I will not answer for my temper; my

grace and charm are all external. Perhaps I have not yet suffered

enough to have the indulgent manners and the absolute tenderness

which come to us from cruel disappointments. Happiness has its

insolence, and I, I fear, am insolent. Camille will be always your

devoted slave; I should be an unreasonable tyrant. Besides,

Camille was brought to you by your guardian angel, at the turning

point of your life, to show you the career you ought to follow,--a

career in which you cannot fail.

I know Felicite! her tenderness is inexhaustible; she may ignore

the graces of our sex, but she possesses that fruitful strength,

that genius for constancy, that noble intrepidity which makes us

willing to accept the rest. She will marry you to some young girl,

no matter what she suffers. She will find you a free Beatrix--if

it is a Beatrix indeed who answers to your desires in a wife, and

to your dreams; she will smooth all the difficulties in your way.

The sale of a single acre of her ground in Paris would free your

property in Brittany; she will make you her heir; are you not

already her son by adoption?

Alas! what could I do for your happiness? Nothing. Do not betray

that infinite love which contents itself with the duties of

motherhood. Ah! I think her very fortunate, my Camille! She can

well afford to forgive your feeling for poor Beatrix; women of her

age are indulgent to such fancies. When they are sure of being

loved, they will pardon a passing infidelity; in fact, it is often

one of their keenest pleasures to triumph over a younger rival.

Camille is above such women, and that remark does not refer to

her; but I make it to ease your mind.

I have studied Camille closely; she is, to my eyes, one of the

greatest women of our age. She has mind and she has goodness,--two

qualities almost irreconcilable in woman; she is generous and

simple,--two other grandeurs seldom found together in our sex. I

have seen in the depths of her soul such treasures that the

beautiful line of Dante on eternal happiness, which I heard her

interpreting to you the other day, "Senza brama sicura ricchezza,"

seems as if made for her. She has talked to me of her career; she

has related her life, showing me how love, that object of our

prayers, our dreams, has ever eluded her. I replied that she

seemed to me an instance of the difficulty, if not the

impossibility, of uniting in one person two great glories.

You, Calyste, are one of the angelic souls whose mate it seems

impossible to find; but Camille will obtain for you, even if she

dies in doing so, the hand of some young girl with whom you can

make a happy home.

For myself, I hold out to you a friendly hand, and I count, not on

your heart, but on your mind, to make you in future a brother to

me, as I shall be a sister to you; and I desire that this letter

may terminate a correspondence which, between Les Touches and

Guerande, is rather absurd.

Beatrix de Casteran.

The baroness, stirred to the depths of her soul by the strange

exhibitions and the rapid changes of her boy's emotions, could no

longer sit quietly at her work in the ancient hall. After looking at

Calyste from time to time, she finally rose and came to him in a

manner that was humble, and yet bold; she wanted him to grant a favor

which she felt she had a right to demand.

"Well," she said, trembling, and looking at the letter, but not

directly asking for it.

Calyste read it aloud to her. And these two noble souls, so simple, so

guileless, saw nothing in that wily and treacherous epistle of the

malice or the snares which the marquise had written into it.

"She is a noble woman, a grand woman!" said the baroness, with

moistened eyes. "I will pray to God for her. I did not know that a

woman could abandon her husband and child, and yet preserve a soul so

virtuous. She is indeed worthy of pardon."

"Have I not every reason to adore her?" cried Calyste.

"But where will this love lead you?" said the baroness. "Ah, my child,

how dangerous are women with noble sentiments! There is less to fear

in those who are bad! Marry Charlotte de Kergarouet and release two-

thirds of the estate. By selling a few farms, Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel

can bestow that grand result upon you in the marriage contract, and

she will also help you, with her experience, to make the most of your

property. You will be able to leave your children a great name, and a

fine estate."

"Forget Beatrix!" said Calyste, in a muffled voice, with his eyes on

the ground.

He left the baroness, and went up to his own room to write an answer

to the marquise.

Madame du Guenic, whose heart retained every word of Madame de

Rochefide's letter, felt the need of some help in comprehending it

more clearly, and also the grounds of Calyste's hope. At this hour the

Chevalier du Halga was always to be seen taking his dog for a walk on

the mall. The baroness, certain of finding him there, put on her

bonnet and shawl and went out.

The sight of the Baronne du Guenic walking in Guerande elsewhere than

to church, or on the two pretty roads selected as promenades on /fete/

days, accompanied by the baron and Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, was an

event so remarkable that two hours later, throughout the whole town,

people accosted each other with the remark,--

"Madame du Guenic went out to-day; did you meet her?"

As soon as this amazing news reached the ears of Mademoiselle de Pen-

Hoel, she said to her niece,--

"Something very extraordinary is happening at the du Guenics."

"Calyste is madly in love with that beautiful Marquise de Rochefide,"

said Charlotte. "I ought to leave Guerande and return to Nantes."

The Chevalier du Halga, much surprised at being sought by the

baroness, released the chain of his little dog, aware that he could

not divide himself between the two interests.

"Chevalier," began the baroness, "you used to practise gallantry?"

Here the Chevalier du Halga straightened himself up with an air that

was not a little vain. Madame du Guenic, without naming her son or the

marquise, repeated, as nearly as possible, the love-letter, and asked

the chevalier to explain to her the meaning of such an answer. Du

Halga snuffed the air and stroked his chin; he listened attentively;

he made grimaces; and finally, he looked fixedly at the baroness with

a knowing air, as he said,--

"When thoroughbred horses want to leap a barrier, they go up to

reconnoitre it, and smell it over. Calyste is a lucky dog!"

"Oh, hush!" she cried.

"I'm mute. Ah! in the olden time I knew all about it," said the old

chevalier, striking an attitude. "The weather was fine, the breeze

nor'east. /Tudieu/! how the 'Belle-Poule' kept close to the wind that

day when--Oh!" he cried, interrupting himself, "we shall have a change

of weather; my ears are buzzing, and I feel the pain in my ribs! You

know, don't you, that the battle of the 'Belle-Poule' was so famous

that women wore head-dresses '/a la/ Belle-Poule.' Madame de

Kergarouet was the first to come to the opera in that head-dress, and

I said to her: 'Madame, you are dressed for conquest.' The speech was

repeated from box to box all through the house."

The baroness listened pleasantly to the old hero, who, faithful to the

laws of gallantry, escorted her to the alley of her house, neglecting

Thisbe. The secret of Thisbe's existence had once escaped him. Thisbe

was the granddaughter of a delightful Thisbe, the pet of Madame

l'Amirale de Kergarouet, first wife of the Comte de Kergarouet, the

chevalier's commanding officer. The present Thisbe was eighteen years

old.

The baroness ran up to Calyste's room. He was absent; she saw a

letter, not sealed, but addressed to Madame de Rochefide, lying on the

table. An invincible curiosity compelled the anxious mother to read

it. This act of indiscretion was cruelly punished. The letter revealed

to her the depths of the gulf into which his passion was hurling

Calyste.

Calyste to Madame la Marquise de Rochefide.

What care I for the race of the du Guenics in these days, Beatrix?

what is their name to me? My name is Beatrix; the happiness of

Beatrix is my happiness; her life is my life, and all my fortune

is in her heart. Our estates have been mortgaged these two hundred

years, and so they may remain for two hundred more; our farmers

have charge of them; no one can take them from us. To see you, to

love you,--that is my property, my object, my religion!

You talk to me of marrying! the very thought convulses my heart.

Is there another Beatrix? I will marry no one but you; I will wait

for you twenty years, if need be. I am young, and you will be ever

beautiful. My mother is a saint. I do not blame her, but she has

never loved. I know now what she has lost, and what sacrifices she

has made. You have taught me, Beatrix, to love her better; she is

in my heart with you, and no other can ever be there; she is your

only rival,--is not this to say that you reign in that heart

supreme? Therefore your arguments have no force upon my mind.

As for Camille, you need only say the word, or give me a mere

sign, and I will ask her to tell you herself that I do not love

her. She is the mother of my intellect; nothing more, nothing

less. From the moment that I first saw you she became to me a

sister, a friend, a comrade, what you will of that kind; but we

have no rights other than those of friendship upon each other. I

took her for a woman until I saw you. You have proved to me that

Camille is a man; she swims, hunts, smokes, drinks, rides on

horseback, writes and analyzes hearts and books; she has no

weaknesses; she marches on in all her strength; her motions even

have no resemblance to your graceful movements, to your step, airy

as the flight of a bird. Neither has she your voice of love, your

tender eyes, your gracious manner; she is Camille Maupin; there is

nothing of the woman about her, whereas in you are all the things

of womanhood that I love. It has seemed to me, from the first

moment when I saw you, that you were mine.

You will laugh at that fancy, but it has grown and is growing. It

seems to me unnatural, anomalous that we should be apart. You are

my soul, my life; I cannot live where you are not!

Let me love you! Let us fly! let us go into some country where you

know no one, where only God and I can reach your heart! My mother,

who loves you, might some day follow us. Ireland is full of

castles; my mother's family will lend us one. Ah, Beatrix, let us

go! A boat, a few sailors, and we are there, before any one can

know we have fled this world you fear so much.

You have never been loved. I feel it as I re-read your letter, in

which I fancy I can see that if the reasons you bring forward did

not exist, you would let yourself be loved by me. Beatrix, a

sacred love wipes out the past. Yes, I love you so truly that I

could wish you doubly shamed if so my love might prove itself by

holding you a saint!

You call my love an insult. Oh, Beatrix, you do not think it so!

The love of noble youth--and you have called me that--would honor

a queen. Therefore, to-morrow let us walk as lovers, hand in hand,

among the rocks and beside the sea; your step upon the sands of my

old Brittany will bless them anew to me! Give me this day of

happiness; and that passing alms, unremembered, alas! by you, will

be eternal riches to your

Calyste.

The baroness let fall the letter, without reading all of it. She knelt

upon a chair, and made a mental prayer to God to save her Calyste's

reason, to put his madness, his error far away from him; to lead him

from the path in which she now beheld him.

"What are you doing, mother?" said Calyste, entering the room.

"I am praying to God for you," she answered, simply, turning her

tearful eyes upon him. "I have committed the sin of reading that

letter. My Calyste is mad!"

"A sweet madness!" said the young man, kissing her.

"I wish I could see that woman," she sighed.

"Mamma," said Calyste, "we shall take a boat to-morrow and cross to

Croisic. If you are on the jetty you can see her."

So saying, he sealed his letter and departed for Les Touches.

That which, above all, terrified the baroness was to see a sentiment

attaining, by the force of its own instinct, to the clear-sightedness

of practised experience. Calyste's letter to Beatrix was such as the

Chevalier du Halga, with his knowledge of the world, might have

dictated.

XIII

DUEL BETWEEN WOMEN

Perhaps one of the greatest enjoyments that small minds or inferior

minds can obtain is that of deceiving a great soul, and laying snares

for it. Beatrix knew herself far beneath Camille Maupin. This

inferiority lay not only in the collection of mental and moral

qualities which we call /talent/, but in the things of the heart

called /passion/.

At the moment when Calyste was hurrying to Les Touches with the

impetuosity of a first love borne on the wings of hope, the marquise

was feeling a keen delight in knowing herself the object of the first

love of so charming a young man. She did not go so far as to wish

herself a sharer in the sentiment, but she thought it heroism on her

part to repress the /capriccio/, as the Italians say. She thought she

was equalling Camille's devotion, and told herself, moreover, that she

was sacrificing herself to her friend. The vanities peculiar to

Frenchwomen, which constitute the celebrated coquetry of which she was

so signal an instance, were flattered and deeply satisfied by

Calyste's love. Assailed by such powerful seduction, she was resisting

it, and her virtues sang in her soul a concert of praise and self-

approval.

The two women were half-sitting, half lying, in apparent indolence on

the divan of the little salon, so filled with harmony and the

fragrance of flowers. The windows were open, for the north wind had

ceased to blow. A soothing southerly breeze was ruffling the surface

of the salt lake before them, and the sun was glittering on the sands

of the shore. Their souls were as deeply agitated as the nature before

them was tranquil, and the heat within was not less ardent.

Bruised by the working of the machinery which she herself had set in

motion, Camille was compelled to keep watch for her safety, fearing

the amazing cleverness of the friendly enemy, or, rather, the inimical

friend she had allowed within her borders. To guard her own secrets

and maintain herself aloof, she had taken of late to contemplations of

nature; she cheated the aching of her own heart by seeking a meaning

in the world around her, finding God in that desert of heaven and

earth. When an unbeliever once perceives the presence of God, he

flings himself unreservedly into Catholicism, which, viewed as a

system, is complete.

That morning Camille's brow had worn the halo of thoughts born of

these researches during a night-time of painful struggle. Calyste was

ever before her like a celestial image. The beautiful youth, to whom

she had secretly devoted herself, had become to her a guardian angel.

Was it not he who led her into those loftier regions, where suffering

ceased beneath the weight of incommensurable infinity? and now a

certain air of triumph about Beatrix disturbed her. No woman gains an

advantage over another without allowing it to be felt, however much

she may deny having taken it. Nothing was ever more strange in its

course than the dumb, moral struggle which was going on between these

two women, each hiding from the other a secret,--each believing

herself generous through hidden sacrifices.

Calyste arrived, holding the letter between his hand and his glove,

ready to slip it at some convenient moment into the hand of Beatrix.

Camille, whom the subtle change in the manner of her friend had not

escaped, seemed not to watch her, but did watch her in a mirror at the

moment when Calyste was just entering the room. That is always a

crucial moment for women. The cleverest as well as the silliest of

them, the frankest as the shrewdest, are seldom able to keep their

secret; it bursts from them, at any rate, to the eyes of another

woman. Too much reserve or too little; a free and luminous look; the

mysterious lowering of eyelids,--all betray, at that sudden moment,

the sentiment which is the most difficult of all to hide; for real

indifference has something so radically cold about it that it can

never be simulated. Women have a genius for shades,--shades of detail,

shades of character; they know them all. There are times when their

eyes take in a rival from head to foot; they can guess the slightest

movement of a foot beneath a gown, the almost imperceptible motion of

the waist; they know the significance of things which, to a man, seem

insignificant. Two women observing each other play one of the choicest

scenes of comedy that the world can show.

"Calyste has committed some folly," thought Camille, perceiving in

each of her guests an indefinable air of persons who have a mutual

understanding.

There was no longer either stiffness or pretended indifference on the

part of Beatrix; she now regarded Calyste as her own property. Calyste

was even more transparent; he colored, as guilty people, or happy

people color. He announced that he had come to make arrangements for

the excursion on the following day.

"Then you really intend to go, my dear?" said Camille,

interrogatively.

"Yes," said Beatrix.

"How did you know it, Calyste?" asked Mademoiselle des Touches.

"I came here to find out," replied Calyste, on a look flashed at him

by Madame de Rochefide, who did not wish Camille to gain the slightest

inkling of their correspondence.

"They have an agreement together," thought Camille, who caught the

look in the powerful sweep of her eye.

Under the pressure of that thought a horrible discomposure overspread

her face and frightened Beatrix.

"What is the matter, my dear?" she cried.

"Nothing. Well, then, Calyste, send my horses and yours across to

Croisic, so that we may drive home by way of Batz. We will breakfast

at Croisic, and get home in time for dinner. You must take charge of

the boat arrangements. Let us start by half-past eight. You will see

some fine sights, Beatrix, and one very strange one; you will see

Cambremer, a man who does penance on a rock for having wilfully killed

his son. Oh! you are in a primitive land, among a primitive race of

people, where men are moved by other sentiments than those of ordinary

mortals. Calyste shall tell you the tale; it is a drama of the

seashore."

She went into her bedroom, for she was stifling. Calyste gave his

letter to Beatrix and followed Camille.

"Calyste, you are loved, I think; but you are hiding something from

me; you have done some foolish thing."

"Loved!" he exclaimed, dropping into a chair.

Camille looked into the next room; Beatrix had disappeared. The fact

was odd. Women do not usually leave a room which contains the man they

admire, unless they have either the certainty of seeing him again, or

something better still. Mademoiselle des Touches said to herself:--

"Can he have given her a letter?"

But she thought the innocent Breton incapable of such boldness.

"If you have disobeyed me, all will be lost, through your own fault,"

she said to him very gravely. "Go, now, and make your preparations for

to-morrow."

She made a gesture which Calyste did not venture to resist.

As he walked toward Croisic, to engage the boatmen, fears came into

Calyste's mind. Camille's speech foreshadowed something fatal, and he

believed in the second sight of her maternal affection. When he

returned, four hours later, very tired, and expecting to dine at Les

Touches, he found Camille's maid keeping watch over the door, to tell

him that neither her mistress nor the marquise could receive him that

evening. Calyste, much surprised, wished to question her, but she bade

him hastily good-night and closed the door.

Six o'clock was striking on the steeple of Guerande as Calyste entered

his own house, where Mariotte gave him his belated dinner; after

which, he played /mouche/ in gloomy meditation. These alternations of

joy and gloom, happiness and unhappiness, the extinction of hopes

succeeding the apparent certainty of being loved, bruised and wounded

the young soul which had flown so high on outstretched wings that the

fall was dreadful.

"Does anything trouble you, my Calyste?" said his mother.

"Nothing," he replied, looking at her with eyes from which the light

of the soul and the fire of love were withdrawn.

It is not hope, but despair, which gives the measure of our ambitions.

The finest poems of hope are sung in secret, but grief appears without

a veil.

"Calyste, you are not nice," said Charlotte, after vainly attempting

on him those little provincial witcheries which degenerate usually

into teasing.

"I am tired," he said, rising, and bidding the company good-night.

"Calyste is much changed," remarked Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel.

"We haven't beautiful dresses trimmed with lace; we don't shake our

sleeves like this, or twist our bodies like that; we don't know how to

give sidelong glances, and turn our eyes," said Charlotte, mimicking

the air, and attitude, and glances of the marquise. "/We/ haven't that

head voice, nor the interesting little cough, /heu! heu!/ which sounds

like the sigh of a spook; /we/ have the misfortune of being healthy

and robust, and of loving our friends without coquetry; and when we

look at them, we don't pretend to stick a dart into them, or to watch

them slyly; /we/ can't bend our heads like a weeping willow, just to

look the more interesting when we raise them--this way."

Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel could not help laughing at her niece's

gesture; but neither the chevalier nor the baron paid any heed to this

truly provincial satire against Paris.

"But the Marquise de Rochefide is a very handsome woman," said the old

maid.

"My dear," said the baroness to her husband, "I happen to know that

she is going over to Croisic to-morrow. Let us walk on the jetty; I

should like to see her."

While Calyste was racking his brains to imagine what could have closed

the doors of Les Touches to him, a scene was passing between Camille

and Beatrix which was to have its influence on the events of the

morrow.

Calyste's last letter had stirred in Madame de Rochefide's heart

emotions hitherto unknown to it. Women are not often the subject of a

love so young, guileless, sincere, and unconditional as that of this

youth, this child. Beatrix had loved more than she had been loved.

After being all her life a slave, she suddenly felt an inexplicable

desire to be a tyrant. But, in the midst of her pleasure, as she read

and re-read the letter, she was pierced through and through with a

cruel idea.

What were Calyste and Camille doing together ever since Claude

Vignon's departure? If, as Calyste said, he did not love Camille, and

if Camille knew it, how did they employ their mornings, and why were

they alone together? Memory suddenly flashed into her mind, in answer

to these questions, certain speeches of Camille; a grinning devil

seemed to show her, as in a magic mirror, the portrait of that heroic

woman, with certain gestures, certain aspects, which suddenly

enlightened her. What! instead of being her equal, was she crushed by

Felicite? instead of over-reaching her, was she being over-reached

herself? was she only a toy, a pleasure, which Camille was giving to

her child, whom she loved with an extraordinary passion that was free

from all vulgarity?

To a woman like Beatrix this thought came like a thunder-clap. She

went over in her mind minutely the history of the past week. In a

moment the part which Camille was playing, and her own, unrolled

themselves to their fullest extent before her eyes; she felt horribly

belittled. In her fury of jealous anger, she fancied she could see in

Camille's conduct an intention of vengeance against Conti. Was the

hidden wrath of the past two years really acting upon the present

moment?

Once on the path of these doubts and superstitions, Beatrix did not

pause. She walked up and down her room, driven to rapid motion by the

impetuous movements of her soul, sitting down now and then, and trying

to decide upon a course, but unable to do so. And thus she remained, a

prey to indecision until the dinner hour, when she rose hastily, and

went downstairs without dressing. No sooner did Camille see her, than

she felt that a crisis had come. Beatrix, in her morning gown, with a

chilling air and a taciturn manner, indicated to an observer as keen

as Maupin the coming hostilities of an embittered heart.

Camille instantly left the room and gave the order which so astonished

Calyste; she feared that he might arrive in the midst of the quarrel,

and she determined to be alone, without witnesses, in fighting this

duel of deception on both sides. Beatrix, without an auxiliary, would

infallibly succumb. Camille well knew the barrenness of that soul, the

pettiness of that pride, to which she had justly applied the epithet

of obstinate.

The dinner was gloomy. Camille was gentle and kind; she felt herself

the superior being. Beatrix was hard and cutting; she felt she was

being managed like a child. During dinner the battle began with

glances, gestures, half-spoken sentences,--not enough to enlighten the

servants, but enough to prepare an observer for the coming storm. When

the time to go upstairs came, Camille offered her arm maliciously to

Beatrix, who pretended not to see it, and sprang up the stairway

alone. When coffee had been served Mademoiselle des Touches said to

the footman, "You may go,"--a brief sentence, which served as a signal

for the combat.

"The novels you make, my dear, are more dangerous than those you

write," said the marquise.

"They have one advantage, however," replied Camille, lighting a

cigarette.

"What is that?" asked Beatrix.

"They are unpublished, my angel."

"Is the one in which you are putting me to be turned into a book?"

"I've no fancy for the role of OEdipus; I know you have the wit and

beauty of a sphinx, but don't propound conundrums. Speak out, plainly,

my dear Beatrix."

"When, in order to make a man happy, amuse him, please him, and save

him from ennui, we allow the devil to help us--"

"That man would reproach us later for our efforts on his behalf, and

would think them prompted by the genius of depravity," said Camille,

taking the cigarette from her lips to interrupt her friend.

"He forgets the love which carried us away, and is our sole

justification--but that's the way of men, they are all unjust and

ungrateful," continued Beatrix. "Women among themselves know each

other; they know how proud and noble their own minds are, and, let us

frankly say so, how virtuous! But, Camille, I have just recognized the

truth of certain criticisms upon your nature, of which you have

sometimes complained. My dear, you have something of the man about

you; you behave like a man; nothing restrains you; if you haven't all

a man's advantages, you have a man's spirit in all your ways; and you

share his contempt for women. I have no reason, my dear, to be

satisfied with you, and I am too frank to hide my dissatisfaction. No

one has ever given or ever will give, perhaps, so cruel a wound to my

heart as that from which I am now suffering. If you are not a woman in

love, you are one in vengeance. It takes a /woman/ of genius to

discover the most sensitive spot of all in another woman's delicacy. I

am talking now of Calyste, and the trickery, my dear,--that is the

word,--/trickery/,--you have employed against me. To what depths have

you descended, Camille Maupin! and why?"

"More and more sphinx-like!" said Camille, smiling.

"You want me to fling myself at Calyste's head; but I am still too

young for that sort of thing. To me, love is sacred; love is love with

all its emotions, jealousies, and despotisms. I am not an author; it

is impossible for me to see ideas where the heart feels sentiments."

"You think yourself capable of loving foolishly!" said Camille. "Make

yourself easy on that score; you still have plenty of sense. My dear,

you calumniate yourself; I assure you that your nature is cold enough

to enable your head to judge of every action of your heart."

The marquise colored high; she darted a look of hatred, a venomous

look, at Camille, and found, without searching, the sharpest arrows in

her quiver. Camille smoked composedly as she listened to a furious

tirade, which rang with such cutting insults that we do not reproduce

it here. Beatrix, irritated by the calmness of her adversary,

condescended even to personalities on Camille's age.

"Is that all?" said Felicite, when Beatrix paused, letting a cloud of

smoke exhale from her lips. "Do you love Calyste?"

"No; of course not."

"So much the better," replied Camille. "I do love him--far too much

for my own peace of mind. He may, perhaps, have had a passing fancy

for you; for you are, you know, enchantingly fair, while I am as black

as a crow; you are slim and willowy, while I have a portly dignity; in

short, you are /young/!--that's the final word, and you have not

spared it to me. You have abused your advantages as a woman against

me. I have done my best to prevent what has now happened. However

little of a woman you may think me, I am woman enough, my dear, not to

allow a rival to triumph over me unless I choose to help her." (This

remark, made in apparently the most innocent manner, cut the marquise

to the heart). "You take me for a very silly person if you believe all

that Calyste tries to make you think of me. I am neither so great nor

so small; I am a woman, and very much of a woman. Come, put off your

grand airs, and give me your hand!" continued Camille, taking Madame

de Rochefide's hand. "You do not love Calyste, you say; that is true,

is it not? Don't be angry, therefore; be hard, and cold, and stern to

him to-morrow; he will end by submitting to his fate, especially after

certain little reproaches which I mean to make to him. Still, Calyste

is a Breton, and very persistent; if he should continue to pay court

to you, tell me frankly, and I will lend you my little country house

near Paris, where you will find all the comforts of life, and where

Conti can come out and see you. You said just now that Calyste

calumniated me. Good heavens! what of that? The purest love lies

twenty times a day; its deceptions only prove its strength."

Camille's face wore an air of such superb disdain that the marquise

grew fearful and anxious. She knew not how to answer. Camille dealt

her a last blow.

"I am more confiding and less bitter than you," she said. "I don't

suspect you of attempting to cover by a quarrel a secret injury, which

would compromise my very life. You know me; I shall never survive the

loss of Calyste, but I must lose him sooner or later. Still, Calyste

loves me now; of that I am sure."

"Here is what he answered to a letter of mine, urging him to be true

to you," said Beatrix, holding out Calyste's last letter.

Camille took it and read it; but as she read it, her eyes filled with

tears; and presently she wept as women weep in their bitterest

sorrows.

"My God!" she said, "how he loves her! I shall die without being

understood--or loved," she added.

She sat for a few moments with her head leaning against the shoulder

of her companion; her grief was genuine; she felt to the very core of

her being the same terrible blow which the Baronne du Guenic had

received in reading that letter.

"Do you love him?" she said, straightening herself up, and looking

fixedly at Beatrix. "Have you that infinite worship for him which

triumphs over all pains, survives contempt, betrayal, the certainty

that he will never love you? Do you love him for himself, and for the

very joy of loving him?"

"Dear friend," said the marquise, tenderly, "be happy, be at peace; I

will leave this place to-morrow."

"No, do not go; he loves you, I see that. Well, I love him so much

that I could not endure to see him wretched and unhappy. Still, I had

formed plans for him, projects; but if he loves you, all is over."

"And I love him, Camille," said the marquise, with a sort of

/naivete/, and coloring.

"You love him, and yet you cast him off!" cried Camille. "Ah! that is

not loving; you do not love him."

"I don't know what fresh virtue he has roused in me, but certainly he

has made me ashamed of my own self," said Beatrix. "I would I were

virtuous and free, that I might give him something better than the

dregs of a heart and the weight of my chains. I do not want a hampered

destiny either for him or for myself."

"Cold brain!" exclaimed Camille, with a sort of horror. "To love and

calculate!"

"Call it what you like," said Beatrix, "but I will not spoil his life,

or hang like a millstone round his neck, to become an eternal regret

to him. If I cannot be his wife, I shall not be his mistress. He has--

you will laugh at me? No? Well, then, he has purified me."

Camille cast on Beatrix the most sullen, savage look that female

jealousy ever cast upon a rival.

"On that ground, I believed I stood alone," she said. "Beatrix, those

words of yours must separate us forever; we are no longer friends.

Here begins a terrible conflict between us. I tell you now; you will

either succumb or fly."

So saying, Camille bounded into her room, after showing her face,

which was that of a maddened lioness, to the astonished Beatrix. Then

she raised the portiere and looked in again.

"Do you intend to go to Croisic to-morrow," she asked.

"Certainly," replied the marquise, proudly. "I shall not fly, and I

shall not succumb."

"I play above board," replied Camille; "I shall write to Conti."

Beatrix became as white as the gauze of her scarf.

"We are staking our lives on this game," she replied, not knowing what

to say or do.

The violent passions roused by this scene between the two women calmed

down during the night. Both argued with their own minds and returned

to those treacherously temporizing courses which are so attractive to

the majority of women,--an excellent system between men and women, but

fatally unsafe among women alone. In the midst of this tumult of their

souls Mademoiselle des Touches had listened to that great Voice whose

counsels subdue the strongest will; Beatrix heard only the promptings

of worldly wisdom; she feared the contempt of society.

Thus Felicite's last deception succeeded; Calyste's blunder was

repaired, but a fresh indiscretion might be fatal to him.

XIV

AN EXCURSION TO CROISIC

It was now the end of August, and the sky was magnificently clear.

Near the horizon the sea had taken, as it is wont to do in southern

climes, a tint of molten silver; on the shore it rippled in tiny

waves. A sort of glowing vapor, an effect of the rays of the sun

falling plumb upon the sands, produced an atmosphere like that of the

tropics. The salt shone up like bunches of white violets on the

surface of the marsh. The patient /paludiers/, dressed in white to

resist the action of the sun, had been from early morning at their

posts, armed with long rakes. Some were leaning on the low mud-walls

that divided the different holdings, whence they watched the process

of this natural chemistry, known to them from childhood. Others were

playing with their wives and children. Those green dragons, otherwise

called custom-house officers, were tranquilly smoking their pipes.

There was something foreign, perhaps oriental, about the scene; at any

rate a Parisian suddenly transported thither would never have supposed

himself in France. The baron and baroness, who had made a pretext of

coming to see how the salt harvest throve, were on the jetty, admiring

the silent landscape, where the sea alone sounded the moan of her

waves at regular intervals, where boats and vessels tracked a vast

expanse, and the girdle of green earth richly cultivated, produced an

effect that was all the more charming because so rare on the desolate

shores of ocean.

"Well, my friends, I wanted to see the marshes of Guerande once more

before I die," said the baron to the /paludiers/, who had gathered

about the entrance of the marshes to salute him.

"Can a Guenic die?" said one of them.

Just then the party from Les Touches arrived through the narrow

pathway. The marquise walked first alone; Calyste and Camille followed

arm-in-arm. Gasselin brought up the rear.

"There are my father and mother," said the young man to Camille.

The marquise stopped short. Madame du Guenic felt the most violent

repulsion at the appearance of Beatrix, although the latter was

dressed to much advantage. A Leghorn hat with wide brims and a wreath

of blue-bells, her crimped hair fluffy beneath it, a gown of some gray

woollen stuff, and a blue sash with floating ends gave her the air of

a princess disguised as a milkmaid.

"She has no heart," thought the baroness.

"Mademoiselle," said Calyste to Camille, "this is Madame du Guenic,

and this is my father." Then he said turning to the baron and

baroness, "Mademoiselle des Touches, and Madame la Marquise de

Rochefide, /nee/ de Casteran, father."

The baron bowed to Mademoiselle des Touches, who made a respectful

bow, full of gratitude, to the baroness.

"That one," thought Fanny, "really loves my boy; she seems to thank me

for bringing him into the world."

"I suppose you have come to see, as I have, whether the harvest is a

good one. But I believe you have better reasons for doing so than I,"

said the baron to Camille. "You have property here, I think,

mademoiselle."

"Mademoiselle is the largest of all the owners," said one of the

/paludiers/ who were grouped about them, "and may God preserve her to

us, for she's a /good/ lady."

The two parties bowed and separated.

"No one would suppose Mademoiselle des Touches to be more than

thirty," said the baron to his wife. "She is very handsome. And

Calyste prefers that haggard Parisian marquise to a sound Breton

girl!"

"I fear he does," replied the baroness.

A boat was waiting at the steps of the jetty, where the party embarked

without a smile. The marquise was cold and dignified. Camille had

lectured Calyste on his disobedience, explaining to him clearly how

matters stood. Calyste, a prey to black despair, was casting glances

at Beatrix in which anger and love struggled for the mastery. Not a

word was said by any of them during the short passage from the jetty

of Guerande to the extreme end of the port of Croisic, the point where

the boats discharge the salt, which the peasant-women then bear away

on their heads in huge earthen jars after the fashion of caryatides.

These women go barefooted with very short petticoats. Many of them let

the kerchiefs which cover their bosoms fly carelessly open. Some wear

only shifts, and are the more dignified; for the less clothing a woman

wears, the more nobly modest is her bearing.

The little Danish vessel had just finished lading, therefore the

landing of the two handsome ladies excited much curiosity among the

female salt-carriers; and as much to avoid their remarks as to serve

Calyste, Camille sprang forward toward the rocks, leaving him to

follow with Beatrix, while Gasselin put a distance of some two hundred

steps between himself and his master.

The peninsula of Croisic is flanked on the sea side by granite rocks

the shapes of which are so strangely fantastic that they can only be

appreciated by travellers who are in a position to compare them with

other great spectacles of primeval Nature. Perhaps the rocks of

Croisic have the same advantage over sights of that kind as that

accorded to the road to the Grande Chartreuse over all other narrow

valleys. Neither the coasts of Croisic, where the granite bulwark is

split into strange reefs, nor those of Sardinia, where Nature is

dedicated to grandiose and terrible effects, nor even the basaltic

rocks of the northern seas can show a character so unique and so

complete. Fancy has here amused itself by composing interminable

arabesques where the most fantastic figures wind and twine. All forms

are here. The imagination is at last fatigued by this vast gallery of

abnormal shapes, where in stormy weather the sea makes rough assaults

which have ended in polishing all ruggedness.

You will find under a naturally vaulted roof, of a boldness imitated

from afar by Brunelleschi (for the greatest efforts of art are always

the timid copying of effects of nature), a rocky hollow polished like

a marble bath-tub and floored with fine white sand, in which is four

feet of tepid water where you can bathe without danger. You walk on,

admiring the cool little covers sheltered by great portals; roughly

carved, it is true, but majestic, like the Pitti palace, that other

imitation of the whims of Nature. Curious features are innumerable;

nothing is lacking that the wildest imagination could invent or

desire.

There even exists a thing so rare on the rocky shores of ocean that

this may be the solitary instance of it,--a large bush of box. This

bush, the greatest curiosity of Croisic, where trees have never grown,

is three miles distant from the harbor, on the point of rocks that

runs farthest into the sea. On this granite promontory, which rises to

a height that neither the waves nor the spray can touch, even in the

wildest weather, and faces southerly, diluvian caprice has constructed

a hollow basin, which projects about four feet. Into this basin, or

cleft, chance, possibly man, has conveyed enough vegetable earth for

the growth of a box-plant, compact, well-nourished, and sown, no

doubt, by birds. The shape of the roots would indicate to a botanist

an existence of at least three hundred years. Above it the rock has

been broken off abruptly. The natural convulsion which did this, the

traces of which are ineffaceably written here, must have carried away

the broken fragments of the granite I know not where.

The sea rushes in, meeting no reefs, to the foot of this cliff, which

rises to a height of some four or five hundred feet; at its base lie

several scattered rocks, just reaching the surface at high water, and

describing a semi-circle. It requires some nerve and resolution to

climb to the summit of this little Gibraltar, the shape of which is

nearly round, and from which a sudden gust of wind might precipitate

the rash gazer into the sea, or, still more to be feared, upon the

rocks.

This gigantic sentinel resembles the look-out towers of old castles,

from which the inhabitants could look the country over and foresee

attacks. Thence we see the clock towers and the arid fields of

Croisic, with the sandy dunes, which injure cultivation, and stretch

as far as Batz. A few old men declare that in days long past a

fortress occupied the spot. The sardine-fishers have given the rock,

which can be seen far out at sea, a name; but it is useless to write

it here, its Breton consonants being as difficult to pronounce as to

remember.

Calyste led Beatrix to this point, whence the view is magnificent, and

where the natural sculpture of the granite is even more imposing to

the spectator than the mass of the huge breastwork when seen from the

sandy road which skirts the shore.

Is it necessary to explain why Camille had rushed away alone? Like

some wounded wild animal, she longed for solitude, and went on and on,

threading her way among the fissures and caves and little peaks of

nature's fortress. Not to be hampered in climbing by women's clothing,

she wore trousers with frilled edges, a short blouse, a peaked cap,

and, by way of staff, she carried a riding-whip, for Camille has

always had a certain vanity in her strength and her agility. Thus

arrayed, she looked far handsomer than Beatrix. She wore also a little

shawl of crimson China crape, crossed on her bosom and tied behind, as

they dress a child. For some time Beatrix and Calyste saw her flitting

before them over the peaks and chasms like a ghost or vision; she was

trying to still her inward sufferings by confronting some imaginary

peril.

She was the first to reach the rock in which the box-bush grew. There

she sat down in the shade of a granite projection, and was lost in

thought. What could a woman like herself do with old age, having

already drunk the cup of fame which all great talents, too eager to

sip slowly the stupid pleasures of vanity, quaff at a single draught?

She has since admitted that it was here--at this moment, and on this

spot--that one of those singular reflections suggested by a mere

nothing, by one of those chance accidents that seem nonsense to common

minds, but which, to noble souls, do sometimes open vast depths of

thought, decided her to take the extraordinary step by which she was

to part forever from social life.

She drew from her pocket a little box, in which she had put, in case

of thirst, some strawberry lozenges; she now ate several; and as she

did so, the thought crossed her mind that the strawberries, which

existed no longer, lived nevertheless in their qualities. Was it not

so with ourselves? The ocean before her was an image of the infinite.

No great spirit can face the infinite, admitting the immortality of

the soul, without the conviction of a future of holiness. The thought

filled her mind. How petty then seemed the part that she was playing!

there was no real greatness in giving Beatrix to Calyste! So thinking,

she felt the earthly woman die within her, and the true woman, the

noble and angelic being, veiled until now by flesh, arose in her

place. Her great mind, her knowledge, her attainments, her false loves

had brought her face to face with what? Ah! who would have thought it?

--with the bounteous mother, the comforter of troubled spirits, with

the Roman Church, ever kind to repentance, poetic to poets, childlike

with children, and yet so profound, so full of mystery to anxious,

restless minds that they can burrow there and satisfy all longings,

all questionings, all hopes. She cast her eyes, as it were, upon the

strangely devious way--like the tortuous rocky path before her--over

which her love for Calyste had led her. Ah! Calyste was indeed a

messenger from heaven, her divine conductor! She had stifled earthly

love, and a divine love had come from it.

After walking for some distance in silence, Calyste could not refrain,

on a remark of Beatrix about the grandeur of the ocean, so unlike the

smiling beauty of the Mediterranean, from comparing in depth, purity,

extent, unchanging and eternal duration, that ocean with his love.

"It is met by a rock!" said Beatrix, laughing.

"When you speak thus," he answered, with a sublime look, "I hear you,

I see you, and I can summon to my aid the patience of the angels; but

when I am alone, you would pity me if you could see me then. My mother

weeps for my suffering."

"Listen to me, Calyste; we must put an end to all this," said the

marquise, gazing down upon the sandy road. "Perhaps we have now

reached the only propitious place to say these things, for never in my

life did I see nature more in keeping with my thoughts. I have seen

Italy, where all things tell of love; I have seen Switzerland, where

all is cool and fresh, and tells of happiness,--the happiness of

labor; where the verdure, the tranquil waters, the smiling slopes, are

oppressed by the snow-topped Alps; but I have never seen anything that

so depicts the burning barrenness of my life as that little arid plain

down there, dried by the salt sea winds, corroded by the spray, where

a fruitless agriculture tries to struggle against the will of that

great ocean. There, Calyste, you have an image of this Beatrix. Don't

cling to it. I love you, but I will never be yours in any way

whatever, for I have the sense of my inward desolation. Ah! you do not

know how cruel I am to myself in speaking thus to you. No, you shall

never see your idol diminished; she shall never fall from the height

at which you have placed her. I now have a horror of any love which

disregards the world and religion. I shall remain in my present bonds;

I shall be that sandy plain we see before us, without fruit or flowers

or verdure."

"But if you are abandoned?" said Calyste.

"Then I should beg my pardon of the man I have offended. I will never

run the risk of taking a happiness I know would quickly end."

"End!" cried Calyste.

The marquise stopped the passionate speech into which her lover was

about to launch, by repeating the word "End!" in a tone that silenced

him.

This opposition roused in the young man one of those mute inward

furies known only to those who love without hope. They walked on

several hundred steps in total silence, looking neither at the sea,

nor the rocks, nor the plain of Croisic.

"I would make you happy," said Calyste.

"All men begin by promising that," she answered, "and they end by

abandonment and disgust. I have no reproach to cast on him to whom I

shall be faithful. He made me no promises; I went to him; but my only

means of lessening my fault is to make it eternal."

"Say rather, madame, that you feel no love for me. I, who love you, I

know that love cannot argue; it is itself; it sees nothing else. There

is no sacrifice I will not make to you; command it, and I will do the

impossible. He who despised his mistress for flinging her glove among

the lions, and ordering him to bring it back to her, did not /love!/

He denied your right to test our hearts, and to yield yourselves only

to our utmost devotion. I will sacrifice to you my family, my name, my

future."

"But what an insult in that word 'sacrifice'!" she said, in

reproachful tones, which made poor Calyste feel the folly of his

speech.

None but women who truly love, or inborn coquettes, know how to use a

word as a point from which to make a spring.

"You are right," said Calyste, letting fall a tear; "that word can

only be said of the cruel struggles which you ask of me."

"Hush!" said Beatrix, struck by an answer in which, for the first

time, Calyste had really made her feel his love. "I have done wrong

enough; tempt me no more."

At this moment they had reached the base of the rock on which grew the

plant of box. Calyste felt a thrill of delight as he helped the

marquise to climb the steep ascent to the summit, which she wished to

reach. To the poor lad it was a precious privilege to hold her up, to

make her lean upon him, to feel her tremble; she had need of him. This

unlooked-for pleasure turned his head; he saw nought else but Beatrix,

and he clasped her round the waist.

"What!" she said, with an imposing air.

"Will you never be mine?" he demanded, in a voice that was choked by

the tumult of his blood.

"Never, my friend," she replied. "I can only be to you a Beatrix,--a

dream. But is not that a sweet and tender thing? We shall have no

bitterness, no grief, no repentance."

"Will you return to Conti?"

"I must."

"You shall never belong to any man!" cried Calyste, pushing her from

him with frenzied violence.

He listened for her fall, intending to spring after her, but he heard

only a muffled sound, the tearing of some stuff, and then the thud of

a body falling on the ground. Instead of being flung head foremost

down the precipice, Beatrix had only slipped some eight or ten feet

into the cavity where the box-bush grew; but she might from there have

rolled down into the sea if her gown had not caught upon a point of

rock, and by tearing slowly lowered the weight of her body upon the

bush.

Mademoiselle des Touches, who saw the scene, was unable in her horror

to cry out, but she signed to Gasselin to come. Calyste was leaning

forward with an expression of savage curiosity; he saw the position in

which Beatrix lay, and he shuddered. Her lips moved,--she seemed to be

praying; in fact, she thought she was about to die, for she felt the

bush beginning to give way. With the agility which danger gives to

youth, Calyste slid down to the ledge below the bush, where he was

able to grasp the marquise and hold her, although at the risk of their

both sliding down into the sea. As he held her, he saw that she had

fainted; but in that aerial spot he could fancy her all his, and his

first emotion was that of pleasure.

"Open your eyes," he said, "and forgive me; we will die together."

"Die?" she said, opening her eyes and unclosing her pallid lips.

Calyste welcomed that word with a kiss, and felt the marquise tremble

under it convulsively, with passionate joy. At that instant Gasselin's

hob-nailed shoes sounded on the rock above them. The old Breton was

followed by Camille, and together they sought for some means of saving

the lovers.

"There's but one way, mademoiselle," said Gasselin. "I must slide down

there, and they can climb on my shoulders, and you must pull them up."

"And you?" said Camille.

The man seemed surprised that he should be considered in presence of

the danger to his young master.

"You must go to Croisic and fetch a ladder," said Camille.

Beatrix asked in a feeble voice to be laid down, and Calyste placed

her on the narrow space between the bush and its background of rock.

"I saw you, Calyste," said Camille from above. "Whether Beatrix lives

or dies, remember that this must be an accident."

"She will hate me," he said, with moistened eyes.

"She will adore you," replied Camille. "But this puts an end to our

excursion. We must get her back to Les Touches. Had she been killed,

Calyste, what would have become of you?"

"I should have followed her."

"And your mother?" Then, after a pause, she added, feebly, "and me?"

Calyste was deadly pale; he stood with his back against the granite

motionless and silent. Gasselin soon returned from one of the little

farms scattered through the neighborhood, bearing a ladder which he

had borrowed. By this time Beatrix had recovered a little strength.

The ladder being placed, she was able, by the help of Gasselin, who

lowered Camille's red shawl till he could grasp it, to reach the round

top of the rock, where the Breton took her in his arms and carried her

to the shore as though she were an infant.

"I should not have said no to death--but suffering!" she murmured to

Felicite, in a feeble voice.

The weakness, in fact the complete prostration, of the marquise

obliged Camille to have her taken to the farmhouse from which the

ladder had been borrowed. Calyste, Gasselin, and Camille took off what

clothes they could spare and laid them on the ladder, making a sort of

litter on which they carried Beatrix. The farmers gave her a bed.

Gasselin then went to the place where the carriage was awaiting them,

and, taking one of the horses, rode to Croisic to obtain a doctor,

telling the boatman to row to the landing-place that was nearest to

the farmhouse.

Calyste, sitting on a stool, answered only by motions of the head, and

rare monosyllables when spoken to; Camille's uneasiness, roused for

Beatrix, was still further excited by Calyste's unnatural condition.

When the physician arrived, and Beatrix was bled, she felt better,

began to talk, and consented to embark; so that by five o'clock they

reached the jetty at Guerande, whence she was carried to Les Touches.

The news of the accident had already spread through that lonely and

almost uninhabited region with incredible rapidity.

Calyste passed the night at Les Touches, sitting at the foot of

Beatrix's bed, in company with Camille. The doctor from Guerande had

assured them that on the following day a little stiffness would be all

that remained of the accident. Across the despair of Calyste's heart

there came a gleam of joy. He was there, at her feet; he could watch

her sleeping or waking; he might study her pallid face and all its

expressions. Camille smiled bitterly as her keen mind recognized in

Calyste the symptoms of a passion such as man can feel but once,--a

passion which dyes his soul and his faculties by mingling with the

fountain of his life at a period when neither thoughts nor cares

distract or oppose the inward working of this emotion. She saw that

Calyste would never, could never see the real woman that was in

Beatrix.

And with what guileless innocence the young Breton allowed his

thoughts to be read! When he saw the beautiful green eyes of the sick

woman turned to him, expressing a mixture of love, confusion, and even

mischief, he colored, and turned away his head.

"Did I not say truly, Calyste, that you men promised happiness, and

ended by flinging us down a precipice?"

When he heard this little jest, said in sweet, caressing tones which

betrayed a change of heart in Beatrix, Calyste knelt down, took her

moist hand which she yielded to him, and kissed it humbly.

"You have the right to reject my love forever," he said, "and I, I

have no right to say one word to you."

"Ah!" cried Camille, seeing the expression on Beatrix's face and

comparing it with that obtained by her diplomacy, "love has a wit of

its own, wiser than that of all the world! Take your composing-

draught, my dear friend, and go to sleep."

That night, spent by Calyste beside Mademoiselle des Touches, who read

a book of theological mysticism while Calyste read "Indiana,"--the

first work of Camille's celebrated rival, in which is the captivating

image of a young man loving with idolatry and devotion, with

mysterious tranquillity and for all his life, a woman placed in the

same false position as Beatrix (a book which had a fatal influence

upon him),--that night left ineffaceable marks upon the heart of the

poor young fellow, whom Felicite soothed with the assurance that

unless a woman were a monster she must be flattered in all her

vanities by being the object of such a crime.

"You would never have flung /me/ into the water," said Camille,

brushing away a tear.

Toward morning, Calyste, worn-out with emotion, fell asleep in his

arm-chair; and the marquise in her turn, watched his charming face,

paled by his feelings and his vigil of love. She heard him murmur her

name as he slept.

"He loves while sleeping," she said to Camille.

"We must send him home," said Felicite, waking him.

No one was anxious at the hotel du Guenic, for Mademoiselle des

Touches had written a line to the baroness telling her of the

accident.

Calyste returned to dinner at Les Touches and found Beatrix up and

dressed, but pale, feeble, and languid. No longer was there any

harshness in her words or any coldness in her looks. After this

evening, filled with music by Camille, who went to her piano to leave

Calyste free to take and press the hands of Beatrix (though both were

unable to speak), no storms occurred at Les Touches. Felicite

completely effaced herself.

Cold, fragile, thin, hard women like Madame de Rochefide, women whose

necks turn in a manner to give them a vague resemblance to the feline

race, have souls of the same pale tint as their light eyes, green or

gray; and to melt them, to fuse those blocks of stone it needs a

thunderbolt. To Beatrix, Calyste's fury of love and his mad action

came as the thunderbolt that nought resists, which changes all

natures, even the most stubborn. She felt herself inwardly humbled; a

true, pure love bathed her heart with its soft and limpid warmth. She

breathed a sweet and genial atmosphere of feelings hitherto unknown to

her, by which she felt herself magnified, elevated; in fact, she rose

into that heaven where Bretons throughout all time have placed the

Woman. She relished with delight the respectful adoration of the

youth, whose happiness cost her little, for a gesture, a look, a word

was enough to satisfy him. The value which Calyste's heart gave to

these trifles touched her exceedingly; to hold her gloved hand was

more to that young angel than the possession of her whole person to

the man who ought to have been faithful to her. What a contrast

between them!

Few women could resist such constant deification. Beatrix felt herself

sure of being obeyed and understood. She might have asked Calyste to

risk his life for the slightest of her caprices, and he would never

have reflected for a moment. This consciousness gave her a certain

noble and imposing air. She saw love on the side of its grandeur; and

her heart sought for some foothold on which she might remain forever

the loftiest of women in the eyes of her young lover, over whom she

now wished her power to be eternal.

Her coquetries became the more persistent because she felt within

herself a certain weakness. She played the invalid for a whole week

with charming hypocrisy. Again and again she walked about the velvet

turf which lay between the house and garden leaning on Calyste's arm

in languid dependence.

"Ah! my dear, you are taking him a long journey in a small space,"

said Mademoiselle des Touches one day.

Before the excursion to Croisic, the two women were discoursing one

evening about love, and laughing at the different ways that men

adopted to declare it; admitting to themselves that the cleverest men,

and naturally the least loving, did not like to wander in the

labyrinths of sentimentality and went straight to the point,--in which

perhaps they were right; for the result was that those who loved most

deeply and reservedly were, for a time at least, ill-treated.

"They go to work like La Fontaine, when he wanted to enter the

Academy," said Camille.

Madame de Rochefide had unbounded power to restrain Calyste within the

limits where she meant to keep him; it sufficed her to remind him by a

look or gesture of his horrible violence on the rocks. The eyes of her

poor victim would fill with tears, he was silent, swallowing down his

prayers, his arguments, his sufferings with a heroism that would

certainly have touched any other woman. She finally brought him by her

infernal coquetry to such a pass that he went one day to Camille

imploring her advice.

Beatrix, armed with Calyste's own letter, quoted the passage in which

he said that to love was the first happiness, that of being loved came

later; and she used that axiom to restrain his passion to the limits

of respectful idolatry, which pleased her well. She liked to feel her

soul caressed by those sweet hymns of praise and adoration which

nature suggests to youth; in them is so much artless art; such

innocent seduction is in their cries, their prayers, their

exclamations, their pledges of themselves in the promissory notes

which they offer on the future; to all of which Beatrix was very

careful to give no definite answer. Yes, she heard him; but she

doubted! Love was not yet the question; what he asked of her was

permission to love. In fact, that was all the poor lad really asked

for; his mind still clung to the strongest side of love, the spiritual

side. But the woman who is firmest in words is often the feeblest in

action. It is strange that Calyste, having seen the progress his suit

had made by pushing Beatrix into the sea, did not continue to urge it

violently. But love in young men is so ecstatic and religious that

their inmost desire is to win its fruition through moral conviction.

In that is the sublimity of their love.

Nevertheless the day came when the Breton, driven to desperation,

complained to Camille of Beatrix's conduct.

"I meant to cure you by making you quickly understand her," replied

Mademoiselle des Touches; "but you have spoiled all. Ten days ago you

were her master; to-day, my poor boy, you are her slave. You will

never have the strength now to do as I advise."

"What ought I to do?"

"Quarrel with her on the ground of her hardness. A woman is always

over-excited when she discusses; let her be angry and ill-treat you,

and then stay away; do not return to Les Touches till she herself

recalls you."

In all extreme illness there is a moment when the patient is willing

to accept the cruellest remedy and submits to the most horrible

operation. Calyste had reached that point. He listened to Camille's

advice and stayed at home two whole days; but on the third he was

scratching at Beatrix's door to let her know that he and Camille were

waiting breakfast for her.

"Another chance lost!" Camille said to him when she saw him re-appear

so weakly.

During his two days' absence, Beatrix had frequently looked through

the window which opens on the road to Guerande. When Camille found her

doing so, she talked of the effect produced by the gorse along the

roadway, the golden blooms of which were dazzling in the September

sunshine.

The marquise kept Camille and Calyste waiting long for breakfast; and

the delay would have been significant to any eyes but those of

Calyste, for when she did appear, her dress showed an evident

intention to fascinate him and prevent another absence. After

breakfast she went to walk with him in the garden and filled his

simple heart with joy by expressing a wish to go again to that rock

where she had so nearly perished.

"Will you go with me alone?" asked Calyste, in a troubled voice.

"If I refused to do so," she replied, "I should give you reason to

suppose I thought you dangerous. Alas! as I have told you again and

again I belong to another, and I must be his only; I chose him knowing

nothing of love. The fault was great, and bitter is my punishment."

When she talked thus, her eyes moist with the scanty tears shed by

that class of woman, Calyste was filled with a compassion that reduced

his fiery ardor; he adored her then as he did a Madonna. We have no

more right to require different characters to be alike in the

expression of feelings than we have to expect the same fruits from

different trees. Beatrix was at this moment undergoing an inward

struggle; she hesitated between herself and Calyste,--between the

world she still hoped to re-enter, and the young happiness offered to

her; between a second and an unpardonable love, and social

rehabilitation. She began, therefore, to listen, without even acted

displeasure, to the talk of the youth's blind passion; she allowed his

soft pity to soothe her. Several times she had been moved to tears as

she listened to Calyste's promises; and she suffered him to

commiserate her for being bound to an evil genius, a man as false as

Conti. More than once she related to him the misery and anguish she

had gone through in Italy, when she first became aware that she was

not alone in Conti's heart. On this subject Camille had fully informed

Calyste and given him several lectures on it, by which he profited.

"I," he said, "will love you only, you absolutely. I have no triumphs

of art, no applause of crowds stirred by my genius to offer you; my

only talent is to love you; my honor, my pride are in your

perfections. No other woman can have merit in my eyes; you have no

odious rivalry to fear. You are misconceived and wronged, but I know

you, and for every misconception, for every wrong, I will make you

feel my comprehension day by day."

She listened to such speeches with bowed head, allowing him to kiss

her hands, and admitting silently but gracefully that she was indeed

an angel misunderstood.

"I am too humiliated," she would say; "my past has robbed the future

of all security."

It was a glorious day for Calyste when, arriving at Les Touches at

seven in the morning, he saw from afar Beatrix at a window watching

for him, and wearing the same straw hat she had worn on the memorable

day of their first excursion. For a moment he was dazzled and giddy.

These little things of passion magnify the world itself. It may be

that only Frenchwomen possess the art of such scenic effects; they owe

it to the grace of their minds; they know how to put into sentiment as

much of the picturesque as the particular sentiment can bear without a

loss of vigor or of force.

Ah! how lightly she rested on Calyste's arm! Together they left Les

Touches by the garden-gate which opens on the dunes. Beatrix thought

the sands delightful; she spied the hardy little plants with rose-

colored flowers that grew there, and she gathered a quantity to mix

with the Chartreux pansies which also grow in that arid desert,

dividing them significantly with Calyste, to whom those flowers and

their foliage were to be henceforth an eternal and dreadful relic.

"We'll add a bit of box," she said smiling.

They sat some time together on the jetty, and Calyste, while waiting

for the boat to come over, told her of his juvenile act on the day of

her arrival.

"I knew of your little escapade," she said, "and it was the cause of

my sternness to you that first night."

During their walk Madame de Rochefide had the lightly jesting tone of

a woman who loves, together with a certain tenderness and abandonment

of manner. Calyste had reason to think himself beloved. But when,

wandering along the shore beneath the rocks, they came upon one of

those charming creeks where the waves deposit the most extraordinary

mosaic of brilliant pebbles, and they played there like children

gathering the prettiest, when Calyste at the summit of happiness asked

her plainly to fly with him to Ireland, she resumed her dignified and

distant air, asked for his arm, and continued their walk in silence to

what she called her Tarpeian rock.

"My friend," she said, mounting with slow steps the magnificent block

of granite of which she was making for herself a pedestal, "I have not

the courage to conceal what you are to me. For ten years I have had no

happiness comparable to that which we have just enjoyed together,

searching for shells among those rocks, exchanging pebbles of which I

shall make a necklace more precious far to me than if it were made of

the finest diamonds. I have been once more a little girl, a child,

such as I was at fourteen or sixteen--when I was worthy of you. The

love I have had the happiness to inspire in your heart has raised me

in my own eyes. Understand these words to their magical extent. You

have made me the proudest and happiest of my sex, and you will live

longer in my remembrance, perhaps, than I in yours."

At this moment they reached the summit of the rock, whence they saw

the vast ocean on one side and Brittany on the other, with its golden

isles, its feudal towers, and its gorse. Never did any woman stand on

a finer scene to make a great avowal.

"But," she continued, "I do not belong to myself; I am more bound by

my own will than I was by the law. You must be punished for my

misdeed, but be satisfied to know that we suffer together. Dante never

saw his Beatrice again; Petrarch never possessed his Laura. Such

disasters fall on none but noble souls. But, if I should be abandoned,

if I fall lower yet into shame and ignominy, if your Beatrix is

cruelly misjudged by the world she loathes, if indeed she is the

lowest of women,--then, my child, my adored child," she said, taking

his hand, "to you she will still be first of all; you will know that

she rises to heaven as she leans on you; but then, my friend," she

added, giving him an intoxicating look, "then if you wish to cast her

down do not fail of your blow; after your love, death!"

Calyste clasped her round the waist and pressed her to his heart. As

if to confirm her words Madame de Rochefide laid a tender, timid kiss

upon his brow. When they turned and walked slowly back; talking

together like those who have a perfect comprehension of each other,--

she, thinking she had gained a truce, he not doubting of his

happiness; and both deceived. Calyste, from what Camille had told him,

was confident that Conti would be enchanted to find an opportunity to

part from Beatrix; Beatrix, yielding herself up to the vagueness of

her position, looked to chance to arrange the future.

They reached Les Touches in the most delightful of all states of mind,

entering by the garden gate, the key of which Calyste had taken with

him. It was nearly six o'clock. The luscious odors, the warm

atmosphere, the burnished rays of the evening sun were all in harmony

with their feelings and their tender talk. Their steps were taken in

unison,--the gait of all lovers,--their movements told of the union of

their thoughts. The silence that reigned about Les Touches was so

profound that the noise which Calyste made in opening and shutting the

gate must have echoed through the garden. As the two had said all to

each other that could be said, and as their day's excursion, so filled

with emotion, had physically tired them, they walked slowly, saying

nothing.

Suddenly, at the turn of a path, Beatrix was seized with a horrible

trembling, with that contagious horror which is caused by the sight of

a snake, and which Calyste felt before he saw the cause of it. On a

bench, beneath the branches of a weeping ash, sat Conti, talking with

Camille Maupin.

XV

CONTI

The inward and convulsive trembling of the marquise was more apparent

than she wished it to be; a tragic drama developed at that moment in

the souls of all present.

"You did not expect me so soon, I fancy," said Conti, offering his arm

to Beatrix.

The marquise could not avoid dropping Calyste's arm and taking that of

Conti. This ignoble transit, imperiously demanded, so dishonoring to

the new love, overwhelmed Calyste who threw himself on the bench

beside Camille, after exchanging the coldest of salutations with his

rival. He was torn by conflicting emotions. Strong in the thought that

Beatrix loved him, he wanted at first to fling himself upon Conti and

tell him that Beatrix was his; but the violent trembling of the woman

betraying how she suffered--for she had really paid the penalty of her

faults in that one moment--affected him so deeply that he was dumb,

struck like her with a sense of some implacable necessity.

Madame de Rochefide and Conti passed in front of the seat where

Calyste had dropped beside Camille, and as she passed, the marquise

looked at Camille, giving her one of those terrible glances in which

women have the art of saying all things. She avoided the eyes of

Calyste and turned her attention to Conti, who appeared to be jesting

with her.

"What will they say to each other?" Calyste asked of Camille.

"Dear child, you don't know as yet the terrible rights which an

extinguished love still gives to a man over a woman. Beatrix could not

refuse to take his arm. He is, no doubt, joking her about her new

love; he must have guessed it from your attitudes and the manner in

which you approached us."

"Joking her!" cried the impetuous youth, starting up.

"Be calm," said Camille, "or you will lose the last chances that

remain to you. If he wounds her self-love, she will crush him like a

worm under her foot. But he is too astute for that; he will manage her

with greater cleverness. He will seem not even to suppose that the

proud Madame de Rochefide could betray him; /she/ could never be

guilty of such depravity as loving a man for the sake of his beauty.

He will represent you to her as a child ambitious to have a marquise

in love with him, and to make himself the arbiter of the fate of two

women. In short, he will fire a broadside of malicious insinuations.

Beatrix will then be forced to parry with false assertions and

denials, which he will simply make use of to become once more her

master."

"Ah!" cried Calyste, "he does not love her. I would leave her free.

True love means a choice made anew at every moment, confirmed from day

to day. The morrow justifies the past, and swells the treasury of our

pleasures. Ah! why did he not stay away a little longer? A few days

more and he would not have found her. What brought him back?"

"The jest of a journalist," replied Camille. "His opera, on the

success of which he counted, has fallen flat. Some journalist,

probably Claude Vignon, remarked in the foyer: 'It is hard to lose

fame and mistress at the same moment,' and the speech cut him in all

his vanities. Love based on petty sentiments is always pitiless. I

have questioned him; but who can fathom a nature so false and

deceiving? He appeared to be weary of his troubles and his love,--in

short, disgusted with life. He regrets having allied himself so

publicly with the marquise, and made me, in speaking of his past

happiness, a melancholy poem, which was somewhat too clever to be

true. I think he hoped to worm out of me the secret of your love, in

the midst of the joy he expected his flatteries to cause me."

"What else?" said Calyste, watching Beatrix and Conti, who were now

coming towards them; but he listened no longer to Camille's words.

In talking with Conti, Camille had held herself prudently on the

defensive; she had betrayed neither Calyste's secret nor that of

Beatrix. The great artist was capable of treachery to every one, and

Mademoiselle des Touches warned Calyste to distrust him.

"My dear friend," she said, "this is by far the most critical moment

for you. You need caution and a sort of cleverness you do not possess;

I am afraid you will let yourself be tricked by the most wily man I

have ever known, and I can do nothing to help you."

The bell announced dinner. Conti offered his arm to Camille; Calyste

gave his to Beatrix. Camille drew back to let the marquise pass, but

the latter had found a moment in which to look at Calyste, and impress

upon him, by putting her finger on her lips, the absolute necessity of

discretion.

Conti was extremely gay during the dinner; perhaps this was only one

way of probing Madame de Rochefide, who played her part extremely ill.

If her conduct had been mere coquetry, she might have deceived even

Conti; but her new love was real, and it betrayed her. The wily

musician, far from adding to her embarrassment, pretended not to have

perceived it. At dessert, he brought the conversation round to women,

and lauded the nobility of their sentiments. Many a woman, he said,

who might have been willing to abandon a man in prosperity, would

sacrifice all to him in misfortune. Women had the advantage over men

in constancy; nothing ever detached them from their first lover, to

whom they clung as a matter of honor, unless he wounded them; they

felt that a second love was unworthy of them, and so forth. His ethics

were of the highest order; shedding incense on the altar where he knew

that one heart at least, pierced by many a blow, was bleeding. Camille

and Beatrix alone understood the bitterness of the sarcasms shot forth

in the guise of eulogy. At times they both flushed scarlet, but they

were forced to control themselves. When dinner was over, they took

each other by the arm to return to Camille's salon, and, as if by

mutual consent, they turned aside into the great salon, where they

could be alone for an instant in the darkness.

"It is dreadful to let Conti ride over me roughshod; and yet I can't

defend myself," said Beatrix, in a low voice. "The galley-slave is

always a slave to his chain-companion. I am lost; I must needs return

to my galleys! And it is you, Camille, who have cast me there! Ah! you

brought him back a day too soon, or a day too late. I recognize your

infernal talent as author. Well, your revenge is complete, the finale

perfect!"

"I may have told you that I would write to Conti, but to do it was

another matter," cried Camille. "I am incapable of such baseness. But

you are unhappy, and I will forgive the suspicion."

"What will become of Calyste?" said the marquise, with naive self-

conceit.

"Then Conti carries you off, does he?" asked Camille.

"Ah! you think you triumph!" cried Beatrix.

Anger distorted her handsome face as she said those bitter words to

Camille, who was trying to hide her satisfaction under a false

expression of sympathy. Unfortunately, the sparkle in her eyes belied

the sadness of her face, and Beatrix was learned in such deceptions.

When, a few moments later, the two women were seated under a strong

light on that divan where the first three weeks so many comedies had

been played, and where the secret tragedy of many thwarted passions

had begun, they examined each other for the last time, and felt they

were forever parted by an undying hatred.

"Calyste remains to you," said Beatrix, looking into Camille's eyes;

"but I am fixed in his heart, and no woman can ever drive me out of

it."

Camille replied, with an inimitable tone of irony that struck the

marquise to the heart, in the famous words of Mazarin's niece to Louis

XIV.,--

"You reign, you love, and you depart!"

Neither Camille nor Beatrix was conscious during this sharp and bitter

scene of the absence of Conti and Calyste. The composer had remained

at table with his rival, begging him to keep him company in finishing

a bottle of champagne.

"We have something to say to each other," added Conti, to prevent all

refusal on the part of Calyste.

Placed as they both were, it was impossible for the young Breton to

refuse this challenge.

"My dear friend," said the composer, in his most caressing voice, as

soon as the poor lad had drunk a couple of glasses of champagne, "we

are both good fellows, and we can speak to each other frankly. I have

not come here suspiciously. Beatrix loves me,"--this with a gesture of

the utmost self-conceit--"but the truth is, I have ceased to love her.

I am not here to carry her away with me, but to break off our

relations, and to leave her the honors of the rupture. You are young;

you don't yet know how useful it is to appear to be the victim when

you are really the executioner. Young men spit fire and flame; they

leave a woman with noise and fury; they often despise her, and they

make her hate them. But wise men do as I am doing; they get themselves

dismissed, assuming a mortified air, which leaves regret in the

woman's heart and also a sense of her superiority. You don't yet know,

luckily for you, how hampered men often are in their careers by the

rash promises which women are silly enough to accept when gallantry

obliges us to make nooses to catch our happiness. We swear eternal

faithfulness, and declare that we desire to pass our lives with them,

and seem to await a husband's death impatiently. Let him die, and

there are some provincial women obtuse or silly or malicious enough to

say: 'Here am I, free at last.' The spent ball suddenly comes to life

again, and falls plumb in the midst of our finest triumphs or our most

carefully planned happiness. I have seen that you love Beatrix. I

leave her therefore in a position where she loses nothing of her

precious majesty; she will certainly coquet with you, if only to tease

and annoy that angel of a Camille Maupin. Well, my dear fellow, take

her, love her, you'll do me a great service; I want her to turn

against me. I have been afraid of her pride and her virtue. Perhaps,

in spite of my approval of the matter, it may take some time to effect

this /chassez-croissez/. On such occasions the wisest plan is to take

no step at all. I did, just now, as we walked about the lawn, attempt

to let her see that I knew all, and was ready to congratulate her on

her new happiness. Well, she was furious! At this moment I am

desperately in love with the youngest and handsomest of our prima-

donnas, Mademoiselle Falcon of the Grand Opera. I think of marrying

her; yes, I have got as far as that. When you come to Paris you will

see that I have changed a marquise for a queen."

Calyste, whose candid face revealed his satisfaction, admitted his

love for Beatrix, which was all that Conti wanted to discover. There

is no man in the world, however /blase/ or depraved he may be, whose

love will not flame up again the moment he sees it threatened by a

rival. He may wish to leave a woman, but he will never willingly let

her leave him. When a pair of lovers get to this extremity, both the

man and the woman strive for priority of action, so deep is the wound

to their vanity. Questioned by the composer, Calyste related all that

had happened during the last three weeks at Les Touches, delighted to

find that Conti, who concealed his fury under an appearance of

charming good-humor, took it all in good part.

"Come, let us go upstairs," said the latter. "Women are so

distrustful; those two will wonder how we can sit here together

without tearing each other's hair out; they are even capable of coming

down to listen. I'll serve you faithfully, my dear boy. You'll see me

rough and jealous with the marquise; I shall seem to suspect her;

there's no better way to drive a woman to betray you. You will be

happy, and I shall be free. Seem to pity that angel for belonging to a

man without delicacy; show her a tear--for you can weep, you are still

young. I, alas! can weep no more; and that's a great advantage lost."

Calyste and Conti went up to Camille's salon. The composer, begged by

his young rival to sing, gave them that greatest of musical

masterpieces viewed as execution, the famous "/Pria che spunti

l'aurora/," which Rubini himself never attempted without trembling,

and which had often been Conti's triumph. Never was his singing more

extraordinary than on this occasion, when so many feelings were

contending in his breast. Calyste was in ecstasy. As Conti sang the

first words of the cavatina, he looked intently at the marquise,

giving to those words a cruel signification which was fully

understood. Camille, who accompanied him, guessed the order thus

conveyed, which bowed the head of the luckless Beatrix. She looked at

Calyste, and felt sure that the youth had fallen into some trap in

spite of her advice. This conviction became certainty when the

evidently happy Breton came up to bid Beatrix good-night, kissing her

hand, and pressing it with a little air of happy confidence.

By the time Calyste had reached Guerande, the servants were packing

Conti's travelling-carriage, and "by dawn," as the song had said, the

composer was carrying Beatrix away with Camille's horses to the first

relay. The morning twilight enabled Madame de Rochefide to see

Guerande, its towers, whitened by the dawn, shining out upon the still

dark sky. Melancholy thoughts possessed her; she was leaving there one

of the sweetest flowers of all her life,--a pure love, such as a young

girl dreams of; the only true love she had ever known or was ever to

conceive of. The woman of the world obeyed the laws of the world; she

sacrificed love to their demands just as many women sacrifice it to

religion or to duty. Sometimes mere pride can rise in acts as high as

virtue. Read thus, this history is that of many women.

The next morning Calyste went to Les Touches about mid-day. When he

reached the spot from which, the day before, he had seen Beatrix

watching for him at the window, he saw Camille, who instantly ran down

to him. She met him at the foot of the staircase and told the cruel

truth in one word,--

"Gone!"

"Beatrix?" asked Calyste, thunderstruck.

"You have been duped by Conti; you told me nothing, and I could do

nothing for you."

She led the poor fellow to her little salon, where he flung himself on

the divan where he had so often seen the marquise, and burst into

tears. Felicite smoked her hookah and said nothing, knowing well that

no words or thoughts are capable of arresting the first anguish of

such pain, which is always deaf and dumb. Calyste, unable even to

think, much less to choose a course, sat there all day in a state of

complete torpidity. Just before dinner was served, Camille tried to

say a few words, after begging him, very earnestly, to listen to her.

"Friend," she said, "you caused me the bitterest suffering, and I had

not, like you, a beautiful young life before me in which to heal

myself. For me, life has no longer any spring, nor my soul a love. So,

to find consolation, I have had to look above. Here, in this room, the

day before Beatrix came here, I drew you her portrait; I did not do

her injustice, or you might have thought me jealous. I wanted you to

know her as she is, for that would have kept you safe. Listen now to

the full truth. Madame de Rochefide is wholly unworthy of you. The

scandal of her fall was not necessary; she did the thing deliberately

in order to play a part in the eyes of society. She is one of those

women who prefer the celebrity of a scandal to tranquil happiness;

they fly in the face of society to obtain the fatal alms of a rebuke;

they desire to be talked about at any cost. Beatrix was eaten up with

vanity. Her fortune and her wit had not given her the feminine royalty

that she craved; they had not enabled her to reign supreme over a

salon. She then bethought herself of seeking the celebrity of the

Duchesse de Langeais and the Vicomtesse de Beauseant. But the world,

after all, is just; it gives the homage of its interest to real

feelings only. Beatrix playing comedy was judged to be a second-rate

actress. There was no reason whatever for her flight; the sword of

Damocles was not suspended over her head; she is neither sincere, nor

loving, nor tender; if she were, would she have gone away with Conti

this morning?"

Camille talked long and eloquently; but this last effort to open

Calyste's eyes was useless, and she said no more when he expressed to

her by a gesture his absolute belief in Beatrix.

She forced him to come down into the dining-room and sit there while

she dined; though he himself was unable to swallow food. It is only

during extreme youth that these contractions of the bodily functions

occur. Later, the organs have acquired, as it were, fixed habits, and

are hardened. The reaction of the mental and moral system upon the

physical is not enough to produce a mortal illness unless the physical

system retains its primitive purity. A man resists the violent grief

that kills a youth, less by the greater weakness of his affection than

by the greater strength of his organs.

Therefore Mademoiselle des Touches was greatly alarmed by the calm,

resigned attitude which Calyste took after his burst of tears had

subsided. Before he left her, he asked permission to go into Beatrix's

bedroom, where he had seen her on the night of her illness, and there

he laid his head on the pillow where hers had lain.

"I am committing follies," he said, grasping Camille's hand, and

bidding her good-night in deep dejection.

He returned home, found the usual company at /mouche/, and passed the

remainder of the evening sitting beside his mother. The rector, the

Chevalier du Halga, and Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel all knew of Madame de

Rochefide's departure, and were rejoicing in it. Calyste would now

return to them; and all three watched him cautiously. No one in that

old manor-house was capable of imagining the result of a first love,

the love of youth in a heart so simple and so true as that of Calyste.

XVI

SICKNESS UNTO DEATH

For several days Calyste went regularly to Les Touches. He paced round

and round the lawn, where he had sometimes walked with Beatrix on his

arm. He often went to Croisic to stand upon that fateful rock, or lie

for hours in the bush of box; for, by studying the footholds on the

sides of the fissure, he had found a means of getting up and down.

These solitary trips, his silence, his gravity, made his mother very

anxious. After about two weeks, during which time this conduct, like

that of a caged animal, lasted, this poor lover, caged in his despair,

ceased to cross the bay; he had scarcely strength to drag himself

along the road from Guerande to the spot where he had seen Beatrix

watching from her window. The family, delighted at the departure of

"those Parisians," to use a term of the provinces, saw nothing fatal

or diseased about the lad. The two old maids and the rector, pursuing

their scheme, had kept Charlotte de Kergarouet, who nightly played off

her little coquetries on Calyste, obtaining in return nothing better

than advice in playing /mouche/. During these long evenings, Calyste

sat between his mother and the little Breton girl, observed by the

rector and Charlotte's aunt, who discussed his greater or less

depression as they walked home together. Their simple minds mistook

the lethargic indifference of the hapless youth for submission to

their plans. One evening when Calyste, wearied out, went off suddenly

to bed, the players dropped their cards upon the table and looked at

each other as the young man closed the door of his chamber. One and

all had listened to the sound of his receding steps with anxiety.

"Something is the matter with Calyste," said the baroness, wiping her

eyes.

"Nothing is the matter," replied Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel; "but you

should marry him at once."

"Do you believe that marriage would divert his mind?" asked the

chevalier.

Charlotte looked reprovingly at Monsieur du Halga, whom she now began

to think ill-mannered, depraved, immoral, without religion, and very

ridiculous about his dog,--opinions which her aunt, defending the old

sailor, combated.

"I shall lecture Calyste to-morrow morning," said the baron, whom the

others had thought asleep. "I do not wish to go out of this world

without seeing my grandson, a little pink and white Guenic with a

Breton cap on his head."

"Calyste doesn't say a word," said old Zephirine, "and there's no

making out what's the matter with him. He doesn't eat; I don't see

what he lives on. If he gets his meals at Les Touches, the devil's

kitchen doesn't nourish him."

"He is in love," said the chevalier, risking that opinion very

timidly.

"Come, come, old gray-beard, you've forgotten to put in your stake!"

cried Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel. "When you begin to think of your young

days you forget everything."

"Come to breakfast to-morrow," said old Zephirine to her friend

Jacqueline; "my brother will have had a talk with his son, and we can

settle the matter finally. One nail, you know, drives out another."

"Not among Bretons," said the chevalier.

The next day Calyste saw Charlotte, as she arrived dressed with

unusual care, just after the baron had given him, in the dining-room,

a discourse on matrimony, to which he could make no answer. He now

knew the ignorance of his father and mother and all their friends; he

had gathered the fruits of the tree of knowledge, and knew himself to

be as much isolated as if he did not speak the family language. He

merely requested his father to give him a few days' grace. The old

baron rubbed his hands with joy, and gave fresh life to the baroness

by whispering in her ear what he called the good news.

Breakfast was gay; Charlotte, to whom the baron had given a hint, was

sparkling. After the meal was over, Calyste went out upon the portico

leading to the garden, followed by Charlotte; he gave her his arm and

led her to the grotto. Their parents and friends were at the window,

looking at them with a species of tenderness. Presently Charlotte,

uneasy at her suitor's silence, looked back and saw them, which gave

her an opportunity of beginning the conversation by saying to

Calyste,--

"They are watching us."

"They cannot hear us," he replied.

"True; but they see us."

"Let us sit down, Charlotte," replied Calyste, gently taking her hand.

"Is it true that your banner used formerly to float from that twisted

column?" asked Charlotte, with a sense that the house was already

hers; how comfortable she should be there! what a happy sort of life!

"You will make some changes inside the house, won't you, Calyste?" she

said.

"I shall not have time, my dear Charlotte," said the young man, taking

her hands and kissing them. "I am going now to tell you my secret. I

love too well a person whom you have seen, and who loves me, to be

able to make the happiness of any other woman; though I know that from

our childhood you and I have been destined for each other by our

friends."

"But she is married, Calyste."

"I shall wait," replied the young man.

"And I, too," said Charlotte, her eyes filling with tears. "You cannot

long love a woman like that, who, they say, has gone off with a

singer--"

"Marry, my dear Charlotte," said Calyste, interrupting her. "With the

fortune your aunt intends to give you, which is enormous for Brittany,

you can choose some better man than I. You could marry a titled man. I

have brought you here, not to tell you what you already knew, but to

entreat you, in the name of our childish friendship, to take this

rupture upon yourself, and say that you have rejected me. Say that you

do not wish to marry a man whose heart is not free; and thus I shall

be spared at least the sense that I have done you public wrong. You do

not know, Charlotte, how heavy a burden life now is to me. I cannot

bear the slightest struggle; I am weakened like a man whose vital

spark is gone, whose soul has left him. If it were not for the grief I

should cause my mother, I would have flung myself before now into the

sea; I have not returned to the rocks at Croisic since the day that

temptation became almost irresistible. Do not speak of this to any

one. Good-bye, Charlotte."

He took the young girl's head and kissed her hair; then he left the

garden by the postern-gate and fled to Les Touches, where he stayed

near Camille till past midnight. On returning home, at one in the

morning, he found his mother awaiting him with her worsted-work. He

entered softly, clasped her hand in his, and said,--

"Is Charlotte gone?"

"She goes to-morrow, with her aunt, in despair, both of them,"

answered the baroness. "Come to Ireland with me, my Calyste."

"Many a time I have thought of flying there--"

"Ah!" cried the baroness.

"With Beatrix," he added.

Some days after Charlotte's departure, Calyste joined the Chevalier du

Halga in his daily promenade on the mall with his little dog. They sat

down in the sunshine on a bench, where the young man's eyes could

wander from the vanes of Les Touches to the rocks of Croisic, against

which the waves were playing and dashing their white foam. Calyste was

thin and pale; his strength was diminishing, and he was conscious at

times of little shudders at regular intervals, denoting fever. His

eyes, surrounded by dark circles, had that singular brilliancy which a

fixed idea gives to the eyes of hermits and solitary souls, or the

ardor of contest to those of the strong fighters of our present

civilization. The chevalier was the only person with whom he could

exchange a few ideas. He had divined in that old man an apostle of his

own religion; he recognized in his soul the vestiges of an eternal

love.

"Have you loved many women in your life?" he asked him on the second

occasion, when, as seamen say, they sailed in company along the mall.

"Only one," replied Du Halga.

"Was she free?"

"No," exclaimed the chevalier. "Ah! how I suffered! She was the wife

of my best friend, my protector, my chief--but we loved each other

so!"

"Did she love you?" said Calyste.

"Passionately," replied the chevalier, with a fervency not usual with

him.

"You were happy?"

"Until her death; she died at the age of forty-nine, during the

emigration, at St. Petersburg, the climate of which killed her. She

must be very cold in her coffin. I have often thought of going there

to fetch her, and lay her in our dear Brittany, near to me! But she

lies in my heart."

The chevalier brushed away his tears. Calyste took his hand and

pressed it.

"I care for this little dog more than for life itself," said the old

man, pointing to Thisbe. "The little darling is precisely like the one

she held on her knees and stroked with her beautiful hands. I never

look at Thisbe but what I see the hands of Madame l'Amirale."

"Did you see Madame de Rochefide?" asked Calyste.

"No," replied the chevalier. "It is sixty-eight years since I have

looked at any woman with attention--except your mother, who has

something of Madame l'Amirale's complexion."

Three days later, the chevalier said to Calyste, on the mall,--

"My child, I have a hundred and forty /louis/ laid by. When you know

where Madame de Rochefide is, come and get them and follow her."

Calyste thanked the old man, whose existence he envied. But now, from

day to day, he grew morose; he seemed to love no one; all things hurt

him; he was gentle and kind to his mother only. The baroness watched

with ever increasing anxiety the progress of his madness; she alone

was able, by force of prayer and entreaty, to make him swallow food.

Toward the end of October the sick lad ceased to go even to the mall

in search of the chevalier, who now came vainly to the house to tempt

him out with the coaxing wisdom of an old man.

"We can talk of Madame de Rochefide," he would say. "I'll tell you my

first adventure."

"Your son is ill," he said privately to the baroness, on the day he

became convinced that all such efforts were useless.

Calyste replied to questions about his health that he was perfectly

well; but like all young victims of melancholy, he took pleasure in

the thought of death. He no longer left the house, but sat in the

garden on a bench, warming himself in the pale and tepid sunshine,

alone with his one thought, and avoiding all companionship.

Soon after the day when Calyste ceased to go even to Les Touches,

Felicite requested the rector of Guerande to come and see her. The

assiduity with which the Abbe Grimont called every morning at Les

Touches, and sometimes dined there, became the great topic of the

town; it was talked of all over the region, and even reached Nantes.

Nevertheless, the rector never missed a single evening at the hotel du

Guenic, where desolation reigned. Masters and servants were all

afflicted at Calyste's increasing weakness, though none of them

thought him in danger; how could it ever enter the minds of these good

people that youth might die of love? Even the chevalier had no example

of such a death among his memories of life and travel. They attributed

Calyste's thinness to want of food. His mother implored him to eat.

Calyste endeavored to conquer his repugnance in order to comfort her;

but nourishment taken against his will served only to increase the

slow fever which was now consuming the beautiful young life.

During the last days of October the cherished child of the house could

no longer mount the stairs to his chamber, and his bed was placed in

the lower hall, where he was surrounded at all hours by his family.

They sent at last for the Guerande physician, who broke the fever with

quinine and reduced it in a few days, ordering Calyste to take

exercise, and find something to amuse him. The baron, on this, came

out of his apathy and recovered a little of his old strength; he grew

younger as his son seemed to age. With Calyste, Gasselin, and his two

fine dogs, he started for the forest, and for some days all three

hunted. Calyste obeyed his father and went where he was told, from

forest to forest, visiting friends and acquaintances in the

neighboring chateaus. But the youth had no spirit or gaiety; nothing

brought a smile to his face; his livid and contracted features

betrayed an utterly passive being. The baron, worn out at last by

fatigue consequent on this spasm of exertion, was forced to return

home, bringing Calyste in a state of exhaustion almost equal to his

own. For several days after their return both father and son were so

dangerously ill that the family were forced to send, at the request of

the Guerande physician himself, for two of the best doctors in Nantes.

The baron had received a fatal shock on realizing the change now so

visible in Calyste. With that lucidity of mind which nature gives to

the dying, he trembled at the thought that his race was about to

perish. He said no word, but he clasped his hands and prayed to God as

he sat in his chair, from which his weakness now prevented him from

rising. The father's face was turned toward the bed where the son lay,

and he looked at him almost incessantly. At the least motion Calyste

made, a singular commotion stirred within him, as if the flame of his

own life were flickering. The baroness no longer left the room where

Zephirine sat knitting in the chimney-corner in horrible uneasiness.

Demands were made upon the old woman for wood, father and son both

suffering from the cold, and for supplies and provisions, so that,

finally, not being agile enough to supply these wants, she had given

her precious keys to Mariotte. But she insisted on knowing everything;

she questioned Mariotte and her sister-in-law incessantly, asking in a

low voice to be told, over and over again, the state of her brother

and nephew. One night, when father and son were dozing, Mademoiselle

de Pen-Hoel told her that she must resign herself to the death of her

brother, whose pallid face was now the color of wax. The old woman

dropped her knitting, fumbled in her pocket for a while, and at length

drew out an old chaplet of black wood, on which she began to pray with

a fervor which gave to her old and withered face a splendor so

vigorous that the other old woman imitated her friend, and then all

present, on a sign from the rector, joining in the spiritual uplifting

of Mademoiselle de Guenic.

"Alas! I prayed to God," said the baroness, remembering her prayer

after reading the fatal letter written by Calyste, "and he did not

hear me."

"Perhaps it would be well," said the rector, "if we begged

Mademoiselle des Touches to come and see Calyste."

"She!" cried old Zephirine, "the author of all our misery! she who has

turned him from his family, who has taken him from us, led him to read

impious books, taught him an heretical language! Let her be accursed,

and may God never pardon her! She has destroyed the du Guenics!"

"She may perhaps restore them," said the rector, in a gentle voice.

"Mademoiselle des Touches is a saintly woman; I am her surety for

that. She has none but good intentions to Calyste. May she only be

enabled to carry them out."

"Let me know the day when she sets foot in this house, that I may get

out of it," cried the old woman passionately. "She has killed both

father and son. Do you think I don't hear death in Calyste's voice? he

is so feeble now that he has barely strength to whisper."

It was at this moment that the three doctors arrived. They plied

Calyste with questions; but as for his father, the examination was

short; they were surprised that he still lived on. The Guerande doctor

calmly told the baroness that as to Calyste, it would probably be best

to take him to Paris and consult the most experienced physicians, for

it would cost over a hundred /louis/ to bring one down.

"People die of something, but not of love," said Mademoiselle de Pen-

Hoel.

"Alas! whatever be the cause, Calyste is dying," said the baroness. "I

see all the symptoms of consumption, that most horrible disease of my

country, about him."

"Calyste dying!" said the baron, opening his eyes, from which rolled

two large tears which slowly made their way, delayed by wrinkles,

along his cheeks,--the only tears he had probably ever shed in his

life. Suddenly he rose to his feet, walked the few steps to his son's

bedside, took his hand, and looked earnestly at him.

"What is it you want, father?" said Calyste.

"That you should live!" cried the baron.

"I cannot live without Beatrix," replied Calyste.

The old man dropped into a chair.

"Oh! where could we get a hundred /louis/ to bring doctors from Paris?

There is still time," cried the baroness.

"A hundred /louis!/" cried Zephirine; "will that save him?"

Without waiting for her sister-in-law's reply, the old maid ran her

hands through the placket-holes of her gown, unfastened the petticoat

beneath it, which gave forth a heavy sound as it dropped to the floor.

She knew so well the places where she had sewn in her /louis/ that she

now ripped them out with the rapidity of magic. The gold pieces rang

as they fell, one by one, into her lap. The old Pen-Hoel gazed at this

performance in stupefied amazement.

"But they'll see you!" she whispered in her friend's ear.

"Thirty-seven," answered Zephirine, continuing to count.

"Every one will know how much you have."

"Forty-two."

"Double /louis!/ all new! How did you get them, you who can't see

clearly?"

"I felt them. Here's one hundred and four /louis/," cried Zephirine.

"Is that enough?"

"What is all this?" asked the Chevalier du Halga, who now came in,

unable to understand the attitude of his old blind friend, holding out

her petticoat which was full of gold coins.

Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel explained.

"I knew it," said the chevalier, "and I have come to bring a hundred

and forty /louis/ which I have been holding at Calyste's disposition,

as he knows very well."

The chevalier drew the /rouleaux/ from his pocket and showed them.

Mariotte, seeing such wealth, sent Gasselin to lock the doors.

"Gold will not give him health," said the baroness, weeping.

"But it can take him to Paris, where he can find her. Come, Calyste."

"Yes," cried Calyste, springing up, "I will go."

"He will live," said the baron, in a shaking voice; "and I can die--

send for the rector!"

The words cast terror on all present. Calyste, seeing the mortal

paleness on his father's face, for the old man was exhausted by the

cruel emotions of the scene, came to his father's side. The rector,

after hearing the report of the doctors, had gone to Mademoiselle des

Touches, intending to bring her back with him to Calyste, for in

proportion as the worthy man had formerly detested her, he now admired

her, and protected her as a shepherd protects the most precious of his

flock.

When the news of the baron's approaching end became known in Guerande,

a crowd gathered in the street and lane; the peasants, the

/paludiers/, and the servants knelt in the court-yard while the rector

administered the last sacraments to the old Breton warrior. The whole

town was agitated by the news that the father was dying beside his

half-dying son. The probable extinction of this old Breton race was

felt to be a public calamity.

The solemn ceremony affected Calyste deeply. His filial sorrow

silenced for a moment the anguish of his love. During the last hour of

the glorious old defender of the monarchy, he knelt beside him,

watching the coming on of death. The old man died in his chair in

presence of the assembled family.

"I die faithful to God and his religion," he said. "My God! as the

reward of my efforts grant that Calyste may live!"

"I shall live, father; and I will obey you," said the young man.

"If you wish to make my death as happy as Fanny has made my life,

swear to me to marry."

"I promise it, father."

It was a touching sight to see Calyste, or rather his shadow, leaning

on the arm of the old Chevalier du Halga--a spectre leading a shade--

and following the baron's coffin as chief mourner. The church and the

little square were crowded with the country people coming in to the

funeral from a circuit of thirty miles.

But the baroness and Zephirine soon saw that, in spite of his

intention to obey his father's wishes, Calyste was falling back into a

condition of fatal stupor. On the day when the family put on their

mourning, the baroness took her son to a bench in the garden and

questioned him closely. Calyste answered gently and submissively, but

his answers only proved to her the despair of his soul.

"Mother," he said, "there is no life in me. What I eat does not feed

me; the air that enters my lungs does not refresh me; the sun feels

cold; it seems to you to light that front of the house, and show you

the old carvings bathed in its beams, but to me it is all a blur, a

mist. If Beatrix were here, it would be dazzling. There is but one

only thing left in this world that keeps its shape and color to my

eyes,--this flower, this foliage," he added, drawing from his breast

the withered bunch the marquise had given him at Croisic.

The baroness dared not say more. Her son's answer seemed to her more

indicative of madness than his silence of grief. She saw no hope, no

light in the darkness that surrounded them.

The baron's last hours and death had prevented the rector from

bringing Mademoiselle des Touches to Calyste, as he seemed bent on

doing, for reasons which he did not reveal. But on this day, while

mother and son still sat on the garden bench, Calyste quivered all

over on perceiving Felicite through the opposite windows of the court-

yard and garden. She reminded him of Beatrix, and his life revived. It

was therefore to Camille that the poor stricken mother owed the first

motion of joy that lightened her mourning.

"Well, Calyste," said Mademoiselle des Touches, when they met, "I want

you to go to Paris with me. We will find Beatrix," she added in a low

voice.

The pale, thin face of the youth flushed red, and a smile brightened

his features.

"Let us go," he said.

"We shall save him," said Mademoiselle des Touches to the mother, who

pressed her hands and wept for joy.

A week after the baron's funeral, Mademoiselle des Touches, the

Baronne du Guenic and Calyste started for Paris, leaving the household

in charge of old Zephirine.

XVII

A DEATH: A MARRIAGE

Felicite's tender love was preparing for Calyste a prosperous future.

Being allied to the family of Grandlieu, the ducal branch of which was

ending in five daughters for lack of a male heir, she had written to

the Duchesse de Grandlieu, describing Calyste and giving his history,

and also stating certain intentions of her own, which were as follows:

She had lately sold her house in the rue du Mont-Blanc, for which a

party of speculators had given her two millions five hundred thousand

francs. Her man of business had since purchased for her a charming new

house in the rue de Bourbon for seven hundred thousand francs; one

million she intended to devote to the recovery of the du Guenic

estates, and the rest of her fortune she desired to settle upon Sabine

de Grandlieu. Felicite had long known the plans of the duke and

duchess as to the settlement of their five daughters: the youngest was

to marry the Vicomte de Grandlieu, the heir to their ducal title;

Clotilde-Frederique, the second daughter, desired to remain unmarried,

in memory of a man she had deeply loved, Lucien de Rubempre, while, at

the same time, she did not wish to become a nun like her eldest

sister; two of the remaining sisters were already married, and the

youngest but one, the pretty Sabine, just twenty years old, was the

only disposable daughter left. It was Sabine on whom Felicite resolved

to lay the burden of curing Calyste's passion for Beatrix.

During the journey to Paris Mademoiselle des Touches revealed to the

baroness these arrangements. The new house in the rue de Bourbon was

being decorated, and she intended it for the home of Sabine and

Calyste if her plans succeeded.

The party had been invited to stay at the hotel de Grandlieu, where

the baroness was received with all the distinction due to her rank as

the wife of a du Guenic and the daughter of a British peer.

Mademoiselle des Touches urged Calyste to see Paris, while she herself

made the necessary inquiries about Beatrix (who had disappeared from

the world, and was travelling abroad), and she took care to throw him

into the midst of diversions and amusements of all kinds. The season

for balls and fetes was just beginning, and the duchess and her

daughters did the honors of Paris to the young Breton, who was

insensibly diverted from his own thoughts by the movement and life of

the great city. He found some resemblance of mind between Madame de

Rochefide and Sabine de Grandlieu, who was certainly one of the

handsomest and most charming girls in Parisian society, and this

fancied likeness made him give to her coquetries a willing attention

which no other woman could possibly have obtained from him. Sabine

herself was greatly pleased with Calyste, and matters went so well

that during the winter of 1837 the young Baron du Guenic, whose youth

and health had returned to him, listened without repugnance to his

mother when she reminded him of the promise made to his dying father

and proposed to him a marriage with Sabine de Grandlieu. Still, while

agreeing to fulfil his promise, he concealed within his soul an

indifference to all things, of which the baroness alone was aware, but

which she trusted would be conquered by the pleasures of a happy home.

On the day when the Grandlieu family and the baroness, accompanied by

her relations who came from England for this occasion, assembled in

the grand salon of the hotel de Grandlieu to sign the marriage

contract, and Leopold Hannequin, the family notary, explained the

preliminaries of that contract before reading it, Calyste, on whose

forehead every one present might have noticed clouds, suddenly and

curtly refused to accept the benefactions offered him by Mademoiselle

des Touches. Did he still count on Felicite's devotion to recover

Beatrix? In the midst of the embarrassment and stupefaction of the

assembled families, Sabine de Grandlieu entered the room and gave him

a letter, explaining that Mademoiselle des Touches had requested her

to give it to him on this occasion.

Calyste turned away from the company to the embrasure of a window and

read as follows:--

Camille Maupin to Calyste.

Calyste, before I enter my convent cell I am permitted to cast a

look upon the world I am now to leave for a life of prayer and

solitude. That look is to you, who have been the whole world to me

in these last months. My voice will reach you, if my calculations

do not miscarry, at the moment of a ceremony I am unable to take

part in.

On the day when you stand before the altar giving your hand and

name to a young and charming girl who can love you openly before

earth and heaven, I shall be before another altar in a convent at

Nantes betrothed forever to Him who will neither fail nor betray

me. But I do not write to sadden you,--only to entreat you not to

hinder by false delicacy the service I have wished to do you since

we first met. Do not contest my rights so dearly bought.

If love is suffering, ah! I have loved you indeed, my Calyste. But

feel no remorse; the only happiness I have known in life I owe to

you; the pangs were caused by my own self. Make me compensation,

then, for all those pangs, those sorrows, by causing me an

everlasting joy. Let the poor Camille, who /is/ no longer, still

be something in the material comfort you enjoy. Dear, let me be

like the fragrance of flowers in your life, mingling myself with

it unseen and not importunate.

To you, Calyste, I shall owe my eternal happiness; will you not

accept a few paltry and fleeting benefits from me? Surely you will

not be wanting in generosity? Do you not see in this the last

message of a renounced love? Calyste, the world without you had

nothing more for me; you made it the most awful of solitudes; and

you have thus brought Camille Maupin, the unbeliever, the writer

of books, which I am soon to repudiate solemnly--you have cast

her, daring and perverted, bound hand and foot, before God.

I am to-day what I might have been, what I was born to be,--

innocent, and a child. I have washed my robes in the tears of

repentance; I can come before the altar whither my guardian angel,

my beloved Calyste, has led me. With what tender comfort I give

you that name, which the step I now take sanctifies. I love you

without self-seeking, as a mother loves her son, as the Church

loves her children. I can pray for you and for yours without one

thought or wish except for your happiness. Ah! if you only knew

the sublime tranquillity in which I live, now that I have risen in

thought above all petty earthly interests, and how precious is the

thought of DOING (as your noble motto days) our duty, you would

enter your beautiful new life with unfaltering step and never a

glance behind you or about you. Above all, my earnest prayer to

you is that you be faithful to yourself and to those belonging to

you. Dear, society, in which you are to live, cannot exist without

the religion of duty, and you will terribly mistake it, as I

mistook it, if you allow yourself to yield to passion and to

fancy, as I did. Woman is the equal of man only in making her life

a continual offering, as that of man is a perpetual action; my

life has been, on the contrary, one long egotism. If may be that

God placed you, toward evening, by the door of my house, as a

messenger from Himself, bearing my punishment and my pardon.

Heed this confession of a woman to whom fame has been like a

pharos, warning her of the only true path. Be wise, be noble;

sacrifice your fancy to your duties, as head of your race, as

husband, as father. Raise the fallen standard of the old du

Guenics; show to this century of irreligion and want of principle

what a gentleman is in all his grandeur and his honor. Dear child

of my soul, let me play the part of a mother to you; your own

mother will not be jealous of this voice from a tomb, these hands

uplifted to heaven, imploring blessings on you. To-day, more than

ever, does rank and nobility need fortune. Calyste, accept a part

of mine, and make a worthy use of it. It is not a gift; it is a

trust I place in your hands. I have thought more of your children

and of your old Breton house than of you in offering you the

profits which time has brought to my property in Paris.

"Let us now sign the contract," said the young baron, returning to the

assembled company.

The Abbe Grimont, to whom the honor of the conversion of this

celebrated woman was attributed, became, soon after, vicar-general of

the diocese.

The following week, after the marriage ceremony, which, according to

the custom of many families of the faubourg Saint-Germain, was

celebrated at seven in the morning at the church of Saint Thomas

d'Aquin, Calyste and Sabine got into their pretty travelling-carriage,

amid the tears, embraces, and congratulations of a score of friends,

collected under the awning of the hotel de Grandlieu. The

congratulations came from the four witnesses, and the men present; the

tears were in the eyes of the Duchesse de Grandlieu and her daughter

Clotilde, who both trembled under the weight of the same thought,--

"She is launched upon the sea of life! Poor Sabine! at the mercy of a

man who does not marry entirely of his own free will."

Marriage is not wholly made up of pleasures,--as fugitive in that

relation as in all others; it involves compatibility of temper,

physical sympathies, harmonies of character, which make of that social

necessity an eternal problem. Marriageable daughters, as well as

mothers, know the terms as well as the dangers of this lottery; and

that is why women weep at a wedding while men smile; men believe that

they risk nothing, while women know, or very nearly know, what they

risk.

In another carriage, which preceded the married pair, was the Baronne

du Guenic, to whom the duchess had said at parting,--

"You are a mother, though you have only had one son; try to take my

place to my dear Sabine."

On the box of the bridal carriage sat a /chasseur/, who acted as

courier, and in the rumble were two waiting-maids. The four postilions

dressed in their finest uniforms, for each carriage was drawn by four

horses, appeared with bouquets on their breasts and ribbons on their

hats, which the Duc de Grandlieu had the utmost difficulty in making

them relinquish, even by bribing them with money. The French postilion

is eminently intelligent, but he likes his fun. These fellows took

their bribes and replaced their ribbons at the barrier.

"Well, good-bye, Sabine," said the duchess; "remember your promise;

write to me often. Calyste, I say nothing more to you, but you

understand me."

Clotilde, leaning on the youngest sister Athenais, who was smiling to

the Vicomte de Grandlieu, cast a reflecting look through her tears at

the bride, and followed the carriage with her eyes as it disappeared

to the clacking of four whips, more noisy than the shots of a pistol

gallery. In a few minutes the gay convoy had reached the esplanade of

the Invalides, the barrier of Passy by the quay of the Pont d'Iena,

and were fairly on the high-road to Brittany.

Is it not a singular thing that the artisans of Switzerland and

Germany, and the great families of France and England should, one and

all, follow the custom of setting out on a journey after the marriage

ceremony? The great people shut themselves in a box which rolls along;

the little people gaily tramp the roads, sitting down in the woods,

banqueting at the inns, as long as their joy, or rather their money

lasts. A moralist is puzzled to decide on which side is the finer

sense of modesty,--that which hides from the public eye and

inaugurates the domestic hearth and bed in private, as to the worthy

burghers of all lands, or that which withdraws from the family and

exhibits itself publicly on the high-roads and in face of strangers.

One would think that delicate souls might desire solitude and seek to

escape both the world and their family. The love which begins a

marriage is a pearl, a diamond, a jewel cut by the choicest of arts, a

treasure to bury in the depths of the soul.

Who can relate a honeymoon, unless it be the bride? How many women

reading this history will admit to themselves that this period of

uncertain duration is the forecast of conjugal life? The first three

letters of Sabine to her mother will depict a situation not surprising

to some young brides and to many old women. All those who find

themselves the sick-nurses, so to speak, of a husband's heart, do not,

as Sabine did, discover this at once. But young girls of the faubourg

Saint-Germain, if intelligent, are women in mind. Before marriage,

they have received from their mothers and the world they live in the

baptism of good manners; though women of rank, anxious to hand down

their traditions, do not always see the bearing of their own lessons

when they say to their daughters: "That is a motion that must not be

made;" "Never laugh at such things;" "No lady ever flings herself on a

sofa; she sits down quietly;" "Pray give up such detestable ways;" "My

dear, that is a thing which is never done," etc.

Many bourgeois critics unjustly deny the innocence and virtue of young

girls who, like Sabine, are truly virgin at heart, improved by the

training of their minds, by the habit of noble bearing, by natural

good taste, while, from the age of sixteen, they have learned how to

use their opera-glasses. Sabine was a girl of this school, which was

also that of Mademoiselle de Chaulieu. This inborn sense of the

fitness of things, these gifts of race made Sabine de Grandlieu as

interesting a young woman as the heroine of the "Memoirs of two young

Married Women." Her letters to her mother during the honeymoon, of

which we here give three or four, will show the qualities of her mind

and temperament.

Guerande, April, 1838.

To Madame la Duchesse de Grandlieu:

Dear Mamma,--You will understand why I did not write to you during

the journey,--our wits are then like wheels. Here I am, for the

last two days, in the depths of Brittany, at the hotel du Guenic,

--a house as covered with carving as a sandal-wood box. In spite

of the affectionate devotion of Calyste's family, I feel a keen

desire to fly to you, to tell you many things which can only be

trusted to a mother.

Calyste married, dear mamma, with a great sorrow in his heart. We

all knew that, and you did not hide from me the difficulties of my

position; but alas! they are greater than you thought. Ah! my dear

mother, what experience we acquire in the short space of a few

days--I might even say a few hours! All your counsels have proved

fruitless; you will see why from one sentence: I love Calyste as

if he were not my husband,--that is to say, if I were married to

another, and were travelling with Calyste, I should love Calyste

and hate my husband.

Now think of a man beloved so completely, involuntarily,

absolutely, and all the other adverbs you may choose to employ,

and you will see that my servitude is established in spite of your

good advice. You told me to be grand, noble, dignified, and self-

respecting in order to obtain from Calyste the feelings that are

never subject to the chances and changes of life,--esteem, honor,

and the consideration which sanctifies a woman in the bosom of her

family. I remember how you blamed, I dare say justly, the young

women of the present day, who, under pretext of living happily

with their husbands, begin by compliance, flattery, familiarity,

an abandonment, you called it, a little too wanton (a word I did

not fully understand), all of which, if I must believe you, are

relays that lead rapidly to indifference and possibly to contempt.

"Remember that you are a Grandlieu!" yes, I remember that you told

me all that--

But oh! that advice, filled with the maternal eloquence of a

female Daedelus has had the fate of all things mythological. Dear,

beloved mother, could you ever have supposed it possible that I

should begin by the catastrophe which, according to you, ends the

honeymoon of the young women of the present day?

When Calyste and I were fairly alone in the travelling carriage,

we felt rather foolish in each other's company, understanding the

importance of the first word, the first look; and we both,

bewildered by the solemnity, looked out of our respective windows.

It became so ridiculous that when we reached the barrier monsieur

began, in a rather troubled tone of voice, a set discourse,

prepared, no doubt, like other improvisations, to which I listened

with a beating heart, and which I take the liberty of here

abridging.

"My dear Sabine," he said, "I want you to be happy, and, above

all, do I wish you to be happy in your own way. Therefore, in the

situation in which we are, instead of deceiving ourselves mutually

about our characters and our feelings by noble compliances, let us

endeavor to be to each other at once what we should be years

hence. Think always that you have a friend and a brother in me, as

I shall feel I have a sister and a friend in you."

Though it was all said with the utmost delicacy, I found nothing

in this first conjugal love-speech which responded to the feelings

in my soul, and I remained pensive after replying that I was

animated by the same sentiments. After this declaration of our

rights to mutual coldness, we talked of weather, relays, and

scenery in the most charming manner,--I with rather a forced

little laugh, he absent-mindedly.

At last, as we were leaving Versailles, I turned to Calyste--whom

I called my dear Calyste, and he called me my dear Sabine--and

asked him plainly to tell me the events which had led him to the

point of death, and to which I was aware that I owed the happiness

of being his wife. He hesitated long. In fact, my request gave

rise to a little argument between us, which lasted through three

relays,--I endeavoring to maintain the part of an obstinate girl,

and trying to sulk; he debating within himself the question which

the newspapers used to put to Charles X.: "Must the king yield or

not?" At last, after passing Verneuil, and exchanging oaths enough

to satisfy three dynasties never to reproach him for his folly,

and never to treat him coldly, etc., etc., he related to me his

love for Madame de Rochefide.

"I do not wish," he said, in conclusion, "to have any secrets

between us."

Poor, dear Calyste, it seems, was ignorant that his friend,

Mademoiselle des Touches, and you had thought it right to tell me

the truth. Well, mother,--for I can tell all to a mother as tender

as you,--I was deeply hurt by perceiving that he had yielded less

to my request than to his own desire to talk of that strange

passion. Do you blame me, darling mother, for having wished to

reconnoitre the extent of the grief, the open wound of the heart

of which you warned me?

So, eight hours after receiving the rector's blessing at Saint-

Thomas d'Aquin, your Sabine was in the rather false position of a

young wife listening to a confidence, from the very lips of her

husband, of his misplaced love for an unworthy rival. Yes, there I

was, in the drama of a young woman learning, officially, as it

were, that she owed her marriage to the disdainful rejection of an

old and faded beauty!

Still, I gained what I sought. "What was that?" you will ask. Ah!

mother dear, I have seen too much of love going on around me not

to know how to put a little of it into practice. Well, Calyste

ended the poem of his miseries with the warmest protestations of

an absolute forgetting of what he called his madness. All kinds of

affirmations have to be signed, you know. The happy unhappy one

took my hand, carried it to his lips, and, after that, he kept it

for a long time clasped in his own. A declaration followed. /That

one/ seemed to me more conformable than the first to the demands

of our new condition, though our lips never said a word. Perhaps I

owed it to the vigorous indignation I felt and showed at the bad

taste of a woman foolish enough not to love my beautiful, my

glorious Calyste.

They are calling me to play a game of cards, which I do not yet

understand. I will finish my letter to-morrow. To leave you at

this moment to make a fifth at /mouche/ (that is the name of the

game) can only be done in the depths of Brittany--Adieu.

Your Sabine.

Guerande, May, 1838.

I take up my Odyssey. On the third day your children no longer

used the ceremonious "you;" they thee'd and thou'd each other like

lovers. My mother-in-law, enchanted to see us so happy, is trying

to take your place to me, dear mother, and, as often happens when

people play a part to efface other memories, she has been so

charming that she is, /almost/, you to me.

I think she has guessed the heroism of my conduct, for at the

beginning of our journey she tried to hide her anxiety with such

care that it was visible from excessive precaution.

When I saw the towers of Guerande rising in the distance, I

whispered in the ear of your son-in-law, "Have you really

forgotten her?" My husband, now become /my angel/, can't know

anything, I think, about sincere and simple love, for the words

made him wild with happiness. Still, I think the desire to put

Madame de Rochefide forever out of his mind led me too far. But

how could I help it? I love, and I am half a Portuguese,--for I am

much more like you, mamma, than like my father.

Calyste accepts all from me as spoilt children accept things, they

think it their right; he is an only child, I remember that. But,

between ourselves, I will not give my daughter (if I have any

daughters) to an only son. I see a variety of tyrants in an only

son. So, mamma, we have rather inverted our parts, and I am the

devoted half of the pair. There are dangers, I know, in devotion,

though we profit by it; we lose our dignity, for one thing. I feel

bound to tell you of the wreck of that semi-virtue. Dignity, after

all, is only a screen set up before pride, behind which we rage as

we please; but how could I help it? you were not here, and I saw a

gulf opening before me. Had I remained upon my dignity, I should

have won only the cold joys (or pains) of a sort of brotherhood

which would soon have drifted into indifference. What sort of

future might that have led to? My devotion has, I know, made me

Calyste's slave; but shall I regret it? We shall see.

As for the present, I am delighted with it. I love Calyste; I love

him absolutely, with the folly of a mother, who thinks that all

her son may do is right, even if he tyrannizes a trifle over her.

Guerande, May 15th.

Up to the present moment, dear mamma, I find marriage a delightful

affair, I can spend all my tenderness on the noblest of men whom a

foolish woman disdained for a fiddler,--for that woman evidently

was a fool, and a cold fool, the worst kind! I, in my legitimate

love, am charitable; I am curing his wounds while I lay my heart

open to incurable ones. Yes, the more I love Calyste, the more I

feel that I should die of grief if our present happiness ever

ceased.

I must tell you how the whole family and the circle which meets at

the hotel de Guenic adore me. They are all personages born under

tapestries of the highest warp; in fact, they seem to have stepped

from those old tapestries as if to prove that the impossible may

exist. Some day, when we are alone together, I will describe to

you my Aunt Zephirine, Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, the Chevalier du

Halga, the Demoiselles de Kergarouet, and others. They all, even

to the two servants, Gasselin and Mariotte (whom I wish they would

let me take to Paris), regard me as an angel sent from heaven;

they tremble when I speak. Dear people! they ought to be preserved

under glass.

My mother-in-law has solemnly installed us in the apartments

formerly occupied by herself and her late husband. The scene was

touching. She said to us,--

"I spent my whole married life, a happy woman, in these rooms; may

the omen be a happy one for you, my children."

She has taken Calyste's former room for hers. Saintly soul! she

seems intent on laying off her memories and all her conjugal

dignities to invest us with them. The province of Brittany, this

town, this family of ancient morals and ancient customs has, in

spite of certain absurdities which strike the eye of a frivolous

Parisian girl, something inexplicable, something grandiose even in

its trifles, which can only be defined by the word /sacred/.

All the tenants of the vast domains of the house of Guenic, bought

back, as you know, by Mademoiselle des Touches (whom we are going

to visit in her convent), have been in a body to pay their

respects to us. These worthy people, in their holiday costumes,

expressing their genuine joy in the fact that Calyste has now

become really and truly their master, made me understand Brittany,

the feudal system and /old/ France. The whole scene was a festival

I can't describe to you in writing, but I will tell you about it

when we meet. The terms of the leases have been proposed by the

/gars/ themselves. We shall sign them, after making a tour of

inspection round the estates, which have been mortgaged away from

us for one hundred and fifty years! Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel told

me that the /gars/ have reckoned up the revenues and estimated the

rentals with a veracity and justice Parisians would never believe.

We start in three days on horseback for this trip. I will write

you on my return, dear mother. I shall have nothing more to tell

you about myself, for my happiness is at its height--and how can

that be told? I shall write you only what you know already, and

that is, how I love you.

Nantes, June, 1838.

Having now played the role of a chatelaine, adored by her vassals

as if the revolutions of 1789 and 1830 had lowered no banners; and

after rides through forests, and halts at farmhouses, dinners on

oaken tables, covered with centenary linen, bending under Homeric

viands served on antediluvian dishes; after drinking the choicest

wines in goblets to volleys of musketry, accompanied by cries of

"Long live the Guenics!" till I was deafened; after balls, where

the only orchestra was a bagpipe, blown by a man for ten hours;

and after bouquets, and young brides who wanted us to bless them,

and downright weariness, which made me find in my bed a sleep I

never knew before, with delightful awakenings when love shone

radiant as the sun pouring in upon me, and scintillating with a

million of flies, all buzzing in the Breton dialect!--in short,

after a most grotesque residence in the Chateau du Guenic, where

the windows are gates and the cows grace peacefully on the grass

in the halls (which castle we have sworn to repair and to inhabit

for a while very year to the wild acclamations of the clan du

Guenic, a /gars/ of which bore high our banner)--ouf! I am at

Nantes.

But oh! what a day was that when we arrived at the old castle! The

rector came out, mother, with all his clergy, crowned with

flowers, to receive us and bless us, expressing such joy,--the

tears are in my eyes as I think of it. And my noble Calyste! who

played his part of seigneur like a personage in Walter Scott! My

lord received his tenants' homage as if he were back in the

thirteenth century. I heard the girls and the women saying to each

other, "Oh, what a beautiful seigneur we have!" for all the world

like an opera chorus. The old men talked of Calyste's resemblance

to the former Guenics whom they had known in their youth. Ah!

noble, sublime Brittany! land of belief and faith! But progress

has got its eye upon it; bridges are being built, roads made,

ideas are coming, and then farewell to the sublime! The peasants

will certainly not be as free and proud as I have now seen them,

when progress has proved to them that they are Calyste's equals--

if, indeed, they could ever be got to believe it.

After this poem of our pacific Restoration had been sung, and the

contracts and leases signed, we left that ravishing land, all

flowery, gay, solemn, lonely by turns, and came here to kneel with

our happiness at the feet of her who gave it to us.

Calyste and I both felt the need of thanking the sister of the

Visitation. In memory of her he has quartered his own arms with

those of Des Touches, which are: party couped, tranche and taille

or and sinople, on the latter two eagles argent. He means to take

one of the eagles argent for his own supporter and put this motto

in its beak: /Souviegne-vous/.

Yesterday we went to the convent of the ladies of the Visitation,

to which we were taken by the Abbe Grimont, a friend of the du

Guenic family, who told us that your dear Felicite, mamma, was

indeed a saint. She could not very well be anything else to him,

for her conversion, which was thought to be his doing, has led to

his appointment as vicar-general of the diocese. Mademoiselle des

Touches declined to receive Calyste, and would only see me. I

found her slightly changed, thinner and paler; but she seemed much

pleased at my visit.

"Tell Calyste," she said, in a low voice, "that it is a matter of

conscience with me not to see him, for I am permitted to do so. I

prefer not to buy that happiness by months of suffering. Ah, you

do not know what it costs me to reply to the question, 'Of what

are you thinking?' Certainly the mother of the novices has no

conception of the number and extent of the ideas which are rushing

through my mind when she asks that question. Sometimes I am seeing

Italy or Paris, with all its sights; always thinking, however, of

Calyste, who is"--she said this in that poetic way you know and

admire so much--"who is the sun of memory to me. I found," she

continued, "that I was too old to be received among the

Carmelites, and I have entered the order of Saint-Francois de

Sales solely because he said, 'I will bare your heads instead of

your feet,'--objecting, as he did, to austerities which mortified

the body only. It is, in truth, the head that sins. The saintly

bishop was right to make his rule austere toward the intellect,

and terrible against the will. That is what I sought; for my head

was the guilty part of me. It deceived me as to my heart until I

reached that fatal age of forty, when, for a few brief moments, we

are forty times happier than young women, and then, speedily,

fifty times more unhappy. But, my child, tell me," she asked,

ceasing with visible satisfaction to speak of herself, "are you

happy?"

"You see me under all the enchantments of love and happiness," I

answered.

"Calyste is as good and simple as he is noble and beautiful," she

said, gravely. "I have made you my heiress in more things than

property; you now possess the double ideal of which I dreamed. I

rejoice in what I have done," she continued, after a pause. "But,

my child, make no mistake; do yourself no wrong. You have easily

won happiness; you have only to stretch out your hand to take it,

and it is yours; but be careful to preserve it. If you had come

here solely to carry away with you the counsels that my knowledge

of your husband alone can give you, the journey would be well

repaid. Calyste is moved at this moment by a communicated passion,

but you have not inspired it. To make your happiness lasting, try,

my dear child, to give him something of his former emotions. In

the interests of both of you, be capricious, be coquettish; to

tell you the truth, you /must/ be. I am not advising any odious

scheming, or petty tyranny; this that I tell you is the science of

a woman's life. Between usury and prodigality, my child, is

economy. Study, therefore, to acquire honorably a certain empire

over Calyste. These are the last words on earthly interests that I

shall ever utter, and I have kept them to say as we part; for

there are times when I tremble in my conscience lest to save

Calyste I may have sacrificed you. Bind him to you, firmly, give

him children, let him respect their mother in you--and," she

added, in a low and trembling voice, "manage, if you can, that he

shall never again see Beatrix."

That name plunged us both into a sort of stupor; we looked into

each other's eyes, exchanging a vague uneasiness.

"Do you return to Guerande?" she asked me.

"Yes," I said.

"Never go to Les Touches. I did wrong to give him that property."

"Why?" I asked.

"Child!" she answered, "Les Touches for you is Bluebeard's

chamber. There is nothing so dangerous as to wake a sleeping

passion."

I have given you, dear mamma, the substance, or at any rate, the

meaning of our conversation. If Mademoiselle des Touches made me

talk to her freely, she also gave me much to think of; and all the

more because, in the delight of this trip, and the charm of these

relations with my Calyste, I had well-nigh forgotten the serious

situation of which I spoke to you in my first letter, and about

which you warned me.

But oh! mother, it is impossible for me to follow these counsels.

I cannot put an appearance of opposition or caprice into my love;

it would falsify it. Calyste will do with me what he pleases.

According to your theory, the more I am a woman the more I make

myself his toy; for I am, and I know it, horribly weak in my

happiness; I cannot resist a single glance of my lord. But no! I

do not abandon myself to love; I only cling to it, as a mother

presses her infant to her breast, fearing some evil.

Note.--When "Beatrix" was first published, in 1839, the volume ended

with the following paragraph: "Calyste, rich and married to the

most beautiful woman in Paris, retains a sadness in his soul which

nothing dissipates,--not even the birth of a son at Guerande, in

1839, to the great joy of Zephirine du Guenic. Beatrix lives still

in the depths of his heart, and it is impossible to foresee what

disasters might result should he again meet with Madame de

Rochefide." In 1842 this concluding paragraph was suppressed and

the story continued as here follows.--TR.

XVIII

THE END OF A HONEY-MOON

Guerande, July, 1838.

To Madame la Duchesse de Grandlieu:

Ah, my dear mamma! at the end of three months to know what it is

to be jealous! My heart completes its experience; I now feel the

deepest hatred and the deepest love! I am more than betrayed,--I

am not loved. How fortunate for me to have a mother, a heart on

which to cry out as I will!

It is enough to say to wives who are still half girls: "Here's a

key rusty with memories among those of your palace; go everywhere,

enjoy everything, but keep away from Les Touches!" to make us

eager to go there hot-foot, our eyes shining with the curiosity of

Eve. What a root of bitterness Mademoiselle des Touches planted in

my love! Why did she forbid me to go to Les Touches? What sort of

happiness is mine if it depends on an excursion, on a visit to a

paltry house in Brittany? Why should I fear? Is there anything to

fear? Add to this reasoning of Mrs. Blue-Beard the desire that

nips all women to know if their power is solid or precarious, and

you'll understand how it was that I said one day, with an

unconcerned little air:--

"What sort of place is Les Touches?"

"Les Touches belongs to you," said my divine, dear mother-in-law.

"If Calyste had never set foot in Les Touches!"--cried my aunt

Zephirine, shaking her head.

"He would not be my husband," I added.

"Then you know what happened there?" said my mother-in-law, slyly.

"It is a place of perdition!" exclaimed Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel.

"Mademoiselle des Touches committed many sins there, for which she

is now asking the pardon of God."

"But they saved the soul of that noble woman, and made the fortune

of a convent," cried the Chevalier du Halga. "The Abbe Grimont

told me she had given a hundred thousand francs to the nuns of the

Visitation."

"Should you like to go to Les Touches?" asked my mother