LIBRARY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 Mr. H. H. KM iani
 
 UC.SB LIBKAHY
 
 H. DE BALZAC 
 
 THE COMEDIE HUMAINE
 
 '
 
 BALZAC'S BIRTHPLACE, RUE ROYALE, TOURS.
 
 H. DE BALZAC 
 
 BEATRIX 
 
 AND THE PURSE 
 
 (LA BOURSE.) 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 JAMES WARING 
 
 WITH A PREFACE BY 
 
 GEORGE SAINTSBURY 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 THE GEBBIE PUBLISHING Co., Ltd. 
 i!
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PACK 
 
 PREFACE ix 
 
 BE A TRIX 
 
 I. DRAMATIS PERSON.* 2 
 
 II. THE DRAMA 13! 
 
 III. RETROSPECTIVE ADULTERY 24! 
 
 THE PURSE 357
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 BALZAC'S BIRTHPLACE, RUE ROYALE, TOURS . . Frontispiece 
 
 Drawn by H. Crickmore. 
 
 PACK 
 
 AT THE UNEXPECTED SIGHT CALYSTE AND FELICITE SAT SILENT 
 
 FOR A MINUTE IOI 
 
 "SPARE THE HORSES, MY BOY THEY HAVE TWELVE LEAGUES 
 
 BEFORE THEM " 14! 
 
 " OPEN YOUR EYES, FORGIVE ME ! " SAID CALYSTE. " OR WE DIE 
 
 TOGETHER " . 2O4 
 
 "LEAVE ME, DAUGHTER," SHE SAID, GOING TO HER PRIE-DIEU . 296 
 Drawn by W. Boncher.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 "BEATRIX" was built up in the odd fashion in which 
 Balzac sometimes did build up his novels, and which may be 
 thought to account for an occasional lack of unity and grasp 
 in them. The original book, written in 1838, and published 
 with the rather flowery dedication "to Sarah " at the end of 
 that year, stopped at the marriage of Calyste and Sabine. 
 The last part, separately entitled " Un Adultere Retrospectif," 
 was not added till six years later. It cannot be said to be 
 either very shocking or very unnatural that the young husband 
 should exemplify the truth of that uncomfortable proverb, Qui a 
 bu boira ; and it is perhaps rather more surprising that Balzac 
 should have allowed him to be " refished " (as the French say) 
 in a finally satisfactory condition by his lawful spouse. 
 
 Still, I do not think the addition can be considered on the 
 whole an improvement to the book, of which it is at the best 
 rather an appendix than an integral part. The conception of 
 Beatrix herself seems to have changed somewhat, and that not 
 as the conception of her immortal namesake in "Esmond" 
 and "The Virginians " changes, merely to suit the irreparable 
 outrage of years. The end has unsavory details, which have 
 not, as the repetition of them in more tragic form a little later 
 in "La Cousine Bette" has, the justification of a really tragic 
 retribution ; and a man must have a great deal of disinterested 
 good-nature about him to feel any satisfaction, or indeed to 
 take much interest, in the restoration of the domestic happi- 
 ness of two such persons as M. and Madame de Rochefide. 
 Calyste du Guenic, whose character was earlier rather exag- 
 gerated, is now almost a caricature, and to me at least the 
 thing is not much excused by the fact that it gives Balzac an 
 opportunity of introducing his pattern gentleman-scoundrel,
 
 * PREFACE. 
 
 Maxima de Trailles, and his pet Bohemian, La Palferine. 
 The many-named Italian here indeed plays a comparatively 
 benevolent part, as does Trailles ; but they are both as great 
 " raffs " and " tigers " as ever. 
 
 The first and larger part of the book, on the other hand 
 the book proper, as we may call it is a remarkable, a well- 
 designed, and a very interesting study. It is not so much of 
 an additional attraction to me, as it perhaps is to most people, 
 that contemporaries, without much contradiction, or in all 
 cases improbability, chose to regard the parts and personages 
 of Felicite des Touches, Beatrix de Rochefide, Claud Vignon, 
 and the musician Conti, as designed, and pretty closely de- 
 signed, after George Sand, Madame d'Agoult (known as 
 " Daniel Stern "), Gustave Planche, the critic, and Liszt, 
 As to the first pair, there can, of course, be no doubt ; for 
 Balzac, by representing "Camille Maupin " as George Sand's 
 rival, and by introducing divers ingenious and legitimate 
 adaptations of the famous she-novelist's career, both invites 
 and, in a way, authorizes the attribution. There is nothing 
 offensive in it; indeed, Felicite is one of the most effective 
 and sympathetic of his female characters, and would always 
 have been incapable of the rather heartless action by which 
 the actual George Sand amused herself intellectually and senti- 
 mentally with lover after lover, and then threw them away. 
 Unless the accounts of Planche that we have are very unfair 
 and they possibly are, for he was a critic, and was particularly 
 obnoxious to the extreme Romantic school, which was perhaps 
 why Balzac liked him Claud Vignon is a still more flattered 
 portrait, though Balzac's low, if not quite impartial, opinion 
 of critics in general comes out in it. Conti may be fair 
 enough for Liszt ; and if Beatrix is certainly a libel on poor 
 Madame d'Agoult, it must be remembered that this later 
 Madame de Stae'l was generally misrepresented in her lifetime, 
 though since her death she has had more justice. 
 
 The " key "-interest of books, however, is always a minor,
 
 PREFACE. xi 
 
 and sometimes a purely illegitimate one. It ought to be suffi- 
 cient for us that the interest of the quartette, even if there had 
 been no such persons as George Sand, Daniel Stern, Planche, 
 and Liszt in the world, would be very great, and that it is well 
 composed with and maintained by the accessory and auxiliary 
 facts and characters. The picture of the Guenic household 
 (which, after Balzac's usual fashion, throws us back to "Les 
 Chouans," while Beatrix as a Casteran, and thus a connection 
 of the luckless Mile, de Verneuil, is also connected with that 
 book) may seem to some to be a little too fully painted ; it 
 does not seem so to me. Whether, as hinted above, the char- 
 acter of Calyste has its childishness exaggerated or not, I must 
 leave to readers to decide for themselves. His casting of 
 Beatrix into the sea, beside being illegal, may seem to some 
 extravagant ; but it must be remembered that Balzac was 
 originally writing when the heyday of the Romantic move- 
 ment was by no means over, and when melodrama was still 
 pretty fully in fashion. It is difficult, too, to see what better 
 contrast and uniting scheme for the contrasted worldlinesses 
 of the four chief characters could have been devised ; while 
 the childishness itself is not inconceivable or unnatural in a 
 boy brought up in a sort of household of romance by a heroic 
 father and a doting mother, both utterly unworldly, his head 
 being further fired by participation in actual civil war on be- 
 half of an injured princess, and his heart exposed without 
 preparation to such different influences as those of Mile, des 
 Touches and of Beatrix. 
 
 The contrast of the two ladies is also fine; indeed, Beatrix 
 seems to me, though by no means Balzac's most perfect work, 
 to be an attempt in a higher style of novel writing than any 
 other heroine of his. It is impossible not to suspect in Fe- 
 licite, good, clever, and so forth as she is, a covert satire on 
 the variety of womankind which had begun to be fashionable. 
 The satire on the unamiable side of mere womanliness which 
 the sketch of Beatrix contains is, of course, open and un-
 
 adi PREFACE. 
 
 deniable. I think that Thackeray has far excelled it, but I 
 am not certain that he was not indebted to it as a pattern. 
 The fault of the French Beatrix has been expressed by her 
 creator on nearly the last page of the book. A woman sans 
 cceur ni tfte may do a great deal of mischief; but she cannot 
 quite play the part attributed to Madame de Rochefide. 
 
 The two first parts of f Beatrix" (in which Madame de 
 Rochefide was at first called Roche^dV) appeared in the 
 "Siecle" during April and May, 1839, with the alternative 
 title "ou les Amours Forces," and they were published in 
 book form by Souverain in the same year. They were then 
 divided briefly: the first part, which was called " Moeurs 
 D'Autrefois" in the "Siecle," and "Une Famille Patri- 
 arcale" in the book, had eight headed chapters; the second 
 (" Moeurs D' Aujourdhui " in the first, "Une Femme Celebre" 
 in the second) eleven; and a third division, " Les Rivalries," 
 eight. As a "Scene de la Vie Priv6e," which it became in 
 1842, it had no chapters; it was little altered otherwise; and 
 the present completion was anticipated, though not given, in 
 a final paragraph. It also had the simple title of "Beatrix." 
 The completion itself did not appear till the midwinter (De- 
 cember-January) of 1844-45. It was first called "Les Petits 
 Maneges d'une Femme Vertueuse " in the "Messager," and 
 when, shortly afterward, it was published by Chlendowski as 
 a book, " La Lune de Miel." In these forms it had fifty-nine 
 headed chapters. In the same year, however, it became, with 
 its forerunners, part of the Comedie, and the chapters were 
 swept away throughout. 
 
 " The Purse " (" La Bourse "), though agreeable, is a little 
 slight. It was early written, apparently for the second edi- 
 tion of the "Scenes de la Vie Privee," in which it appeared. 
 In 1835 it was moved over to the "Scenes de la Vie Paris- 
 ienne," between which and the Vie Privee there is in fact a 
 good deal of cross and arbitrary division. But when the full 
 Comdie took shape it moved back again. G. S.
 
 BEATRIX. 
 
 To Sarah. 
 
 In clear weather, on the Mediterranean shore, 
 where formerly your name held elegant sway, the 
 waves sometimes allow us to perceive beneath the mist 
 of waters a sea-flower, one of Nature 1 s masterpieces; 
 the lacework of its tissue, tinged with purple, russet, 
 rose, violet, or gold, the crispness of that living fili- 
 gree, the velvet texture, all vanish as soon as curiosity 
 draws it forth and spreads it on the strand. 
 
 Thus would the glare of publicity offend your tender 
 modesty ; so, in dedicating this work to you, I must 
 reserve a name which would, indeed, be its pride. 
 But, under the shelter of this half-concealment, your 
 superb hands may bless it, your noble brow may bend 
 and dream over it, your eyes, full of motherly love, 
 may smile upon it, since you are here at once present 
 and veiled. Like that gem of the ocean-garden, you 
 will dwell on the fine, white, level sand where your 
 beautiful life expands, hidden by a wave that is trans- 
 parent only to certain friendly and reticent eyes. 
 
 I would gladly have laid at your feet a work in 
 harmony with your perfections ; but as that was im- 
 possible, I knew, for my consolation, that I was grat- 
 ifying one of your instincts by offering you something to 
 protect. 
 
 DE BALZAC. 
 
 (1)
 
 PART I. 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONS. 
 
 FRANCE, and more especially Brittany, still has some few 
 towns that stand entirely outside the social movement which 
 gives a character to the nineteenth century. For lack of rapid 
 and constant communications with Paris, connected only by 
 an ill-made road with the prefecture or chief town to which 
 they belong, these places hear and see modern civilization 
 pass by like a spectacle ; they are amazed, but they do not 
 applaud ; and whether they fear it or make light of it, they 
 remain faithful to the antiquated manners of which they pre- 
 serve the stamp. Any one who should travel as a moral 
 archaeologist, and study men instead of stones, might find a 
 picture of the age of Louis XV. in some village of Provence, 
 that of the time of Louis XIV. in the depths of Poitou, that 
 of yet remoter ages in the heart of Brittany. 
 
 Most of these places have fallen from some splendor of 
 which history has kept no record, busied as it is with facts and 
 dates rather than manners, but of which the memory still sur- 
 vives in tradition ; as in Brittany, where the character of the 
 people allows no forgetfulness of anything that concerns the 
 home country. Many of these towns have been the capital 
 of some little feudal territory a county or a duchy conquered 
 by the Crown, or broken up by inheritors in default of a direct 
 male line. Then, deprived of their activity, these heads be- 
 came arms ; the arms, bereft of nutrition, have dried up and 
 merely vegetate ; and within these thirty years these images 
 of remote times are beginning to die out and grow very rare. 
 
 Modern industry, toiling for the masses, goes on destroying 
 
 the creations of ancient art, for its outcome was as personal to 
 
 the purchaser as to the maker. We have products nowadays ; 
 
 we no longer have works. Buildings play a large part in 
 
 (2)
 
 BEATRIX. 3 
 
 the phenomena of retrospection ; but to industry buildings 
 are stone-quarries or saltpetre mines, or warehouses for cotton. 
 A few years more and these primitive towns will be trans- 
 formed, known no more except in this literary iconography. 
 
 One of the towns where the physiognomy of the feudal ages 
 is still most plainly visible is Guerande. The name alone will 
 revive a thousand memories in the mind of painters, artists, 
 and thinkers, who may have been to the coast and have seen 
 this noble gem of feudality proudly perched where it com- 
 mands the sand-hills and the strand at low tide, the top 
 corner, as it were, of a triangle at whose other points stand 
 two not less curious relics le Croisic and le Bourg de Batz. 
 Beside Guerande there are but two places Vitre, in the very 
 centre of Brittany, and Avignon, in the south which preserve 
 their mediaeval aspect and features in the midst of our century. 
 Guerande is to this day inclosed by mighty walls, its wide 
 moats are full of water, its battlements are unbroken, its 
 loopholes are not filled up with shrub, the ivy has thrown no 
 mantle over its round and square towers. It has three gates, 
 where the rings may still be seen for suspending the port- 
 cullis ; it is entered over drawbridges of timber shod with 
 iron, which could be raised, though they are raised no longer. 
 The municipality was blamed in 1820 for planting poplars by 
 the side of the moat to shade the walk ; it replied that on the 
 land side, by the sand-hills, for above a hundred years, the 
 fine long esplanade by the walls, which look as if they had 
 been built yesterday, had been made into a mall overshadowed 
 by elms, where the inhabitants took their pleasure. 
 
 The houses have known no changes ; they are neither more 
 nor less in number. Not one of them has felt on its face the 
 hammer of the builder or the brush of the whitewasher, nor 
 trembled under the weight of an added story. They all re- 
 tain their primitive character. Some are raised on wooden 
 columns forming " rows," under which there is a footway, 
 floored with planks that yield but do not break. The store-
 
 4 BEATRIX. 
 
 dwellings are small and low, and faced with slate shingles. 
 Woodwork, now decayed, has been largely used for carved 
 window-frames ; and the beams, prolonged beyond the pillars, 
 project in grotesque heads, or at the angles, in the form of 
 fantastic creatures, vivified by the great idea of art, which at 
 that time lent life to dead matter. These ancient things, defy- 
 ing the touch of time, offer to painters the brown tones and 
 obliterated lines that they delight in. 
 
 The streets are what they were a hundred years ago. Only, 
 as the population is thinner now, as the social stir is less 
 active, a traveler curious to wander through this town, as fine 
 as a perfect suit of antique armor, may find his way, not un- 
 touched by melancholy, down an almost deserted street, where 
 the stone window-frames are choked with concrete to avoid 
 the tax. This street ends at a postern-gate built up with a 
 stone-wall, and crowned by a clump of saplings planted there 
 by the hand of Breton Nature France can hardly show a 
 more luxuriant and all-pervading vegetation. If he is a poet 
 or a painter, our wanderer will sit down, absorbed in the 
 enjoyment of the perfect silence that reigns under the still 
 sharp-cut vaulting of this side-gate, whither no sound comes 
 from the peaceful town, whence the rich country may be seen 
 in all its beauty through loopholes, once held by archers and 
 cross-bowmen, which seem placed like the little windows 
 arranged to frame a view from a summer-house. 
 
 It is impossible to go through the town without being re- 
 minded at every step of the manners and customs of long past 
 times ; every stone speaks of them ; traditions of the Middle 
 Ages survive there as superstitions. If by chance a gendarme 
 passes in his laced hat, his presence is an anachronism against 
 which the mind protests j but nothing is rarer than to meet a 
 being or a thing of the present. There is little to be seen 
 even of the dress of the day ; so much of it as the natives 
 have accepted has become to some extent appropriate to their 
 unchanging habits and hereditary physiognomy. The market-
 
 BEATRIX. 5 
 
 place is filled with Breton costumes, which artists come here 
 to study, and which are amazingly varied. The whiteness of 
 the linen clothes worn by the paludiers, the salt-workers who 
 collect salt from the pans in the marshes, contrasts effectively 
 with the blues and browns worn by the inland peasants, and 
 the primitive jewelry piously preserved by the women. These 
 two classes and the jacketed seamen, with their round, var- 
 nished leather hats, are as distinct as the castes in India, and 
 they still recognize the distinctions that separate the towns- 
 folk, the clergy, and the nobility. Here every landmark still 
 exists ; the revolutionary plane found the divisions too rugged 
 and too hard to work over ; it would have been notched if 
 not broken. Here the immutability which nature has given 
 to zoological species is to be seen in men. In short, even 
 since the revolution of 1830, Guerande is still a place unique, 
 essentially Breton, fervently Catholic, silent, meditative, where 
 new ideas can scarcely penetrate. 
 
 Its geographical position accounts for this singularity. 
 This pretty town overlooks the salt marshes ; its salt is indeed 
 known throughout Brittany as Sel de Guerande, and to its 
 merits many of the natives ascribe the excellence of their 
 butter and sardines. It has no communication with the rest 
 of France but by two roads, one leading to Savenay, the chief 
 town of the immediate district, and thence to Saint-Nazaire ; 
 and the other by Vannes on to Morbihan. The district road 
 connects it with Nantes by land ; that by Saint-Nazaire and 
 then by boat also leads to Nantes. The inland road is used 
 only by the Government, the shorter and more frequented way 
 is by Saint-Nazaire. Between that town and Guerande lies a 
 distance of at least six leagues, which the mails do not serve, 
 and for a very good reason there are not three travelers by 
 coach a year. Saint-Nazaire is divided from Paimboeuf by 
 the estuary of the Loire, there four leagues in width. The bar 
 of the river makes the navigation by steamboat somewhat un- 
 certain ; and, to add to the difficulties, there was, in 1829, no
 
 6 BE A TRIX. 
 
 landing quay at the cape of Saint-Nazaire ; the point ended 
 in slimy shoals and granite reefs, the natural fortifications of 
 its picturesque church, compelling arriving voyagers to fling 
 themselves and their baggage into boats when the sea was 
 high, or, in fine weather, to walk across the rocks as far as 
 the jetty then in course of construction. These obstacles, ill 
 suited to invite the amateur, may perhaps still exist there. 
 In the first place, the authorities move but slowly; and then 
 the natives of this corner of land, which you may see pro- 
 jecting like a tooth on the map of France between Saint- 
 Nazaire, le Bourg de Batz, and le Croisic, are very well 
 content with the hindrances that protect their territory from 
 the incursions of strangers. 
 
 Thus flung down on the edge of a continent, Gu6rande 
 leads no whither, and no one ever comes there. Happy in 
 being unknown, the town cares only for itself. The centre 
 of the immense produce of the salt marshes, paying not less 
 than a million francs in taxes, is at le Croisic, a peninsular 
 town communicating with Guerande across a tract of shifting 
 sands, where the road traced each day is washed out each 
 night, and by boats indispensable for crossing the inlet, 
 which forms the port of le Croisic, and which encroaches on 
 the sand. Thus this charming little town is a Herculaneum 
 of feudalism, minus the winding-sheet of lava. It stands, 
 but is not alive ; its only reason for surviving is that it has 
 not been pulled down. 
 
 If you arrive at Guerande from le Croisic, after crossing 
 the tract of salt marshes, you are startled and excited at the 
 sight of this immense fortification, apparently quite new. 
 Coming on it from Saint-Nazaire, its picturesque position and 
 the rural charm of the neighborhood are no less fascinating. 
 The country round it is charming, the hedges full of flowers 
 honeysuckles, roses, and beautiful shrubs ; you might fancy it 
 was an English wild-garden planned by a great artist. This 
 rich landscape, so homelike, so little visited, with all the
 
 BEA TRIX. 7 
 
 charm of a clump of violets or lily-of-the-valley found in the 
 midst of a forest, is set in an African desert shut in by the 
 ocean a desert without a tree, without a blade of grass, 
 without a bird, where, on a sunny day, the marshmen, dressed 
 all in white, and scattered at wide intervals over the dismal 
 flats where the salt is collected, look just like Arabs wrapped 
 in their burnouse. Indeed, Guerande, with its pretty scenery 
 inland, and its desert bounded on the right by le Croisic and 
 on the left by Batz, is quite unlike anything else to be seen by 
 the traveler in France. The two types of nature so strongly 
 contrasted and linked by this last monument of feudal life 
 are quite indescribably striking. The town itself has the 
 effect on the mind that a soporific has on the body ; it is as 
 soundless as Venice. 
 
 There is no public conveyance but that of a carrier who 
 transports travelers, parcels, and possibly letters, in a wretched 
 vehicle, from Saint-Nazaire to Guerande or back again. 
 Bernus, the driver of this conveyance, was, in 1829, the fac- 
 totum of the whole community. He goes as he likes, the 
 whole country knows him, he does everybody's commissions. 
 The arrival of a carriage is an immense event some lady who 
 is passing through Guerande by the land road to le Croisic, or 
 a few old invalids on their way to take sea-baths, which 
 among the rocks of this peninsula have virtues superior to 
 those of Boulogne, Dieppe, or les Sables. The peasants come 
 on horseback, and for the most part bring in their produce in 
 sacks. They come hither chiefly, as do the salt-makers, for 
 the business of purchasing the jewelry peculiar to their caste, 
 which must always be given to Breton maidens on betrothal, 
 and the white linen or the cloth for their clothes. For ten 
 leagues round, Guerande is still that illustrious Guerande 
 where a treaty was signed famous in French history ; the key 
 of the coast, displaying no less than le Bourg de Batz a mag- 
 nificence now lost in the darkness of ages. The jewelry, the 
 cloth, the linen, the ribbons, and hats are manufactured else-
 
 8 BEA TRIX. 
 
 where, but to the purchasers they are the specialty of Guer- 
 ande. 
 
 Every artist, nay, and every one who is not an artist, who 
 passes through Guerande, feels a desire soon forgotten to 
 end his days in its peace and stillness, walking out in fine 
 weather on the mall that runs round the town from one gate 
 to the other on the seaward side. Now and again a vision of 
 this town comes to knock at the gates of memory ; it comes 
 in crowned with towers, belted with walls ; it displays its robe 
 strewn with lovely flowers, shakes its mantle of sand-hills, 
 wafts the intoxicating perfumes of its pretty thorn-hedged 
 lanes, decked with posies lightly flung together; it fills your 
 mind, and invites you like some divine woman whom you 
 have once seen in a foreign land, and who has made herself a 
 home in your heart. 
 
 Close to the church of Guerande a house may be seen 
 which is to the town what the town is to the country, an 
 exact image of the past, the symbol of a great thing now 
 gone, a poem. This house belongs to the noblest family in 
 the land that of du Guaisnic, who, in the time of the du 
 Guesclin, were as superior to them in fortune and antiquity as 
 the Trojans were to the Romans. The Guaisqlain (also for- 
 merly spelt du Glaicquin) which has become Guesclin are 
 descended from the Guaisnics. The Guaisnics, as old as the 
 granite of Brittany, are neither Franks nor Gauls ; they are 
 Bretons, or, to be exact, Celts. Of old they must have been 
 Druids, have cut the mistletoe in sacred groves, and have 
 sacrificed men on dolmens. To-day this race, the equals of 
 the Rohans, but never chosing to be made princes, powerful 
 in the land before Hugues Capet's ancestors had been heard 
 of, this family, pure from every alloy, is possessed of about 
 two thousand francs a year, this house at Guerande, and the 
 little Castle of le Guaisnic. All the estates belonging to the 
 Barony of le Guaisnic, the oldest in Brittany, are in the
 
 BEATRIX. 9 
 
 hands of farmers, and bring in about sixty thousand francs a 
 year in spite of defective culture. The du Guaisnics are in- 
 deed still the owners of the land ; but as they cannot pay up 
 the capital deposited with them two hundred years ago by 
 those who then held them, they cannot take the income. 
 They are in the position of the French Crown toward its 
 tenants in 1789. When and where could the barons find the 
 million francs handed over to them by their farmers ? Until 
 1789 the tenure of the fiefs held of the Castle of le Guaisnic, 
 which stands on a hill, was still worth fifty thousand francs ; 
 but by a single vote the National Assembly suppressed the 
 fines on leases and sales paid to the feudal lords. In such 
 circumstances, this family, no longer of any consequence in 
 France, would be a subject of ridicule in Paris ; at Guerande, 
 it is an epitome of Brittany. At Guerande, the Baron du 
 Guaisnic is one of the great barons of France, one of the men 
 above whom there is but one the King of France, chosen 
 of old to be their chief. In these days the name of du Guais- 
 nic full of local meanings, of which the etymology has been 
 explained in " Les Chouans or Brittany in 1799 " has under- 
 gone the same change as disfigures that of du Guaisqlain. 
 The tax-collector, like every one else, writes it Guenic. 
 
 At the end of a silent, damp, and gloomy alley, formed 
 by the gabled fronts of the neighboring houses, the arch 
 of a door in the wall may be seen, high and wide enough 
 to admit a horseman, which is in itself sufficient evidence 
 of the house having been finished at a time when car- 
 riages as yet were not. This arch, raised on jambs, is all 
 of granite. The door, made of oak, has cracked like 
 the bark of the trees that furnished the timber, and is 
 set with enormous nails in a geometrical pattern. The 
 arch is coved, and displays the coat-of-arms of the du 
 Guaisnics, as sharp and clean-cut as though the carver had 
 but just finished it. This shield would delight an ama- 
 teur of heraldry by its simplicity, testifying to the pride and
 
 10 BEA TRIX. 
 
 the antiquity of the family. It is still the same as on the 
 day when the crusaders of the Christian world invented these 
 symbols to know each other by ; the Guaisnics have never 
 quartered their bearings with any others. It is always true 
 to itself, like the arms of France, which heralds may recog- 
 nize borne in chief or quarterly in the coats of the oldest 
 families. This is the blazon, as you still may see it at Guer- 
 ande : Gules, a hand proper manched ermine holding a sword 
 argent in pale, with this tremendous motto, Fac. Is not that 
 a fine and great thing ? The wreath of the baronial coronet 
 surmounts this simple shield, on which the vertical lines, used, 
 instead of color, to represent gules, are still clear and sharp. 
 
 The sculptor has given an indescribable look of pride and 
 chivalry to the hand. With what vigor does it hold the 
 sword which has done the family service only yesterday ! In- 
 deed, if you should go to Guerande after reading this story, 
 you will not look at that coat-of-arms without a thrill. The 
 most determined Republican cannot fail to be touched by the 
 fidelity, the nobleness, and the dignity buried at the bottom 
 of that narrow street. The du Guaisnics did well yesterday ; 
 they are ready to do well to-morrow. " To do " is the great 
 word of chivalry. "You did well in the fight" was always 
 the praise bestowed by the High Constable par excellence, 
 the great du Guesclin, who for a while drove the English 
 out of France. The depth of the carving, protected from 
 the weather by the projecting curved margin of the arch, 
 seems in harmony with the deeply graven moral of the motto 
 in the spirit of this family. To those who know the Guaisnics 
 this peculiarity is very pathetic. 
 
 The open door reveals a fairly large courtyard with stables 
 to the right and kitchen offices to the left. The house is 
 built of squared stone from cellar to garret. The front to the 
 courtyard has a double flight of outside steps ; the decorated 
 landing at the top is covered with vestiges of sculpture much 
 injured by time ; but the eye of the antiquarian can still dis-
 
 BEATRIX. 11 
 
 tinguish in the centre-piece of the principal ornament the 
 hand holding the sword. Below this elegant balcony, graced 
 with mouldings now broken in many places, and polished 
 here and there by long use, is a little lodge, once occupied 
 by a watch-dog. The stone balustrade is disjointed, and 
 weeds, tiny flowers, and mosses sprout in the seams and on 
 the steps, which ages have dislodged without destroying their 
 solidity. The door into the house must have been pretty in 
 its day. So far as the remains allow us to judge, it must have 
 been wrought by an artist trained in the great Venetian school 
 of the thirteenth century; it shows a singular combination 
 of the Mauresque and Byzantine styles, and is crowned by a 
 semicircular bracket, which is overgrown with plants, a posy 
 of rose, yellow, brown, or blue, according to the season. 
 The door, of nail-studded oak, opens into a vast hall, beyond 
 which is a similar door leading to such another balcony, and 
 steps down into the garden. 
 
 This hall is in wonderful preservation. The wainscot, up 
 to the height of a man's elbow, is in chestnut-wood; the 
 walls above are covered with splendid Spanish leather stamped 
 in relief, its gilding rubbed and rusty. The ceiling is coffered, 
 artistically moulded, painted, and gilt, but the gold is 
 scarcely visible ; it is in the same condition as that on the 
 cordova leather ; a few red flowers and green leaves can still 
 be seen. It seems probable that cleaning would revive the 
 paintings and show them to be like those which decorate the 
 woodwork of the House at Tours, called la Maison de Tristan, 
 which would prove that they had been restored or repaired in 
 the time of Louis XI. The fireplace is enormous, of carved 
 stone, with huge wrought-iron dogs of the finest workmanship. 
 They would carry a cartload of logs. All the seats in this 
 hall are of oak, and have the family shield carved on their 
 backs. Hanging to nails on the wall are three English mus- 
 kets, fit alike for war or for sport, three cavalry swords, two 
 game-bags, and various tackle for hunting and fishing.
 
 12 BEATRIX. 
 
 On one side is the dining-room, communicating with the 
 kitchen by a door in a corner turret. This turret corresponds 
 with another in the general design of the front, containing a 
 winding-stair up to the two stories above. The dining-room 
 is hung with tapestries dating from the fourteenth century ; 
 the style and spelling of the legends on ribbons below each 
 figure prove their antiquity; but as they are couched in the 
 frank language of the Fabliaux,* they cannot be transcribed 
 here. These pieces, which are well preserved in the corners 
 where the light has not faded them, are set in frames of carved 
 oak now as black as ebony. The ceiling is supported on 
 beams carved with foliage, and all different ; the flats between 
 are of painted wood, wreaths of flowers on a blue ground. 
 Two old dressers with cupboards face each other ; and on the 
 shelves, rubbed with Breton perseverance by Mariotte the 
 cook, may be seen now as at the time when kings were quite 
 as poor in 1200 as the du Guaisnics in 1830 four old goblets, 
 an ancient soup-tureen, and two salt-cellars in silver, a quan- 
 tity of metal plates, a number of blue and gray stoneware 
 pitchers with arabesque designs and the du Guaisnic arms, 
 and crowned with hinged metal lids-. 
 
 The fireplace has been modernized ; its state shows that 
 since the last century this has been the family sitting-room. 
 It is of carved stone in the Louis XV. style, surmounted by a 
 mirror framed in a beaded and gilt moulding. This anachro- 
 nism, to which the family is indifferent, would grieve a poet. 
 On the shelf, covered with red velvet, there stands in the 
 middle a clock of tortoise-shell, inlaid with brass, flanked by a 
 pair of silver candelabra of strange design. A large table on 
 heavy twisted legs stands in the middle of the room ; the 
 chairs are of turned wood, covered with tapestry. A round- 
 table with a centre leg and claw carved to represent a vine- 
 stock stands in front of the window to the garden, and on it 
 
 * Ancient stories in verse.
 
 BEATRIX. 13 
 
 stands a quaint lamp. This lamp is formed of a globe of 
 common glass, rather smaller than an ostrich's egg, held in a 
 candlestick by a glass knob at the bottom. From an opening 
 at the top comes a flat wick in a sort of brass nozzle ; the plait 
 of cotton, curled up like a worm in a phial, is fed with nut 
 oil from the glass vessel. The window looking out on the 
 garden, like that on the courtyard for they are alike has 
 stone mullions and hexagon panes set in lead ;. they are hung 
 with curtains and valances, decorated with heavy tassels of an 
 old-fashioned stuff red silk shot with yellow, formerly known 
 as brocatelle or damask. 
 
 Each floor of the house there are but two below the attics 
 consists of only two rooms. The second floor was of old 
 inhabited by the head of the family; the third was given up to 
 the children ; guests were lodged in the attic rooms. The 
 servants were housed over the kitchens and stables. The 
 sloping roof, leaded at every angle, has to the front and back 
 alike a noble dormer window with a pointed arch, almost as 
 high as the ridge of the roof, supported on graceful brackets ; 
 but the carving of the stone is worn and eaten by the salt vapor 
 of the atmosphere. Above the windows, divided into four by 
 mullions of carved stone, the aristocratic weathercock still 
 creaks as it veers. 
 
 A detail, precious by its originality and not devoid of 
 merit in the eyes of the archaeologist, must not be overlooked. 
 The turret containing the winding stairs finishes the angle of a 
 broad gabled wall in which there is no window. The stairs 
 go down to a small arched door, opening on a sandy plot 
 dividing the house from the outer wall which forms the back 
 of the stables. The turret is repeated at the corner of the 
 garden-front ; but, instead of being circular, this turret has 
 five angles and a hemispherical dome ; also, it is crowned by 
 a little belfry instead of carrying a conical cap like its sister. 
 This is how those elegant architects lent variety to symmetry. 
 On the level of the second floor these turrets are connected
 
 14 BEATRIX. 
 
 by a stone balcony, supported by brackets like prows with 
 human heads. This outside gallery has a balustrade wrought 
 with marvelous elegance and finish. Then from the top of 
 the gable, below which there is a single small loophole, falls 
 an ornamental stone canopy, like those which are seen over 
 the heads of saints in a cathedral porch. Each turret has a 
 pretty little doorway under a pointed arch, opening on to 
 this balcony. Thus did the architects of the thirteenth cen- 
 tury turn to account the bare, cold wall which is presented to 
 us in modern times by the end-section of a house. 
 
 Cannot you see a lady walking on this balcony in the morn- 
 ing and looking out over Guerande to where the sun sheds 
 a golden light on the sands and is mirrored in the face of the 
 ocean ? Do you not admire this wall with its finial and gable, 
 furnished at its corners with these reed-like turrets one sud- 
 denly rounded off like a swallow's nest, the other displaying 
 its little door and gothic arch decorated with the hand and 
 sword ? 
 
 The other end of the Hotel du Guaisnic joins on to the next 
 house. 
 
 The harmony of effect so carefully aimed at by the builders 
 of that period is preserved in the front to the courtyard by 
 the turret corresponding to that containing the winding stair 
 or vyse, an old word derived from the French vis. It serves 
 as a passage from the dining-room to the kitchen, but it ends 
 at the second floor, and is capped by a little cupola on pillars 
 covering a blackened statue of Saint Calixtus. 
 
 The garden is sumptuous within its ancient inclosure; it is 
 more than half an acre in extent, and the walls are covered 
 with fruit trees; the square beds for vegetables are marked 
 out by standards, and kept by a manservant named Gasselin, 
 who also takes charge of the horses. At the bottom of the 
 garden is an arbor with a bench under it. In the midst 
 stands a sundial. The paths are graveled. 
 
 The garden-front has no second turret to correspond with
 
 BE A TRIX. 15 
 
 that at the corner of the gable ; to make up for this there is a 
 column with a spiral twist from bottom to top, which of old 
 must have borne the standard of the family, for it ends in a 
 large rusty iron socket in which lank weeds are growing. This 
 ornament, harmonizing with the remains of stonework, shows 
 that the building was designed by a Venetian architect ; this 
 elegant standard is like a sign manual left by Venice, and re- 
 vealing the chivalry and refinement of the thirteenth century. 
 If there could still be any doubt, the character of the details 
 would remove them. The trefoils of the Guaisnic house have 
 four leaves. This variant betrays the Venetian school debased 
 by its trade with the East, since the semi-Mauresque architects, 
 indifferent to Catholic symbolism, gave the trefoil a fourth 
 leaf, while Christian architects remained faithful to the emblem 
 of the Trinity. From this point of view Venetian inventive- 
 ness was heretical. 
 
 If this house moves you to admiration, you will wonder, 
 perhaps, why the present age never repeats these miracles of 
 art. In our day such fine houses are sold and pulled down, 
 and make way for streets. Nobody knows whether the next 
 generation will keep up the ancestral home, where each one 
 abides as in an inn ; whereas formerly men labored, or at 
 least believed that they labored, for an eternal posterity. 
 Hence the beauty of their houses. Faith in themselves 
 worked wonders, as much as faith in God. 
 
 With regard to the arrangement and furniture of the upper 
 stories, they can only be imagined from this description of 
 the first floor and from the appearance and habits of the 
 family. For the last fifty years the du Guaisnics have never 
 admitted a visitor into any room but these two, which, like 
 the courtyard and the external features of the house, are redo- 
 lent of the grace, the spirit, and originality of the noble 
 province of old Brittany. 
 
 Without this topography and description of the town, with- 
 out this detailed picture of their home, the singular figures of
 
 16 BE A TRIX. 
 
 the family dwelling there might have been less well under- 
 stood. The frame was necessarily placed before the portraits. 
 Every one must feel that mere things have an effect on people. 
 There are buildings whose influence is visible on the persons 
 who live near them. It is difficult to be irreligious under the 
 shadow of a cathedral like that of Bourges. The soul that is 
 constantly reminded of its destiny by imagery finds it less 
 easy to fall short of it. So thought our ancestors, but the 
 opinion is no longer held by a generation which has neither 
 symbols nor distinctions, while its manners change every ten 
 years. Do you not expect to find the Baron du Guaisnic, 
 sword in hand or all this picture will be false ? 
 
 In 1836, when this drama opens, in the early days of 
 August, the family consisted still of Monsieur and Madame 
 du Guenic, of Mademoiselle du Guenic, the Baron's elder 
 sister, and of a son aged one-and-twenty, named Gaudebert- 
 Calyste-Louis, in obedience to an old custom in the family. 
 His father's name was Gaudebert-Calyste-Charles. Only the 
 last name was ever changed; Saint-Gaudebert and Saint- 
 Calixtus were always the patrons of the Gudnics. 
 
 The Baron du Guenic had gone forth from Guerande as 
 soon as la Vendee and Brittany had taken up arms, and he 
 had fought with Charette, with Catelineau, la Rochejaquelein, 
 d'Elbee, Bonchamps, and the Prince de Loudon. Before go- 
 ing, he had sold all his possessions to his elder sister, Made- 
 moiselle Zephirine du Guenic, a stroke of prudence unique in 
 Revolutionary annals. After the death of all the heroes of 
 the West, the Baron, preserved by some miracle from ending 
 as they did, would not yield to Napoleon. He fought on till 
 1802, when, having narrowly escaped capture, he came back 
 to Guerande, and from Guerande went to le Croisic, whence 
 he sailed to Ireland faithful to the traditional hatred of the 
 Bretons for England. 
 
 The good people of Guerande pretended not to know that
 
 BEATRIX. 17 
 
 the Baron was alive ; during twenty years not a word be- 
 trayed him. Mademoiselle du Guenic collected the rents, 
 and sent the money to her brother through the hands of 
 fishermen. 
 
 In 1813, Monsieur du Guenic came back to Guerande with 
 as little fuss as if he had been spending the summer at Nantes. 
 During his sojourn in Dublin, in spite of his fifty years, the 
 Breton noble had fallen in love with a charming Irish girl, the 
 daughter of one of the oldest and poorest houses of that un- 
 happy country. Miss Fanny O'Brien was at that time one- 
 and-twenty. The Baron du Guenic came to fetch the papers 
 needed for his marriage, went back to be married, and re- 
 turned ten months later, at the beginning of 1814, with his 
 wife, who gave birth to a son on the very day when Louis 
 XVIII. landed at Calais which accounts for the name of 
 Louis. 
 
 The loyal old man was now seventy-three years old, but the 
 guerilla warfare against the Republic, his sufferings during 
 five sea-voyages in open boats, and his life at Dublin, had all 
 told on him ; he looked more than a hundred. Hence, never 
 had there been a Guenic whose appearance was in more perfect 
 harmony with the antiquity of the house built at a time when 
 a court was held at Guerande. 
 
 Monsieur du Guenic was a tall old man, upright, shriveled, 
 strongly knit and lean. His oval face was puckered by a 
 thousand wrinkles, forming arched fringes above the cheek- 
 bones and eyebrows, giving his face some resemblance to those 
 of the old men painted with such a loving brush by Van Os- 
 tade, Rembrandt, Mieris, and Gerard Dow heads that need 
 a magnifying glass to show their finish. His countenance was 
 buried, as it were, under these numerous furrows produced by 
 an open-air life, by the habit of scanning the horizon in the 
 sunshine, at sunrise, and at the fall of day. But the sym- 
 pathetic observer could still discern the imperishable forms 
 of the human face, which always speak to the soul even when 
 2
 
 18 BEATRIX. 
 
 the eye sees no more than a death's head. The firm modeling 
 of the features, the high brow, the sternness of outline, the 
 severe nose, the form of the bones which wounds alone can 
 alter, expressed disinterested courage, boundless faith, im- 
 plicit obedience, incorruptible fidelity, unchanging affection. 
 In him the granite of Brittany was made man. 
 
 The Baron had no teeth. His lips, once red, but now 
 blue, were supported only by the hardened gums with which 
 he ate the bread his wife took care first to soften by wrapping 
 it in a damp cloth, and they were sunk in his face while pre- 
 serving a proud and threatening smile. His chin aimed at 
 touching his nose ; but the character of that nose high in 
 the middle showed his Breton vigor and power of resistance. 
 His complexion, marbled with red that showed through the 
 wrinkles, was that of a full-blooded, high-tempered man, able 
 to endure the fatigues which had often, no doubt, saved him 
 from apoplexy. The head was crowned with hair as white as 
 silver, falling in curls on his shoulders. His face, that seemed 
 partly extinct, still lived by the brightness of a pair of black 
 eyes, sparkling in their dark, sunken sockets, and flashing 
 with the last fires of a generous and loyal soul. The eyebrows 
 and eyelashes were gone. The skin had set, and would not 
 yield ; the difficulty of shaving compelled the old man to 
 grow a fan-shaped beard. 
 
 What a painter would most have admired in this old lion 
 of Brittany, with his broad shoulders and sinewy breast, was 
 the hands, splendid soldier's hands hands such as du Gues- 
 clin's must have been, broad, firm, and hairy; the hands that 
 had seized the sword never to relinquish it any more than 
 Jeanne d'Arc's till the day when the royal standard floated 
 in the Cathedral at Reims ; hands that had often streamed 
 with blood from the thorns of the Bocage the thickets of la 
 Vendee that had pulled the oar in the Marais to steal upon 
 the "blues," or on the open sea to help Georges to land ; the 
 'hands of a partisan and of a gunner, of a private and of a
 
 BEA TRIX. 19 
 
 captain ; hands that were now white, though the Bourbons of 
 the elder branch were in exile ; but if you looked at them, 
 you could see certain recent marks revealing that the Baron, 
 not so long ago, had joined MADAME in la Vendee, since the 
 truth may now be told. These hands were a living commen- 
 tary on the noble motto to which no Guenic had ever been 
 false, "Fad" 
 
 The forehead attracted attention by the golden tone on the 
 temples, in contrast with the tan of that narrow, hard, set 
 brow to which baldness had given height enough to add 
 majesty to the noble ruin. The whole countenance, some- 
 what unintellectual it must be owned and how should it be 
 otherwise ? had, like the other Breton faces grouped about 
 it, a touch of savagery, a stolid calm, like the impassibility 
 of Huron Indians, an indescribable stupidity, due perhaps to 
 the complete reaction that follows on excessive fatigue when 
 the animal alone is left evident. Thought was rare there; 
 it was visibly an effort ; its seat was in the heart rather than 
 the head ; and its outcome was action rather than an idea. 
 But on studying this fine old man with sustained attention, 
 the mystery could be detected of this practical antagonism to 
 the spirit of the age. His feelings and beliefs were, so to 
 speak, intuitive, and saved him all thought. He had learned 
 his duties by dint of living. Religion and institutions thought 
 for him. Hence he and his kindred reserved their powers of 
 mind for action, without frittering them on any of the things 
 they thought useless, though others considered them import- 
 ant. He brought his thought out of his mind as he drew 
 his sword from the scabbard, dazzling with rectitude like the 
 hand in its ermine sleeve on his coat-of-arms. As soon as 
 this secret was understood everything was clear. It explained 
 the depth of the resolutions due to clear, definite, loyal ideas, 
 as immaculate as ermine. It accounted for the sale to his 
 sister before the war, though to him it had meant everything 
 death, confiscation, exile. The beauty of these two old
 
 20 BEATRIX. 
 
 persons' characters for the sister lived only in and for her 
 brother cannot be fully appreciated by the selfish habits 
 which lie at the root of the uncertainty and changefulness of 
 our day. An archangel sent down to read their hearts would 
 not have found in them a single thought bearing the stamp 
 of self. In 1814, when the priest of Guerande hinted to 
 Baron du Guenic that he should go to Paris to claim his re- 
 ward, the old sister, though avaricious for the family, ex- 
 claimed 
 
 " Shame ! Need my brother go begging like a vagrant ? " 
 
 "It would be supposed that I had served the King from 
 interested motives," said the old man. " Beside, it is his 
 business to remember. And, after all, the poor King has 
 enough to do with all who are harassing him. If he were to 
 give France away piecemeal, he would still be asked for 
 more." 
 
 This devoted servant, who cared so loyally for Louis 
 XVIII., received a colonelcy, the cross of Saint-Louis, and 
 a pension of two thousand francs. 
 
 " The King has remembered ! " he exclaimed, on receiving 
 his letters patent. 
 
 No one undeceived him. The business had been carried 
 through by the Due de Feltre from the lists of the Army 
 of la Vendee, in which he found the name of du Gu6nic 
 with a few other Breton names ending in ic. 
 
 And so, in gratitude to the King, the Baron stood a 
 siege at Gu6rande in 1815 against the forces of General 
 Travot ; he would not surrender the stronghold ; and when 
 he was compelled to evacuate, he made his escape into the 
 woods with a party of Chouans, who remained under arms 
 till the second return of the Bourbons. Guerande still 
 preserves the memory of this last siege. If the old Breton 
 trainbands had but joined, the war begun by this heroic 
 resistance would have fired the whole of la Vendee. 
 
 It must be confessed that the Baron du Guenic was
 
 BEATRIX. 21 
 
 wholly illiterate as illiterate as a peasant ; he could read, 
 write, and knew a little of arithmetic ; he understood the 
 art of war and heraldry ; but he had not read three books 
 in his life beside his prayer-book. 
 
 His dress, a not unimportant detail, was always the same; 
 it consisted of heavy shoes, thick woolen stockings, velvet 
 breeches of a greenish hue, a cloth vest, and a coat with a 
 high collar, on which hung the cross of Saint-Louis. 
 
 Beautiful peace rested on this countenance, which, for a 
 year past, frequent slumber, the precursor of death, seemed 
 to be preparing for eternal rest. This constant sleepiness, 
 increasing day by day, did not distress his wife, nor his now 
 blind sister, nor his friends, whose medical knowledge was 
 not great. To them these solemn pauses of a blameless 
 but weary soul were naturally accounted for the Baron had 
 done his duty. This told all. 
 
 In this house the predominant interest centred in the 
 fate of the deposed elder branch. The future of the exiled 
 Bourbons and the Catholic religion, and the influence of 
 the new politics on Brittany, exclusively absorbed the Baron's 
 family. No other interest mingled with these but the affec- 
 tion they all felt for the son of the house, Calyste, the heir 
 and only hope of the great name of du Guenic. The old 
 Vendden, the old Chouan, had shown a sort of renewal of 
 his youth a few years since, to give his son the habit of those 
 athletic exercises that befit a gentleman who may be called 
 upon to fight at any moment. As soon as Calyste reached 
 the age of sixteen, his father had gone out with him in the 
 woods and marshes, teaching him by the pleasures of sport 
 the rudiments of war, preaching by example, resisting fatigue, 
 steadfast in the saddle, sure of his aim, whatever the game 
 might be, ground game or birds, reckless in overcoming ob- 
 stacles, inciting his son to face danger as though he had ten 
 children to spare. 
 
 Then, when the Duchesse de Berry came to France to
 
 22 BEATRIX. 
 
 conquer the kingdom, the father carried off his son to make 
 him act on the family motto. The Baron set out in the night 
 without warning his wife, who might perhaps have displayed 
 her emotion, leading his only child under fire as if it were to 
 a festival, and followed by Gasselin, his only vassal, who rode 
 forth gleefully. The three men of the house were away for 
 six months, without sending any news to the Baroness who 
 never read the " Quotidienne " without quaking over every 
 line nor to her old sister-in-law, heroically upright, whose 
 brow never flinched as she listened to the paper. So the 
 three muskets hanging in the hall had seen service re- 
 cently. The Baron, in whose opinion this call to arms was 
 unavailing, had left the field before the fight at La Penis- 
 siere, otherwise the noble race of Guenic might have become 
 extinct. 
 
 When, one night of dreadful weather, the father, son, and 
 serving-man had reached home after taking leave of MADAME, 
 surprising their friends, the Baroness and old Mademoiselle 
 du Gudnic though she, by a gift bestowed on all blind 
 people, had recognized the steps of three men in the little 
 street the Baron looked around on the circle of his anxious 
 friends gathered around the little table lighted up by the 
 antique lamp, and merely said, in a quavering voice, while 
 Gasselin hung up the muskets and swords in their place, these 
 words of feudal simplicity 
 
 " Not all the Barons did their duty." 
 
 Then he kissed his wife and sister, sat down in his old arm- 
 chair, and ordered supper for his son, himself, and Gasselin. 
 Gasselin, having screened Calystewith his body, had received 
 a sabre cut on his shoulder ; such a small matter, that he was 
 scarcely thanked for it. 
 
 Neither the Baron nor his guests uttered a curse or a word 
 of abuse of the conquerors. This taciturnity is a character- 
 istically Breton trait. In forty years no one had ever heard a 
 contemptuous speech from the Baron as to his adversaries.
 
 BEATRIX. 23 
 
 They could but do their business, as he did his duty. Such 
 stern silence is an indication of immutable determination. 
 
 This last struggle, the flicker of exhausted powers, had 
 resulted in the weakness under which the Baron was now 
 failing. The second exile of the Bourbons, as miraculously 
 ousted as they had been miraculously restored, plunged him 
 in bitter melancholy. 
 
 At about six in the evening, on the day when the scene 
 opens, the Baron, who, according to old custom, had done 
 his dinner by four o'clock, had gone to sleep while listening 
 to the reading of the " Quotidienne." His head rested 
 against the back of his armchair by the fireside, at the garden 
 end. 
 
 The Baroness, sitting on one of the old chairs in front of 
 the fire, by the side of this gnarled trunk of an ancient tree, 
 was of the type of those adorable women which exist nowhere 
 but in England, Scotland, or Ireland. There only do we 
 find girls kneaded with milk, golden-haired, with curls twined 
 by angels' fingers, for the light of heaven seems to ripple over 
 their tendrils with every air that fans them. Fanny O'Brien 
 was one of those sylphs, strong in tenderness, invincible in 
 misfortune, as sweet as the music of her voice, as pure as the 
 blue of her eyes, elegantly lovely and refined, with the pretti- 
 ness and the exquisite flesh satin to the touch and a joy to 
 the eye that neither pencil nor pen can do justice to. Beau- 
 tiful still at forty-two, many a man would have been happy to 
 marry her as he looked at the charms of this glorious, richly 
 toned autumn, full of flower and fruit, and renewed by dews 
 from heaven. The Baroness held the newspaper in a hand 
 soft with dimples, and turned-up finger-tips with squarely cut 
 nails like those of an antique statue. She leaned back in her 
 chair, without awkwardness or affectation, her feet thrust for- 
 ward to get warm ; and she wore a black velvet dress, for the 
 wind had turned cold these last few days. The bodice, fitting
 
 24 BEATRIX. 
 
 tight to the throat, covered shoulders of noble outline and a 
 bosom which had suffered no disfigurement from having 
 nursed an only child. Her hair fell in ringlets on each side 
 of her face, close to her cheeks, in the English fashion ; a 
 simple twist on the top of her head was held by a tortoise- 
 shell comb ; and the mass, instead of being of a doubtful hue, 
 glittered in the light like threads of brownish gold. She had 
 made a plait of the loose short hairs that grow low down and 
 are a mark of fine breeding. This tiny tress, lost in the rest 
 of her hair that was combed high on her head, allowed the 
 eye to note with pleasure the flowing line from her neck to 
 her beautiful shoulders. This little detail shows the care she 
 always gave to her toilet. She persisted in charming the old 
 man's eye. What a delightful and touching attention ! 
 
 When you see a woman lavishing in her home-life the care 
 for appearance which other women find for one feeling only, 
 you may be sure that she is a noble mother, as she is a noble 
 wife, the joy and flower of the household ; she understands 
 her duties as a woman, the elegance of her appearance dwells 
 in her soul and her affections, she does good in secret, she 
 knows how to love truly without ulterior motives, she loves her 
 neighbor as she loves God, for himself. And it really seemed 
 as though the Virgin in paradise, under whose protection she 
 lived, had rewarded her chaste girlhood and saintly woman- 
 hood by the side of the noble old man by throwing over her 
 a sort of glory that preserved her from the ravages of time. 
 
 Plato would perhaps have honored the fading of her beauty 
 as so much added grace. Her skin, once so white, had ac- 
 quired those warm and pearly tones that painters delight in. 
 Her forehead, broad and finely moulded, seemed to love the 
 light that played on it with sheeny touches. Her eyes of 
 turquoise-blue gleamed with wonderful softness under light 
 velvety lashes. The drooping lids and pathetic temples sug- 
 gested some unspeakable, silent melancholy ; below the eyes 
 her cheeks were dead white, faintly veined with blue to the
 
 BEATRIX. 25 
 
 bridge of the nose. The nose, aquiline and thin, had a touch 
 of royal dignity, a reminder of her noble birth. Her lips, 
 pure and delicately cut, were graced by a smile, the natural 
 outcome of inexhaustible good humor. Her teeth were small 
 and white. She had grown a little stout, but her shapely 
 hips and slender waist were not disfigured by it ; the autumn 
 of her beauty displayed still some bright flowers forgotten by 
 spring and the wanner glories of summer. Her finely moulded 
 arms, her smooth lustrous skin had gained a finer texture; 
 the forms had filled out. And her open, serene countenance, 
 with its faint color, the purity of her blue eyes, to which too 
 rude a gaze would have been an offense, expressed unchanging 
 gentleness, the infinite tenderness of the angels. 
 
 At the other side of the fireplace, in another armchair, sat 
 the old sister of eighty, in every particular but dress the 
 exact image of her brother ; she listened to the paper while 
 knitting stockings, for which sight is not needed. Her eyes 
 were darkened by cataract, and she obstinately refused to be 
 operated on, in spite of her sister-in-law's entreaties. She 
 alone knew the secret motive of her determination ; she as- 
 cribed it to lack of courage, but in fact she did not choose 
 that twenty-five louis should be spent on her ; there would 
 have been so much less in the house. Nevertheless, she would 
 have liked to see her brother again. These two old people 
 were an admirable foil to the Baroness' beauty. What woman 
 would not have seemed young and handsome between Mon- 
 sieur du Guenic and his sister? 
 
 Mademoiselle Zephirine, deprived of sight, knew nothing 
 of the changes that her eighty years had wrought in her 
 looks. Her pallid, hollow face, to which the fixity of her 
 white and sightless eyes gave a look of death, while three or 
 four projecting teeth added an almost threatening expression ; 
 in which the deep eye-sockets were circled with red lines, and 
 a few manly hairs, long since white, were visible on the chin 
 and lips this cold, calm face was framed in a little brown
 
 26 BEATRIX. 
 
 cotton hood quilted like a counterpane, edged with a cambric 
 frill, and tied under her chin with ribbons that were never 
 fresh. She wore a short upper skirt of stout cloth over a 
 quilted petticoat, a perfect mattress, within which lurked 
 double louis d'or ; and she had pockets sewn to a waistband, 
 which she took off at night and put on in the morning as a 
 garment. Her figure was wrapped in the usual jacket bodice 
 of Breton women, made of cloth like the skirt, and finished 
 with a close pleated frill, of which the washing formed the 
 only subject of difference between her and the Baroness ; she 
 insisted on changing it but once a week. Out of the wadded 
 sleeves of this jacket came a pair of withered but sinewy arms, 
 and two ever-busy hands, somewhat red, which made her arms 
 look as white as poplar wood. These fingers, claw-like from 
 the contraction induced by the habit of knitting, were like a 
 stocking-machine in constant motion ; the wonder would have 
 been to see them at rest. Now and then Mademoiselle du 
 Guenic would take one of the long knitting-needles darned 
 into the bosom of her dress, and push it in under her hood 
 among her white hairs. A stranger would have laughed to 
 see how calmly she stuck it in again, without any fear of 
 pricking herself. She was as upright as a steeple ; her colum- 
 nar rigidity might be regarded as one of those old women's 
 vanities which prove that pride is a passion indispensable 
 to vitality. She had a bright smile ; she, too, had done her 
 duty. 
 
 As soon as Fanny saw that the Baron was asleep, she ceased 
 reading. A sunbeam shot across from window to window, 
 cutting the atmosphere of the old room in two by a band of 
 gold, and casting a glory on the almost blackened furniture. 
 The light caught the carvings of the cornice, fluttered over the 
 cabinets, spread a shining face over the oak table, and gave 
 cheerfulness to this softly sombre room, just as Fanny's voice 
 brought to the old woman's spirit a harmony as luminous and 
 gay as the sunbeam. Ere long the rays of the sun assumed a
 
 BE A TR1X. 27 
 
 reddish glow, which by insensible degrees sank to the melan- 
 choly hues of dusk. The Baroness fell into serious thought, 
 one of those spells of perfect silence which her old sister-in- 
 law had noticed during a fortnight past, trying to account for 
 them without questioning the Baroness in any way ; but she 
 was studying the causes of this absence of mind as only blind 
 people can, who read as it were a black book with white 
 letters, while every sound rings through their soul as though 
 it were an oracular echo. The old blind woman, to whom 
 the falling darkness now meant nothing, went on knitting, 
 and the silence was so complete that the tick of her steel 
 knitting-needles could be heard. 
 
 " You have dropped the paper but you are not asleep, 
 sister," said the old woman sagaciously. 
 
 It was now dark ; Mariotte came in to light the lamp and 
 placed it on a square table in front of the fire ; then she 
 fetched her distaff, her hank of flax, and a little stool, and sat 
 down to spin in the window recess on the side toward the 
 courtyard, as she did every evening. Gasselin was still busy 
 in the outbuildings, attending to the Baron's horse and that 
 of Calyste, seeing that all was right in the stables, and giving 
 the two fine hounds their evening meal. The glad barking 
 of these two creatures was the last sound that roused the 
 echoes lurking in the dark walls of the house. 
 
 These two horses and two dogs were the last remains of the 
 splendor of chivalry. An imaginative man, sitting on the 
 outer steps, and abandoning himself to the poetry of the 
 images still living in this dwelling, might have been startled 
 at hearing the dogs and the tramping hoofs of the neighing 
 steeds. 
 
 Gasselin was one of the short, sturdy, square-built Breton 
 race, with black hair and tanned faces, silent, slow, as stub- 
 born as mules, but always going on the road marked out for 
 them. He was now forty-two, and had lived in the house 
 twenty-five years. Mademoiselle had engaged Gasselin as
 
 28 SEA TRTX. 
 
 servant when he was fifteen, on hearing of the Baron's mar- 
 riage and probable return. This henchman considered him- 
 self a member of the family. He had played with Calyste, he 
 loved the horses and dogs, and talked to them and petted 
 them as though they were his own. He wore a short jacket 
 of blue linen with little pockets that flapped over his hips, and 
 a vest and trousers of the same material, in all seasons alike, 
 blue stockings and hobnailed shoes. When the weather was 
 very cold or wet he added the goatskin with the hair on worn 
 in his province. 
 
 Mariotte, who was also past forty, was as a woman exactly 
 what Gasselin was as a man. Never did a better pair run in 
 harness ; the same color, the same figure, the same small, 
 sharp black eyes. It was hard to imagine why Mariotte and 
 Gasselin had never married ; but it might have been criminal ; 
 they almost seemed like brother and sister. Mariotte had 
 thirty crowns a year in wages and Gasselin a hundred livres ; 
 but not for a thousand francs a year would they have quitted 
 the house of the Guenics. They were both under the juris- 
 diction of old mademoiselle, who had been in the habit of 
 managing the house from the time of the war in la Vendee 
 till her brother's return. Hence she had been greatly upset 
 on hearing that her brother was bringing home a mistress of 
 the house, supposing that she would have to lay down the 
 domestic sceptre in favor of the Baronne du Gu6nic, whose 
 first subject she would then be. 
 
 Mademoiselle Zephirine had been very agreeably surprised 
 on finding that Miss Fanny O'Brien was born to a lofty posi- 
 tion, a girl who detested the minute cares of housekeeping, 
 and who, like all noble souls, would have preferred dry bread 
 from the bakers to any food she had to prepare herself; capa- 
 ble of fulfilling all the duties of motherhood, strong to endure 
 every necessary privation, but without energy for common- 
 place industry. When the Baron, in the name of his shrinking 
 wife, begged his sister to rule the house, the old maid em-
 
 BEATRIX. 29 
 
 braced the Baroness as her sister ; she made a daughter of 
 her, she adored her, happy in being allowed to continue her 
 care of governing the house, and keeping it with incredible 
 rigor and most economical habits, which she relaxed only on 
 great occasions, such as her sister-in-law's confinement and 
 feeding, and everything that could affect Calyste, the wor- 
 shiped son of the house. 
 
 Though the two servants were accustomed to this strict 
 rule, and needed no telling ; though they took more care of 
 their master's interests than of their own, still Mademoiselle 
 Zephirine had an eye on everything. Her attention having 
 nothing to divert it, She was the woman to know without going 
 to look how large the pile of walnuts should be in the loft, 
 and how much corn was left in the stable-bin without plunging 
 her sinewy arm into its depths. She wore a boatswain's 
 whistle attached by a string to her waistband, and called 
 Mariotte by whistling once and Gasselin by whistling twice. 
 Gasselin's chief happiness consisted in cultivating the garden 
 and raising fine fruit and good vegetables. He had so little 
 to do that but for his gardening he would have been bored to 
 death. When he had groomed the horses in the morning he 
 polished the floors and cleaned the two first-floor rooms ; he 
 had little to do for his masters. So in the garden you could 
 not have found a weed or a noxious insect. Sometimes Gas- 
 selin might be seen standing motionless and bareheaded in 
 the sunshine, watching for a field-rat or the dreadful larvae of 
 the cockchafer ; then he would rush in with a child's glee to 
 show the master the creature he had spent a week in catching. 
 On fast days it was his delight to go to le Croisic to buy fish, 
 cheaper there than at Guerande. 
 
 Never was there a family more united, on better terms, 
 or more inseparable, than this pious and noble household. 
 Masters and servants seemed to have been made for each 
 other. In five-and-twenty years there had never been a trouble 
 or a discord. The only sorrows they had known were the
 
 30 BE A TRIX. 
 
 child's little ailments, and the only anxieties had come of the 
 events of 1814, and again of 1830. If the same things were 
 invariably done at the same hours, if the food varied only 
 with the changes of the seasons, this monotony, like that of 
 nature, with its alternation of cloud, rain, and sunshine, was 
 made endurable by the affection that filled every heart, and 
 was all -the more helpful and beneficent because it was the 
 outcome of natural laws. 
 
 When twilight was ended, Gasselin came into the room 
 and respectfully inquired whether he were wanted. 
 
 "After prayers you can go out or go to bed," said the 
 Baron, rousing himself, "unless madame or my sister 
 
 The two ladies nodded agreement. Gasselin, seeing them 
 all rise to kneel on their chairs, fell on his knees. Mariotte 
 knelt on her stool. Old Mademoiselle du Guenic said prayers 
 aloud. 
 
 As she finished, a knock was heard at the outer gate. Gas- 
 selin went to open it. 
 
 " It is Monsieur le Cure, no doubt ; he is almost always 
 the first," remarked Mariotte. 
 
 And, in fact, they all recognized the footstep of the parish 
 priest on the resonant steps to the balcony entrance. The 
 cure bowed respectfully to the three, addressing the Baron 
 and the two ladies with the unctuous civility that a priest has 
 at his command. In reply to an absent-minded "Good-even- 
 ing" from the mistress of the house, he gave her a look of 
 priestly scrutiny. 
 
 " Are you uneasy, madame, or unwell?" he asked. 
 
 "Thank you, no ! " said she. 
 
 Monsieur Grimont, a man of about fifty, of middle height, 
 wrapped in his gown, beneath which a pair of thick shoes 
 with silver buckles were visible, showed above his bands a fat 
 face, on the whole fair, but sallow. His hands were plump. 
 His abbot-like countenance had something of the Dutch 
 burgomaster in its calm complexion and the tones of the flesh,
 
 BE A TRIX. 31 
 
 and something, too, of the Breton peasant in its straight black 
 hair and sparkling black eyes, which nevertheless were under 
 the control of priestly decorum. His cheerfulness, like that 
 of all people whose conscience is calm and pure, consented to 
 jest. There was nothing anxious or forbidding in his look, 
 as in that of those unhappy priests whose maintenance or 
 power is disputed by their parishioners, and who instead of 
 being, as Napoleon so grandly said, the moral leaders of the 
 people and natural justices of the peace, are regarded as ene- 
 mies. The most unbelieving of strangers who should see 
 Monsieur Grimont walking through Gu6rande would have 
 recognized him as the sovereign of the Catholic town ; but 
 this sovereign abdicated his spiritual rule before the feudal 
 supremacy of the du Guenic family. In this drawing-room 
 he was as a chaplain in the hall of his liege. In church, as 
 he gave the blessing, his hand always turned first toward the 
 chapel of the house, where their hand and sword and their 
 motto were carved on the keystone of the vaulting. 
 
 "I thought that Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel was here," said 
 the cure, seating himself, as he kissed the Baroness' hand. 
 " She is losing her good habits. Is the fashion for dissipation 
 spreading? For I observe that Monsieur le Chevalier is at 
 les Touches again this evening." 
 
 " Say nothing of his visits there before Mademoiselle de 
 Pen-Hoel," exclaimed the old lady in an undertone. 
 
 "Ah! mademoiselle," Mariotte put in, "how can you 
 keep the whole town from talking?" 
 
 "And what do they say ?" asked the Baroness. 
 
 "All the girls and the old gossips everybody, in short 
 is saying that he is in love with Mademoiselle des Touches." 
 
 "A young fellow so handsome as Calyste is only following 
 his calling by making himself loved," said the Baron. 
 
 "Here is Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel," said Mariotte. 
 
 The gravel in the courtyard was, in fact, heard to crunch 
 under this lady's deliberate steps, heralded by a lad bearing a
 
 32 BE A TRIX. 
 
 lantern. On seeing this retainer, Mariotte transferred her 
 stool and distaff to the large hall, where she could chat with 
 him by the light of the rosin candle that burned at the cost 
 of the rich and stingy old maid, thus saving her master's. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel was a slight, thin woman, as 
 yellow as the parchment of an archive, and wrinkled like a 
 lake swept by the wind, with gray eyes, large prominent teeth, 
 and hands like a man's ; she was short, certainly crooked, 
 and perhaps even hump-backed ; but no one had ever been 
 curious to study her perfections or imperfections. Dressed in 
 the same style as Mademoiselle du Guenic, she made quite a 
 commotion in a huge mass of petticoats and frills when she 
 tried to find one of the two openings in her gown by which 
 she got at her pockets ; the strangest clinking of keys and 
 money was then heard from beneath these skirts. All the 
 iron paraphernalia of a good housewife was to be found on 
 one side, and on the other her silver snuff-box, her thimble, 
 her knitting, and other jangling objects. 
 
 Instead of the quilted hood worn by Mademoiselle du 
 Gudnic, she had a green bonnet, which she no doubt wore 
 when she went to look at her melons ; like them, it has faded 
 from green to yellow, and as for its shape, fashion has lately 
 revived it in Paris under the name of Bibi. This bonnet was 
 made under her own eye by her nieces, of green sarsnet pur- 
 chased at Gu6rande, on a shape she bought new every five 
 years at Nantes for she allowed it the life of an administra- 
 tion. Her nieces also made her gowns, cut by an immemorial 
 pattern. The old maid still used the crutch-handled cane 
 which ladies carried at the beginning of the reign of Marie- 
 Antoinette. She was of the first nobility of Brittany. On 
 her shield figured the ermines of the ancient duchy ; the illus- 
 trious Breton house of Pen-Hoel ended in her and her 
 sister. 
 
 This younger sister had married a Kergarouet, who, in 
 spite of the disapprobation of the neighbors, had added the
 
 BE A TRIX. 33 
 
 name of Pen-Hoel to his own, and called himself the Vi- 
 comte de Kergarouet-Pen-Hocl. 
 
 "Heaven has punished him," the old maid would say. 
 " He has only daughters, and the name of Kergarouet-Pen- 
 Hoe'l will become extinct." 
 
 Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel enjoyed an income of about 
 seven thousand francs from land. For thirty-six years, since 
 she had come of age, she herself had managed her estates ; 
 she rode out to inspect them, and on every point displayed 
 the firmness of will characteristic of deformed persons. Her 
 avarice was the amazement of all for ten leagues around, but 
 viewed with no disapprobation. She kept one woman ser- 
 vant and this lad ; all her expenditure, not inclusive of taxes, 
 did not come to more than a thousand francs a year. Hence 
 she was the object of the most flattering attentions from the 
 Kergarouet-Pen-Hoels, who spent the winter at Nantes and 
 the summer at their country-house on the banks of the Loire 
 just below Indret. It was known that she intended to leave 
 her fortune and her savings to that one of her nieces whom 
 she might prefer. Every three months one of the four 
 Demoiselles de Kergarouet came to spend a few days with 
 her. 
 
 Jacqueline de Pen-Hoel, a great friend of Zephirine de 
 Guenic's, and brought up in the faith and fear of the Breton 
 dignity of the Guenics, had conceived a plan, since Calyste's 
 birth, of securing her wealth to this youth by getting him to 
 marry one of these nieces, to be bestowed on him by the 
 Vicomtesse de Kergarouet-Pen-Hoel. She proposed to re- 
 purchase some of the best land for the Guenics by paying off 
 the farmers' loans. When avarice has an end in view it 
 ceases to be a vice ; it is the instrument of virtue ; its stern 
 privations become a constant sacrifice ; in short, it has great- 
 ness of purpose concealed beneath its meanness. Zephirine 
 was perhaps in Jacqueline's secret. Perhaps, too, the Bar- 
 oness, whose whole intelligence was absorbed in love for her 
 3
 
 34 BE A TRIX. 
 
 son and tender care for his father, may have guessed some- 
 thing when she saw with what pertinacious perseverance 
 Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel would bring with her, day after 
 day,' Charlotte de Kergarouet, her favorite niece, now fifteen. 
 The priest, Monsieur Grimont, was undoubtedly in her con- 
 fidence ; he helped the old lady to invest her money well. 
 But if Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel had had three hundred 
 thousand francs in gold the sum at which her savings were 
 commonly estimated ; if she had had ten times more land 
 than she owned, the du Guenics would never have allowed 
 themselves to pay her such attention as might lead the old 
 maid to fancy that they were thinking of her fortune. With 
 an admirable instinct of truly Breton pride, Jacqueline de 
 Pen-Hoel, gladly accepting the supremacy assumed by her old 
 friends Zephirine and the du Guenics, always expressed her- 
 self honored by a visit when the descendant of Irish kings 
 and Zephirine condescended to call on her. She went so far 
 as to conceal with care the little extravagance which she 
 winked at every evening by permitting her boy to burn an 
 oribus at the du Guenics' the gingerbread-colored candle 
 which is commonly used in various districts in the West. 
 This rich old maid was indeed aristocracy, pride, and dignity 
 personified. 
 
 At the moment when the reader is studying her portrait, an 
 indiscretion on the part of the cur6 had betrayed the fact 
 that, on the evening when the old Baron, the young cheva- 
 lier, and Gasselin stole away armed with swords and fowling- 
 pieces to join MADAME in la Vendee to Fanny's extreme 
 terror and to the great joy of the Bretons Mademoiselle de 
 Pen-Hoel had placed in the Baron's hands a sum of ten thou- 
 sand francs in gold, an immense sacrifice, supplemented by 
 ten thousand francs more, the fruits of a tithe collected by 
 the cure, which the old partisan was requested to lay at the 
 feet of Henri V.'s mother, in the name of the Pen-Hoels and 
 of the parish of Gurande.
 
 BE A TRIX. 36 
 
 Meanwhile she treated Calyste with the airs of a woman 
 who believes she is in her rights ; her schemes justified her in 
 keeping an eye on him ; not that she was strait-laced in her 
 ideas as to questions of gallantry she had all the indulgence 
 of a woman of the old regime ; but she had a horror of Rev- 
 olutionary manners. Calyste, who might have risen in her 
 esteem by intrigues with Breton women, would have fallen 
 immensely if he had taken up what she called the new-fangled 
 ways. Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, who would have unearthed 
 a sum of money to pay off a girl he had seduced, would have 
 regarded Calyste as a reckless spendthrift if she had seen him 
 driving a tilbury, or heard him talk of setting out for Paris. 
 And if she had found him reading some impious review or 
 newspaper, it is impossible to imagine what she might have 
 done. To her, new notions meant the rotation of crops, 
 sheer ruin under the guise of improvements and methods, 
 lands ultimately mortgaged as a result of experiments. To 
 her, thrift was the real way to make a fortune ; good manage- 
 ment consisted in filling her outhouses with buckwheat, rye, 
 and hemp ; at waiting for prices to rise at the risk of being 
 known to force the market, and in resolutely hoarding her 
 corn-sacks. As it happened, strangely enough, she had often 
 met with good bargains that confirmed her in her principles. 
 She was thought cunning, but she was not really clever ; she 
 had only the methodical habits of a Dutchwoman, the caution 
 of a cat, the pertinacity of a priest ; and this, in a land of 
 routine, was as good as the deepest perspicacity. 
 
 "Shall we see Monsieur du Halga this evening?" asked 
 Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, taking off her knitted worsted 
 mittens after exchanging the usual civilities. 
 
 " Yes, mademoiselle, I saw him airing his dog in the mall," 
 replied the cure. 
 
 "Then our mouche will be lively this evening," said she. 
 " We were but four last night." 
 
 On hearing the word mouche, the priest rose and brought
 
 36 BE A TKIX. 
 
 out of a drawer of one of the cabinets a small round "basket 
 of fine willow, some ivory counters as yellow as Turkish 
 tobacco, from twenty years' service, and a pack of cards as 
 greasy as those of* the custom-house officers of Saint-Nazaire, 
 who only have a new pack once a fortnight. The abbe him- 
 self sorted out the proper number of counters for each player, 
 and put the basket by the lamp in the middle of the table, 
 with childish eagerness and the manner of a man accustomed 
 to fulfill this little task. A loud rap in military style presently 
 echoed through the silent depths of the old house. Made- 
 moiselle de Pen-HoeTs little servant went solemnly to open 
 the gate. Before long the tall, lean figure of the Chevalier 
 du Halga, formerly flag-captain under Admiral de Kergarouet, 
 was seen, carefully dressed to suit the season, a black object 
 in the dusk that still prevailed outside. 
 
 " Come in, chevalier," cried Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel. 
 " The altar is prepared ! " said the priest. 
 Du Halga, whose health was poor, wore flannel for the 
 rheumatism, a black silk cap to protect his head against the 
 fog, and a spencer to guard his precious chest from the sud- 
 den blasts of wind that refresh the atmosphere of Guerande. 
 He always went about armed with a rattan to drive off dogs 
 when they tried to make inopportune love to his own, which was 
 a lady. This man, as minutely particular as any fine lady, put 
 out by the smallest obstacles, speaking low to spare the voice 
 remaining to him, had been in his day one of the bravest and 
 most capable officers of the King's navy. He had been hon- 
 ored with the confidence of the Bailli de Suffren and the 
 Comte de Portenduere's friendship. His valor, as captain of 
 Admiral de Kergarouet's flag-ship, was scored in legible char- 
 acters on his face, seamed with scars. No one, on looking at 
 him, could have recognized the voice that had roared down 
 the storm, the eye that had swept the horizon, the indomitable 
 courage of a Breton seaman. He did not smoke, he never 
 swore ; he was as gentle and quiet as a girl, and devoted him-
 
 BEATRIX. 87 
 
 self to his dog Thisbe and her various little whims with the 
 absorption of an old woman. He gave every one a high 
 idea of his departed gallantry. He never spoke of the startling 
 acts which had amazed the Comte d'Estaing. 
 
 Though he stooped like a pensioner and walked as though 
 he feared to tread on eggs at every step, though he complained 
 of a cool breeze, of a scorching sun, of a damp fog, he dis- 
 played fine white teeth set in red gums, which were reassuring 
 as to his health ; and, indeed, his complaint must have been 
 an expensive one, for it consisted in eating four meals a day 
 of monastic abundance. His frame, like the Baron's, was 
 large-boned and indestructibly strong, covered with parch- 
 ment stretched tightly over the bones, like the coat of an Arab 
 horse that shines in the sun over its sinews. His complexion 
 had preserved the tanned hue it had acquired in his voyages 
 to India, but he had brought back no ideas and no reminis- 
 cences. He had emigrated ; he had lost all his fortune ; then 
 he had recovered the cross of Saint-Louis and a pension of 
 two thousand francs, legitimately earned by his services, and 
 paid out of the fund for naval pensions. The harmless hypo- 
 chondria that led him to invent a thousand imaginary ailments 
 was easily accounted for by his sufferings during the emigra- 
 tion. He had served in the Russian navy till the day when 
 the Emperor Alexander wanted him to serve against France ; 
 he then retired and went to live at Odessa, near the Due de 
 Richelieu, with whom he came home, and who procured the 
 payment of the pension due to this noble wreck of the old 
 Breton navy. 
 
 At the death of Louis XVIII. he came home to Gurande 
 and was chosen mayor of the town. The cure, the chevalier, 
 and Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel had been for fifteen years in 
 the habit of spending their evenings at the Hotel du Guenic, 
 whither also came a few persons of good family from the town 
 and immediate neighborhood. It is easy to see that the 
 Guenic family were the leaders of this little Faubourg Saint-
 
 38 BE A TRIX. 
 
 Germain of the district, into which no official was admitted 
 who had been appointed to his post by the new Government. 
 For six years past the cure invariably coughed at the critical 
 words of Domine, salvumfac regem. Politics always stuck at 
 that point in Guerande. 
 
 Mouche (a sort of loo) is a game played with five cards in 
 each hand and a turn-up. The turned-up card decides the 
 trumps. At every fresh deal each player is at liberty to play 
 or to retire. If he throws away his hand, he loses only his 
 deposit ; for as long as no fines have been paid into the pool, 
 each player must contribute to it. Those who play must 
 make a trick, paid for in proportion to the contents of the 
 pool; if there are five sous in the trick, he pays one sou. 
 The player who fails to pay is looed; he then owes as much as 
 the pool contains, which increases it for the following deal. 
 The fines due are written down ; they are added to the pools 
 one after another in diminishing order, the heaviest before 
 the lesser sums. Those who decline to play show their cards 
 during the play, but they count for nothing. The players 
 may discard and draw from the pack, as at tcarte, in order of 
 seniority. Each player may change as many cards as he likes, 
 so the eldest and the second hands may use up the pack be- 
 tween them. The turned-up card belongs to the dealer, who 
 is the youngest hand ; he has a right to exchange it for any 
 card in his own hand. One terrible card takes all others, and 
 is known as mistigris ; mistigris is the knave of clubs. This 
 game, though so excessively simple, is not devoid of interest. 
 The covetousness natural to man finds scope in it, as well as 
 some diplomatic finessing and play of expression. 
 
 At the Hotel du Gunic each player purchased twenty 
 counters for five sous, by which the stake amounted to five 
 liards each deal, an important sum in the eyes of these gam- 
 blers. With very great luck a player might win fifty sous, 
 more than any one in Gudrande spent in a day. And Made-
 
 BEATRIX. 39 
 
 moiselle de Pen-Hoel came to this game of which the sim- 
 plicity is unsurpassed in the nomenclature of the Academy, 
 unless by that of Beggar my Neighbor with an eagerness as 
 great as that of a sportsman at a great hunting party. Made- 
 moiselle Zephirine, who was the Baroness' partner, attached 
 no less importance to the game of mouchc. To risk a Hard* for 
 the chance of winning five, deal after deal, constituted a 
 serious financial speculation to the thrifty old woman, and she 
 threw herself into it with as much moral energy as the greed- 
 iest speculator puts into gambling on the Bourse for the rise 
 and fall of shares. 
 
 By a diplomatic convention, dating from September, 1825, 
 after a certain evening when Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel had 
 lost thirty-seven sous, the game was ended as soon as any one 
 expressed a wish to that effect after losing ten sous. Polite- 
 ness would not allow of a player being put to the little dis- 
 comfort of looking on at the game without taking part in it. 
 But every passion has its Jesuitical side. The Chevalier du 
 Halga and the Baron, two old politicians, had found a way of 
 evading the act. When all the players were equally eager to 
 prolong an exciting game, the brave chevalier, one of those 
 bachelors who are prodigal and rich by the expenses they 
 save, always offered to lend Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel or 
 Mademoiselle Zephirine ten counters when either of them had 
 lost her five sous, on the understanding that she should repay 
 them if she should win. An old bachelor might allow him- 
 self such an act of gallantry to the unmarried ladies. The 
 Baron also would offer the old maids ten counters, under pre- 
 tense of not stopping the game. The avaricious old women 
 always accepted, not without some pressing, after the usage 
 and custom of old maids. But to allow themselves such a 
 piece of extravagance the Baron and the chevalier must first 
 have won, otherwise the offer bore the character of an affront. 
 
 This game was in its glory when a young Mademoiselle de 
 * A Hard was the fourth of a sou.
 
 40 BEATRIX. 
 
 Kergarouet was on a visit to her aunt Kergarouet only, for 
 the family had never succeeded in getting itself called Kerga- 
 rouet-Pen-Hoel by anybody here, not even by the servants, 
 who had indeed peremptory orders on this point. The aunt 
 spoke of the mouche parties at the Gudnics' as a great treat. The 
 girl was enjoined to make herself agreeable an easy matter 
 enough when she saw the handsome Calyste, on whom the 
 four young ladies all doted. These damsels, brought up in 
 the midst of modern civilization, thought little of five sous, 
 and paid fine after fine. Then fines would be scored up to a 
 total sometimes of five francs, on a scale ranging from two 
 sous and a half up to ten sous. These were evenings of intense 
 excitement to the old blind woman. The tricks were called 
 mains (or hands) at Guerande. The Baroness would press her 
 foot on her sister-in-law's as many times as she had, as she 
 believed, tricks in her hand. The question of play or no play 
 on occasions when the pool was full led to secret struggles in 
 which covetousness contended with alarms. The players would 
 ask each other, "Are you coming in ? " with feelings of envy 
 of those who had good enough cards to tempt fate and spasms 
 of despair when they were forced to retire. 
 
 If Charlotte de Kergarouet, who was commonly thought 
 foolhardy, was lucky in her daring when her aunt had won 
 nothing, she was treated with coldness when they got home, 
 and had a little lecture : " She was too decided and forward ; 
 a young girl ought not to challenge persons older than her- 
 self; she had an overbold manner of seizing the pool or de- 
 claring to play ; a young person should show more reserve and 
 modesty in her manners ; it was not seemly to laugh at the 
 misfortunes of others," and so forth. 
 
 Then perennial jests, repeated a thousand times a year, but 
 always fresh, turned on the carriage of the basket when the 
 pool overfilled it. They must get oxen to draw it, elephants, 
 horses, asses, dogs. And at the end of twenty years no one 
 noticed the staleness of the joke ; it always provoked the same
 
 BE A TRIX. 41 
 
 smile. It was the same thing with the remarks caused by the 
 annoyance of seeing a pool taken from those who had helped 
 to fill it and got nothing out. The cards were dealt with 
 automatic slowness. They talked in chest tones. And these 
 respectable and high-born personages were so delightfully 
 mean as to suspect each other's play. Mademoiselle de Pen- 
 Hoel almost always accused the cure of cheating when he won 
 a pool. 
 
 " But what is so odd," the cure would say, " is that I never 
 cheat when I am fined." 
 
 No one laid down a card without profound meditation, 
 without keen scrutiny, and more or less astute hints, inge- 
 nious and searching remarks. The deals were interrupted, 
 you may be sure, by gossip as to what was going on in the 
 town, or discussions on politics. Frequently the players 
 would pause for a quarter of an hour, their cards held in a 
 fan against their chest, absorbed in talk. Then, if after such 
 an interruption a counter was short in the pool, everybody 
 was certain that his or her counter was not missing ; and gen- 
 erally it was the chevalier who made up the loss, under general 
 accusations of thinking of nothing but the singing in his ears, 
 his headache, or his fads, and of forgetting to put in. As 
 soon as he had paid up a counter, old Zephirine or the cun- 
 ning hunchback was seized with remorse ; they then fancied 
 that perhaps the fault was theirs ; they thought, they doubted ; 
 but, after all, the chevalier could afford the little loss ! The 
 Baron often quite forgot what he was about when the misfor- 
 tunes of the royal family came under discussion. 
 
 Sometimes the game resulted in a way that was invariably a 
 surprise to the players, who each counted on being the winner. 
 After a certain number of rounds each had won back his 
 counters and went away, the hour being late, without loss or 
 profit, but not without excitement. On these depressing 
 evenings the mouche was abused ; it had not been interesting; 
 the players accused the game, as negroes beat the reflection of
 
 42 BEATRIX. 
 
 the moon in water when the weather is bad. The evening 
 had been dull ; they had toiled so hard for so little. 
 
 When, on their first visit, the Vicomte de Kergarouet and his 
 wife spoke of whist and boston as games more interesting than 
 mouche, and were encouraged to teach them by the Baroness, 
 who was bored to death by mouche, the company lent them- 
 selves to the innovation, not without strong protest ; but it was 
 impossible to make these games understood ; and as soon as 
 the Kergarouets had left, they were spoken of as overwhelm- 
 ingly abstruse, as algebraical puzzles, and incredibly difficult. 
 They all preferred their beloved mouche, their unpretentious 
 little mouche. And mouche triumphed over the modern games, 
 as old things constantly triumph over new in Brittany. 
 
 While the cure dealt the cards, the Baroness was asking the 
 Chevalier du Halga the same questions as she had asked the 
 day before as to his health. The chevalier made it a point 
 of honor to have some new complaint. Though the questions 
 were always the same, the captain had a great advantage in his 
 replies. To-day his false ribs had been troubling him. The 
 remarkable thing was that the worthy man never complained 
 of his wounds. Everything serious he was prepared for, he 
 understood it ; but fantastic ailments pains in his head, dogs 
 devouring his inside, bells ringing in his ears and a thousand 
 other crotchets worried him greatly ; he set up as an incurable, 
 with all the more reason that physicians know no remedy for 
 maladies that are non-existent. 
 
 "Yesterday, I fancy you had pains in your legs," said the 
 cure very seriously. 
 
 "They move about," replied du Halga. 
 
 "Legs in your false ribs?" asked Mademoiselle Zephirine. 
 
 "And made no halt on the way?" said Mademoiselle de 
 Pen-Hoel with a smile. 
 
 The chevalier bowed gravely, with a negative shake of the 
 head, not without fun in it, which would have proved to an
 
 BE A TRIX. 43 
 
 observer that in his youth the seaman must have been witty, 
 loved and loving. His fossilized life at Guerande covered 
 perhaps many memories. As he stood planted on his heron's 
 legs in the sun, stupidly watching the sea or his dog sporting 
 on the mall, perhaps he was alive again in the earthly para- 
 dise of a past rich in remembrance. 
 
 " So the old Due de Lenoncourt is dead ? " said the Baron, 
 recalling the passage in the " Quotidienne " at which his wife 
 had stopped. " Well, well, the first gentleman-in-waiting 
 had not long to wait before following his master. I shall soon 
 go too." 
 
 "My dear! my dear! " said his wife, gently patting his 
 lean and bony hand. 
 
 " Let him talk, sister," said Zephirine. " So long as I am 
 above ground, he will not go under ground. He is younger 
 than I am." 
 
 A cheerful smile brightened the old woman's face when the 
 Baron dropped a reflection of this kind, the players and callers 
 would look at each other anxiously, grieved to find the King 
 of Guerande out of spirits. Those who had come to see him 
 would say as they went away, " Monsieur de Gunic is much 
 depressed; have you noticed how much he sleeps?" And 
 next day all Guerande would be talking of it: "The Baron 
 du Guenic is failing." The words began the conversation in 
 every house in the place. 
 
 " And is Thisbe well?" asked Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel 
 as soon as the deal was over. 
 
 "The poor little beast is like me," said the chevalier. 
 " Her nerves are out of order ; she is always holding up one 
 of her legs as she runs. Like this." 
 
 And in showing how Thisbe ran, by bending his arm as he 
 raised it, the chevalier allowed his neighbor, Mademoiselle de 
 Pen-Hoel, to see his cards; she wanted to know whether he 
 had trumps or mistigris. This was the first finesse to which he 
 fell a prey.
 
 44 BEATRIX. 
 
 "Oh ! " exclaimed the Baroness, " the tip of Monsieur le 
 Cure's nose has turned pale, he must have mistigris ! " 
 
 The joy of having mistigris was so great to the cure, as to 
 all the players, that the poor priest could not disguise it. 
 There is in each human face some spot where every secret 
 emotion of the heart betrays itself; and these good people, 
 accustomed to watch each other, had, after the lapse of years, 
 discovered the weak place in the cure when he had mistigris 
 the tip of his nose turned white. Then they all took care 
 not to play. 
 
 "You have had visitors to-day?" said the chevalier to 
 Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel. 
 
 "Yes; one of my brother-in-law's cousins. He surprised 
 me by telling me of the intended marriage of Madame la 
 Comtesse de Kergarouet, a Demoiselle de Fontaine " 
 
 "A daughter of Grand-Jacques!" exclaimed du Halga, 
 who during his stay in Paris had never left his admiral's 
 side. 
 
 "The Countess inherits everything; she has married a man 
 who was ambassador. He told me the most extraordinary 
 things about our neighbor, Mademoiselle des Touches ; so 
 extraordinary, that I will not believe them. Calyste could 
 never be so attentive to her ; he has surely enough good sense 
 to perceive such monstrosities." 
 
 " Monstrosities ! " said the Baron, roused by the word. 
 
 The Baroness and the priest looked meaningly at each 
 other. The cards were dealt. Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel 
 had mistigris ; she did not want to continue the conversation, 
 but was glad to cover her delight under the general amaze- 
 ment caused by this word. 
 
 "It is your turn to lead, Monsieur le Baron," said she, 
 bridling. 
 
 " My dear nephew is not one of those young men who 
 like monstrosities," said Zephirine, poking her knitting-pin 
 through her hair.
 
 BEATRIX. 45 
 
 " Mistigris ! " cried Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, without 
 answering her friend. 
 
 The cure, who appeared fully informed as to all that con- 
 cerned Calyste and Mademoiselle des Touches, did not enter 
 the lists. 
 
 "What does she do that is so extraordinary, this Made- 
 moiselle des Touches?" asked the Baron. 
 
 " She smokes," said Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel. 
 
 "It is very wholesome," said the chevalier. 
 
 " Her bacon ? " asked the Baron. 
 
 " Her bacon ! She does not save it," retorted the old maid. 
 
 " Every one played, and every one is looed ; I have the 
 king, queen, and knave of trumps, mistigris, and a king," 
 said the Baroness. "The pool is ours, sister." 
 
 This stroke, won without play, overwhelmed Mademoiselle 
 de Pen-Hoel, who thought no more of Calyste and Made- 
 moiselle des Touches. At nine o'clock no one remained in 
 the room but the Baroness and the cure. The four old 
 people had gone away and to bed. 
 
 The chevalier, as usual, escorted Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel 
 to her own house in the market-place, making remarks on the 
 skill of the last player, on their good or ill luck, or on the 
 ever-new glee with which Mademoiselle Zephirine's pocket 
 engulfed her winnings, for the old blind woman made no 
 attempt now to disguise the expression of her sentiments in 
 her face. Madame du Guenic's absence of mind was their 
 subject to-night. The chevalier had observed the charming 
 Irishwoman's inattention to the game. On the doorstep, 
 when her boy had gone upstairs, the old lady replied in con- 
 fidence to the chevalier's guesses as to the Baroness' strange 
 manner by these words, big with importance 
 
 " I know the reason ; Calyste is done for if he is not soon 
 married. He is in love with Mademoiselle des Touches an 
 actress ! " 
 
 " In that case, send for Charlotte."
 
 46 BEA TRIX. 
 
 " My sister shall hear from me to-morrow," said Mademoi- 
 selle de Pen-Hoel, bidding him good-night. 
 
 From this study of a normal evening, the commotion may 
 be imagined that was produced in the home circles of Guer- 
 ande by the arrival, the stay, the departure, or even the passing 
 through of a stranger. 
 
 When not a sound was audible in the Baron's room or in 
 his sister's, Madame du Guenic turned to the priest, who was 
 pensively playing with the counters. 
 
 " I see that you at last share my uneasiness about Calyste," 
 she said. 
 
 " Did you notice Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel's prim air this 
 evening?" asked he. 
 
 "Yes," replied the Baroness. 
 
 " She has, I know, the very best intentions toward our dear 
 Calyste ; she loves him as if he were her son ; and his conduct 
 in la Vandee at his father's side, with MADAME'S praise of his 
 devoted behavior, has added to the affection Mademoiselle de 
 Pen-Hoel feels for him. She will endow either of her nieces 
 whom Calyste may marry with all her fortune by deed of 
 gift. 
 
 " You have, I know, in Ireland, a far richer match for your 
 beloved boy ; but it is well to have two strings to one's bow. 
 In the event of your family not choosing to undertake to settle 
 anything on Calyste, Mademoiselle de Pen-HoeTs fortune is 
 not to be despised. You could, no doubt, find your son a 
 wife with seven thousand francs a year, but not the savings 
 of forty years, nor lands managed, tilled, and kept up as 
 Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel's are. That wicked woman, Made- 
 moiselle des Touches, has come to spoil everything. We have 
 at last found out something about her." 
 
 " Well ? " asked the mother. 
 
 "Oh, she is a slut, a baggage," exclaimed the cur6. "A 
 woman of doubtful habits, always hanging about the theatres 
 in the company of actors and actresses, squandering her for-
 
 BEATRIX. 47 
 
 tune with journalists, painters, musicians the devil's own, in 
 short ! When she writes, she uses a different name in her 
 books, and is better known by that, it is said, than by that 
 of des Touches. A perfect imp, who has never been inside a 
 church since her first communion, excepting to stare at statues 
 or pictures. She has spent her fortune in decorating les 
 Touches in the most improper manner to make it a sort of 
 Mahomet's paradise, where the houris are not women. There 
 is more good wine drunk there while she is in the place than 
 in all Guerande beside in a year. Last year the Demoiselles 
 Bougniol had for lodgers some men with goats' beards, sus- 
 pected of being ' blues,' who used to go to her house, and 
 who sang songs that made those virtuous girls blush and weep. 
 That is the woman your son at present adores. 
 
 " If that creature were to ask this evening for one of the 
 atrocious books in which atheists nowadays laugh everything 
 to scorn, the young chevalier would come and saddle his 
 horse with his own hands, to ride off at a gallop to fetch it for 
 her from Nantes. I do not know that Calyste would do so 
 much for the church. And then, Bretonne as she is, she is 
 not a Royalist. If it were necessary to march out, gun in 
 hand, for the good cause, should Mademoiselle des Touches 
 or Camille Maupin, for that, I remember, is her name want 
 to keep Calyste with her, your son would let his old father set 
 out alone." 
 
 " No," said the Baroness. 
 
 " I should not like to put him to the test, you might feel it 
 too painfully," replied the cure. "All Guerande is in a 
 commotion over the chevalier's passion for this amphibious 
 creature that is neither man nor woman, who smokes like a 
 trooper, writes like a journalist, and, at this moment, has 
 under her roof the most malignant writer of them all, accord- 
 ing to the postmaster a trimmer who reads all the papers. 
 It is talked of at Nantes. This morning the Kergarouet 
 cousin, who wants to see Charlotte married to a man who has
 
 48 BE A TRIX. 
 
 sixty thousand francs a year, came to call on Mademoiselle de 
 Pen-Hoel, and turned her head with roundabout tales about 
 Mademoiselle des Touches which lasted seven hours. There 
 is a quarter to ten striking by the church clock, and Calyste 
 is not come in ; he is at les Touches perhaps he will not 
 come back until morning." 
 
 The Baroness listened to the cure, who had unconsciously 
 substituted monologue for dialogue ; he was looking at this 
 lamb of his flock, reading her uneasy thoughts in her face. 
 The Baroness was blushing and trembling. When the Abbe 
 Grimont saw tears in the distressed mother's beautiful eyes, 
 he was deeply touched. 
 
 " I will see Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel to-morrow, be com- 
 forted," said he, in an encouraging tone. "The mischief is, 
 perhaps, not so great as rumor says ; I will find out the truth. 
 Beside, Mademoiselle Jacqueline has confidence in me. 
 Again, we have brought up Calyste, and he will not allow 
 himself to be bewitched by the demon ; he will do nothing 
 to disturb the peace of his family, or the plans we are making 
 for his future life. Do not weep ; all is not lost, madame ; 
 one fault is not vice." 
 
 "You only tell me the details," said the Baroness. "Was 
 not I the first to perceive the change in Calyste ? A mother 
 feels keenly the pain of being second in her son's affections, 
 the grief of not being alone in his heart. That phase of a 
 man's life is one of the woes of motherhood ; but though I 
 knew it must come, I did not expect it so soon. And, then, 
 I could have wished that he should have taken into his heart 
 some beautiful and noble creature, not a mere actress, a pos- 
 ture-maker, a woman who frequents theatres, an authoress 
 accustomed to feign feeling, a bad woman who will deceive 
 him and make him wretched. She has had ' affairs? ' ' 
 
 "With many men," said the Abbe Grimont. "And yet 
 this miscreant was born in Brittany. She is a disgrace to her 
 native soil. On Sunday I will preach a sermon about her."
 
 BEATRIX. 49 
 
 ''By no means! " exclaimed the Baroness. "The marsh- 
 men and peasants are capable of attacking les Touches. 
 Calyste is worthy of his name : he is a true Breton ; and some 
 evil might come of it if he were there, for he would fight for 
 her as if she were the blessed Virgin." 
 
 "It is striking ten; I will bid you good-night," said the 
 abbe, lighting the oribus of his lantern, of which the clear 
 glass-panes and glittering metal-work showed his housekeeper's 
 minute care for all the concerns of the house. " Who could 
 have told me, madame," he went on, "that a young man 
 nursed at your breast, brought up by me in Christian ideas, a 
 fervent Catholic, a boy who lived like a lamb without spot, 
 would plunge into such a foul bog?" 
 
 "But is that quite certain?" said the mother. "And, 
 after all, how could any woman help loving Calyste? " 
 
 " No proof is needed beyond that witch's prolonged stay 
 at les Touches. During twenty-four years, since she came of 
 age, this is the longest visit she has paid here. Happily for 
 us, her apparitions have hitherto been brief." 
 
 "A woman past forty ! " said the Baroness. "I have heard 
 it said in Ireland that such a woman is the most dangerous 
 mistress a young man can have." 
 
 " On that point I am ignorant," replied the cure. " Nay, 
 and I shall die in my ignorance." 
 
 " Alas ! and so shall I," said the Baroness. "I wish now 
 that I had ever been in love, to be able to study, advise, and 
 comfort Calyste." 
 
 The priest did not cross the clean little courtyard alone ; 
 Madame du Guenic went with him as far as the gate, in 
 the hope of hearing Calyste's step in Guerande ; but she 
 heard only the heavy sound of the abbe's deliberate tread, 
 which grew fainter in the distance, and ceased when the 
 shutting of the priest's door echoed through the silent 
 town. 
 
 The poor mother went indoors in despair at learning 
 4
 
 50 BEATRIX. 
 
 that the whole town was informed of what she had believed 
 herself alone in knowing. She sat down, revived the lamp 
 by cutting the wick with a pair of old scissors, and took up 
 the worsted work she was accustomed to do while waiting 
 for Calyste. She flattered herself that she thus induced her 
 son to come home earlier, to spend less time with Mademoi- 
 selle des Touches. But this stratagem of maternal jealousy 
 was in vain. Calyste's visits to les Touches became more 
 and more frequent, and every evening he came in a little later ; 
 at last, the previous night, he had not returned until midnight. 
 
 The Baroness, sunk in meditation, set her stitches with the 
 energy of women who can think while following some manual 
 occupation. Anyone who should have seen her bent to catch 
 the light of the lamp, in the midst of the paneling of this 
 room, four centuries old, must have admired the noble pic- 
 ture. Fanny's flesh had a transparency that seemed to show 
 her thoughts legible on her brow. Stung, now, by the curi- 
 osity that comes to pure-minded women, she wondered by 
 what diabolical secrets these daughters of Baal so bewitched 
 a man as to make him forget his mother and family, his coun- 
 try, his self-interest. Then she went so far as to wish she 
 could see the woman, so as to judge her sanely. She calcu- 
 lated the extent of the mischief that the innovating spirit of 
 the age which the cure described as so dangerous to youthful 
 souls might do to her only child, till now as guileless and 
 pure as an innocent girl, whose beauty could not be fresher 
 than his. 
 
 Calyste, a noble offshoot of the oldest Breton and the no- 
 blest Irish blood, had been carefully brought up by his 
 mother. Till the moment when the Baroness handed him 
 over to the cure of Guerande, she was sure that not an inde- 
 cent word, nor an evil idea, had ever soiled her son's ear or 
 his understanding. The mother, after rearing him on her 
 own milk, and thus giving him a double infusion of her blood, 
 could present him in virginal innocence to the priest who,
 
 BE A TRIX. 51 
 
 out of reverence for the family, undertook to give him a 
 complete and Christian education. Calyste was educated on 
 the plan of the seminary where the Abbe Grimont had been 
 brought up. His mother taught him English. A mathemat- 
 ical master was discovered, not without difficulty, among the 
 clerks at Saint-Nazaire. Calyste, of course, knew nothing of 
 modern literature, or of the latest advance and progress of 
 science. His education was limited to the geography and 
 emasculated history taught in girls' schools, to the Latin and 
 Greek of the seminary, to the literature of dead languages, 
 and a limited selection of French writers. When, at sixteen, 
 he began what the abbe called his course of philosophy, he 
 was still as innocent as at the moment when Fanny had 
 handed him over to the cure. The church was no less ma- 
 ternal than the mother ; without being bigoted or ridiculous, 
 this well-beloved youth was a fervent Catholic. 
 
 The Baroness longed to plan a happy and obscure life for 
 her handsome and immaculate son. She expected some little 
 fortune from an old aunt, about two or three thousand pounds 
 sterling ; this sum, added to the present fortune of the 
 Guenics, might enable her to find a wife for Calyste who 
 would bring him twelve or fifteen thousand francs a year. 
 Charlotte de Kergarouet, with her aunt's money, some rich 
 Irish girl, or any other heiress it was a matter of indifference 
 to the Baroness. She knew nothing of love ; like all the 
 people among whom she lived, she regarded marriage as a 
 stepping-stone to fortune. Passion was a thing unknown to 
 these Catholics, old people wholly occupied in saving their 
 souls, in thinking of God, the King, and their own wealth. 
 
 No one, therefore, can be surprised at the gravity of the re- 
 flections that mingled with the wounded feelings in this 
 mother's heart, living, as she did, as much for her boy's 
 interests as by his affection. If the young couple would but 
 listen to reason, by living parsimoniously and economizing, 
 as country folk know how, by the second generation the du
 
 52 BE A TRIX. 
 
 Guenics might repurchase their old estates and reconquer the 
 splendor of wealth. The Baroness hoped to live to be old 
 that she might see the dawn of that life of ease. Mademoiselle 
 du Guenic had understood and adopted this scheme, and now 
 it was threatened by Mademoiselle des Touches. 
 
 Madame du Guenic heard midnight strike with horror, and 
 she endured an hour more of fearful alarms, for the stroke of 
 one rang out, and still Calyste had not come home. 
 
 " Will he stay there?" she wondered. " It would be the 
 first time poor child." 
 
 At this moment Calyste's step was heard in the street. 
 The poor mother, in whose heart joy took the place of anxiety, 
 flew from the room to the gate and opened it for her son. 
 
 " My dearest mother," cried Calyste, with a look of vexa- 
 tion, "why sit up for me? I have the latch-key and a tinder- 
 box." 
 
 " You know, my child, that I can never sleep while you are 
 out," said she, kissing him. 
 
 When the Baroness had returned to the room, she looked 
 into her son's face to read in its expression what had hap- 
 pened during the evening; but this look produced in her, as 
 it always did, a certain emotion which custom does not weaken 
 which all loving mothers feel as they gaze at their human 
 masterpiece, and which for a moment dims their sight. 
 
 Calyste had black eyes, full of vigor and sunshine, inherited 
 from his father, with the fine fair hair, the aquiline nose and 
 lovely mouth, the turned-up finger-tips, the soft complexion, 
 finish, and fairness of his mother. Though he looked not unlike 
 a girl dressed as a man, he was wonderfully strong. His sinews 
 had the elasticity and tension of steel springs, and the singular 
 effect of his black eyes had a charm of its own. As yet he had 
 no hair on his face ; this late development, it is said, is a promise 
 of long life. The young chevalier, who wore a short jacket 
 of black velvet, like his mother's gown, with silver buttons, 
 had a blue neckerchief, neat gaiters, and trousers of gray
 
 BE A TRIX. 63 
 
 drill. His snow-white forehead bore the traces, as it seemed, 
 of great fatigue, but, in fact, they were those of a burden of 
 sad thoughts. His mother, having no suspicion of the sorrows 
 that were eating the lad's heart out, ascribed this transient 
 change to happiness. Calyste was, nevertheless, as beautiful 
 as a Greek god, handsome without conceit ; for, in the first 
 place, he was accustomed to see his mother, and he also cared 
 but little for beauty, which he knew to be useless. 
 
 "And those lovely smooth cheeks," thought she, "where 
 the rich young blood flows in a thousand tiny veins, belong to 
 another woman, who is mistress, too, of that girl-like brow? 
 Passion will stamp them with its agitations, and dim those fine 
 eyes, as liquid now as a child's ! " 
 
 The bitter thought fell heavy on Madame du Guenic's heart 
 and spoilt her pleasure. 
 
 It must seem strange that, in a family where six persons 
 were obliged to live on three thousand francs a year, the son 
 should have a velvet coat and the mother a velvet dress ; but 
 Fanny O'Brien had rich relations and aunts in London who 
 reminded the Breton Baroness of their existence by sending 
 her presents. Some of her sisters, having married well, took 
 an interest in Calyste so far as to think of finding him a rich 
 wife, knowing that he was as handsome and as well born as 
 their exiled favorite Fanny. 
 
 "You stayed later at les Touches than you did yesterday, 
 my darling?" she said at last, in a broken voice. 
 
 "Yes, mother dear," replied he, without adding any ex- 
 planation. 
 
 The brevity of the answer brought a cloud to his mother's 
 brow ; she postponed any explanation till the morrow. When 
 mothers are disturbed by such alarms as the Baroness felt at 
 this moment, they almost tremble before their sons ; they in- 
 stinctively feel the effects of the great emancipation of love ; 
 they understand all that this new feeling will rob them of; 
 but, at the same time, they are, in a sense, glad of their son's
 
 64 BE A TRIX. 
 
 happiness ; there is a fierce struggle in their hearts. Though 
 the result is that the son is grown up, and on a higher level, 
 true mothers do not like their tacit abdication ; they would 
 rather keep their child little and wanting care. That, per- 
 haps, is the secret of mothers' favoritism for weakly, deformed, 
 and helpless children. 
 
 "You are very tired, dear child," said she, swallowing 
 down her tears. " Go to bed." 
 
 A mother who does not know everything her son is doing 
 thinks of him as lost when she loves and is as well loved as 
 Fanny. And perhaps any other mother would have quaked 
 in her place as much as Madame du Guenic. The patience 
 of twenty years might be made useless. Calyste a human 
 masterpiece of noble, prudent, and religious training might 
 be ruined ; the happiness so carefully prepared for him might 
 be destroyed for ever by a woman. 
 
 Next day Calyste slept till noon, for his mother would not 
 allow him to be roused ; Mariotte gave the spoilt boy his 
 breakfast in bed. The immutable and almost conventual rule 
 that governed the hours of meals yielded to the young gen- 
 tleman's caprices. Indeed, when at any time it was necessary 
 to obtain Mademoiselle du Guenic's bunch of keys to get out 
 something between meals which would necessitate intermin- 
 able explanations, the only way of doing it was to plead some 
 whim of Calyste's. 
 
 At about one o'clock the Baron, his wife, and mademoiselle 
 were sitting in the dining-room ; they dined at three. The 
 Baroness had taken up the " Quotidienne " and was finishing 
 it to her husband, who was always rather more wakeful before 
 his meals. Just as she had done, Madame du Guenic heard 
 her son's step on the floor above, and laid down the paper, 
 saying 
 
 " Calyste, I suppose, is dining at les Touches again to-day ; 
 he has just finished dressing."
 
 BE A TRIX. 56 
 
 "He takes his pleasure that boy!" said the old lady, 
 pulling a silver whistle out of her pocket, and whistling once. 
 
 Mariotte came through the turret, making her appearance 
 at the door, which was hidden by a silk damask curtain, like 
 those at the windows. 
 
 " Yes," said she, " did you please to want anything? " 
 
 "The chevalier is dining at les Touches; we shall not want 
 the fish." 
 
 " Well, we do not know yet," said the Baroness. 
 
 "You seem vexed about it, sister ; I know by the tone of 
 your voice," said the blind woman. 
 
 " Monsieur Grimont has learned some serious facts about 
 Mademoiselle des Touches, who, during the last year, has 
 done so much to change our dear Calyste." 
 
 " In what way? " asked the Baron. 
 
 " Well, he reads all sorts of books." 
 
 " Ah, ha ! " said the Baron ; " then that is why he neglects 
 hunting and riding." 
 
 "She leads a very reprehensible life and calls herself by a 
 man's name," Madame du Guenic went on. 
 
 "A nickname among comrades," said the old man. "I 
 used to be called /' } Intime, the Comte de Fontaine was Grand- 
 Jacques, the Marquis de Montauran was le Gars. I was a 
 great friend of Ferdinand" 's ; he did not submit, any more 
 than I did. Those were good times ! There was plenty of 
 fighting, and we had some fun here and there, all the same." 
 
 These reminiscences of the war, thus taking the place of 
 paternal anxiety, distressed Fanny for a moment. The cure's 
 revelations and her son's want of confidence had hindered 
 her sleeping. 
 
 "And if Monsieur le Chevalier should be in love with 
 Mademoiselle des Touches, where is the harm?" exclaimed 
 Mariotte. "She is a fine woman and has thirty thousand 
 crowns a year." 
 
 " What are you talking about, Mariotte," cried the old man.
 
 56 BEATRIX. 
 
 " A du GuSnic to marry a des Touches ! The des Touches 
 were not even our squires at a time when the du Guesclins 
 regarded an alliance with us as a distinguished honor." 
 
 "A woman who calls herself by a man's name Camille 
 Maupin ! " added the Baroness. 
 
 "The Maupins are an old family," said the old man. 
 
 "They are Norman, and bear gules, three " he stopped 
 
 short. " But she cannot be a man and a woman at the same 
 time." 
 
 " She calls herself Maupin at the theatre." 
 
 "A des Touches cannot be an actress," said the old man. 
 " If I did not know you, Fanny, I should think you were 
 mad." 
 
 " She writes pieces and books," the Baroness went on. 
 
 "Writes books ! " said the Baron, looking at his wife with 
 as much astonishment as if he had heard of a miracle. " I 
 have heard that Mademoiselle de Scuderi and Madame de 
 Sevign6 wrote books, and that was not the best of what they 
 did. But only Louis XIV. and his court could produce such 
 prodigies." 
 
 " You will be dining at les Touches, won't you, monsieur?" 
 said Mariotte to Calyste, who came in. 
 
 "Probably," said the young man. 
 
 Mariotte was not inquisitive, and she was one of the family; 
 she left the room without waiting to hear the question Madame 
 du Guenic was about to put to Calyste. 
 
 "You are going to les Touches again, my Calyste?" said 
 she, with an emphasis on my Calyste. "And les Touches is 
 not a decent and reputable house. The mistress of it leads a 
 wild life ; she will corrupt our boy. Camille Maupin makes 
 him read a great many books she has had a great many ad- 
 ventures ! And you knew it, bad child, and never said any- 
 thing about it to your old folk." 
 
 " The chevalier is discreet," said his father, " an old-world 
 virtue 1 "
 
 BE A TRIX. 57 
 
 "Too discreet! " said the jealous mother, as she saw the 
 color mount to her son's brow. 
 
 "My dear mother," said Calyste, kneeling down before 
 her; "I did not think it necessary to proclaim my defeat. 
 Mademoiselle des Touches, or, if you prefer it, Camille 
 Maupin, rejected my love eighteen months since, when she 
 was here last. She gently made fun of me ; she might be my 
 mother, she said ; a woman of forty who loved a minor com- 
 mitted a sort of incest, and she was incapable of such de- 
 pravity. In short, she laughed at me in a hundred ways, and 
 quite overpowered me, for she has the wit of an angel. Then, 
 when she saw me crying bitter tears, she comforted me by 
 offering me her friendship in the noblest way. She has even 
 more heart than brains ; she is as generous as you are. I am 
 like a child to her now. Then, when she came here again, I 
 heard that she loved another man and I resigned myself. 
 Do not repeat all the calumnies you hear about her ; Camille 
 is an artist ; she has genius, and leads one of those exceptional 
 lives which cannot be judged by provincial or ordinary stand- 
 ards." 
 
 " My child ! " said the pious Fanny, " nothing can excuse 
 a woman for not living according to the ordinances of the 
 church. She fails in her duties toward God and toward so- 
 ciety by failing in the gentle religion of her sex. A woman 
 commits a sin even by going to a theatre ; but when she writes 
 impieties to be repeated by actors, and flies about the world, 
 sometimes with an enemy of the Pope's, sometimes with a 
 musician Oh, Calyste ! you will find it hard to con- 
 vince me that such things are acts of faith, hope, or charity. 
 Her fortune was given her by God to do good. What use 
 does she make of it ? " 
 
 Calyste suddenly stood up ; he looked at his mother and 
 said 
 
 " Mother, Camille is my friend. I cannot hear her spoken 
 of in this way, for I would give my life for her."
 
 58 BE A TRIX. 
 
 "Your life?" said the Baroness, gazing at her son in ter- 
 ror. "Your life is our life the life of us all ! " 
 
 " My handsome nephew has made use of many words that 
 I do not understand," said the old blind woman, turning to 
 Calyste. 
 
 "Where has he learned them?" added his mother. "At 
 les Touches." 
 
 "Why, my dear mother, she found me as ignorant as a 
 carp." 
 
 "You knew all that was essential in knowing the duties 
 enjoined on us by religion," replied the Baroness. "Ah! 
 that woman will undermine your noble and holy beliefs." 
 
 The old aunt rose and solemnly extended her hand toward 
 her brother, who was sleeping. 
 
 "Calyste," said she, in a voice that came from her heart, 
 " your father never opened a book, he speaks Breton, he 
 fought in the midst of perils for the King and for God. 
 Educated men had done the mischief, and gentlemen of 
 learning had deserted their country. Learn if you will." 
 
 She sat down again and began knitting with the vehemence 
 that came of her mental agitation. Calyste was struck by 
 this Phocion-like utterance. 
 
 " In short, my dearest, I have a presentiment of some evil 
 hanging over you in that house," said his mother, in a broken 
 voice, as her tears fell. 
 
 "Who is making Fanny cry?" exclaimed the old man, 
 suddenly wakened by the sound of his wife's voice. He 
 looked round at her, his son, and his sister. 
 
 "What is the matter?" 
 
 " Nothing, my dear," replied the Baroness. 
 
 "Mamma," said Calyste, in his mother's ear, "it is im- 
 possible that I should explain matters now ; but we will talk 
 it over this evening. When you know all, you will bless 
 Mademoiselle des Touches." 
 
 " Mothers have no love of cursing," replied the Baroness,
 
 BE A TRIX. 59 
 
 " and I should never curse any woman who truly loved my 
 Calyste." 
 
 The young man said good-by to his father, and left the 
 house. The Baron and his wife rose to watch him as he 
 crossed the courtyard, opened the gate, and disappeared. 
 The Baroness did not take up the paper again ; she was 
 agitated. In a life so peaceful, so monotonous, this little dis- 
 cussion was as serious as a quarrel in any other family ; and 
 the mother's anxiety, though soothed, was not dispelled. 
 Whither would this friendship, which might demand and im- 
 peril her boy's life, ultimately lead him ? How could she, 
 the Baroness, have reason to bless Mademoiselle des Touches ? 
 These two questions were as all-important to her simple soul 
 as the maddest revolution can be to a diplomatist. Camille 
 Maupin was a revolution in the quiet and simple home. 
 
 "I am very much afraid that this woman will spoil him for 
 us," said she, taking up the newspaper again. 
 
 "My dear Fanny," said the old Baron, with knowing 
 sprightliness, " you are too completely an angel to understand 
 such things. Mademoiselle des Touches is, they say, as black 
 as a crow, as strong as a Turk, and she is forty our dear boy 
 was sure to be attracted by her. He will tell a few very honor- 
 able fibs to conceal his happiness. Let him enjoy the illusions 
 of his first love." 
 
 "If it were any other woman " 
 
 " But, dearest Fanny, if the woman were a saint, she would 
 not make your son welcome." 
 
 The Baroness went back to the paper. 
 
 "I will go to see her," said the old man, "and tell you 
 what I think of her." 
 
 The speech has no point but in retrospect. After hearing 
 the history of Camille Maupin, you may imagine the Baron 
 face to face with this famous woman. 
 
 The town of Guerande, which for two months past had seen 
 Calyste its flower and its pride going every day, morning
 
 60 BE A TRIX. 
 
 or evening sometimes both morning and evening to les 
 Touches, supposed that Mademoiselle des Touches was pas- 
 sionately in love with the handsome lad, and did her utmost 
 to bewitch him. More than one girl and one young woman 
 wondered what was the witchcraft of an old woman that she 
 had such absolute empire over the angelic youth. And so, as 
 Calyste crossed the High street to go out by the gate to le 
 Croisic, more than one eye looked anxiously after him. 
 
 It now becomes necessary to account for the reports that 
 were current concerning the personage whom Calyste was going 
 to see. These rumors, swelled by Breton gossip and enven- 
 omed by the ignorance of the public, had reached even the 
 cur6. The tax-receiver, the justice of the peace, the head 
 clerk of the customs at Saint-Nazaire, and other literate per- 
 sons in the district, had not reassured the abbe by telling him 
 of the eccentric life led by the woman and artist hidden under 
 the name of Camille Maupin. 
 
 She had not yet come to eating little children, to killing 
 her slaves, like Cleopatra, to throwing men into the river, as 
 the heroine of the "Tour de Nesle" is falsely accused of 
 doing ; still, to the Abbe Grimont, this monstrous creature, 
 at once a siren and an atheist, was a most immoral combina- 
 tion of woman and philosopher, and fell short of every social 
 law laid down to control or utilize the weaknesses of the fair 
 sex. Just as Clara Gazul is the feminine pseudonym of a 
 clever man and George Sand that of a woman of genius, so 
 Camille Maupin was the mask behind which a charming girl 
 long hid herself a Bretonne named Felicite des Touches, she 
 who was now giving the Baronne du Guenic and the worthy 
 Cure of Gu6rande so much cause for anxiety. This family 
 has no connection with that of the des Touches of Touraine, 
 to which the Regent's ambassador belongs, a man more famous 
 now for his literary talents than for his diplomacy. 
 
 Camille Maupin, one of the few famous women of the nine-
 
 BEATRIX. 61 
 
 teenth century, was long supposed to be really a man, so 
 manly was her first appearance as an author. Everybody is 
 now familiar with the two volumes of dramas, impossible to 
 put on the stage, written in the manner of Shakespeare or of 
 Lopez de Vega, and brought out in 1822, which caused a sort 
 of literary revolution when the great question of Romanticism 
 versus Classicism was a burning one in the papers, at clubs, 
 and at the Academic. Since then Camille Maupin has written 
 several plays and a novel which have not belied the success of 
 her first efforts, now rather too completely forgotten, except 
 by literati. 
 
 An explanation of the chain of circumstances by which a 
 girl assumed a masculine incarnation by which Felicite 
 des Touches made herself a man and a writer of how, 
 more fortunate than Madame de Stae'l, she remained free, 
 and so was more readily excused for her celebrity will, no 
 doubt, satisfy much curiosity, and justify the existence of one 
 of those monstrosities which stand up among mankind like 
 monuments, their fame being favored by their rarity for in 
 twenty centuries scarcely twenty great women are to be 
 counted. Hence, though she here plays but a secondary part, 
 as she had great influence over Calyste, and is a figure in the 
 literary history of the time, no one will be sorry if we pause 
 to study her for a rather longer time than modern fiction 
 usually allows. 
 
 In 1793 Mademoiselle Felicite des Touches found herself 
 an orphan. Thus her estates escaped the confiscation which 
 no doubt would have fallen on her father or brother. Her 
 father died on the loth of August, killed on the palace steps 
 among the defenders of the King, on whom he was in waiting 
 as major of the bodyguard. Her brother, a young member 
 of the corps, was massacred at les Carmes. Mademoiselle 
 des Touches was but two years old when her mother died of 
 grief a few days after this second blow. On her death-bed 
 Madame des Touches placed her little girl in the care of her
 
 62 BE A TRIX. 
 
 sister, a nun at Chelles. This nun, Madame de Faucombe, 
 very prudently took the child to Faucombe, an estate of some 
 extent near Nantes, belonging to Madame des Touches, where 
 she settled with three sisters from the convent. During the 
 last days of the Terror, the mob of Nantes demolished the 
 chateau and seized the sisters and Mademoiselle des Touches, 
 who were thrown into prison under a false charge of having 
 harbored emissaries from Pitt and from Coburg. The ninth 
 Thermidor saved them. Felicity's aunt died of the fright ; 
 two of the sisters fled from France ; the third handed the 
 little girl over to her nearest relation, Monsieur de Faucombe, 
 her mother's uncle, who lived at Nantes, and then joined her 
 companions in exile. 
 
 Monsieur de Faucombe, a man of sixty, had married a 
 young wife, to whom he left the management of his affairs. 
 He busied himself only with archaeology, a passion, or, to be 
 accurate, a mania, which helps old men to think themselves 
 alive. His ward's education was left entirely to chance. 
 Felicite, little cared for by a young woman who threw herself 
 into all the pleasures of the Emperor's reign, brought herself 
 up like a boy. She sat with Monsieur de Faucombe in his 
 library, and read whatever he might happen to be reading. 
 Thus she knew life well in theory, and preserved no inno- 
 cence of mind though virginal at heart. Her intelligence 
 wandered through all the impurities of science while her heart 
 remained pure. Her knowledge was something amazing, fed 
 by her passion for reading and well served by an excellent 
 memory. Thus, at eighteen, she was as learned as the authors 
 of to-day ought to be before trying to write. This prodigious 
 amount of study controlled her passions far better than a 
 convent life, which only inflames a young girl's imagination ; 
 this brain, crammed with undigested and unclassified informa- 
 tion, governed the heart of a child. Such a depravity of 
 mind, absolutely devoid of any influence on her chastity of 
 person, would have amazed a philosopher or an observer, if
 
 BEATRIX. 63 
 
 any one at Nantes could have suspected the fine qualities of 
 Mademoiselle des Touches. 
 
 The result was in inverse proportion to the cause : Felicite 
 had no predisposition toward evil ; she conceived of every- 
 thing by her intelligence, but held aloof from the facts. She 
 delighted old Faucombe and helped him in his works, writ- 
 ing three books for the worthy gentleman, who believed them 
 to be his own, for his spiritual paternity also was blind. Such 
 severe work, out of harmony with the development of her 
 girlhood, had its natural effect : Felicite fell ill, there was a 
 fever in her blood, her lungs were threatened with inflamma- 
 tion. The doctors ordered her horse-exercise and social 
 amusements. Mademoiselle des Touches became a splendid 
 horsewoman, and had recovered in a few months. 
 
 At eighteen she made her appearance in the world, where 
 she produced such a sensation that at Nantes she was never 
 called anything but the beautiful Mademoiselle des Touches. 
 But the adoration of which she was the object left her insen- 
 sible, and she had come to this by the influence of one of the 
 sentiments which are imperishable in a woman, however su- 
 perior she may be. Snubbed by her aunt and cousins, who 
 laughed at her studies and made fun of her distant manners, 
 assuming that she was incapable of being attractive, Felicite 
 aimed at being light and coquettish in short, a woman. She 
 had expected to find some interchange of ideas, some fascina- 
 tion on a level with her own lofty intelligence; she was dis- 
 gusted by the commonplaces of ordinary conversation and the 
 nonsense of flirtation ; above all, she was provoked by the 
 aristocratic airs of the military, to whom at that time every- 
 thing gave way. 
 
 She had, as a matter of course, neglected the drawing-room 
 arts. When she found herself less considered than the dolls 
 who could play the piano and make themselves agreeable by 
 singing ballads, she aspired to become a musician. She re- 
 tired into deep solitude and set to work to study unremittingly
 
 64 BEA TRIX. 
 
 under the guidance of the best master in the town. She was 
 rich, she sent for Steibelt to give her finishing lessons, to the 
 great astonishment of her neighbors. This princely outlay is 
 still remembered at Nantes. The master's stay there cost her 
 twelve thousand francs. She became at last a consummate 
 musician. Later, in Paris, she took lessons in harmony and 
 counterpoint, and composed two operas, which were im- 
 mensely successful, though the public never knew her secret. 
 These operas were ostensibly the work of Conti, one of the 
 most eminent artists of our day ; but this circumstance was 
 connected with the history of her heart and will be explained 
 presently. The mediocrity of provincial society wearied her 
 so excessively, her imagination was full of such grand ideas, that 
 she withdrew from all the drawing-rooms after reappearing for 
 a time to eclipse all other women by the splendor of her 
 beauty, to enjoy her triumph over the musical performers, and 
 win the devotion of all clever people ; still, after proving her 
 power to her two cousins and driving two lovers to despera- 
 tion, she came back to her books, to her piano, to the works 
 of Beethoven, and to old Faucombe. 
 
 In 1812 she was one-and-twenty ; the archaeologist ac- 
 counted to her for his management of her property ; and from 
 that time forth she herself controlled her fortune, consisting 
 of fifteen thousand francs a year from les Touches, her father's 
 estate ; twelve thousand francs, the income at that time from 
 the lands of Faucombe, which increased by a third when the 
 leases were renewed ; beside a capital sum of three hundred 
 thousand francs saved by her guardian. Felicite derived 
 nothing from her country training but an apprehension of 
 money matters, and that instinct for wise administration 
 which perhaps restores, in the provinces, the balance against 
 the constant tendency of capital to centre in Paris. She with- 
 drew her three hundred thousand francs from the bank where 
 the archaeologist had deposited them, and invested in consols 
 just at the time of the disastrous retreat from Moscow. Thus
 
 BEATRIX. 85 
 
 she had thirty thousand francs a year more. When all her 
 expenses were paid she had a surplus of fifty thousand francs 
 a year to be invested. 
 
 A girl of one-and-twenty, with such a power of will, was a 
 match for a man of thirty. Her intellect had gained immense 
 breadth and habits of criticism, which enabled her to judge 
 sanely of men and things, art and politics. Thenceforward 
 she purposed leaving Nantes ; but old Monsieur Faucombe fell 
 ill of the malady that carried him off. She was like a wife to 
 the old man ; she nursed him for eighteen months with the 
 devotion of a guardian angel, and closed his eyes at the very 
 time when Napoleon was fighting with Europe over the dead 
 body of France. She therefore postponed her departure for 
 Paris till the end of the war. 
 
 As a Royalist she flew to hail the return of the Bourbons to 
 Paris. She was welcomed there by the Grandlieus, with 
 whom she was distantly connected ; but then befell the catas- 
 trophe of the 2oth of March, and everything remained in 
 suspense. She had the opportunity of seeing on the spot this 
 last resurrection of the Empire, of admiring the "Grand 
 Army" which came out on the Champ de Mars, as in an 
 arena, to salute its Caesar before dying at Waterloo. Felicity's 
 great and lofty soul was captivated by the magical spectacle. 
 Political agitations and the fairy transformations of the theat- 
 rical drama, lasting for three months, and known as the Hun- 
 dred Days, absorbed her wholly, and preserved her from any 
 passion, in the midst of an upheaval that broke up the Royalist 
 circle in which she had first come out. The Grandlieus fol- 
 lowed the Bourbons to Ghent, leaving their house at Made- 
 moiselle des Touches' service. 
 
 Felicite, who could not accept a dependent position, bought 
 for the sum of a hundred and thirty thousand francs one of 
 the handsomest mansions in the Rue du Mont-Blanc, where 
 she settled on the return of the Bourbons in 1815 ; the garden 
 alone is worth two million francs now. Being accustomed to 
 5
 
 66 BEATRIX. 
 
 act on her own responsibility, Felicite soon took the habit of 
 independent action, which seems the privilege of men only. 
 In 1816 she was five-and-twenty. She knew nothing of mar- 
 riage ; she conceived of it only in her brain, judged of it by 
 its causes instead of observing its effect, and saw only its dis- 
 advantages. Her superior mind rebelled against the abdica- 
 tion which begins the life of a married woman ; she keenly felt 
 the preciousness of independence and had nothing but disgust 
 for the cares of motherhood. These details are necessary to 
 justify the anomalies that characterize Camille Maupin. She 
 never knew father or mother, she was her own mistress from 
 her childhood, her guardian was an old antiquary, chance 
 placed her in the domain of science and imagination, in the 
 literary world, instead of keeping her within the circle drawn 
 by the futile education given to women a mother's lectures 
 on dress, on the hypocritical proprieties and man-hunting 
 graces of her sex. And so, long before she became famous, 
 it could be seen at a glance that she had never played the doll. 
 
 Toward the end of the year 1817 Felicite des Touches per- 
 ceived that her face showed symptoms not indeed of fading, 
 but of the beginning of fatigue. She understood that her 
 beauty would suffer from the fact of her persistent celibacy ; 
 she was bent on remaining beautiful, for at that time she 
 prized her beauty. Knowledge warned her of the doom set 
 by Nature on her creations, which deteriorate as much by 
 misapplication as by ignorance of her laws. The vision of her 
 aunt's emaciated face rose before her and made her shudder. 
 Thus placed between marriage and passion, she determined to 
 remain free ; but she no longer scorned the homage that she 
 met with on all hands. 
 
 At the date when this story begins she was almost the same 
 as she had been in 1817. Eighteen years had passed over her 
 and left her still untouched ; at the age of forty she might have 
 called herself twenty-five. Thus a picture of her in 1836 will 
 represent her as she was in 1817. Women who know under
 
 BEATRIX. 67 
 
 what conditions of temperament and beauty a woman must 
 live to resist the attacks of time will understand how and why 
 Felicite des Touches enjoyed such high privileges, as they 
 study a portrait for which the most glowing colors of the 
 palette and the richest setting must be brought into play. 
 
 Brittany offers a singular problem in the predominance of 
 brown hair, brown eyes, and a dark complexion, in a country 
 so close to England, where the atmospheric conditions are so 
 nearly similar. Does the question turn on the wider one of 
 race or on unobserved physical influences ? Scientific men 
 will some day perhaps inquire into the cause of this peculi- 
 arity, which does not exist in the neighboring province of 
 Normandy. Pending its solution, the strange fact lies before 
 us that fair women are rare among the women of Brittany, 
 who almost always have the brilliant eyes of Southerners ; 
 but, instead of showing the tall figures and serpentine grace 
 of Italy or Spain, they are usually small, short, with neat, set; 
 figures, excepting some women of the upper classes which 
 have been crossed by aristocratic alliances. 
 
 Mademoiselle des Touches, a thoroughbred Bretonne, is of 
 medium height, about five feet, though she looks taller. This 
 illusion is produced by the character of her countenance, 
 which gives her dignity. She has the complexion which is 
 characteristic of Italian beauty, pale olive by day, and white 
 under artificial light ; you might think it was animated ivory. 
 Light glides over such a skin as over a polished surface, it 
 glistens on it ; only strong emotion can bring a faint flush to 
 the middle of each cheek, and it disappears at once. This 
 peculiarity gives her face the placidity of a savage. The 
 face, long rather than oval, resembles that of some beautiful 
 Isis in the bas-reliefs of Egina ; it has the purity of a Sphinx's 
 head, polished by desert fires, lovingly touched by the flame 
 of the Egyptian sun. Her hair, black and thick, falls in 
 plaited loops over her neck, like the head-dress with ridged 
 double locks of the statues at Memphis, accentuating very
 
 68 BEA TRIX. 
 
 finely the general severity of her features. She has a full, 
 broad forehead, bossy at the temples, bright with its smooth 
 surface on which the light lingers, and moulded like that of a 
 hunting Diana ; a powerful, willful brow, calm and still. 
 The eyebrows, strongly arched, bend over eyes in which the 
 fire sparkles now and again like that of fixed stars. The white 
 of the eye is not bluish, nor veined with red, nor is it pure 
 white ; its texture looks horny, still it is warm in tone ; the 
 black centre has an orange ring round the edge ; it is bronze 
 set in gold but living gold, animated bronze. The pupil is 
 deep. It is not, as in some eyes, lined, as it were, like a 
 mirror, reflecting the light, and making them look like the 
 eyes of tigers and cats ; it has not that terrible fixity of gaze 
 that makes sensitive persons shiver ; but this depth has infini- 
 tude, just as the brightness of mirror-eyes has finality. The 
 gaze of the observer can sink and lose itself in that soul, 
 which can shrink and retire as rapidly as it can flash forth 
 from those velvet eyes. In a moment of passion Camille 
 Maupin's eye is superb; the gold of her glance lights up the 
 yellowish white, and the whole flashes fire j but when at rest 
 it is dull, the torpor of deep thought often gives it a look of 
 stupidity ; and when the light of the soul is absent, the lines 
 of the face also look sad. The lashes are short, but as black 
 and thick-set as the hair of an ermine's tail. The lids are 
 tawny, and netted with fine red veins, giving them at once 
 strength and elegance, two qualities hard to combine in 
 women. All round the eyes there is not the faintest wrinkle 
 or stain. Here again you will think of Egyptian granite 
 mellowed by time. Only the cheek-bones, though softly 
 rounded, are more prominent than in most women, and con- 
 firm the impression of strength stamped on the face. 
 
 Her nose, narrow and straight, has high-cut nostrils, with 
 enough of passionate dilation to show the rosy gleam of their 
 delicate lining ; this nose is well set on to the brow, to which 
 it is joined by an exquisite curve, and it is perfectly white to
 
 BEATRIX. 69 
 
 the very tip a tip endowed with a sort of proper motion that 
 works wonders whenever Camille is angry, indignant, or re- 
 bellious. There especially as Talma noted the rage of 
 irony of lofty souls finds expression. Rigid nostrils betray a 
 certain shallowness. The nose of a miser never quivers, it is 
 tightly set like his lips ; everything in his face is as close shut 
 as himself. 
 
 Camille's mouth, arched at the corners, is brightly red ; the 
 lips, full of blood, supply that living, impulsive carmine that 
 gives them such infinite charm and may reassure the lover 
 who might be alarmed by the grave majesty of the face. The 
 upper lip is thin, the furrow beneath the nose dents it low 
 down, like a bow, which gives peculiar emphasis to her scorn. 
 Camille has no difficulty in expressing anger. This pretty lip 
 meets the broader red edge of a lower lip that is exquisitely 
 kind, full of love, and carved, it might be, by Phidias, as the 
 edge of an opened pomegranate, which it resembles in color. 
 The chin is round and firm, a little heavy, but expressing de- 
 termination, and finishing well this royal, if not goddess-like, 
 profile. It is necessary to add that below the nose the lip is 
 faintly shaded by a down that is wholly charming; nature 
 would have blundered if she had not there placed that tender 
 smoky tinge. 
 
 The ear is most delicately formed, a sign of other concealed 
 daintinesses. The bust broad, the bosom small but not flat, 
 the hips slender but graceful. The slope of the back is mag- 
 nificent, more suggestive of the Bacchus than of the Venus 
 Callipyge. Herein we see a detail that distinguishes almost 
 all famous women from the rest of their sex ; they have in this 
 a vague resemblance to men; they have neither the pliancy 
 nor the freedom of line that we see in women destined by 
 nature to be mothers ; their gait is unbroken by a gentle sway. 
 This observation is, indeed, two-edged ; it has its counterpart 
 in men whose hips have a resemblance to those of women 
 men who are cunning, sly, false, and cowardly.
 
 70 BE A TRIX. 
 
 Camille's head, instead of having a hollow at the nape of 
 the neck, is set on her shoulders with a swelling outline with- 
 out an inward curve, an unmistakable sign of power ; and 
 this neck, in some attitudes, has folds of athletic firmness. 
 The muscles attaching the upper arm, splendidly moulded, are 
 those of a colossal woman. The arm is powerfully modeled, 
 ending in wrists of English slenderness and pretty delicate 
 hands, plump and full of dimples, finished off with pink nails 
 cut to an almond shape, and well set in the flesh. Her hands 
 are of a whiteness which proclaims that all the body, full, 
 firm, and solid, is of a quite different tone from her face. 
 The cold, steadfast carriage of her head is contradicted by the 
 ready mobility of the lips, their varying expression, and the 
 sensitive nostrils of an artist. 
 
 Still, in spite of this exciting promise, not wholly visible to 
 the profane, there is something provoking in the calmness of 
 this countenance. The face is melancholy and serious rather 
 than gracious, stamped with the sadness of constant medita- 
 tion. Mademoiselle des Touches listens more than she speaks. 
 She is alarming by her silence and that look of deep scrutiny. 
 Nobody among really well-informed persons can ever have 
 seen her without thinking of the real Cleopatra, the little 
 brown woman who so nearly changed the face of the earth ; 
 but in Camille the animal is so perfect, so homogeneous, so 
 truly leonine, that a man with anything of the Turk in him 
 regrets the embodiment of so great a mind in such a frame, 
 and wishes it were altogether woman. Every one fears lest he 
 may find there the strange corruption of a diabolical soul. 
 Do not cold analysis and positive ideas throw their light upon 
 the passions in this unwedded soul? In her does not judg- 
 ment take the place of feeling? Or, a still more terrible 
 phenomenon, does she not feel and judge both together? 
 Her brain being omnipotent, can she stop where other women 
 stop ? Has the intellectual powers left the affections weak ? 
 Can she be gracious ? Can she condescend to the pathetic
 
 SEA TR1X. 71 
 
 trifles by which a woman busies, amuses, and interests the 
 man she loves ? Does she not crush a sentiment at once if it 
 does not answer to the infinite that she apprehends and con- 
 templates? Who can fill up the gulfs in her eyes? 
 
 We fear lest we should find in her some mysterious element 
 of unsubdued virginity. The strength of a woman ought to 
 be merely symbolical ; we are frightened at finding it real. 
 Camille Maupin is in some degree the living image of Schiller's 
 Isis, hidden in the depths of the temple, at whose feet the 
 priests found the dying gladiators who had dared to consult 
 her. Her various "affairs," believed in by the world, and 
 not denied by Camille herself, confirm the doubts suggested 
 by her appearance. But perhaps she enjoys this calumny? 
 The character of her beauty has not been without effect on 
 her reputation ; it has helped her, just as her fortune and 
 position have upheld her in the midst of society. If a sculptor 
 should wish to make an admirable statue of Brittany, he might 
 copy Mademoiselle des Touches. Such a sanguine, bilious 
 temperament alone can withstand the action of time. The 
 perennially nourished texture of such a skin, as it were var- 
 nished, is the only weapon given to women by nature to ward 
 off wrinkles, which in Camille are hindered also by the pas- 
 sivity of her features. 
 
 In 1817 this enchanting woman threw open her house to 
 artists, famous authors, learned men, and journalists, the men 
 to whom she was instinctively attracted. She had a drawing- 
 room like that of Baron Gerard, where the aristocracy mingled 
 with distinguished talents and the cream of Parisian woman- 
 hood. Mademoiselle des Touches' family connections and 
 her fine fortune, now augmented by that of her aunt the nun, 
 protected her in her undertaking a difficult one in Paris of 
 forming a circle. Her independence was one cause of her 
 success. Many ambitious mothers dreamed of getting her to 
 marry a son whose wealth was disproportioned to the splendor 
 of his armorial bearings. Certain peers of France, attracted
 
 72 BEATRIX. 
 
 by her eighty thousand francs a year, and tempted by her 
 splendid house and establishment, brought the strictest and 
 most fastidious ladies of their family. The diplomatic world, 
 on the lookout for wit and amusement, came and found pleas- 
 ure there. 
 
 Thus Mademoiselle des Touches, the centre of so many 
 interests, could study the different comedies which all men, 
 even the most distinguished, are led to play by passion, ava- 
 rice, or ambition. She soon saw the world as it really is, and 
 was so fortunate as not to fall at once into such an absorbing 
 love as engrosses a woman's intellect and faculties and pre- 
 vents her wholesome judgment. Generally a woman feels, 
 enjoys, and judges, each in turn ; hence three ages, the last 
 coinciding with the sad period of old age. To Felicite the 
 order was reversed. Her youth was shrouded in the snows 
 of science, the chill of thoughtfulness. This transposition 
 also explains the oddity of her life and the character of her 
 talents. She was studying men at the age when most women 
 see but one ; she despised what they admire ; she detected 
 falsehood in the flatteries they accept as truth ; she laughed at 
 what makes them serious. 
 
 This contradictory state lasted a long time ; it had a dis- 
 astrous termination ; it was her fate to find her first love, 
 new-born and tender in her heart, at an age when women are 
 required by nature to renounce love. Her first entanglement 
 was kept so secret that no one ever knew of it. Felicite, like 
 all women who believe in the commonsense of their feelings, 
 was led to count on finding a beautiful soul in a beautiful 
 body; she fell in love with a face and discovered all the 
 foolishness of a lady's man, who thought of her merely as a 
 woman. It took her some time to get over her disgust and 
 this mad connection. Another man guessed her trouble, and 
 consoled her without looking for any return, or at any rate he 
 concealed his purpose. Felicit thought she had found the 
 magnanimity of heart and mind that the dandy had lacked.
 
 BE A TRIX. 73 
 
 This man had one of the most original intellects of the day. 
 He himself wrote under a pseudonym, and his first works re- 
 vealed him as an admirer of Italy. Felicit must needs travel 
 or perpetuate the only form of ignorance in which she re- 
 mained. This man, a skeptic and a scoffer, took Felicite to 
 study the land of art. This famous "Anonymous " may be 
 regarded as Camille Maupin's teacher and creator. He re- 
 duced her vast information to order, he added to it a knowl- 
 edge of the masterpieces of which Italy is full, and gave her 
 that subtle and ingenious tone, epigrammatic and yet deep, 
 which is characteristic of his talent always a little eccentric 
 in its expression but modified in Camille Maupin by the 
 delicate feeling and the ingenious turn natural to women ; he 
 inoculated her with a taste for the works of English and Ger- 
 man literature, and made her learn the two languages while 
 traveling. 
 
 At Rome, in 1820, Mademoiselle des Touches found herself 
 deserted for an Italian. But for this disaster she might never 
 have become really famous. Napoleon once said that Misfor- 
 tune was midwife to Genius. This event also gave Made- 
 moiselle des Touches at once and for ever the scorn of man- 
 kind, which is her great strength. Felicite was now dead 
 and Camille was born. 
 
 She returned to Paris in the company of Conti, the great 
 musician, for whom she wrote the libretti of two operas ; but 
 she had no illusions left, and became, though the world did 
 not know it, a sort of female Don Juan without either debts 
 or conquests. Encouraged by success, she published the two 
 volumes of dramas which immediately placed Camille Maupin 
 among the anonymous celebrities. She told the story of her 
 betrayed love in an admirable little romance, one of the 
 masterpieces of the time. This book, a dangerous example, 
 was compared and on a level with "Adolphe," a horrible 
 lament, of which the counterpart was found in Camille's tale. 
 The delicate nature of her literary disguise is not yet fully
 
 74 BEATRIX. 
 
 understood ; some refined intelligences still see nothing in it 
 but the magnanimity that subjects a man to criticism and 
 screens a woman from fame by allowing her to remain un- 
 known. 
 
 In spite of herself, her reputation grew every day, as much 
 by the influence of her Salon as for her repartees, the sound- 
 ness of her judgment, and the solidity of her acquirements. 
 She was regarded as an authority, her witticisms were re- 
 peated, she could not abdicate the functions with which 
 Parisian society invested her. She became a recognized excep- 
 tion. The fashionable world bowed to the talent and the 
 wealth of this strange girl ; it acknowledged and sanctioned 
 her independence ; women admired her gifts and men her 
 beauty. Indeed, her conduct was always ruled by the social 
 proprieties. Her friendships seemed to be entirely Platonic. 
 There was nothing of the authoress the female author about 
 her ; as a woman of the world Mademoiselle des Touches is 
 delightful weak at appropriate moments, indolent, coquettish, 
 devoted to dress, charmed with the trivialities that appeal to 
 women and poets. 
 
 She perfectly understood that after Madame de Stael there 
 was no place in this century for a Sappho, and that no Ninon 
 could exist in Paris when there were no great lords, no volup- 
 tuous court. She is the Ninon of intellect ; she adores art 
 and artists ; she goes from the poet to the musician, from the 
 sculptor to the prose-writer. She is full of a noble generosity 
 that verges on credulity, so ready is she to pity misfortune 
 and to disdain the fortunate. Since 1830 she has lived in a 
 chosen circle of proved friends, who truly love and esteem 
 each other. She dwells far removed from such turmoil as 
 Madame de Stael's, and not less far from political conflict ; 
 and she makes great fun of Camille Maupin as the younger 
 brother of George Sand,* of whom she speaks as "Brother 
 Cain," for this new glory has killed her own. Mademoiselle 
 * See Preface.
 
 BEATRIX. 75 
 
 des Touches admires her happier rival with angelic readiness, 
 without any feeling of jealousy or covert envy. 
 
 Until the time when this story opens she had led the hap- 
 piest life conceivable for a woman who is strong enough to 
 take care of herself. She had come to les Touches five or 
 six times between 1817 and 1834. Her first visit had been 
 made just after her first disenchantment, in 1818. Her house 
 at les Touches was uninhabitable ; she sent her steward to 
 Guerande, and took his little house at les Touches. As yet 
 she had no suspicion of her coming fame ; she was sad, she 
 would see no one ; she wanted to contemplate herself, as it 
 were, after this great catastrophe. She wrote to a lady in 
 Paris, a friend, explaining her intentions, and giving instruc- 
 tions for furniture to be sent for les Touches. The things 
 came by ship to Nantes, were transhipped to a smaller boat 
 for le Croisic, and thence were carried, not without difficulty, 
 across the sands to les Touches. She sent for workmen from 
 Paris, and settled herself at les Touches, which she particu- 
 larly liked. She meant to meditate there on the events of 
 life, as in a little private chartreuse. 
 
 At the beginning of winter she returned to Paris. Then 
 the little town of Guerande was torn by diabolical curiosity ; 
 nothing was talked of but the Asiatic luxury of Mademoiselle 
 des Touches. The notary, her agent, gave tickets to admit 
 visitors to les Touches, and people came from Batz, from le 
 Croisic, and from Savenay. This curiosity produced in two 
 years the enormous sum for the gatekeeper and gardener of 
 seventeen francs. 
 
 Mademoiselle did not come there again till two years later, 
 on her return from Italy, and arrived by le Croisic. For 
 some time no one knew that she was at Guerande, and with 
 her Conti the composer. Her appearance at intervals did 
 not greatly excite the curiosity of the little town of Guerande. 
 Her steward and the notary at most had been in the secret of 
 Camille Maupin's fame. By this time, however, new ideas
 
 76 SEA TRIX. 
 
 had made some little progress at Guerande, and several per- 
 sons knew of Mademoiselle des Touches' double existence. 
 The postmaster got letters addressed to " Camille Maupin, 
 aux Touches." 
 
 At last the veil was rent. In a district so essentially Cath- 
 olic, old-world, and full of prejudices, the strange life led by 
 this illustrious and unmarried woman could not fail to start 
 the rumors which had frightened the Abbe Grimont ; it could 
 never be understood ; she seemed an anomaly. 
 
 Felicite was not alone at les Touches ; she had a guest. 
 This visitor was Claud Vignon, the haughty and contemptu- 
 ous writer, who, though he has never published anything but 
 criticism, has impressed the public and literary circles with 
 an idea of his superiority. Felicite, who for the last seven 
 years had made this writer welcome, as she had a hundred 
 others authors, journalists, artists, and people of fashion 
 who knew his inelastic temperament, his idleness, his utter 
 poverty, his carelessness, and his disgust at things in general, 
 seemed by her behavior to him to wish to marry him. She 
 explained her conduct, incomprehensible to her friends, 
 by her ambition and the horror she felt of growing old ; 
 she wanted to place the rest of her life in the hands of a 
 superior man for whom her fortune might be a stepping- 
 stone, and who would uphold her importance in the literary 
 world. So she had carried off Claud Vignon from Paris to 
 les Touches, as an eagle takes a kid in his talons, to study 
 him and take some vehement step ; but she was deceiving 
 both Calyste and Claud she was not thinking of marriage. 
 She was in the most violent throes that can convulse a soul 
 so firm as hers, for she found herself the dupe of her own in- 
 tellect, and saw her life illuminated too late by the sunshine 
 of love, glowing as it glows in the heart of a girl of twenty. 
 
 Now for a picture of Camille's " Chartreuse." 
 
 At a few hundred paces from Guerande the terra firma of 
 Brittany ends and the salt-marshes and sand-hills begin. A
 
 BEATRIX. 77 
 
 rugged road, to which vehicles are unknown, leads down a 
 ravine to the desert of sands left by the sea as neutral ground 
 between the waters and the land. This desert consists of 
 barren hills, of "pans" of various sizes edged with a ridge 
 of clay, in which the salt is collected, of the creek which 
 divides the mainland from the island of le Croisic. Though 
 in geography le Croisic is a peninsula, as it is attached to 
 Brittany only by the strand between it and the Bourg de Batz, 
 a shifting bottom which it is very difficult to cross, it may be 
 regarded as an island. At an angle where the road from le 
 Croisic to Guerande joins the road on the mainland stands a 
 country house, inclosed in a large garden remarkable for its 
 wrung and distorted pine trees some spreading parasol-like 
 at the top, others stripped of their boughs, and all showing 
 red scarred trunks where the bark has been torn away. These 
 trees, martyrs to the storm, growing literally in spite of wind 
 and tide, prepare the mind for the melancholy and strange 
 spectacle of the salt-marshes and the sand-hills looking like 
 solidified waves. 
 
 The house, well built of schistose stone and cement held 
 together by courses of granite, has no pretensions to archi- 
 tecture ; the eye sees only a bare wall, regularly pierced by 
 the windows ; those on the second floor have large panes, on 
 the first floor small quarries. Above the second floor there 
 are lofts, under an enormously high-pointed roof, with a gable 
 at each end, and two large dormers on each side. Under 
 the angle of each gable a window, looks out, like a Cyclops' 
 eye, to the west over the sea, to the east at Guerande. One 
 side of the house faces the Guerande road; the other the 
 waste over which le Croisic is seen, and beyond that the open 
 sea. A little stream escapes through an opening in the garden- 
 wall on the side by the road to le Croisic, which it crosses, 
 and is soon lost in the sand or in the little pool of salt-water 
 inclosed by the sand-hills and marsh-land, being left there by 
 the arm of the sea.
 
 78 BEATRIX. 
 
 A few fathoms of roadway, constructed in this break in the 
 soil, leads to the house. It is entered through a gate ; the 
 courtyard is surrounded by unpretentious rural outhouses 
 a stable, a coach-house, a gardener's cottage with a poultry- 
 yard and sheds adjoining, of more use to the gatekeeper than 
 to his mistress. The gray tones of this building harmonize 
 delightfully with the scenery it stands in. The grounds are 
 an oasis in this desert, on the edge of which the traveler has 
 passed a mud-hovel, where custom-house officers keep guard. 
 The house, with no lands, or rather of which the lands lie in 
 the district of Guerande, derives an income of ten thousand 
 francs from the marshes and from farms scattered about the 
 mainland. This was the fief of les Touches, deprived of its 
 feudal revenues by the Revolution. Les Touches is still a 
 property; the marshmen still speak of the Castle, and they 
 would talk of the Lord if the owner were not a woman. 
 When Felicite restored les Touches, she was too much of an 
 artist to think of altering the desolate-looking exterior which 
 gives this lonely building the appearance of a prison. Only 
 the gate was improved by the addition of two brick piers with 
 an architrave, under which a carriage can drive in. The court- 
 yard was planted. 
 
 The arrangement of the first floor is common to most coun- 
 try houses built a hundred years ago. The dwelling was 
 evidently constructed on the ruins of a little castle perched 
 there as a link connecting le Croisic and Batz with Guerande, 
 and lording it over the marshes. A hall had been contrived 
 at the foot of the stairs. The first room is a large wainscoted 
 anteroom where Felicite has a billiard-table ; next comes an 
 immense drawing-room with six windows, two of which, at the 
 gable-end, form doors leading to the garden, down ten steps, 
 corresponding in the arrangement of the room with the door 
 into the billiard-room and that into the dining-room. The 
 kitchen, at the other end, communicates with the dining-room 
 through the pantry. The staircase is between the billiard-
 
 BEATRIX. 79 
 
 room and the kitchen, which formerly had a door into the 
 hall ; this Mademoiselle des Touches closed, and opened one 
 to the courtyard. 
 
 The loftiness and spaciousness of the rooms enabled Camille 
 to treat this first floor with noble simplicity. She was careful 
 not to introduce any elaboration of detail. The drawing- 
 room, painted gray, has old mahogany furniture with green 
 silk cushions, white cotton window-curtains bordered with 
 green, two consoles, and a round table ; in the middle is a 
 carpet with a large pattern in squares ; over the huge chimney- 
 place are an immense mirror and a clock representing Apollo's 
 car, between candelabra of the style of the Empire. The bil- 
 liard-room has gray cotton curtains, bordered with green, 
 and two divans. The dining-room furniture consists of four 
 large mahogany sideboards, a table, twelve mahogany chairs 
 with horsehair seats, and some magnificent engravings by 
 Audran in mahogany frames. From the middle of the ceiling 
 hangs an elegant lamp such as were usual on the staircases of 
 fine houses, with two lights. All the ceilings and the beams 
 supporting them are painted to imitate wood. The old stair- 
 case, of wood with a heavy balustrade, is carpeted with green 
 from top to bottom. 
 
 On the second floor were two sets of rooms divided by the 
 staircase. Camille chose for her own those which look over 
 the marshes, the sand-hills, and the sea, arranging them as a 
 little sitting-room, a bedroom, a dressing-room, and a study. 
 On the other side of the house she contrived two bedrooms, 
 each with a dressing-closet and anteroom. The servants' 
 rooms are above. The two spare rooms had at first only the 
 most necessary furniture. The artistic luxuries for which she 
 had sent to Paris she reserved for her own rooms. In this 
 gloomy and melancholy dwelling, looking out on that gloomy 
 and melancholy landscape, she wanted to have the most fan- 
 tastic creations of art. Her sitting-room is hung with fine 
 Gobelin tapestry, set in wonderfully carved frames. The,
 
 80 BEATRIX. 
 
 windows are draped with heavy antique stuffs, a splendid 
 brocade with a doubly shot ground, gold and red, yellow and 
 green, falling in many bold folds, edged with royal fringes 
 and tassels worthy of the most splendid baldachins of the 
 church. The room contains a cabinet which her agent found 
 for her, worth seven or eight thousand francs now, a table of 
 carved ebony, a writing bureau, brought from Venice, with a 
 hundred drawers, inlaid with arabesques of ivory, and some 
 beautiful Gothic furniture. There are pictures and statuettes, 
 the best that an artist friend could select in the old curiosity 
 shops, where the dealers never suspected in 1818 the price 
 their treasures would afterward fetch. On her tables stand 
 fine Chinese vases of grotesque designs. The carpet is Per- 
 sian, smuggled in across the sand-hills. 
 
 Her bedroom is in the Louis XV. style, and a perfectly 
 exact imitation. Here we have the carved wooden bedstead, 
 painted white, with the arched head and side, and figures of 
 Loves throwing flowers, the lower part stuffed and upholstered 
 in brocaded silk, the crown above decorated with four bunches 
 of feathers ; the walls are hung with India chintz draped 
 with silk cords and knots. The fireplace is finished with 
 rustic work ; the clock of ormolu, between two large vases of 
 the choicest blue Sevres mounted in gilt copper ; the mirror 
 is framed to match. The Pompadour toilet-table has its lace 
 hangings and its glass ; and then there is all the fanciful small 
 furniture, the duchesses, the couch, the little formal settee, the 
 easy-chair with a quilted back, the lacquer screen, the curtains 
 of silk to match the chairs, lined with pink satin and draped 
 with thick ropes ; the carpet woven at la Savonnerie in short, 
 all the elegant, rich, sumptuous, and fragile things among 
 which the ladies of the eighteenth century made love. 
 
 The study, absolutely modern, in contrast with the gallant 
 suggestiveness of the days of Louis XV., has pretty mahogany 
 furniture. The bookshelves are full ; it looks like a boudoir ; 
 there is a divan in it. It is crowded with the dainty trifles
 
 BE A TRIX. 81 
 
 that women love : books that lock up, boxes for handkerchiefs 
 and gloves; pictured lamp-shades, statuettes, Chinese gro- 
 tesques, writing-cases, two or three albums, paper-weights; in 
 short, every fashionable toy. The curious visitor notes with 
 uneasy surprise a pair of pistols, a narghileh, a riding-whip, a 
 hammock, a pipe, a fowling-piece, a blouse, some tobacco, 
 and a soldier's knapsack a motley collection characteristic 
 of Felicite. 
 
 Every lofty soul on looking around must be struck by the 
 peculiar beauty of the landscape that spreads its breadth be- 
 yond the grounds, the last vegetation of the continent. Those 
 dismal squares of brackish water, divided by little, white dykes 
 on which the marshman walks, all in white, to rake out and 
 collect the salt and heap it up ; that tract over which salt- 
 vapors rise, forbidding birds to fly across, while they at the 
 same time choke every attempt at plant-life ; those sands 
 where the eye can find no comfort but in the stiff evergreen 
 leaves of a small plant with rose-colored flowers and in the 
 Carthusian pink; that pool of sea-water, the sand of the 
 dunes, and the view of le Croisic a miniature town dropped 
 like Venice into the sea; and beyond, the immensity of 
 ocean, tossing a fringe of foam over the granite reefs to em- 
 phasize their wild forms this scene elevates while it saddens 
 the spirit, the effect always produced in the end by anything 
 sublime which makes us yearn regretfully for unknown things 
 that the soul apprehends at unattainable heights. Indeed, 
 these wild harmonies have no charm for any but lofty natures 
 and great sorrows. This desert, not unbroken, where the 
 sunbeams are sometimes reflected from the water and the 
 sand, whiten the houses of Batz, and ripple over the roofs of 
 le Croisic with a pitiless dazzling glare, would absorb Camille 
 for days at a time. She rarely turned to the delightful green 
 views, the thickets, and flowery hedges that garland Guerande 
 like a bride, with flowers and posies and veils and festoons. 
 She was suffering dreadful and unknown misery. 
 6
 
 82 BE A TRIX. 
 
 As Calyste saw the weathercocks of the two gables peeping 
 above the furze-bushes of the high-road and the gnarled heads 
 of the fir trees, the air seemed to him lighter; to him Guer- 
 ande was a prison, his life was at les Touches. Who can- 
 not understand the attractions it held for a simple-minded 
 lad? 
 
 His love, like that of Cherubino, which had brought him to 
 the feet of a personage who had been a great idea to him 
 before being a woman, naturally survived her inexplicable 
 rejections. This feeling, which is rather the desire for love 
 than love itself, had no doubt failed to elude the inexorable 
 analysis of Camille Maupin, and hence, perhaps, her repulses, 
 a nobleness of mind misunderstood by Calyste. And, then, 
 the marvels of modern civilization seemed all the more daz- 
 zling here by contrast with Guerande, where the poverty of 
 the Guenics was considered splendor. Here, spread before 
 the ravished eyes of this ignorant youth, who had never seen 
 anything but the yellow broom of Brittany and the heaths of 
 la Vendee, lay the Parisian glories of a new world ; just as 
 here he heard an unknown and sonorous language. Calyste 
 here listened to the poetical tones of the finest music, the 
 amazing music of the nineteenth century, in which melody 
 and harmony vie with each other as equal powers, and singing 
 and orchestration have achieved incredible perfection. He 
 here saw the works of the most prodigal painting that of the 
 French school of to-day, the inheritor of Italy, Spain, and 
 Flanders, in which talent has become so common that our 
 eyes and hearts, weary of so much talent, cry out loudly for a 
 genius. He here read those works of imagination, those 
 astounding creations of modern literature, which produce 
 their fullest effect on a fresh young heart. In short, our 
 grand nineteenth century rose before him in all its magnifi- 
 cence as a whole its criticism, its struggles for every kind of 
 renovation, its vast experiments, almost all measured by the 
 standard of the giant who nursed its infancy in his flag, and
 
 BEATRIX. 83 
 
 sang it hymns to an accompaniment of the terrible bass of 
 cannon. 
 
 Initiated by F6licit6 into all this grandeur, which perhaps 
 escapes the ken of those who put it on the stage and are its 
 makers, Calyste satisfied at les Touches the love of the mar- 
 velous that is so strong at his age, and that guileless admira- 
 tion, the first love of a growing man, which is so wroth with 
 criticism. It is so natural that flame should fly upward ! He 
 heard the light Parisian banter, the graceful irony which re- 
 vealed to him what French wit should be, and awoke in him 
 a thousand ideas that had been kept asleep by the mild torpor 
 of home life. To him Mademoiselle des Touches was the 
 mother of his intelligence, a mother with whom he might 
 be in love without committing a crime. She was so kind to 
 him: a woman is always adorably kind to a man in whom she 
 has inspired a passion, even though she should not seem to 
 share it. 
 
 At this very moment Felicite was giving him music lessons. 
 To him the spacious rooms on the first floor, looking all the 
 larger by reason of the skillful arrangement of the lawns and 
 shrubs in the little park; the staircase, lined with masterpieces 
 of Italian patience carved wood, Venetian and Florentine 
 mosaics, bas-reliefs in ivory and marble, curious toys made to 
 the order of the fairies of the Middle Ages ; the upper rooms, 
 so cozy, so dainty, so voluptuously artistic, were all informed 
 and living with a light, a spirit, an atmosphere, that wer$ 
 supernatural, indefinable, and strange. The modern world 
 with its poetry was in strong contrast to the solemn patriarchal 
 world of Guerande, and the two systems here were face to face. 
 On one hand the myriad effects of art ; on the other the sim* 
 plicity of wild Brittany. No one, then, need ask why the 
 poor boy, as weary as his mother was of the subtleties otmouche, 
 always felt a qualm as he entered this house, as he rang the 
 bell, as he crossed the yard. It is to be observed that these 
 presentiments cease to agitate men of riper growth, inured to
 
 84 BEATRIX. 
 
 the mishaps of life, whom nothing can surprise, and who are 
 prepared for everything. 
 
 As he went in, Calyste heard the sound of the piano; he 
 thought that Camille Maupin was in the drawing-room ; but 
 on entering the billiard-room he could no longer hear it. 
 Camille was playing, no doubt, on the little upright piano, 
 brought for her from England by Conti, which stood in the 
 little drawing-room above. As he mounted the stairs, where 
 the thick carpet completely deadened the sound of footsteps, 
 Calyste went more and more slowly. He perceived that this 
 music was something extraordinary. Felicite was playing to 
 herself alone ; she was talking to herself. Instead of going 
 in, the young man sat down on a Gothic settle with a green 
 velvet cushion, on the landing, beneath the window, which 
 was artistically framed in carved wood stained with walnut- 
 juice and varnished. 
 
 Nothing could be more mysteriously melancholy than 
 Camille's improvisation ; it might have been the cry of a soul 
 wailing a De profundis to its God from the depths of the 
 grave. 
 
 The young lover knew it for the prayer of love in despair, the 
 tenderness of resigned grief, the sighing of controlled anguish. 
 
 Camille was amplifying, varying, and changing the introduc- 
 tion to the cavatina, " Gr&ce pour tot, grdce pour mot," from 
 the fourth act of "Robert le Diable." Suddenly she began 
 to sing the scena in heartrending tones, and broke off. Calyste 
 went in and saw the reason of this abrupt ending. Poor 
 Camille Maupin, beautiful Felicite, turned to him without 
 affectation, her face bathed in tears, took out her handker- 
 chief to wipe them away, and said simply 
 
 " Good-morning." 
 
 She was charming in her morning dress ; on her head was 
 one of the red chenille nets at that time in fashion, from 
 which the shining curls of her black hair fell on her neck. 
 A very short pelisse formed a modern Greek tunic, showing
 
 BEATRIX. 85 
 
 below it cambric trousers with embroidered frills, and the 
 prettiest scarlet and gold Turkish slippers. 
 
 "What is the matter?" asked Calyste. 
 
 "He has not come back," she replied, standing up at the 
 window and looking out over the sands, the creek, and the 
 marshes. 
 
 This reply accounted for her costume. Camille, it would 
 seem, was expecting Claud Vignon, and she was fretted as a 
 woman who had wasted her pains. A man of thirty would 
 have seen this. Calyste only saw that she was unhappy. 
 
 " You are anxious? " he asked. 
 
 " Yes," she replied, with a melancholy that this boy could 
 not fathom. 
 
 Calyste was hastily leaving the room. 
 
 " Well, where are you going? " 
 
 "To find him." 
 
 "Dear child!" said she, taking his hand, and drawing 
 him to her with one of those tearful looks which to a young 
 soul is the highest reward. " Are you mad ? Where do you 
 think you can find him on this shore?" 
 
 "I will find him." 
 
 "Your mother will suffer mortal anguish. Beside stay. 
 Come, I insist upon it," and she made him sit down on the 
 divan. " Do not break your heart about me. These tears 
 that you see are the tears we take pleasure in. There is a 
 faculty in women which men have not : that of abandoning 
 ourselves to our nerves by indulging our feelings to excess. 
 By imagining certain situations, and giving way to the idea, 
 we work ourselves up to tears, sometimes into a serious condi- 
 tion and real illness. A woman's fancies are not the sport 
 of the mind merely, but of the heart. You have come at the 
 right moment ; solitude is bad for me. I am not deluded by 
 the wish he felt to go without me to study le Croisic and its 
 rocks, the Bourg de Batz, and its sands and salt-marshes. I 
 knew he would spend several days over it instead of one. He
 
 86 BEATRIX. 
 
 wished to leave us two alone ; he is jealous, or rather he is 
 acting jealousy. You are young; you are handsome." 
 
 "Why did you not tell me sooner? Must I come no 
 more?" asked Calyste, failing to restrain a tear that rolled 
 down his cheek, and touched Felicite deeply. 
 
 " You are an angel ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 Then she lightly sang Mathilde's strain "Restez" out of 
 "William Tell," to efface all gravity from this grand reply 
 of a princess to her subject. 
 
 "He thus hopes," she added, "to make me believe in* a 
 greater love for me than he feels. He knows all the regard I 
 feel for him," she went on, looking narrowly at Calyste, 
 "but he is perhaps humiliated to find himself my inferior in 
 this. Possibly, too, he has formed some suspicions of you 
 and thinks he will take us by surprise. But, even if he is 
 guilty of nothing worse than of wishing to enjoy the delights 
 of this expedition in the wilds without me, of refusing to let 
 me share his excursions, and the ideas the scenes may arouse 
 in him, of leaving me in mortal alarms is not that enough? 
 His great brain has no more love for me than the musician 
 had, the wit, the soldier. Sterne is right : names have a 
 meaning, and mine is the bitterest mockery. I shall die 
 without ever finding in a man such love as I have in my heart, 
 such poetry as I have in my soul." 
 
 She sat with her arms hanging limp, her head thrown 
 back on the cushion, her eyes dull with concentrated 
 thought and fixed on a flower in the carpet. The sufferings 
 of superior minds are mysteriously grand and imposing ; they 
 reveal immense expanses of the soul, to which the spectator's 
 fancy adds yet greater breadth. Such souls share in the priv- 
 ilege of royalty, whose affections cling to a nation, and then 
 strike a whole world. 
 
 "Why did you ?" began Calyste, who could not 
 
 finish the sentence. Camille Maupin's beautiful, burning 
 hand was laid on his, and eloquently stopped him.
 
 BEATRIX. 87 
 
 " Nature has forsworn her laws by granting me five or six 
 years of added youth. I have repelled you out of selfishness. 
 Sooner or later age would have divided us. I am thirteen 
 years older than he is, and that is quite enough ! " 
 
 "You will still be beautiful when you are sixty !" cried 
 Calyste heroically. 
 
 " God grant it ! " she replied with a smile. " But, my 
 dear child, I intend to love him. In spite of his insensibility, 
 his lack of imagination, his cowardly indifference, and the 
 envy that consumes him, I believe that there is greatness 
 under those husks ; I hope to galvanize his heart, to save 
 
 him from himself, to attach him to me Alas ! I have the 
 
 brain to see clearly while my heart is blind." 
 
 She was appallingly clear as to herself. She could suffer and 
 analyze her suffering, as Cuvier and Dupuytren could explain 
 to their friends the fatal progress of their diseases and the 
 steady advance of death. Camille Maupin knew passion as 
 these two learned men knew anatomy. 
 
 " I came here on purpose to form an opinion about him ; 
 he is already bored. He misses Paris, as I told him ; he is 
 homesick for something to criticise. Here there is no author 
 to be plucked, no system to be undermined, no poet to be 
 driven to despair ; he dares not here rush into some excess in 
 which he could unburden himself of the weight of thought. 
 Alas ! my love perhaps is not true enough to refresh his brain. 
 In short, I cannot intoxicate him ! To-night you and he 
 must get drunk together ; I shall say I am ailing, and stay 
 in my room ; I shall know if I am mistaken." 
 
 Calyste turned as red as a cherry, red from his chin to his 
 hair, and his ears tingled with the glow. 
 
 " Good God ! " she exclaimed, " and here am I depraving 
 your maiden innocence without thinking of what I was doing! 
 Forgive me, Calyste. When you love you will know that 
 you would try to set the Seine on fire to give the least pleasure 
 to 'the object of your affections,' as the fortune-tellers say."
 
 88 BEATRIX. 
 
 She paused. 
 
 "There are some proud and logical spirits," she went on, 
 "who at a certain age can exclaim, ' If I could live my life 
 again, I would do everything the same.' Now I and I do 
 not think myself weak I say, ' I would be such a woman as 
 your mother.' 
 
 " To have a Calyste of my own ! What happiness ! If I 
 had the greatest fool on earth for a husband, I should have 
 been a humble and submissive wife. And yet I have not 
 sinned against society, I have only hurt myself. Alas ! dear 
 child, a woman can no longer go into society unprotected 
 excepting in what is called a primitive state. The affections 
 that are not in harmony with social or natural laws, the affec- 
 tions which are not binding, in short, evade us. If I am to 
 suffer for suffering's sake, I might as well be useful. What do 
 I care for the children of my Faucombe cousins, who are no 
 longer Faucombes, whom I have not seen for twenty years, 
 and who married merchants only ! You are a son who has 
 cost me none of the cares of motherhood ; I shall leave you 
 my fortune and you will be happy, at any rate so far as that 
 is concerned, by my act, dear jewel of beauty and sweetness, 
 which nothing should ever change or fade ! " 
 
 As she spoke these words in a deep voice, her eyelids fell 
 that he should not read her eyes. 
 
 "You have never chosen to accept anything from me," 
 said Calyste. " I shall restore your fortune to your heirs." 
 
 " Child ! " said Camille in her rich tones, while the tears 
 fell down her beautiful cheeks, " can nothing save me from 
 myself? " 
 
 "You have a story to tell me, and a letter to " the 
 
 generous boy began, to divert her from her distress. But she 
 interrupted him before he could finish the sentence. 
 
 " You are right. I must, above all things, keep my word. 
 It was too late yesterday ; but we shall have time enough to- 
 day, it would seem," she said in a half-playful, half-bitter
 
 BEATRIX. 89 
 
 tone. " To fulfill my promise, I will sit where I can look 
 down the road to the cliffs." 
 
 Calyste placed a deep Gothic armchair, where she could 
 look out in that direction, and opened the window. Camille 
 Maupin, who shared the Oriental tastes of the more illustrious 
 writer of her own sex, took out a magnificent Persian narghileh 
 that an ambassador had given her ; she filled it with patchouli 
 leaves, cleaned the mouthpiece, scented the quill before she 
 inserted it it would serve her but once put a match to the 
 dried leaves, placed the handsome instrument of pleasure, 
 with its long-necked bowl of blue-and-gold enamel, at no 
 great distance, and then rang for tea. 
 
 " If you would like a cigarette ? Ah! I always forget that 
 you do not smoke. Such immaculateness as yours is rare ! 
 I feel as though only the fingers of an Eve fresh from the 
 hand of God ought to caress the downy satin of your 
 cheeks." 
 
 Calyste reddened and sat down on a stool; he did not 
 observe the deep emotion that made Camille blush. 
 
 " The person from whom I yesterday received this letter, 
 and who will perhaps be here to-morrow, is the Marquise de 
 Rochefide," said Felicit. "After getting his eldest daughter 
 married to a Portuguese grandee who had settled in France, 
 old Rochefide, whose family is not so old as yours, wanted 
 to connect his son with the highest nobility, so as to procure 
 for him a peerage he had failed to obtain for himself. The 
 Comtesse de Montcornet told him that in the department of 
 the Orne there was a certain Mademoiselle Beatrix Maxi- 
 milienne Rose de Casteran, the youngest daughter of the 
 Marquis de Casteran, who wanted to get his two daughters 
 off his hands without any money, so as to leave his whole 
 fortune to his son, the Comte de Casteran. The Casterans, it 
 would seem, are descended direct from Adam. 
 
 " Beatrix, born and brought up in the chateau of Casteran, at 
 the time of her marriage, in 1828, was twenty years of age.
 
 90 BE A TRIX. 
 
 She was remarkable for what you provincials call eccentricity, 
 which is simply a superior mind, enthusiasm, a sense of the 
 beautiful, and a fervid feeling for works of art. Take the word 
 of a poor woman who has trusted herself on these slopes, there 
 is nothing more perilous for a woman ; if she tries them, she 
 arrives where you see me, and where the Marquise is in an 
 abyss. Men only have the staff that can be a support on the 
 edge of those precipices, a strength which we lack, or which 
 makes us monsters if we have it. 
 
 " Her old grandmother, the dowager Marquise de Casteran, 
 was delighted to see her marry a man whose superior she would 
 certainly be in birth and mind. The Rochefides did every- 
 thing extremely well, Beatrix could but be satisfied ; and in 
 the same way Rochefide had every reason to be pleased with 
 the Casterans, who, as connected with the Verneuils, the 
 d'Esgrignons, and the Troisvilles, obtained the peerage for 
 their son-in-law as one of the last batch made by Charles X., 
 though it was annulled by a decree of the Revolution of July. 
 
 " Rochefide is a fool ; however, he began by having a son ; 
 and, as he gave his wife no respite and almost killed her with 
 his company, she soon had enough of him. The early days of 
 married life are a rock of danger for small minds as for great 
 passions. Rochefide, being a fool, mistook his wife's igno- 
 rance for coldness ; he regarded Beatrix as a lymphatic crea- 
 ture she is very fair and thereupon lulled himself into per- 
 fect security and led a bachelor life, trusting to the Marquise's 
 supposed coldness, her pride, her haughtiness, and the splen- 
 dor of a style of living which surrounds a woman in Paris with 
 a thousand barriers. When you go there you will understand 
 what I mean. Those who hoped to take advantage of his easy 
 indifference would say to him, 'You are a lucky fellow. You 
 have a heartless wife, whose passions will all be in her brain ; 
 she is content with shining; her fancies are purely artistic ; 
 her jealousy and wishes will be amply satisfied if she can form 
 a Salon where all the wits and talents meet ; she will have
 
 BE A TRIX. 91 
 
 debauches of music, orgies of literature.' And the husband 
 took in all this nonsense with which simpletons are stuffed in 
 Paris. 
 
 " At the same time, Rochefide is not a common idiot ; he 
 has as much vanity and pride as a clever man, with this differ- 
 ence, that clever men assume some modesty and become cats ; 
 they coax to be coaxed in return ; whereas Rochefide has a 
 fine flourishing conceit, rosy and plump, that admires itself in 
 public, and is always smiling. His vanity rolls in the stable 
 and feeds noisily from the manger, tugging out the hay. He 
 has faults such as are known only to those who are in a posi- 
 tion to judge him intimately, which are noticeable only in 
 the shade and mystery of private life, while in society and to 
 society the man seems charming. Rochfide must have been 
 intolerable the moment he fancied that his hearth and home 
 were threatened ; for his is that cunning and squalid jealousy 
 that is brutal when it is aroused, cowardly for six months, and 
 murderous the seventh. He thought he deceived his wife, 
 and he feared her two reasons for tyranny if the day should 
 come when he discerned that his wife was so merciful as to 
 affect indifference to his infidelities. 
 
 " I have analyzed his character to explain Beatrix's con- 
 duct. The Marquise used to admire me greatly; but there is but 
 one step from admiration to jealousy. I have one of the most 
 remarkable Salons of Paris ; she wished to have one and tried 
 to win away my circle. I have not the art of keeping those 
 who wish to leave me. She has won such superficial persons 
 as are everybody's friends from vacuity, and whose object is 
 always to go out of a room as soon as they have come in ; but 
 she has not had time to make a circle. At that time I sup- 
 posed that she was consumed with the desire of any kind of 
 celebrity. Nevertheless, she had some greatness of soul, a 
 royal pride, ideas, and a wonderful gift of apprehending and 
 understanding everything. She will talk of metaphysics and 
 of music, of theology and of painting. You will see her as a
 
 92 BEATRIX. 
 
 woman what we saw her as a bride ; but she is not without a 
 little conceit ; she gives herself too much the air of knowing 
 difficult things Chinese or Hebrew, of having ideas about 
 hieroglyphics, and of being able to explain the papyrus that 
 wraps a mummy. 
 
 "Beatrix is one of those fair women by whom fair Eve 
 would look like a negress. She is as tall and straight as a 
 taper and as white as the holy wafer ; she has a long pointed 
 face and a very variable complexion, to-day as colorless as 
 cambric, to-morrow dull and mottled under the skin with a 
 myriad tiny specks, as though the blood had left dust there in 
 the course of the night. Her forehead is grand, but a little 
 too bold; her eyes, pale aquamarine-tinted, floating in the 
 white cornea under colorless eyebrows and indolent lids. 
 There is often a dark circle around her eyes. Her nose, 
 curved to a quarter of a circle, is pinched at the nostrils and 
 full of refinement, but it is impertinent. She has the Austrian 
 mouth, the upper lip thicker than the lower, which has a 
 scornful droop. Her pale cheeks only flush under some very 
 strong emotion. Her chin is rather fat ; mine is not thin ; 
 and perhaps I ought not to tell you that women with a fat 
 chin are exacting in love affairs. She has one of the most 
 beautiful figures I ever saw; a back of dazzling whiteness, 
 which used to be very flat, but which now, I am told, has 
 filled out and grown dimpled ; but the bust is not so fine as 
 the shoulders ; her arms are still thin. However, she has a 
 mien and a freedom of manner which redeem all her defects 
 and throw her beauties into relief. Nature has bestowed on 
 her that air, as of a princess, which can never be acquired, 
 which becomes her and at once reveals the woman of birth ; 
 it is in harmony with the slender hips of exquisite form, with 
 the prettiest foot in the world, and the abundant angel-like 
 hair, resembling waves of light, such as Girodet's brush has so 
 often painted. 
 
 " Without being faultlessly beautiful or pretty, when she
 
 BEATRIX. 93 
 
 chooses she can make an indelible impression. She has only 
 to dress in cherry-colored velvet, with lace frillings, and red 
 roses in her hair, to be divine. If on any pretext Beatrix 
 could dress in the costume of a time when women wore 
 pointed stomachers laced with ribbon, rising, slender and 
 fragile-looking, from the padded fulness of brocade skirts set 
 in thick deep pleats; when their heads were framed in starched 
 ruffs, and their arms hidden under slashed sleeves with lace 
 ruffles, out of which the hand appeared like the pistil from the 
 cup of a flower ; when their hair was tossed back in a thou- 
 sand little curls over a knot held up by a network of jewels, 
 Beatrix would appear as a successful rival to any of the ideal 
 beauties you may see in that array." 
 
 Felicite showed Calyste a good copy of Mieris* picture in 
 which a lady in white satin stands singing with a gentleman 
 of Brabant, while a negro pours old Spanish wine into a glass 
 with a foot, and a housekeeper is arranging some biscuits. 
 
 " Fair women," she went on, " have the advantage over us 
 dark women of the most delightful variety; you may be fair 
 in a hundred ways, but there is only one way of being dark. 
 Fair women are more womanly than we are ; we dark French- 
 women are too like men. Well," she added, "do not be 
 falling in love with Beatrix on the strength of the portrait I 
 have given you, exactly like some prince in the 'Arabian 
 Nights.' Too late in the day, my dear boy! But be com- 
 forted. With her the bones are for the first comer." 
 
 She spoke with meaning ; the admiration expressed in the 
 youth's face was evidently more for the picture than for the 
 painter whose touch had missed its purpose. 
 
 "In spite of her being a blonde," she resumed, "Beatrix 
 has not the delicacy of her coloring ; the lines are severe, she 
 is elegant and hard ; she has the look of a strictly accurate 
 drawing, and you might fancy she had southern fires in her 
 soul. She is a flaming angel, slowly drying up. Her eyes 
 look thirsty. Her front face is the best ; in profile her face
 
 94 BEA TRIX. 
 
 looks as if it had been flattened between two doors. You 
 will see if I am wrong. 
 
 "This is what led to our being such intimate friends: 
 For three years, from 1828 to 1831, Beatrix, while enjoying 
 the last gayeties of the Restoration, wandering through draw- 
 ing-rooms, going to court, gracing the fancy-dress balls at the 
 Elysee Bourbon, was judging men, things, and events from 
 the heights of her intellect. Her mind was fully occupied. 
 This first bewilderment at seeing the world kept her heart 
 dormant, and it remained torpid under the first startling 
 experiences of marriage a baby a confinement, and all the 
 business of motherhood, which I cannot bear; I am not a 
 woman so far as that is concerned. To me children are unen- 
 durable ; they bring a thousand sorrows and incessant anxi- 
 eties. I must say that I regard it as one of the blessings of 
 modern society of which that hypocrite Jean-Jacques deprived 
 us, that we were free to be or not to be mothers. Though I 
 am not the only woman that thinks this, I am the only one to 
 say it. 
 
 "During the storm of 1830 and 1831 Beatrix went to her 
 husband's country house, where she was as much bored as a 
 saint in his stall in paradise. On her return to Paris, the 
 Marquise thought, and perhaps rightly, that the Revolution, 
 which in the eyes of most people was purely political, would 
 be a moral revolution too. The world to which she belonged 
 had failed to reconstitute itself during the unlooked-for fifteen 
 years of triumph under the Restoration, so it must crumble 
 away under the steady battering ram of the middle class. 
 She had understood Monsieur Laine"'s great words, ' Kings 
 are departing.' This opinion, I suspect, was not without its 
 influence on her conduct. 
 
 "She sympathized intellectually with the new doctrines 
 which, for three years after that July, swarmed into life like 
 flies in the sunshine, and which turned many women's heads ; 
 but, like all the nobility, though she thought the new ideas
 
 BE A TRIX. 95 
 
 magnificent, she wished to save the nobility. Finding no 
 opening now for personal superiority, seeing the uppermost 
 class again setting up the speechless opposition it had already 
 shown to Napoleon which, during the dominion of actions 
 and facts, was the only attitude it could take, whereas, in a 
 time of moral transition, it was equivalent to retiring from the 
 contest she preferred a happy life to this mute antagonism. 
 
 "When we began to breathe a little, the Marquise met at 
 my house the man with whom I had thought to end my days 
 Gennaro Conti, the great composer, of Neapolitan parent- 
 age, but born at Marseilles. Conti is a very clever fellow 
 and has gifts as a composer, though he can never rise to 
 the highest rank. If we had not Meyerbeer and Rossini, he 
 might perhaps have passed for a genius. He has this advan- 
 tage over them, that he is as a singer what Paganini is on the 
 violin, Liszt on the piano, Taglioni as a dancer in short, 
 what the famous Garat was, of whom he reminds those who 
 ever heard that singer. It is not a voice, my dear boy, it is 
 a soul. When that singing answers to certain ideas, certain 
 indescribable moods in which a woman sometimes finds herself, 
 if she hears Gennaro she is lost. The Marquise fell madly in 
 love with him and won him from me. It was excessively 
 provincial, but fair warfare. She gained my esteem and 
 friendship by her conduct toward me. She fancied I was the 
 woman to fight for my possession ; she could not tell that in 
 my eyes the most ridiculous thing in the world under such 
 circumstances is the subject of the contest. She came to see 
 me. The woman, proud as she is, was so much in love that 
 she betrayed her secret and left me mistress of her fate. She 
 was quite charming ; in my eyes she remained a woman and 
 a marquise. 
 
 "I may tell you, my friend, that women are sometimes 
 bad ; but they have a secret greatness which men will never 
 be able to appreciate. And so, as I may wind up my affairs 
 as a woman on the brink of old age, which is awaiting me, I
 
 96 BEATRIX, 
 
 will tell you that I had been faithful to Conti, that I should 
 have continued faithful till death, and that nevertheless I 
 knew him thoroughly. He has apparently a delightful nature, 
 at bottom he is detestable. In matters of feeling he is a 
 charlatan. 
 
 "There are men, like Nathan, of whom I have spoken to 
 you, who are charlatans on the surface but honest. Such men 
 lie to themselves. Perched on stilts, they fancy that they are 
 on their feet, and play their tricks with a sort of innocence ; 
 their vanity is in their blood ; they are born actors, swaggerers, 
 grotesquely funny like a Chinese jar ; they might even laugh 
 at themselves. Their personal impulses are generous, and, 
 like the gaudiness of Murat's royal costume, they attract 
 danger. 
 
 "But Conti's rascality will never be known to any one but 
 his mistress. He has as an artist that famous Italian jealousy 
 which led Carlone to assassinate Piola and caused Paesiello a 
 stiletto thrust. This terrible envy is hidden beneath the most 
 charming good-fellowship. Conti has not the courage of his 
 vice; he smiles at Meyerbeer and pays him compliments while 
 he longs to rend him. He feels himself weak, and gives him- 
 self the airs of force ; and his vanity is such that he affects 
 the sentiments furthest from his heart. He assumes to be an 
 artist inspired direct from heaven. To him Art is something 
 sacred and holy. He is a fanatic ; he is sublime in his fooling 
 of fashionable folk; his eloquence seems to flow from the 
 deepest convictions. He is a seer, a demon, a god, an angel. 
 In short, though I have warned you, Calyste, you will be his 
 dupe. This southerner, this seething artist, is as cold as a 
 well-rope. 
 
 " You listen to him ; the artist is a missionary, Art is a re- 
 ligion that has its priesthood and must have its martyrs. 
 Once started, Gennaro mounts to the most disheveled pathos 
 that ever a German philosopher spouted out on his audience. 
 You admire his convictions he believes in nothing. He
 
 BEATRIX. 97 
 
 carries you up to heaven by a song that seems to be some 
 mysterious fluid, flowing with love ; he gives you a glance of 
 ecstasy ; but he keeps an eye on your admiration ; he is asking 
 himself, 'Am I really a god to these people ? ' And in the 
 same instant he is perhaps saying to himself, ' I have eaten too 
 much macaroni.' You fancy he loves you he hates you ; and 
 you do not know why. But I always knew. He had seen 
 some woman the day before, loved her for a whim, insulted 
 me with false love, with hypocritical kisses, making me pay 
 dearly for his feigned fidelity. In short, he is insatiable for 
 applause ; he shams everything and trifles with everything ; 
 he can act joy as well as grief, and he succeeds to perfection. 
 He can please, he is loved, he can get admiration whenever he 
 chooses. 
 
 " I left him hating his voice ; he owed it more success than 
 he could get from his talent as a composer ; and he would 
 rather be a man of genius like Rossini than a performer as fine 
 as Rubini. I had been so foolish as to attach myself to him, 
 and I would have decked the idol to the last. Conti, like 
 many artists, is very dainty and likes his ease and his little 
 enjoyments ; he is dandified, elegant, well dressed ; well, I 
 humored all his manias, I loved that weak but astute character. 
 I was envied, and I sometimes smiled with disdain. I re- 
 spected his courage ; he is brave, and bravery, it is said, is 
 the only virtue which no hypocrisy can simulate. On one 
 occasion, when traveling, I saw him put to the test ; he was 
 ready to risk his life and he loves it ; but, strange to say, 
 in Paris I have known him guilty of what I call mental cow- 
 ardice. 
 
 " My dear boy, I knew all this. I said to the poor Mar- 
 quise, ' You do not know what a gulf you are setting foot in ; 
 you are the Perseus of a hapless Andromeda ; you are rescuing 
 me from the rock. If he loves you, so much the better ; but 
 I doubt it, he loves no one but himself.' 
 
 " Gennaro was in the seventh heaven of pride. I was no 
 7
 
 98 BEATRIX. 
 
 marquise, I was not born a Casteran ; I was forgotten in a day. 
 I allowed myself the fierce pleasure of studying this character 
 to its depths. Certain of what the end would be, I meant to 
 watch Conti's contortions. My poor boy, in one week I saw 
 horrors of sentimentality, hideous manoeuvring ! I will tell 
 you no more ; you will see the man here. Only, as he knows 
 that I know him, he hates me now. If he could safely stab 
 me I should not be alive for two seconds. 
 
 " I have never said a word of this to Beatrix. Gennaro's 
 last and constant insult is that he believes me capable of com- 
 municating my painful knowledge to the Marquise. He has 
 become restless and absent-minded, for he cannot believe in 
 good feeling in any one. He still performs for my benefit 
 the part of a man grieved to have deserted me. You will 
 find him full of the most penetrating cordiality ; he will 
 wheedle, he will be chivalrous. To him every woman is a 
 Madonna ! You have to live with him for some time before 
 you detect the secret of that false frankness or know the 
 stiletto prick of his humbug. His air of conviction would 
 take in God. And so you will be enmeshed by his feline 
 blandishments, and will never conceive of the deep and rapid 
 arithmetic of his inmost mind. Let him be. 
 
 " I carried indifference to the point of receiving them to- 
 gether at my house. The consequence of this was that the 
 most suspicious world on earth, the world of Paris, knew 
 nothing of the intrigue. Though Gennaro was drunk with 
 pride, he wanted, no doubt, to pose before Beatrix ; his dis- 
 simulation was consummate. He surprised me ; I had ex- 
 pected to find that he insisted on a stage-effect. It was she 
 who compromised herself, after a year of happiness under all 
 the vicissitudes and risks of Parisian existence. 
 
 " She had not seen Gennaro for some days and I had in- 
 vited him to dine with me, as she was coming in the evening. 
 Rochefide had no suspicions ; but Beatrix knew her husband 
 so well, that, as she often told me, she would have preferred
 
 BE A TRIX. 99 
 
 the worst poverty to the wretched life that awaited her in the 
 event of that man ever having a right to scorn or to torment 
 her. I had chosen the evening when our friend the Com- 
 tesse de Montcornet was at home. After seeing her husband 
 served with his coffee, Beatrix left the drawing-room to 
 dress, though she was not in the habit of getting ready so 
 early. 
 
 " Your hairdresser is not here yet,' said Rochefide, when 
 he heard why she was going. 
 
 " 'Therese can do my hair,' she replied. 
 
 " 'Why, where are you going? You cannot go to Mad- 
 ame de Montcornet's at eight o'clock.' 
 
 " ' No,' said she, ' but I shall hear the first act at the Italian 
 opera.' 
 
 " The catechising bailiff in Voltaire's ' Huron ' is a silent 
 man by comparison with an idle husband. Beatrix fled, to 
 be no farther questioned, and did not hear her husband say, 
 ' Very well ; we will go together.' 
 
 " He did not do it on purpose ; he had no reason to 
 suspect his wife ; she was allowed so much liberty ! He tried 
 never to fetter her in any way; he prided himself on it. 
 And, indeed, her conduct did not offer the smallest hold for the 
 strictest critic. The Marquis was going who knows where 
 to see his mistress perhaps. He had dressed before dinner ; 
 he had only to take up his hat and gloves when he heard his 
 wife's carriage draw up under the awning of the steps in the 
 courtyard. He went to her room and found her ready, but 
 amazed at seeing him. 
 
 " ' Where are you going? ' said she. 
 
 " ' Did I not tell you I would go with you to the opera? ' 
 
 "The Marquise controlled the outward expression of in- 
 tense annoyance ; but her cheeks turned as scarlet as though 
 she had used rouge. 
 
 " 'Well, come then,' she replied. 
 
 "Rochefide followed her, without heeding the agitation
 
 100 BEATRIX. 
 
 betrayed by her voice ; she was burning with the most violent 
 suppressed rage. 
 
 " ' To the opera,' said her husband. 
 
 " ' No,' cried Beatrix, ' to Mademoiselle des Touches'. 
 I have a word to say to her,' she added when the door was 
 shut. 
 
 "The carriage started. 
 
 " ' But if you like,' Beatrix added, ' I can take you first to 
 the opera and go to her afterward. ' 
 
 " 'No,' said the Marquis; 'if you have only a few words 
 to say to her, I will wait in the carriage ; it is only half-past 
 seven.' 
 
 " If Beatrix had said to her husband, ' Go to the opera and 
 leave me alone,' he would have obeyed her quite calmly. 
 Like every clever woman, knowing herself guilty, she was 
 afraid of rousing his suspicions, and resigned herself. Thus, 
 when she gave up the opera to come to my house, her husband 
 accompanied her. She came in scarlet with rage and impa- 
 tience. She walked straight up to me, and said in a low 
 voice, with the calmest manner in the world 
 
 " ' My dear Felicite, I shall start for Italy to-morrow even- 
 ing with Conti ; beg him to make his arrangements, and wait 
 for me here with a carriage and passport. ' 
 
 " Then she left with her husband. Violent passions insist 
 on liberty at any cost. Beatrix had for a year been suffering 
 from want of freedom and the rarity of their meetings, for 
 she considered herself one with Gennaro. So nothing could 
 surprise me. In her place, with my temper, I should have 
 acted as she did. Conti's happiness broke my heart ; only 
 his vanity was engaged in this matter. 
 
 " ' That is indeed being loved ! ' he exclaimed, in the 
 midst of his transports. ' How few women would thus forego 
 their whole life, their fortune, their reputation ! ' 
 
 " 'Oh yes, she loves you,' said I; 'but you do not love 
 her!'
 
 AT THE UNEXPECTED SIGHT CALYSTE AND FELICITE SAT 
 SILENT FOR A MINUTE.
 
 BEATRIX. 101 
 
 " He flew into a fury and made a scene ; he harangued, he 
 scolded, he described his passion, saying he had never thought 
 it possible that he could love so much. I was immovably 
 cool, and lent him the money he might want for the journey 
 that had taken him by surprise. 
 
 "Beatrix wrote a letter to her husband and set out for Italy 
 the next evening. She stayed there two years ; she wrote to 
 me several times. Her letters are bewitchingly friendly ; the 
 poor child clings to me as the only woman that understands 
 her. She tells me she adores me. Want of money compelled 
 Gennaro to write an opera; he did not find in Italy the 
 pecuniary resources open to a composer in Paris. Here is 
 her last letter ; you can understand it now if, at your age, you 
 can analyze the emotions of the heart," she added, handing 
 him the letter. 
 
 At this moment Claud Vignon came in. At the unexpected 
 sight Calyste and Felicit6 sat silent for a minute, she from 
 surprise, he from vague dissatisfaction. Claud's vast, high, 
 and wide forehead, bald at seven-and-thirty, was dark with 
 clouds. His firm, judicious lips expressed cold irony. Claud 
 Vignon is an imposing person, in spite of the changes in a 
 face that was splendid and is now grown livid. From the 
 age of eighteen to five-and-twenty he had a strong likeness to 
 the divine young Raphael ; but his nose, the human feature 
 which most readily alters, has grown sharp ; his countenance 
 has, as it were, sunk under mysterious hollows, the outlines 
 have grown puffy, and with a bad color ; leaden grays pre- 
 dominate in the worn complexion, though no one knows what 
 the fatigues can be <jf a young man, aged perhaps by crushing 
 loneliness, and an abuse of keen discernment. He is always 
 examining other men's minds, without object or system ; the 
 pickaxe of his criticism is always destroying, and never con- 
 structing anything. His weariness is that of the laborer, not 
 of the architect.
 
 102 BE A TRIX. 
 
 His eyes, light blue and once bright, are dimmed with 
 unconfessed suffering or clouded by sullen sadness. Dissipa- 
 tion has darkened the eyelids beneath the brows ; the temples 
 have lost their smoothness. The chin, most nobly moulded, 
 has grown double without dignity. His voice, never very 
 sonorous, has grown thin ; it is not hoarse, not husky, but 
 something between the two. The inscrutability of this fine 
 face, the fixity of that gaze, cover an irresolution and weak- 
 ness that are betrayed in the shrewd and ironical smile. This 
 weakness affects his actions, but not his mind ; the stamp of 
 encyclopaedic intellect is on that brow and in the habit of 
 that face, at once childlike and lofty. 
 
 One detail may help to explain the eccentricities of this 
 character. The man is tall and already somewhat bent, like 
 all who bear a world of ideas. These tall, long frames have 
 never been remarkable for tenacious energy, for creative 
 activity. Charlemagne, Narses, Belisarius, and Constantine 
 have been, in this particular, very noteworthy exceptions. 
 Claud Vignon, no doubt, suggests mysteries to be solved. In 
 the first place, he is at once very simple and very deep. 
 Though he rushes into excess with the readiness of a court- 
 esan, his mind remains unclouded. The intellect which can 
 criticise art, science, literature, and politics is inadequate to 
 control his outer life. Claud contemplates himself in the 
 wide extent of his intellectual realm, and gives up the form 
 of things with Diogenes-like indifference. Content with 
 seeing into everything, understanding everything, he scorns 
 material details ; but, being beset with hesitancy as soon as 
 creation is needed, he sees obstacles without being carried 
 away by beauties, and, by dint of discussing means, he sits, 
 his hands hanging idle, producing no results. Intellectually 
 he is a Turk in whom meditation induces sleep. Criticism is 
 his opium, and his harem of books has disgusted him with 
 any work he might do. 
 
 He is equally indifferent to the smallest and to the greatest
 
 BEATRIX. 103 
 
 things, and is compelled by the mere weight of his brain to 
 throw himself into debauchery to abdicate for a little while 
 the irresistible power of his omnipotent analysis. He is too 
 much absorbed by the seamy side of genius, and you may 
 now conceive that Camille Maupin should try to show him 
 the right side. 
 
 The task was a fascinating one. Claud Vignon believed 
 himself no less great as a politician than he was as a writer; 
 but this Machiavelli of private life laughs in his sleeve at 
 ambitious persons, he knows all he can ever know, he instinc- 
 tively measures his future life by his faculties, he sees himself 
 great, he looks obstacles in the face, perceives the folly of par- 
 venus, takes fright or is disgusted, and lets the time slip by 
 without doing anything. Like Etienne Lousteau, the feuille- 
 ton writer; like Nathan, the famous dramatic author; like 
 Blondet, another journalist, he was born in the middle class 
 to which we owe most of our great writers. 
 
 "Which way did you come?" said Mademoiselle des 
 Touches, coloring with pleasure or surprise. 
 
 "In at the door," replied Claud Vignon drily. 
 
 "Well," she replied, with a shrug, "I know you are not a 
 man to come in at the window." 
 
 " Scaling a balcony is a sort of cross of honor for the 
 beloved fair." 
 
 "Enough! " said Felicite. 
 
 " I am in the way ? " said Claud Vignon. 
 
 "Monsieur," said the guileless Calyste, "this letter 
 
 " Keep it ; I ask no questions. At our age such things 
 need no words," said he, in a satirical tone, interrupting 
 Calyste. 
 
 "But, indeed, monsieur " Calyste began indignantly. 
 
 "Be calm, young man; my indulgence for feelings is 
 boundless." 
 
 " My dear Calyste," said Camille, anxious to speak. 
 
 " Dear?" said Vignon, interrupting her.
 
 104 BEATRIX. 
 
 "Claud is jesting," Camille went on, addressing Calyste; 
 " and he is wrong with you who know nothing of Paris and 
 its 'chaff.'" 
 
 "I had no idea that I was funny," said Vignon very 
 gravely. 
 
 " By what road did you come ? For two hours I have 
 never ceased looking out toward le Croisic." 
 
 "You were not incessantly looking," replied Vignon. 
 
 "You are intolerable with your banter." 
 
 "Banter! I?" 
 
 Calyste rose. 
 
 "You are not so badly off here that you need leave," said 
 Vignon. 
 
 "On the contrary," said the indignant youth, to whom 
 Camille gave her hand, which he kissed instead of merely 
 taking it, and left on it a scalding tear. 
 
 " I wish I were that little young man," said the critic, seat- 
 ing himself, and taking the end of the hookah. " How he 
 will love ! " 
 
 " Too much, for then he will not be loved," said Made- 
 moiselle des Touches. " Madame de Rochefide is coming 
 here." 
 
 " Good ! " said Claud ; " and with Conti ? " 
 
 " She will stay here alone, but he is bringing her." 
 
 " Have they quarreled ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Play me a sonata by Beethoven ; I know nothing of the 
 music he has written for the piano." 
 
 Claud filled the bowl of the hookah with tobacco, watching 
 Camille more closely than she knew ; a hideous idea possessed 
 him ; he fancied that a straightforward woman believed she 
 had duped him. The situation was a new one. 
 
 Calyste as he went away was thinking neither of Beatrix de 
 Rochefide nor her letter ; he was furious with Claud Vignon,
 
 BE A TRIX. 105 
 
 full of wrath at what he thought want of delicacy, and of pity 
 for poor Felicite. How could a man be loved by that perfect 
 woman and not worship her on his knees, not trust her on the 
 faith of a look or a smile ? After being the privileged spec- 
 tator of the suffering FelicitS had endured while waiting, he 
 felt an impulse to rend that pale, cold spectre. He knew 
 nothing himself, as Felicite had told him, of the sort of decep- 
 tive witticisms in which the satirists of the press excel. To 
 him love was a human form of religion. 
 
 On seeing him cross the courtyard, his mother could not 
 restrain a joyful exclamation, and old Mademoiselle du Gu6nic 
 whistled for Mariotte. 
 
 " Mariotte, here is the child ; give us the tufo'ne." 
 
 "I saw him, mademoiselle," replied the cook. 
 
 His mother, a little distressed by the melancholy that sat 
 on Calyste's brow, never suspecting that it was caused by what 
 he thought Vignon's bad treatment of Felicite, took up her 
 worsted work. The old aunt pulled out her knitting. The 
 Baron gave up his easy-chair to his son and walked up and 
 down the room as if to unstiffen his legs before taking a turn 
 in the garden. No Flemish or Dutch picture represents an 
 interior of richer tone or furnished with more happily suitable 
 figures. The handsome youth, dressed in black velvet, the 
 mother, still so handsome, and the two old folk, in the setting 
 of ancient paneling, were the expression of the most touching 
 domestic harmony. 
 
 Fanny longed to question Calyste, but he had taken Beatrix's 
 letter out of his pocket the letter which was, perhaps, to de- 
 stroy all the happiness this noble family enjoyed. As he un- 
 folded it, Calyste's lively imagination called up the Marquise 
 dressed as Camille Maupin had fantastically described her.
 
 106 BEATRIX. 
 
 From Beatrix to Felicite. 
 
 " GENOA, July zd. 
 
 " I have not written to you, my dear friend, since our stay 
 at Florence, but Venice and Rome took up all my time ; 
 and happiness, as you know, fills a large place in life. We 
 are neither of us likely to take strict account of a letter more 
 or less. I am a little tired ; I insisted on seeing everything, 
 and to a mind not easily satiated the repetition of pleasures 
 brings fatigue. Our friend had great triumphs at the Scala, 
 at the Fenice, and these last three days at the San Carlo. 
 Three Italian operas in two years ! You cannot say that love 
 has made him idle. 
 
 " We have been warmly welcomed everywhere, but I should 
 have preferred silence and solitude. Is not that the only 
 mode of life that suits a woman in direct antagonism with the 
 world? This was what I had expected. Love, my dear, is a 
 more exacting master than marriage ; but it is sweet to serve 
 him. After having played at love all my life, I did not know 
 that I must see the world again, even in glimpses, and the atten- 
 tions paid me on all hands were so many wounds. I was no 
 longer on an equal footing with women of the highest type. 
 The more kindly I was treated, the more was my inferiority 
 marked. Gennaro did not understand these subtleties, but he 
 was so happy that I should have been graceless if I had not 
 sacrificed such petty vanities to a thing so splendid as an 
 artist's life. 
 
 "We live only by love, while men live by love and action 
 otherwise they would not be men. There are, however, 
 immense disadvantages to a woman in the position in which 
 I have placed myself; and you have avoided them. You 
 have remained great in the face of the world which had no 
 rights over you ; you have perfect liberty, and I have lost 
 mine. I am speaking only with reference to concerns of the 
 heart, and not to social matters, which I have wholly sacri-
 
 BE A TRIX. 107 
 
 ficed. You might be vain and willful, you might have all the 
 graces of a woman in love, who can give or refuse anything as 
 she chooses ; you had preserved the privilege of being capri- 
 cious, even in the interest of your affection and of the man 
 you might like. In short, you, even now, have still your own 
 sanction ; I have not the freedom of feeling which, as I think, 
 it is always delightful to assert in love, even when the passion 
 is an eternal one. I have not the right to quarrel in jest, 
 which we women so highly and so rightly prize : is it not the 
 line by which we sound the heart ? I dare not threaten, I 
 must rely for attractiveness on infinite docility and sweetness, 
 I must be impressive through the immenseness of my love ; I 
 would rather die than give up Gennaro, for the holiness of my 
 passion is its only plea for pardon. 
 
 " I did not hesitate between my social dignity and my own 
 little dignity a secret between me and my conscience. 
 Though I have fits of melancholy, like the clouds which float 
 across the clearest sky, to which we women like to give way, 
 I silence them at once ; they would look like regret. Dear 
 me ! I so fully understood the extent of my debt to him that 
 I have equipped myself with unlimited indulgence; but 
 hitherto Gennaro has not aroused my sensitive jealousy. In- 
 deed, I cannot see how my dear great genius can do wrong. 
 I am, my dear, rather like the devotees who argue with their 
 God, for is it not to you that I owe my happiness? And you 
 cannot doubt that I have often thought of you. 
 
 "At last I have seen Italy ! As you saw it, as it ought to 
 be seen, illuminated to the soul by love, as it is by its glorious 
 sun and its masterpieces of art. I pity those who are inces- 
 santly fired by the admiration it calls for at every step when 
 they have not a hand to clasp, a heart into which they may 
 pour the overflow of emotions which then subside as they 
 grow deeper. These ~two years are to me all my life, and my 
 memory will have reaped a rich harvest. Did you not, as I 
 did, dream of settling at Chiavari, of buying a palace at
 
 108 BEATRIX. 
 
 Venice, a villa at Sorrento, a house at Florence ? Do not all 
 women who love shun the world ? And I, for ever an out- 
 cast, could I help longing to bury myself in a lovely land- 
 scape, in a heap of flowers, looking out on the pretty sea, or 
 a valley as good as the sea, like the valley you look on from 
 Fiesole? 
 
 " But, alas, we are poor artists, and want of money is drag- 
 ging the wanderers back to Paris again. Gennaro cannot 
 bear me to feel that I have left all my luxury, and he is 
 bringing a new work, a grand opera, to be rehearsed in Paris. 
 Even at the cost of my love, I cannot bear to meet one of 
 those looks from a woman or a man which would make me 
 feel murderous. Yes ! for I could hack any one to pieces 
 who should condescend to pity me, should offer me the pro- 
 tection of patronage like that enchanting Chateauneuf who, 
 in the time of Henri III., I think, spurred her horse to trample 
 down the Provost of Paris for some such offense. 
 
 " So I am writing to tell you that without delay I shall 
 arrive to join you at les Touches, and wait for our Gennaro 
 in that quiet spot. You see how bold I am with my bene- 
 factress and sister. Still, the magnitude of the obligation 
 will not betray my heart, like some others, into base ingrat- 
 itude. 
 
 "You have told me so much about the difficulties of the 
 journey that I shall try to reach le Croisic by sea. This idea 
 occurred to me on hearing that there was here a little Danish 
 vessel, loaded with marble, which will put in at le Croisic 
 to take up salt on its way back to the Baltic. By this voyage 
 I shall avoid the fatigue and expense of traveling by post. I 
 know you are not alone, and I am glad of it ; I had some 
 remorse in the midst of my happiness. You are the only 
 person with whom I could bear to be alone without Conti. 
 Will it not be a pleasure to you, too, to have a woman with 
 you who will understand your happiness and not be jealous 
 of it?
 
 BEATRIX. 109 
 
 "Well, till our meeting ! The wind is fair, and I am off, 
 
 sending you a kiss." 
 
 " Well, well, she too knows how to love ! " said Calyste to 
 himself, folding up the letter, with a sad expression. 
 
 This sadness flashed on his mother's heart like a gleam 
 lighting up an abyss. The Baron had just left the room. 
 Fanny bolted the door to the turret, and returned to lean 
 over the back of the chair in which her boy was sitting, as 
 Dido's sister bends over her in Guerin's picture. She kissed 
 his forehead and said 
 
 " What is the matter, my child ? what makes you unhappy? 
 You promised to account to me for your constant visits to les 
 Touches; I ought to bless its mistress, you say?" 
 
 "Yes, indeed," he replied. "She, my dear mother, has 
 shown me all the defects of my education in these times, 
 when men of noble birth must acquire personal merit if they 
 are to restore their names to life again. I was as remote 
 from my day as Guerande is from Paris. She has been, in a 
 way, the mother of my intelligence." 
 
 " Not for that can I bless her ! " said the Baroness, her 
 eyes filling with tears. 
 
 " Mother," cried Calyste, on whose forehead the hot tears 
 fell, drops of heartbroken motherhood, "mother, do not cry. 
 Just now, when, to do her a pleasure, I proposed scouring 
 the coast from the custom-house hut to the Bourg de Batz, 
 she said to me, ' How anxious your mother would be ! ' ' 
 
 " She said so ! Then I can forgive her much," said Fanny. 
 
 " Felicite wishes me well," replied Calyste, "and she often 
 checks herself from saying some of those hasty and doubtful 
 things which artists let fall, so as not to shake my faith 
 knowing that it is not immovable. She has told me of the 
 life led in Paris by youths of the highest rank, going from 
 their country homes as I might from mine, leaving their 
 family without any fortune, and making great wealth by the
 
 110 BEA TRIX. 
 
 force of their will and their intelligence. I can do what the 
 Baron de Rastignac has done, and he is in the Ministry. 
 She gives me lessons on the piano, she teaches me Italian, 
 she has let me into a thousand social secrets of which no one 
 has an inkling at Guerande. She could not give me the 
 treasures of her love ; she gives me those of her vast intellect, 
 her wit, her genius. She does not choose to be a mere pleas- 
 ure, but a light to me ; she offends none of my creeds ; she 
 believes in the nobility, she loves Brittany " 
 
 " She has changed our Calyste," said the old blind woman, 
 interrupting him, "for I understand nothing of this talk. 
 You have a fine old house over your head, nephew, old rela- 
 tions who worship you, good old servants ; you can marry a 
 good little Bretonne, a pious and well-bred girl who will make 
 you happy, and you can reserve your ambitions for your eldest 
 son, who will be three times as rich as you are if you are wise 
 enough to live quietly and economically, in the shade and in 
 the peace of the Lord, so as to redeem the family estates. 
 That is as simple as a Breton heart. You will get rich less 
 quickly, but far more surely." 
 
 " Your aunt is right, my darling ; she cares as much for 
 your happiness as I do. If I should not succeed in arranging 
 your marriage with Miss Margaret, your uncle Lord Fitz- 
 William's daughter, it is almost certain that Mademoiselle de 
 Pen-Hoel will leave her money to either of her nieces you may 
 prefer." 
 
 "And there will be a few crown-pieces here," said the old 
 aunt in a low mysterious voice. 
 
 " I ! Marry at my age? " said he, with one of those looks 
 which weaken a mother's reason. "Am I to have no sweet 
 and crazy love-making? Am I never to tremble, thrill, 
 flutter, fear, lie down under a pitiless gaze and presently melt 
 it ? May I never know the beauty that is free, the fancy of 
 the soul, the clouds that fleet over the serene blue of happi- 
 ness and that the breath of enjoyment blows away ? May I
 
 BEATRIX. HI 
 
 never stand under a gutter-spout without discovering that it is 
 raining, like the lovers seen by Diderot ? Shall I never hold 
 a burning coal in the palm of my hand like the Due de Lor- 
 raine ? Shall I never climb a silken rope-ladder, nor cling to 
 a rotten old trellis without feeling it yield ? Am I never to 
 hide in a closet or under a bed ? Must I know nothing of 
 woman but wifely surrender, or of love but its equitable lamp- 
 light ? Is all my curiosity to be satiated before it is excited ? 
 Am I to live without ever feeling that fury of the heart which 
 adds to a man's power? Am I to be a married monk ? No ! 
 I have set my teeth in the Paris apple of civilization. Do you 
 not perceive that by your chaste, your ignorant family habits you 
 have laid the fire that is consuming me, and that I shall be 
 burnt up before I can adore the divinity I see wherever I turn 
 in the green foliage and in the sand glowing in the sun- 
 shine, and in all the beautiful, lordly, and elegant women who 
 are described in the books and poems I have devoured at Ca- 
 mille's ? Alas ! There is but one such woman in all Guerande, 
 and that is you, mother ! The lovely blue birds of my dreams 
 come from Paris ; they live in the pages of Lord Byron and 
 Scott ; they are Parisina, Effie, Minna ! Or, again, that 
 Royal Duchess I saw on the moors among the heath and 
 broom, whose beauty sent my blood with a rush to the 
 heart!" 
 
 These thoughts were clearer, more brilliant, more living, to 
 the Baroness' eye than art can make them to the reader; she 
 saw them in a flash shot from the boy's glance like the arrows 
 from a quiver that is upset. Though she had never read 
 Beaumarchais, she thought, as any woman would, that it would 
 be a crime to make this Cherubino marry. 
 
 "Oh, my dear boy! " said she, taking him in her arms, 
 pressing him to her, and kissing his beautiful hair still her 
 own " marry when you please, only be happy. It is not my 
 part to tease you." 
 
 Mariotte came to lay the table. Gasselin had gone out to
 
 112 BEATRIX. 
 
 exercise Calyste's horse, for he had not ridden it these two 
 months. The three women, the mother, the aunt, and Mari- 
 otte were of one mind, with the natural cunning of women, to 
 make much of Calyste when he dined at home. Breton penu- 
 riousness, fortified by the memories and habits of childhood, 
 tried to contend with the civilization of Paris so faithfully 
 represented at les Touches, so close to Guerande. Mariotte 
 tried to disgust her young master with the elaborate dishes 
 prepared in Camille Maupin's kitchen, as his mother and aunt 
 vied with each other in attentions to enmesh their child in 
 the nets of their tenderness, and to make comparisons impos- 
 sible. 
 
 " Ah, ha ! You have a lubine (a sort of fish), Monsieur 
 Calyste, and snipe, and pancakes such as you will never get 
 anywhere but here," said Mariotte, with a knowing and tri- 
 umphant air, as she looked down on the white cloth, a perfect 
 sheet of snow. 
 
 After dinner, when his old aunt had settled down to her 
 knitting again, when the cure of Guerande and the Chevalier 
 du Halga came in, attracted by their game of mouche, Calyste 
 went out to go back to les Touches, saying he must return 
 Beatrix's letter. 
 
 Claud Vignon and Mademoiselle des Touches were still at 
 table. The great critic had a tendency to greediness, and 
 this vice was humored by Felicity, who knew how a woman 
 makes herself indispensable by such attentions. 
 
 The dining-room, lately finished by considerable additions, 
 showed how readily and how quickly a woman can marry 
 the nature, adopt the profession, the passions, and the tastes 
 of the man she loves or means to love. The table had the 
 rich and dazzling appearance which modern luxury, seconded 
 by the improvements in manufactures, stamps on every detail. 
 The noble but impoverished house of du Gunic knew not 
 the antagonist with whom it had to do battle, nor how large a
 
 BEATRIX. 113 
 
 sum was needed to contend with the brand-new plate brought 
 from Paris by Mademoiselle des Touches, with her china 
 thought good enough for the country her fine linen, her 
 silver-gilt, all the trifles on her table, and all the skill of her 
 man-cook. 
 
 Calyste declined to take any of the liqueurs contained in 
 one of the beautiful inlaid cases of precious woods, that 
 might be shrines. 
 
 "Here is your letter," he said, with childish ostentation, 
 looking at Claud, who was sipping a glass of West India 
 liqueur. 
 
 "Well, what do you think of it?" asked Mademoiselle 
 des Touches, tossing the letter across the table to Vignon, 
 who read it, alternately lifting and setting down his glass. 
 
 " Why that the women of Paris are very happy; they all 
 have men of genius, who love them, to worship." 
 
 " Dear me, you are still but a rustic ! " said Felicite, with a 
 laugh. "What! You did not discover that she already 
 loves him less, that " 
 
 " It is self-evident ! " said Claud Vignon, who had as yet 
 read no more than the first page. ' ' When a woman is really 
 in love, does she trouble her head in the least about her posi- 
 tion ? Is she as finely observant as the Marquise ? Can she 
 calculate ? Can she distinguish ? Our dear Beatrix is tied to 
 Conti by her pride; she is condemned to love him, come 
 what may." 
 
 " Poor woman ! " said Camille. 
 
 Calyste sat staring at the table, but he saw nothing. The 
 beautiful creature in her fantastic costume, as sketched by 
 Felicite that morning, rose before him, radiant with light ; she 
 smiled on him, she played with her fan, and her other hand, 
 emerging from a frill of lace and cherry-colored velvet, lay 
 white and still on the full folds of her magnificent petticoat. 
 
 " This is the very thing for you," said Claud Vignon, with 
 a sardonic smile at Calyste. 
 8
 
 114 BEATRIX. 
 
 Calyste was offended at the words the very thing. 
 
 "Do not suggest the idea of such an intrigue to the dear 
 child ; you do not know how dangerous such a jest may be. 
 I know Beatrix ; she has too much magnanimity of temper to 
 change; beside, Conti will be with her." 
 
 " Ah ! " said Claud Vignon satirically, " a little twinge of 
 jealousy, heh ? " 
 
 " Can you suppose it?" said Camille proudly. 
 
 " You are more clear-sighted than a mother could be," re- 
 plied Claud. 
 
 "But I ask you, is it possible?" and she looked at Ca- 
 lyste. 
 
 "And yet," Vignon went on, "they would be well 
 matched. She is ten years older than he is ; he would be 
 the girl." 
 
 "A girl, monsieur, who has twice been under fire in la 
 Vendee. If there had but been twenty thousand of such 
 girls " 
 
 "I was singing your praise," said Vignon, "an easier 
 matter than singeing your beard." 
 
 " I have a sword to cut the beards of those who wear them 
 too long," retorted Calyste. 
 
 "And I have a tongue that cuts sharply too," replied 
 Vignon, smiling. "We are Frenchmen the affair can be 
 arranged." 
 
 Mademoiselle des Touches gave Calyste a beseeching look, 
 which calmed him at once. 
 
 "Why," said Felicity, to end the discussion, " why is it 
 that youths, like my Calyste there, always begin by loving 
 women no longer young? " 
 
 " I know of no more guileless and generous impulse," said 
 Vignon. " It is the consequence of the delightful qualities 
 of youth. And, beside, to what end would old women come 
 if it were not for such love? You are young and hand- 
 some, and will be for twenty years to come; before you
 
 BEA TRIX. 115 
 
 we may speak plainly," he went on, with a keen glance at 
 Mademoiselle des Touches. "In the first place, the semi-dow- 
 agers to whom very young men attach themselves know how 
 to love far better than young women. A youth is too like a 
 woman for a young woman to attract him. Such a passion 
 is too suggestive of the myth of Narcissus. Beside this, there 
 is, I believe, a common want of experience which keeps them 
 asunder. Hence the reason which makes it true that a young 
 woman's heart can only be understood by a man in whom 
 long practice is veiled by his real or assumed passion is the 
 same as that which, allowing for differences of nature, makes 
 a woman past her youth more seductive to a boy ; he is in- 
 tensely conscious that he will succeed with her, and the 
 woman's vanity is intensely flattered by his pursuit of her. 
 
 " Then, again, it is natural that the young should seize on 
 fruit, and autumn offers many fine and luscious kinds. Is it 
 nothing to meet those looks, at once bold and reserved, lan- 
 guishing at the proper moments, soft with the last gleams of 
 love, so warm, so soothing ? And the elaborate elegance of 
 speech, the splendid ripe shoulders so finely filled out, the 
 ample roundness, the rich and undulating plumpness, the 
 hands full of dimples, the pulpy, well-nourished skin, the 
 brow full of overflowing sentiment, on which the light lingers, 
 the hair, so carefully cherished and dressed, where fine part- 
 ings of white skin are delicately traced, and the throat with 
 those fine curves, the inviting nape where every resource of 
 art is applied to bring out the contrast between the hair and 
 the tones of the flesh, to emphasize all the audacity of life 
 and love ? Dark women then get some of the tones of the 
 fairest, the amber shade of maturity. 
 
 " Then, again, these women betray their knowledge of the 
 world in their smiles, and display it in their conversation ; 
 they know how to talk ; they will set the whole world before 
 you to raise a smile ; they have sublime touches of dignity 
 and pride ; they can shriek with despair in a way to break
 
 116 BE A TRIX. 
 
 your heart, wail a farewell to love, knowing that it is futile, 
 and only resuscitates passion ; they grow young again by dint 
 of varying the most desperately simple things. They con- 
 stantly expect to be contradicted as to the falling off they 
 so coquettishly proclaim, and the intoxication of their tri- 
 umph is contagious. Their devotion is complete ; they listen ; 
 in short, they love ; they clutch at love as a man condemned 
 to death clings to the smallest trifles of living ; they are like 
 those lawyers who can urge every plea in a case without fa- 
 tiguing the court ; they exhaust every means in their power ; 
 indeed, perfect love can only be known in them. 
 
 " I doubt if they are ever forgotten, any more than we can 
 forget anything vast and sublime. 
 
 "A young woman has a thousand other things to amuse 
 her, these women have nothing ; they have no conceit left, no 
 vanity, no meanness; their love is the Loire at its mouth, 
 immense, swelled by every disenchantment, every affluent of 
 life, and that is why my daughter is dumb!" he ended, 
 seeing Mademoiselle des Touches in an attitude of ecstasy, 
 clutching Calyste's hand tightly, perhaps to thank him for 
 having been the cause of such a moment for her, of such a 
 tribute of praise that she could detect no snare in it. 
 
 All through the evening Claud Vignon and Felicite were 
 brilliantly witty, telling anecdotes and describing the life of 
 Paris to Calyste, who quite fell in love with Claud, for wit 
 exerts a peculiar charm on men of feeling. 
 
 " I should not be in the least surprised to see Madame de 
 Rochefide land here to-morrow with Conti, who is accom- 
 panying her no doubt," said Claud at the end of the evening. 
 " When I came up from le Croisic the seamen had spied a 
 small ship, Danish, Swedish, or Norwegian." 
 
 This speech brought the color to Camille's cheeks, calm as 
 she was. 
 
 That night, again, Madame du Guenic sat up for her son
 
 BEA TRIX. H7 
 
 till one o'clock, unable to imagine what he could be doing at 
 les Touches if Felicite did not love him. 
 
 "He must be in the way," thought this delightful mother. 
 
 "What have you had to talk about so long?" she asked, 
 as she saw him come in. 
 
 " Oh, mother ! I never spent a more delightful evening. 
 Genius is a great, a most sublime thing ! Why did you not 
 bestow genius on me ? With genius a man must be able to 
 choose the woman he loves from all the world ; she must 
 inevitably be his !" 
 
 " But you are handsome, my Calyste." 
 
 "Beauty has no place but in women. And, beside, Claud 
 Vignon is fine. Men of genius have a brow that beams, eyes 
 where lightnings play and I, unhappy wretch, I only know 
 how to love." 
 
 "They say that is all-sufficient, my darling," said she, 
 kissing his forehead. 
 
 "Really, truly?" 
 
 "I have been told so. I have had no experience." 
 
 It was now Calyste's turn to kiss his mother's hand with 
 reverence. 
 
 "I will love for all those who might have been your 
 adorers," said he. 
 
 "Dear child, it is in some degree your duty; you have 
 inherited all my feelings. So do not be rash; try to love 
 only high-souled women, if you must love." 
 
 What young man, welling over with passion and suppressed 
 vitality, but would have had the triumphant idea of going to 
 le Croisic to see Madame de Rochefide land, so as to be able 
 to study her, himself unknown? Calyste greatly amazed his 
 father and mother, who knew nothing of the fair Marquise's 
 arrival, by setting out in the morning without waiting for 
 breakfast. Heaven knows how briskly the boy stepped out. 
 He felt as if some new strength had come to his aid, he was
 
 118 BEA TRIX. 
 
 so light ; he kept close under the walls of les Touches to avoid 
 being seen. The delightful boy was ashamed of his ardor, and 
 had perhaps a miserable fear of being laughed at ; Felicite and 
 Claud Vignon were so horribly keen-sighted ! And, then, in 
 such cases a youth believes that his forehead is transparent. 
 
 He followed the zigzag path across the maze of salt-marshes, 
 reached the sands, and was across them with a skip and a 
 hop, in spite of the scorching sun that twinkled on them. 
 
 This brought him to the edge of the strand, banked up 
 with a breakwater, near which stands a house where travelers 
 may find shelter from storms, sea-gales, rain, and the whirl- 
 wind. It is not always possible to cross the little strait, nor 
 are there always boats, and it is convenient, while they are 
 crossing from the port, to have shelter for the horses, asses, 
 merchandise, or passengers' luggage. From thence men can 
 scan the open sea and the port of le Croisic ; and from thence 
 Calyste soon discerned two boats coming, loaded with bag- 
 gage bundles, trunks, carpet-bags, and cases, of which the 
 shape and size proclaimed to the natives the arrival of extra- 
 ordinary things, such as could only belong to a voyager of 
 distinction. 
 
 In one of these boats sat a young woman with a straw hat 
 and green veil, accompanied by a man. This boat was the 
 first to come to land. Calyste felt a thrill ; but their appear- 
 ance showed them to be a maid and a manservant, and he 
 dared not question them. 
 
 "Are you crossing to le Croisic, Monsieur Calyste?" 
 asked one of the boatmen, who knew him ; but he replied 
 only by a negative shake of the head, ashamed of having his 
 name mentioned. 
 
 Calyste was enchanted at the sight of a trunk covered with 
 waterproof canvas, on which he read MADAME LA MARQUISE 
 DE ROCHEFIDE. The name glittered in his eyes like some 
 talisman ; it had to him a purport of mysterious doom ; he 
 knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he should fall in love
 
 BEATRIX. 119 
 
 with this woman ; the smallest things relating to her inter- 
 ested him already, spurred his fancy and his curiosity. Why? 
 In the burning desert of its immeasurable and objectless de- 
 sires does not youth put forth all its powers toward the first 
 woman who comes within reach ? Beatrix had fallen heir to 
 the love that Camille had disdained. 
 
 Calyste watched the landing of the baggage, looking out 
 from time to time at le Croisic, hoping to see a boat come 
 out of the harbor, cross to this little headland, and reveal to 
 him the Beatrix who had already become to him what another 
 Beatrix was to Dante, an eternal statue of marble on whose 
 hands he would hang his flowers and wreaths. He stood with 
 his arms folded, lost in the dream of expectancy. A thing 
 worthy of remark, but which nevertheless has never been re- 
 marked, is the way in which we frequently subordinate our 
 feelings to our will, how we pledge ourself to ourself as it 
 were, and how we make our fate; chance has certainly far 
 less share in it than we suppose. 
 
 " I see no horses," said the maid, sitting on a trunk. 
 
 "And I see no carriage-road," said the valet. 
 
 " Well, horses have certainly been here," replied the woman, 
 pointing to their traces. "Monsieur," said she, addressing 
 Calyste, " is that the road leading to Guerande?" 
 
 "Yes," said he, "whom are you expecting?" 
 
 "We were told that we should be met, fetched to les 
 Touches. If they are very late, I do not know how madame 
 can dress," said she to the man. "You had better walk on 
 to les Touches. What a land of savages ! " 
 
 It dawned on Calyste that he was in a false position. 
 
 "Then your mistress is going to les Touches?" he asked. 
 
 "Mademoiselle came to meet her at seven this morning," 
 was the reply. " Ah ! here come the horses." 
 
 Calyste fled, running back to Guerande with the swiftness 
 and lightness of a chamois, and doubling like a hare to avoid 
 being seen by the servants from les Touches ; still, he met
 
 120 BEATRIX. 
 
 two of them in the narrow way across the marsh which he 
 had to cross. 
 
 " Shall I go in ? Shall I not ? " he asked himself as he saw 
 the tops of the pine trees of les Touches. 
 
 He was afraid; he returned to Guerande, hang-dog and 
 repentant, and walked up and down the mall, where he con- 
 tinued the discussion with himself. 
 
 He started as he caught sight of les Touches, and studied 
 the weathercocks. 
 
 "She can have no idea of my excitement," said he to 
 himself. 
 
 His wandering thoughts became so many grapnels that 
 caught in his heart and held the Marquise there. Calyste 
 had felt none of these terrors, these anticipatory joys with 
 regard to Camille; he had first met her on horseback, and 
 his desire had sprung up, as at the sight of a beautiful flower 
 he might have longed to pluck. These vacillations constitute 
 a sort of poem in a timid soul. Fired by the first flames of 
 imagination, these souls rise up in wrath, are appeased, and 
 eager by turns, and in silence and solitude reach the utmost 
 heights of love before they have even spoken to the object of 
 so many struggles. 
 
 Calyste saw from afar, on the mall, the Chevalier du Halga, 
 walking with Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel ; he hid himself. 
 The chevalier and the old lady, believing themselves alone on 
 the mall, were talking aloud. 
 
 "Since Charlotte de Kergaroue't is coming to you," said 
 the chevalier, "keep her three or four months. How can 
 you expect her to flirt with Calyste ? She never stays here 
 long enough to attempt it ; whereas, if they see each other 
 every day, the two children will end by being desperately in 
 love, and you will see them married this winter. If you say 
 two words of your plans to Charlotte, she will at once say four 
 to Calyste; and a girl of sixteen will certainly win the day 
 against a woman of forty-something ! "
 
 BEATRIX. 121 
 
 The two old folk turned to retrace their steps. Calyste 
 heard no more, but lie had understood what Mademoiselle de 
 Pen-Hoel's plan was. In his present frame of mind nothing 
 could be more disastrous. Is it in the fever of a preconceived 
 passion that a young man will accept as his wife a girl found 
 for him by others ? Calyste, who cared not a straw for Charlotte 
 de Kergarouet, felt inclined to repulse her. Considerations of 
 money could not touch him ; he had been accustomed from 
 childhood to the modest style of his father's house ; beside, 
 seeing Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel live as poorly as the Gudnics 
 themselves, he had no notion of her wealth. And a youth 
 brought up as Calyste had been would not, in any case, con- 
 sider anything but feeling ; and all his mind was set on the 
 Marquise. 
 
 Compared with the portrait drawn by Camille, what was 
 Charlotte? The companion of his childhood, whom he 
 treated as his sister. 
 
 He did not get home until five o'clock. When he went 
 into the room, his mother, with a melancholy smile, handed 
 him a note from Mademoiselle des Touches, as follows : 
 
 "Mr DEAR CALYSTE: The beautiful Marquise de Roche- 
 fide has arrived ; we count on you to do honor to her advent. 
 Claud, always satirical, declares that you will be Bice and 
 she Dante. The honor of Brittany and of the Gunnies is at 
 stake when there is a Casteran to be welcomed. So let us 
 meet soon. Yours, 
 
 "CAMILLE MAUPIN. 
 
 " Come as you are, without ceremony, or we shall look 
 ridiculous." 
 
 Calyste showed his mother the note, and went at once. 
 "What are these Casterans?" said she to the Baron. 
 "An old Norman family, related to William the Con-
 
 122 BEATRIX. 
 
 queror," he replied. " Their arms are In tierce per fess azure 
 gules and or, a horse rearing argent hoofed or. The beautiful 
 creature for whom le Gars was killed at Fougeres in 1800 was 
 the daughter of a Casteran, who became a nun at Seez and 
 was made abbess, after being thrown over by the Due de 
 Verneuil." 
 
 "And the Rochefides?" 
 
 " I do not know the name ; I should want to see their 
 arms," said he. 
 
 The Baroness was a little relieved at hearing that the Mar- 
 quise Beatrix de Rochefide was of an old family ; still, she 
 felt some alarm at knowing that her son was exposed to fresh 
 fascinations. 
 
 Calyste, as he walked, felt the most violent and yet de- 
 lightful impulses ; his throat was choked, his heart full, his 
 brain confused ; he was devoured by fever. He wanted to 
 walk slower, but a superior power urged him on. All young 
 men have known this perturbation of the senses caused by a 
 vague hope : a subtle fire flames within and raises a halo, like 
 the glory shown about the divine persons in a sacred picture, 
 through which they see nature in a glow and woman radiant. 
 Are they not, then, like the saints themselves, full of faith, 
 ardor, hope, and purity ? 
 
 The young Breton found the whole party in Camille's little 
 private drawing-room. It was by this time nearly six o'clock ; 
 through the windows the sinking sun shed a ruddy light, 
 broken by the trees ; the air was still, the room was full of 
 the soft gloom that women love so well. 
 
 " Here is the member for Brittany," said Camille Maupin, 
 smiling to her friend, as Calyste lifted the tapestry curtain 
 over the door. "As punctual as a king ! " 
 
 "You recognized his step? " said Claud Vignon to Made- 
 moiselle des Touches. 
 
 Calyste bowed to the Marquise, who merely nodded to him ;
 
 BEATRIX. 123 
 
 he had not looked at her. He shook hands with Claud Vis- 
 
 O 
 
 non, who offered him his hand. 
 
 " Here is the great man of whom you have heard so much, 
 Gennaro Conti," Camille went on, without answering Claud 
 Vignon. 
 
 She introduced to Calyste a man of middle height, thin and 
 slender, with chestnut hair, eyes that were almost orange 
 color, with a white, freckled skin; in short, so exactly the 
 well-known head of Lord Byron that it would be superfluous 
 to describe it but perhaps he held it better. Conti was not 
 a little proud of this resemblance. 
 
 " I am delighted, being but one day at les Touches, to meet 
 monsieur," said Gennaro. 
 
 "It is my part to say as much to you," replied Calyste, 
 with sufficient ease of manner. 
 
 "He is as handsome as an angel ! " the Marquise said to 
 Felicite. Calyste, standing between the divan and the two 
 women, overheard the words, though spoken in a whisper. 
 He moved to an armchair, and stole watchful looks at the 
 Marquise. In the soft light of the setting sun he saw lounging 
 on the divan, as though a sculptor had placed her in position, 
 a white sinuous figure which seemed to dazzle his sight. 
 F6licite, without knowing it, had served her friend well by 
 her description. 
 
 Beatrix was superior to the not too flattering portrait drawn 
 by Camille. Was it not partly for the stranger's benefit that 
 Beatrix had placed in her splendid hair bunches of blue corn- 
 flowers, which showed off the pale gleam of her ringlets, ar- 
 ranged to frame her face and flicker over her cheeks ? Her 
 eyes were set in circles darkened by fatigue, but only to the 
 tone of the purest and most opalescent mother-of-pearl ; her 
 cheeks were as bright as her eyes. Under her white skin, as 
 delicate as the silky lining of an egg-shell, life flushed in the 
 purple blood. The finish of her features was exquisite ; 
 her brow seemed diaphanous. This fair and gentle head,
 
 124 BE A TRIX. 
 
 finely set on a long neck of marvelous beauty, lent itself to 
 the most varying expression. 
 
 Her waist, slight enough to span, had a bewitching grace ; 
 her bare shoulders gleamed in the twilight like a white 
 camellia in black hair. The bosom, well supported, but 
 covered with a clear handkerchief, showed two exquisitely 
 enticing curves. The India-muslin dress, white flowered 
 with blue ; the wide sleeves ; the bodice, pointed and without 
 any sash ; the shoes with sandals crossed over fine thread 
 stockings all showed perfect knowledge of the arts of dress. 
 Earrings of silver filigree, marvels of Genoese work which no 
 doubt were coming into fashion, were admirably suited to the 
 exquisite softness of the fair hair starred with cornflowers. 
 
 At a single eager glance Calyste took in all this beauty, 
 which stamped itself on his soul. Beatrix, so fair, and 
 Felicite, so dark, recalled the "Keepsake" contrasts, so 
 much affected by English engravers and draughtsmen. They 
 were woman's weakness and woman's strength in their utmost 
 expression, a perfect antithesis. These two women could 
 never be rivals ; each had her empire. They were like a 
 delicate pale periwinkle or lily by the side of a sumptuous 
 and gorgeous red poppy, or a turquoise by a ruby. In an 
 instant Calyste was possessed by a passion which crowned the 
 secret working of his hopes, his fears, his doubts. Mademoi- 
 selle des Touches had roused his senses, Beatrix fired his mind 
 and heart. The young Breton was conscious .of the birth 
 within himself of an all-conquering force that would respect 
 nothing. And he shot at Conti a look of envy and hatred, 
 gloomy, and full of alarms, a look he had never had for 
 Claud Vignon. 
 
 Calyste called up all his resolution to restrain himself, 
 thinking, nevertheless, that the Turks were very right to keep 
 their women shut up, and that such beautiful creatures should 
 be forbidden to show themselves in their tempting witcheries 
 to young men aflame with love. This hot hurricane was
 
 BEATRIX. 125 
 
 lulled as soon as Beatrix turned her eyes on him and her 
 gentle voice made itself heard ; the poor boy already feared 
 her as he feared God. 
 
 The dinner-bell rang. 
 
 "Calyste, give your arm to the Marquise," said Made- 
 moiselle des Touches, taking Conti on her right and Claud 
 on her left, as she stood aside to let the young couple pass. 
 
 Thus to go down the old staircase of les Touches was to 
 Calyste like a first battle ; his heart failed him, he found noth- 
 ing to say, a faint moisture stood on his brow and down his 
 spine. His arm trembled so violently that at the bottom step 
 the Marquise said to him 
 
 "What is the matter?" 
 
 "Never," said he in a choked voice, "never in my life 
 have I seen a woman so beautiful as you are, excepting my 
 mother; and I cannot control my agitation." 
 
 " Why, have you not Camille Maupin here?" 
 
 " But what a difference ! " said Calyste artlessly. 
 
 " Ha ! Calyste," Felicite whispered in his ear; "did I not 
 tell you that you would forget me as though I had never 
 existed? Sit there, next her on the right, and Vignon on 
 her left. As for you, Gennaro, I keep you by me," she added, 
 laughing; " we will keep an eye on her flirtations." 
 
 The accent in which Camille spoke struck Claud, who 
 looked at her with the wily and apparently absent glance, 
 which in him showed that he was observant. He never 
 once ceased watching Mademoiselle des Touches throughout 
 dinner. 
 
 " Flirtations ! ' ' replied the Marquise, drawing off her gloves 
 and showing her beautiful hands; "I have every excuse ; on 
 one side of me I have a poet," and she turned to Claud, "on 
 the other poetry." 
 
 Gennaro bestowed on Calyste a gaze full of flattery. 
 
 By candle-light Beatrix looked even more beautiful than 
 before. The pale gleam of the wax-lights cast a satin sheen
 
 126 BEATRIX. 
 
 on her forehead, set sparks in her gazelle-like eyes, and fell 
 through her silky ringlets, making separate hairs shine like 
 threads of gold. With a graceful movement she threw off 
 her gauze scarf, uncovering her shoulders. Calyste could then 
 see the delicate nape, as white as milk, with a deep hollow 
 that parted into two, curving off toward each shoulder with 
 a lovely and delusive symmetry. The changes of aspect in 
 which pretty women indulge produce very little effect in the 
 fashionable world, where every eye is blase, but they commit 
 fearful ravages in a soul as fresh as was Calyste's. This bust, 
 so unlike Camille's, revealed a perfectly different character in 
 Beatrix. There could be seen pride of race, a tenacity pecu- 
 liar to the aristocracy, and a certain hardness in that double 
 muscle of the shoulder, which is perhaps the last surviving 
 vestige of the conquerors' strength. 
 
 Calyste found it very difficult to seem to eat ; he was full 
 of nervous feelings, which took away his hunger. As in all 
 young men, nature was in the clutches of those throes which 
 precede first love, and stamp it so deeply on the soul. At his 
 age the ardor of the heart repressed by the ardor of the 
 moral sense leads to an internal conflict, which accounts for 
 the long, respectful hesitancy, the deep absorption of love, 
 the absence of all self-interest all the peculiar attractions of 
 youths whose heart and life are pure. - 
 
 As he noted by stealth, so as not to rouse Gennaro's 
 jealous suspicions all the details which make the Marquise 
 de Rochefide so supremely beautiful, Calyste was oppressed 
 by the majesty of the lady beloved ; he felt himself shrink 
 before the haughtiness of some of her glances, the imposing 
 aspect of her face, overflowing with aristocratic self-conscious- 
 ness, a pride which women can express by slight movements, 
 by airs of the head and a magnificent slowness of gesture, 
 which are all less affected and less studied than might be sup- 
 posed. There is a sentiment behind all these modes of ex- 
 pression. The ambiguous position in which Beatrix found
 
 BE A TRIX. 127 
 
 herself compelled her to keep a watch over herself, to be im- 
 posing without being ridiculous ; and women of the highest 
 stamp can all achieve this, though it is the rock on which 
 ordinary women are wrecked. 
 
 Beatrix could guess from Felicity's looks all the secret 
 adoration she inspired in her neighbor, and that it was un- 
 worthy of her to encourage it ; so from time to time she 
 bestowed on him a repellent glance that fell on him like an 
 avalanche of snow. The unfortunate youth appealed to 
 Mademoiselle des Touches by a gaze in which she felt the 
 tears kept down in his heart by superhuman determination, 
 and Felicite kindly asked him why he ate nothing. Calyste 
 stuffed to order, and made a feint of joining in the conversa- 
 tion. The idea of being tiresome instead of agreeable was 
 unendurable, and hammered at his brain. He was all the 
 more bashful because he saw, behind the Marquise's chair, the 
 manservant he had met in the morning on the jetty, who 
 would no doubt report his curiosity. 
 
 Whether he were contrite or happy, Madame de Rochefide 
 paid no attention to him. Mademoiselle des Touches had 
 led her to talk of her journey in Italy, and she gave a very 
 witty account of the point-blank fire of passion with which a 
 little Russian diplomat at Florence had honored her, laugh- 
 ing at these little young men who fling themselves at a woman 
 as a locust rushes on grass. She made Claud Vignon and 
 Gennaro laugh, and Felicite also ; but these darts of sarcasm 
 went straight to Calyste's heart, who only heard words 
 through the humming in his ears and brain. The poor boy 
 made no vow, as some obstinate men have done, to win this 
 woman at any cost ; no, he was not angry, he was miserable. 
 When he discerned in Beatrix an intention to sacrifice him at 
 Gennaro's feet, he only said to himself" If only I can 
 serve her in any way ! " and allowed himself to be trampled 
 on with the meekness of a lamb. 
 
 " How is it," said Claud Vignon to the Marquise, " that
 
 128 BEATRIX. 
 
 you, who so much admire poetry, give it so bad a reception ? 
 Such artless admiration, so sweet in its expression, with no 
 second thought, no reservation, is not that the poetry of the 
 heart ? Confess now that it gives you a sense of satisfaction 
 and well-being." 
 
 " Certainly," she replied, " but we should be very unhappy 
 and, above all, very worthless if we yielded to every passion 
 we inspire." 
 
 "If you made no selection," said Conti, "we should not 
 be so proud of being loved." 
 
 " When shall I be chosen and distinguished by a woman ? " 
 Calyste wondered to himself, restraining his agony of emotion 
 with difficulty. 
 
 He reddened like a sufferer on whose wound a finger is 
 laid. Mademoiselle des Touches was startled by the expres- 
 sion she saw in Calyste's face, and tried to comfort him with 
 a sympathizing look. Claud Vignon caught that look. From 
 that moment the writer's spirits rose and he vented his gayety 
 in sarcasms : he maintained that love lived only in desire, that 
 most women were mistaken in their love, that they often loved 
 for reasons unknown to the men and to themselves, that they 
 sometimes wished to deceive themselves, that the noblest of 
 them were still insincere. 
 
 " Be content to criticise books, and do not criticise our 
 feelings," said Camille, with an imperious flash. 
 
 The dinner ceased to be lively. Claud Vignon's satire had 
 made both the women grave. Calyste was in acute torment 
 in spite of the happiness of gazing at Beatrix. Conti tried 
 to read Madame de Rochefide's eyes and guess her thoughts. 
 When the meal was ended, Mademoiselle des Touches took 
 Calyste's arm, left the other two men to the Marquise, and 
 allowed them to lead the way, so as to say to the youth 
 
 " My dear boy, if the Marquise falls in love with you, she 
 will pitch Conti out of the window ; but you are behaving 
 in such a way as to tighten their bonds. Even if she were
 
 BEATRIX. 129 
 
 enchanted by your worship, could she take any notice of it ? 
 Command yourself." 
 
 "She is so hard on me, she will never love me," said 
 Calyste; " and if she does not love me, I shall die." 
 
 "Die? you! My dear Calyste, you are childish," said 
 Camille. "You would not have died for me, then?" 
 
 "You made yourself my friend," replied he. 
 
 After the little chat that always accompanies the coffee, 
 Vignon begged Conti to sing. Mademoiselle des Touches 
 sat down to the piano. Camille and Gennaro sang Dunquc 
 il mio bene tu mia sarai, the final duet in Zingarelli's " Romeo 
 and Juliet," one of the most pathetic pages of modern 
 music. The passage Di tanti palpiti expresses love in all its 
 passion. Calyste, sitting in the armchair where he had sat 
 when Felicite had told him the story of the Marquise, lis- 
 tened devoutly. Beatrix and Vignon stood on each side of 
 the piano. 
 
 Conti's exquisite voice blended perfectly with Felicity's. 
 They both had frequently sung the piece ; they knew all its 
 resources, and agreed wonderfully in bringing them out. It 
 was in their hands what the musician had intended to create, 
 a poem of divine melancholy, the swan's song of two lovers. 
 When the duet was ended the hearers were all in a state of 
 feeling that cannot find expression in vulgar applause. 
 
 " Oh, Music is the queen of the arts ! " exclaimed the Mar- 
 quise. 
 
 " Camille gives the first place to youth and beauty the 
 queen of all poetry," said Claud Vignon. 
 
 Mademoiselle des Touches looked at Claud, dissembling a 
 vague uneasiness. Beatrix, not seeing Calyste, looked round 
 to see what effect the music had on him, less out of interest 
 in him than for Conti's satisfaction. In a recess she saw a 
 pale face covered with tears. At the sight she hastily turned 
 away, as if some acute pain had stung her, and looked at 
 Gennaro. 
 9
 
 130 BEATRIX. 
 
 It was not merely that Music had risen up before Calyste, 
 had touched him with her divine hand, had launched him on 
 creation and stripped it of its mysteries to his eyes he was 
 overwhelmed by Conti's genius. In spite of what Camille 
 Maupin had told him of the man's character, he believed at 
 this moment that the singer must have a beautiful soul, a heart 
 full of love. How was he to contend against such an artist ? 
 How could a woman ever cease to adore him? The song 
 must pierce her soul like another soul. 
 
 The poor boy was as much overcome by poetic feeling as by 
 despair : he saw himself as so small a thing ! This ingenuous 
 conviction of his own nothingness was to be read in his face, 
 mingling with his admiration. He did not observe Beatrix, 
 who, attracted to Calyste by the contagion of genuine feeling, 
 pointed him out by a glance to Mademoiselle des Touches. 
 
 " Oh ! such a delightful nature ! " said Felicite. " Conti, 
 you will never receive any applause to compare with the 
 homage paid you by this boy. Let us sing a trio. Come, 
 Beatrix, my dear." 
 
 When the Marquise, Camille, and Conti had returned to 
 the piano, Calyste rose unperceived, flung himself on a sofa 
 in the adjoining bedroom, of which the door was open, and 
 remained there sunk in despair.
 
 PART II. 
 
 THE DRAMA. 
 
 "What is the matter with you, my boy?" said Claud 
 Vignon, stealing quietly in after him and taking his hand. 
 " You are in love, you believe yourself scorned ; but it is not 
 so. In a few days the field will be open to you, you will be 
 supreme here, and be loved by more than one woman ; in 
 fact, if you know how to manage matters, you will be a sultan 
 here." 
 
 " What are you saying? " cried Calyste, starting to his feet 
 and dragging Claud away into the library. "Who that b 
 here loves me?" 
 
 "Camille," said Vignon. 
 
 " Camille loves me ? " said Calyste. " And what of you ? " 
 
 "I," said Claud, "I " 
 
 He paused. Then he sat down and rested his head against 
 a pillow, in the deepest melancholy. 
 
 "I am weary of life," he went on, after a short silence, 
 "and I have not the courage to end it. I wish I were mis- 
 taken in what I have told you ; but within the last few days 
 more than one vivid gleam has flashed upon me. I did not 
 wander about the rocks of le Croisic for my amusement, on 
 my soul ! The bitterness of my tone when, on my return, I 
 found you talking to Camille, had its source in the depths of 
 my wounded self-respect. I will have an explanation presently 
 with Camille. Two minds so clear-sighted as hers and mine 
 cannot deceive each other. Between two professional duelists 
 a fight is soon ended. So I may at once announce my de- 
 parture. Yes, I shall leave les Touches, to-morrow perhaps, 
 with Conti. 
 
 " When we are no longer here, some strange perhaps ter- 
 
 (131)
 
 132 BEATRIX. 
 
 rible things will certainly happen, and I shall be sorry not 
 to look on at these struggles of passion, so rare in France, 
 and so dramatic ! You are very young to enter on so perilous 
 a fight ; I am interested in you. But for the deep disgust I 
 feel for women, I would stay to help you to play the game ; it 
 is difficult ; you may lose it ; you have two remarkable women 
 to deal with, and you are already too much in love with one 
 to make use of the other. 
 
 " Beatrix must surely have some tenacity in her nature, and 
 Camille has magnanimity. You, perhaps, like some fragile 
 and brittle thing, will be dashed between the two rocks, swept 
 away by the torrent of passion. Take care." 
 
 Calyste's amazement on hearing these words allowed Claud 
 Vignon to finish his speech and leave the lad, who remained 
 in the position of a traveler in the Alps to whom his guide 
 has proved the depth of an abyss by dropping in a stone. 
 
 He had heard from Claud himself that Camille loved him, 
 Calyste, at the moment when he knew that his love for Beatrix 
 would end only with his life. There was something in the 
 situation too much for such a guileless young soul. Crushed 
 by immense regret that weighed upon him for the past, killed 
 by the perplexities of the present, between Beatrix, whom he 
 loved, and Camille, whom he no longer loved, when Claud said 
 that she loved him, the poor youth was desperate; he sat 
 undecided, lost in thought. He vainly sought to guess the 
 reasons for which Felicite had rejected his devotion, to go to 
 Paris and accept that of Claud Vignon. 
 
 Now and again Madame de Rochefide's voice came to his 
 ear, pure and clear, reviving the violent excitement from 
 which he had fled in leaving the drawing-room. Several 
 times he could hardly master himself so far as to restrain a 
 fierce desire to seize her and snatch her away. What would 
 become of him ? Could he ever come again to les Touches ? 
 Knowing that Camille loved him, how could he here worship 
 Beatrix ? He could find no issue from his difficulties.
 
 BEATRIX. 133 
 
 Gradually silence fell on the house. Without heeding it, 
 he heard the shutting of doors. Then suddenly he counted 
 the twelve strokes of midnight told by the clock in the next 
 room, where the voices of Camille and Claud now roused 
 him from the numbing contemplation of the future. A light 
 shone there amid the darkness. Before he could show him- 
 self to them, he heard these dreadful words spoken by Claud 
 Vignon. 
 
 "You came back from Paris madly in love with Calyste," 
 he was saying to Felicite. "But you were appalled at the 
 consequences of such a passion at your age ; it would lead you 
 into a gulf, a hell to suicide perhaps. Love can exist only 
 in the belief that it is eternal, and you could foresee, a few 
 paces before you in life, a terrible parting weariness and old 
 age putting a dreadful end to a beautiful poem. You remem- 
 ber Adolphe, the disastrous termination of the loves of Mad- 
 ame de Stael and Benjamin Constant, who were, nevertheless, 
 much better matched in age than you and Calyste. 
 
 " So, then, you took me, as men take fascines, to raise an 
 intrenchment between yourself and the enemy. But while 
 you tried to attach me to les Touches, was it not that you 
 might spend your days in secret worship of your divinity? 
 But to carry out such a scheme, at once unworthy and sub- 
 lime, you should have chosen a common man or a man so 
 absorbed by lofty thought that he would be easily deceived. 
 You fancied that I was simple and as easy to cheat as a man 
 of genius. I am, it would seem, no more than a clever man . 
 I saw through you. When yesterday I sang the praises of 
 women of your age and explained to you why Calyste loved 
 you, do you suppose that I thought all your ecstatic looks 
 brilliant, enchanting were meant for me? Had I not al- 
 ready read your soul ? The eyes, indeed, were fixed on mine, 
 but the heart throbbed for Calyste. You have never been 
 loved, my poor Maupin ; and you never will be now, after 
 denying yourself the beautiful fruit which chance put in your
 
 134 BEATRIX. 
 
 way at the very gates of woman's hell, which must close at 
 the touch of the figure 50." 
 
 "And why has love always avoided me?" she asked, in a 
 broken voice. "You who know everything, tell me." 
 
 " Why, you are unamiable," said he ; " you will not yield 
 to love, you want it to yield to you. You can perhaps be led 
 into the mischief and spirit of a school-boy ; but you have no 
 youth of heart ; your mind is too deep, you never were artless, 
 and you cannot begin now. Your charm lies in mystery ; it 
 is abstract, and not practical. And, again, your power repels 
 very powerful natures ; they dread a conflict. Your strength 
 may attract young souls, which, like Calyste's, love to feel 
 protected; but, in the long run, it is fatiguing. You are 
 superior, sublime ! You must accept the disadvantages of 
 these two qualities ; they are wearisome. " 
 
 "What a verdict!" cried Camille. "Can I never be a 
 woman? Am I a monster?" 
 
 " Possibly," said Claud. 
 
 "We shall see," cried the woman, stung to the quick. 
 
 " Good-night, my dear. I leave to-morrow. I owe you 
 no grudge, Camille ; I think you the greatest of women ; but 
 if I should consent to play the part any longer of a screen or 
 a curtain," said Claud, with two marked inflexions of his 
 voice, "you would despise me utterly. We can part now 
 without grief or remorse; we have no happiness to mourn 
 for, no hopes to disappoint. 
 
 "To you, as to some infinitely rare men of genius, love is 
 not what nature made it a vehement necessity, with acute 
 but transient delights attached to its satisfaction, and then 
 death ; you regard it as what Christianity has made it : an ideal 
 realm full of noble sentiments, of immense small things, 
 of poetry and spiritual sensations, of sacrifices, flowers of 
 morality, enchanting harmonies, placed far above all vulgar 
 grossness, but whither two beings joined to be one angel are 
 carried up on the wings of pleasure. This was what I hoped
 
 BEATRIX. 135 
 
 for ; I thought I held one of the keys which open the door 
 that is shut to so many persons, and through which we soar 
 into infinitude. You were there already ! And so I was 
 deceived. 
 
 "I am going back to misery in my vast prison, Paris. 
 Such a deception at the beginning of my career would have 
 been enough to make me flee from woman ; now, it fills my 
 soul with such disenchantment as casts me for ever into ap- 
 palling solitude ; I shall be destitute even of the faith which 
 helped the holy fathers to people it with sacred visions. 
 This, my dear Camille, is what a superior nature brings us to. 
 We may each of us sing the terrible chant that a poet has put 
 into the mouth of Moses addressing the Almighty 
 
 " ' O Lord ! Thou hast made me powerful and alone ! ' " 
 
 At this moment Calyste came in. 
 
 " I ought to let you know that I am here," said he. 
 
 Mademoiselle des Touches looked absolutely terrified; a 
 sudden color flushed her calm features with a fiery red. All 
 through the scene she was handsomer than she had ever been 
 in her life. 
 
 "We thought you had gone, Calyste," said Claud; "but 
 this involuntary indiscretion on both sides will have done no 
 harm ; perhaps you will feel more free at les Touches now 
 that you know Felicite so completely. Her silence shows me 
 that I was not mistaken as to the part she intended that I 
 should play. She loves you, as I told you ; but she loves you 
 for yourself and not for herself a feeling which few women 
 are fitted to conceive of or to cling to : very few of them 
 know the delights of pain kept alive by desire. It is one of 
 the grander passions reserved for men ; but she is somewhat 
 of a man," he added, with a smile. "Your passion for 
 Beatrix will torture her and make her happy, both at once." 
 
 Tears rose to Mademoiselle des Touches' eyes ; she dared 
 not look either at the merciless Claud or the ingenuous
 
 136 BEATRIX. 
 
 Calyste. She was frightened at having been understood ; 
 she had not supposed that any man, whatever his gifts, 
 could divine such a torment of refined feeling, such lofty 
 heroism as hers. And Calyste, seeing her so humiliated at 
 finding her magnanimity betrayed, sympathized with the 
 agitation of the woman he had placed so high, and whom 
 he beheld so stricken. By an irresistible impulse, he fell at 
 Camille's feet and kissed her hands, hiding his tear- washed 
 face in them. 
 
 "Claud!" she cried, "do not desert me; what will be- 
 come of me?" 
 
 "What have you to fear?" replied the critic. "Calyste 
 already loves the Marquise like a madman. You can cer- 
 tainly have no stronger barrier between him and yourself 
 than this passion fanned into life by your own act. It is 
 quite as effectual as I could be. Yesterday there was danger 
 for you and for him ; but to-day everything will give you 
 maternal joys," and he gave her a mocking glance. "You 
 will be proud of his triumphs." 
 
 Felicite looked at Calyste, who, at these words, raised his 
 head with a hasty movement. Claud Vignon was suffi- 
 ciently revenged by the pleasure he took in seeing their 
 confusion. 
 
 "You pushed him toward Madame de Rochefide," Vig- 
 non went on ; " he is now under the spell. You have dug 
 your own grave. If you had but trusted yourself to me, 
 you would have avoided the disasters that await you." 
 
 "Disasters!" cried Camille Maupin, raising Calyste's 
 head to the level of her own, kissing his hair and wetting 
 it with her tears. "No, Calyste. Forget all you have just 
 heard, and count me for nothing ! " 
 
 She stood up in front of the two men, drawn to her full 
 height, quelling them by the lightnings that flashed from her 
 eyes in which all her soul shone. 
 
 "While Claud was speaking," she went on, "I saw all
 
 BEATRIX. 137 
 
 the beauty, the dignity of hopeless love; is it not the 
 only sentiment that brings us near to God ? Do not love 
 me, Calyste; but I I will love you as no other woman 
 can ever love ! " 
 
 It was the wildest cry that ever a wounded eagle sent 
 out from his eyrie. Claud, on one knee, took her hand and 
 kissed it. 
 
 "Now go, my dear boy," said Mademoiselle des Touches 
 to Calyste ; " your mother may be uneasy." 
 
 Calyste returned to Guerande at a leisurely pace, turning 
 around to see the light which shone from the windows of 
 Beatrix's rooms. He was himself surprised that he felt so 
 little pity for Camille ; he was almost annoyed with her for 
 having deprived him of fifteen months of happiness. And 
 again, now and then, he felt the same thrill in himself that 
 Camille had just caused him, he felt the tears she had shed 
 on his hair, he suffered in her suffering, he fancied he could 
 hear the moans for, no doubt, she was moaning of this 
 wonderful woman for whom he had so longed a few days 
 since. 
 
 As he opened the courtyard gate at home, where all was 
 silent, he saw through the window his mother working by 
 the primitive lamp while waiting for him. Tears rose to his 
 eyes at the sight. 
 
 "What more has happened?" asked Fanny, her face ex- 
 pressive of terrible anxiety. Calyste's only reply was to 
 clasp his mother in his arms and kiss her cheeks, her fore- 
 head, her hair, with the passionate effusion which delights a 
 mother, infusing into her the subtle fires of the life she 
 gave. 
 
 " It is you that I love ! " said Calyste to his mother, blush- 
 ing and almost shamefaced ; " you who live for me alone, 
 whom I would fain make happy." 
 
 " But you are not in your usual frame of mind, my child,"
 
 138 BEA TRIX. 
 
 said the Baroness, looking at her son. "What has hap- 
 pened?" 
 
 " Camille loves me," said he; "and I no longer love 
 her." 
 
 The Baroness drew him toward her and kissed him on the 
 forehead, and in the deep silence of the gloomy old tapes- 
 tried room he could hear the rapid beating of his mother's 
 heart. The Irishwoman was jealous of Camille, and had 
 suspected the truth. While awaiting her son night after 
 night she had studied that woman's passion ; led by the light 
 of persistent meditation, she had entered into Camille's 
 heart ; and without being able to account for it, she had 
 understood that in that unwedded soul there was a sort of 
 motherly affection. Calyste's story horrified this simple and 
 guileless mother. 
 
 " Well," said she, after a pause, " love Madame de Roche- 
 fide; she will cause me no sorrow." 
 
 Beatrix was not free ; she could not upset any of the plans 
 they had made for Calyste's happiness, at least so Fanny 
 thought ; she saw in her a sort of daughter-in-law to love, and 
 not a rival mother to contend with. 
 
 " But Beatrix will never love me ! " cried Calyste. 
 
 " Perhaps," replied the Baroness, with a knowing air. 
 " Did you not say that she is to be alone to-morrow ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Well, my child," said the mother, coloring, "jealousy 
 lurks in all our hearts, but I did not know that I should ever 
 find it at the bottom of my own, for I did not think that any 
 one would try to rob me of my Calyste's affection ! " She 
 sighed. " I fancied," she went on, " that marriage would be 
 to you what it was to me. What lights you have thrown on 
 my mind during these two months ! What colors are reflected 
 on your very natural passion, my poor darling ! Well, still 
 seem to love your Mademoiselle des Touches ; the Marquise 
 will be jealous of her and will be yours."
 
 SEA 7RIX. 139 
 
 " Oh, my sweet mother, Camille would never have told me 
 that ! " cried Calyste, taking his mother by the waist and 
 kissing her on the neck. 
 
 "You make me very wicked, you bad child," said she, 
 quite happy at seeing the beaming face hope gave to her son, 
 who gaily went up the winding stairs. 
 
 Next morning Calyste desired Gasselin to stand on the 
 road from Guerande to Saint-Nazaire and watch for Made- 
 moiselle des Touches' carriage ; then, as it went past, he was 
 to count the persons in it. 
 
 Gasselin returned just as the family had sat down together 
 at breakfast. 
 
 " What now can have happened?" said Mademoiselle du 
 Guenic ; " Gasselin is running as if Gudrande were burning." 
 
 " He must have caught the rat," said Mariotte, who was 
 bringing in the coffee, milk, and toast. 
 
 " He is coming from the town and not from the garden," 
 replied the blind woman. 
 
 " But the rat's hole is behind the wall to the front by the 
 street," said Mariotte. 
 
 " Monsieur le Chevalier, there were five of them ; four 
 inside and the coachman." 
 
 " Two ladies on the back seat ? " asked Calyste. 
 
 "And two gentlemen in front," replied Gasselin. 
 
 " Saddle my father's horse, ride after them ; be at Saint- 
 Nazaire by the time the boat starts for Paimboeuf ; and if the 
 two men go on board, come back and tell me as fast as you 
 can gallop." 
 
 Gasselin went. 
 
 "Why, nephew, you have the very devil in you!" ex- 
 claimed old Aunt Zephirine. 
 
 "Let him please himself, sister," cried the Baron. " He 
 was as gloomy as an owl, and now he is as merry as a lark." 
 
 " Perhaps you told him that our dear Charlotte was com- 
 ing," said the old lady, turning to her sister-in-law.
 
 140 BEATRIX. 
 
 "No," replied the Baroness. 
 
 "I thought he might wish to go to meet her," said Made- 
 moiselle du Guenic slily. 
 
 " If Charlotte is to stay three months with her aunt he has 
 time enough to see her in," replied the Baroness. 
 
 "Why, sister, what has occurred since yesterday," asked 
 the old lady. "You were so delighted to think that Made- 
 moiselle de Pen-Hoel was going this morning to fetch her 
 niece." 
 
 "Jacqueline wants me to marry Charlotte to snatch me from 
 perdition, aunt," said Calyste, laughing, and giving his mother 
 a look of intelligence. "I was on the mall this morning when 
 Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel was talking to Monsieur du Halga ; 
 she did not reflect that it would be far worse perdition for me 
 to be married at my age." 
 
 "It is written above," cried the old aunt, interrupting 
 Calyste, " that I am to die neither happy nor at peace. I 
 should have liked to see our family continued, and some of 
 our lands redeemed but nothing of the kind ! Can you, my 
 fine nephew, put anything in the scale to outweigh such duties 
 as these?" 
 
 "Why," said the Baron, "can Mademoiselle des Touches 
 hinder Calyste from marrying in due course ? I must go to 
 see her." 
 
 " I can assure you, father, that Felicit will never be an 
 obstacle in the way of my marriage." 
 
 " I cannot make head or tail of it ! " said the blind woman, 
 who knew nothing of her nephew's sudden passion for the 
 Marquise de Rochefide. 
 
 The mother kept her son's secret ; in such matters silence 
 is instinctive in all women. The old aunt sank into deep 
 meditation, listening with all her might, spying every voice, 
 every sound, to guess the mystery they were evidently keeping 
 from her. 
 
 Gasselin soon returned, and told his young master that he
 
 "SPARE THE HORSES, MY BOY THEY HAVE TWELVE 
 LEAGUES BEFORE THEM."
 
 BE A TRIX. 141 
 
 had not needed to go so far as Saint-Nazaire to learn that 
 Mademoiselle des Touches and the lady would return alone ; 
 he had heard it in town, from Bernus the carrier, who had 
 taken charge of the gentlemen's baggage. 
 
 " They will come back alone ? " said Calyste. " Bring out 
 my horse." 
 
 Gasselin supposed from his young master's voice that there 
 was something serious on hand ; he saddled both the horses, 
 loaded the pistols without saying anything, and dressed to 
 ride out with Calyste. Calyste was so delighted to know that 
 Claud and Gennaro were gone that he never thought of the 
 party he would meet at Saint-Nazaire ; he thought only of the 
 pleasure of escorting the Marquise. He took his old father's 
 hands and pressed them affectionately, he kissed his mother, 
 and put his arm round his old aunt's waist. 
 
 "Well, at any rate I like him better thus than when he is 
 sad," said old Zephirine. 
 
 "Where are you off to, chevalier?" asked his father. 
 
 "To Saint-Nazaire." 
 
 " The deuce you are ! And when is the wedding to be?" 
 said the Baron, who thought he was in a hurry to see Charlotte 
 de Kergarouet. "I should like to be a grandfather; it is 
 high time." 
 
 When Gasselin showed his evident intention of riding out 
 with Calyste, it occurred to the young man that he might 
 return in Camille's carriage with Beatrix, leaving his horse 
 in Gasselin' s care, and he clapped the man on the shoulder, 
 saying 
 
 " That was well thought of." 
 
 " So I should think," replied Gasselin. 
 
 "Spare the horses, my boy," said his father, coming out 
 on the steps with Fanny; "they have twelve leagues before 
 them." 
 
 Calyste exchanged looks full of meaning with his mother 
 and was gone.
 
 142 BEATRIX. 
 
 "Dearest treasure!" said she, seeing him bend his head 
 under the top of the gate. 
 
 "God preserve him!" replied the Baron, "for we shall 
 never make another." 
 
 This little speech, in the rather coarse taste of a country 
 gentleman, made the Baroness shiver. 
 
 " My nephew is not so much in love with Charlotte as to rush 
 to meet her," said old mademoiselle to Mariotte, who -was 
 clearing the table. 
 
 " Oh, a fine lady has come to les Touches, a Marquise, and 
 he is running after her. Well, well, he is young!" said 
 Mariotte. 
 
 "Those women will be the death of him," said Made- 
 moiselle du Gu6nic. 
 
 "That won't kill him, mademoiselle, quite the contrary," 
 replied Mariotte, who seemed quite happy in Calyste's hap- 
 piness. 
 
 Calyste was riding at a pace that might have killed his 
 horse, when Gasselin very happily asked his master whether 
 he wished to arrive before the departure of the boat; this was 
 by no means his purpose ; he had no wish to be seen by either 
 Conti or Vignon. The young man reined in his horse and 
 looked complacently at the double furrow traced by the wheels 
 of the carriage on the sandy parts of the road. He was wildly 
 gay merely at the thought : "She passed this way; she will 
 come back this way ; her eyes rested on those woods, on these 
 trees ! " 
 
 " What a pretty road ! " said he to Gasselin, looking around 
 admiringly. 
 
 "Yes, sir, Brittany is the finest country in the world," re- 
 plied the servant. "Are there such flowers in the hedges 
 or green lanes that wind like this one anywhere else to be 
 found?" 
 
 "Nowhere, Gasselin." 
 
 " Here comes Bernus' carriage," said Gasselin.
 
 BEATRIX. 143 
 
 "Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel will be in it with her niece; 
 let us hide," said Calyste. 
 
 " Hide here, sir ! are you crazy ? We are in the midst of 
 the sands." 
 
 The carriage, which was in fact crawling up a sandy hill 
 above Saint-Nazaire, presently appeared, in all the artless 
 simplicity of rude Breton construction. To Calyste's great 
 astonishment, the conveyance was full. 
 
 " We have left Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel and her sister 
 and her niece in a great pother," said the driver to Gasselin ; 
 " all the places had been taken by the custom-house. " 
 
 " I am done for ! " cried Calyste. 
 
 The vehicle was in fact full of custom-house men, on their 
 way, no doubt, to relieve those in charge at the salt-marshes. 
 
 When Calyste reached the little esplanade surrounding the 
 church of Saint-Nazaire, whence there is a view of Paimboeuf 
 and of the majestic estuary of the Loire where it struggles with 
 the tide, he found Camille and the Marquise waving their 
 handkerchiefs to bid a last farewell to the two passengers borne 
 away by the steam packet. Beatrix was quite bewitching, her 
 face tenderly shaded by the reflection from a rice-straw hat on 
 which poppies were lightly piled, tied by a scarlet ribbon ; in 
 a flowered India-muslin dress, one little slender foot put for- 
 ward in a green-gaitered shoe, leaning on her slight parasol- 
 stick, and waving her well-gloved hand. Nothing is more 
 strikingly effective than a woman on a rock, like a statue on 
 its pedestal. 
 
 Conti could see Calyste go up to Camille. 
 
 " I thought," said the youth to Mademoiselle des Touches, 
 " that you two ladies would be returning alone." 
 
 "That was very nice of you, Calyste," she replied, taking 
 his hand. Beatrix looked around, glanced at her young 
 adorer, and gave him the most imperious flash at her com- 
 mand. A smile that the Marquise caught on Camille's eloquent 
 lips made her feel the vulgarity of this impulse worthy of a
 
 144 BEA TRIX. 
 
 mere bourgeoise. Madame de Rochefide then said with a 
 smile to Calyste 
 
 " And was it not rather impertinent to suppose that I could 
 bore Camille on the way?" 
 
 " My dear, one man for two widows is not much in the 
 way," said Mademoiselle des Touches, taking Calyste's arm, 
 and leaving Beatrix to gaze after the boat. 
 
 At this instant Calyste heard in the street of what must be 
 called the port of Saint-Nazaire the voices of Mademoiselle 
 de Pen-Hoel, Charlotte, and Gasselin, all three chattering 
 like magpies. The old maid was catechising Gasselin, and 
 wanted to know what had brought him and his master to 
 Saint-Nazaire ; Mademoiselle des Touches' carriage had made 
 a commotion. 
 
 Before the lad could escape, Charlotte had caught sight of 
 him. 
 
 "There is Calysle ! " cried the girl, pointing him out to 
 her companions. 
 
 " Go and offer them my carriage ; their woman can sit by 
 my coachman," said Camille, who knew that Madame de Ker- 
 garouet with her daughter and Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel 
 had failed to get places. 
 
 Calyste, who could not avoid obeying Camille, went to 
 deliver this message. As soon as she knew that she would 
 have to ride with the Marquise de Rochefide and the famous 
 Camille Maupin, Madame de Kergarouet ignored her elder 
 sister's objections ; Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel refused to avail 
 herself of what she called the devil's chariot. At Nantes 
 people lived in rather more civilized latitudes than at Guer- 
 ande ; Camille was admired ; she was regarded as the Muse 
 of Brittany and an honor to the country ; she excited as much 
 curiosity as jealousy. The absolution granted her in Paris by 
 the fashionable world was consecrated by Mademoiselle des 
 Touches' fine fortune, and perhaps by her former successes at
 
 BEATRIX. 145 
 
 Nantes, which was proud of having been the birthplace of 
 Camille Maupin. 
 
 So the Viscountess, crazy with curiosity, dragged away her 
 old sister, turning a deaf ear to her jeremiads. 
 
 " Good-morning, Calyste," said little Charlotte. 
 
 "Good-morning, Charlotte," replied Calyste, but he did 
 not offer her his arm. 
 
 Both speechless with surprise, she at his coldness, he at his 
 own cruelty, they went up the hollow ravine that is called a 
 street at Saint-Nazaire, following the two sisters in silence. 
 In an instant the girl of sixteen saw the castle in the air which 
 her romantic hopes had built and furnished crumble into 
 ruins. She and Calyste had so constantly played together 
 during their childhood, they had been so intimately connected, 
 that she imagined her future life secure. She had hurried on, 
 carried away by heedless happiness, like a bird rushing down 
 on a field of wheat ; she was checked in her flight without 
 being able to imagine what the obstacle could be. 
 
 "What is the matter, Calyste?" she asked, taking his 
 hand. 
 
 " Nothing," he replied, withdrawing his hand with terrible 
 haste as he thought of his aunt's schemes and Mademoiselle 
 de Pen-HoeTs. 
 
 Tears filled Charlotte's eyes. She looked at the handsome 
 youth without animosity ; but she was to feel the first pangs 
 of jealousy and know the dreadful rage of rivalry at the sight 
 of the two Parisian beauties, which led her to suspect the 
 cause of Calyste's coldness. 
 
 Charlotte de Kergarouet was of middle height; she had 
 rustic rosy cheeks, a round face with wide-awake black eyes 
 that affected intelligence, a quantity of brown hair, a round 
 waist, flat back, and thin arms, and the crisp, decided tone 
 of speech adapted by country-bred girls who do not wish to 
 seem simpletons. She was the spoiled child of the family in 
 consequence of her aunt's preference for her. At this moment 
 10
 
 146 BEATRIX. 
 
 she was wearing the plaid tweed cloak lined with green silk 
 that she had put on for the passage in the steamboat. Her 
 traveling gown of cheap stuff, with a chaste, gathered body 
 and a finely pleated collar, would presently strike her as being 
 hideous in comparison with the fresh morning dress worn by 
 Beatrix and Camille. She would be painfully conscious of 
 stockings soiled on the rocks and the boats she had jumped 
 into, of old leather shoes, chosen especially that there might 
 be nothing good to spoil on the journey, as is the manner and 
 custom of provincial folk. 
 
 As to the Vicomtesse de Kergarouct, she was typically pro- 
 vincial. Tall, lean, faded, full of covert pretentiousness 
 which only showed when it was wounded, a great talker, and 
 by dint of talk picking up a few ideas as a billiard-player 
 makes a cannon, which gave her a reputation for brilliancy; 
 trying to snub Parisians by a display of blunt country shrewd- 
 ness, and an assumption of perfect contentment constantly 
 paraded ; stooping in the hope of being picked up, and furi- 
 ous at being left on her knees ; fishing for compliments, as 
 the English have it, and not always catching them ; dressing 
 in a style at once exaggerated and slatternly ; fancying that 
 a lack of politeness was lofty impertinence, and that she could 
 distress people greatly by paying them no attention ; refusing 
 things she wished for to have them offered a second time and 
 pressed on her beyond reason ; her head full of extinct sub- 
 jects, and much astonished to find herself behind the times; 
 finally, hardly able to abstain for one hour from dragging in 
 Nantes, and the small lions of Nantes, and the gossip of the 
 upper ten of Nantes ; complaining of Nantes, and criticising 
 Nantes, and then regarding as a personal affront the concur- 
 rence extorted from the politeness of those who rashly agreed 
 with all she said. 
 
 Her manners, her speech, and her ideas had to some extent 
 rubbed off on her four daughters. 
 
 To meet Camille Maupin and Madame de Rochefide!
 
 BE A TRIX. 147 
 
 Here was fame for the future and matter for a hundred con- 
 versations ! She marched on the church as if to take it by 
 storm, flourishing her handkerchief, which she unfolded to 
 show the corners ponderously embroidered at home, and 
 trimmed with worn-out lace. She had a rather stalwart gait, 
 which did not matter in a woman of seven-and-forty. 
 
 "Monsieur le Chevalier," said she, and she pointed to 
 Calyste, who was following sulkily enough with Charlotte, 
 " has informed us of your amiable offer ; but my sister, my 
 daughter, and I fear we shall incommode you." 
 
 "Not I, sister; I shall not inconvenience these ladies," 
 said the old maid sharply. " I can surely find a horse in 
 Saint-Nazaire to carry me home." 
 
 Camille and Beatrix exchanged sidelong looks, which Ca- 
 lyste noted, and that glance was enough to annihilate every 
 memory of his youth, all his belief in the Kergarouet-Pen- 
 Hoe'ls, and to wreck for ever the schemes laid by the two 
 families. 
 
 " Five can sit quite easily in the carriage," replied Made- 
 moiselle des Touches, on whom Jacqueline had turned her 
 back. " Even if we were horribly squeezed, which is impos- 
 sible, as you are all so slight, I should be amply compensated 
 by the pleasure of doing a service to friends of Calyste's. 
 Your maid, madame, will find a seat ; and your bundles, if 
 you have any, can be put in the rumble ; I have no servant 
 with me." 
 
 The Viscountess was profusely grateful, and blamed her 
 sister Jacqueline, who had been in such a hurry for her niece 
 that she would not give her time to travel by land in their 
 carriage ; to be sure, the post-road was not only longer, but 
 expensive ; she must return immediately to Nantes, where she 
 had left three more little kittens eager to have her back again 
 and she stroked her daughter's chin. But Charlotte put 
 on a little victimized air as she looked up at her mother, 
 which made it seem likely that the Viscountess bored her four
 
 148 BE A TRIX. 
 
 daughters most consumedly by trotting them out as persist- 
 ently as, in "Tristram Shandy," Corporal Trim puts his 
 cap on. 
 
 "You are a happy mother, and you must " Camille 
 
 began ; but she broke off, remembering that Beatrix must 
 have deserted her boy to follow Conti. 
 
 "Oh ! " said the Viscountess, " though it is my misfortune 
 to spend my life in the country and at Nantes, I have the 
 comfort of knowing that my children adore me. Have you 
 any children ? " she asked Camille. 
 
 "I am Mademoiselle des Touches," replied Camille. 
 "Madame is the Marquise de Rochefide." 
 
 " Then you are to be pitied for not knowing the greatest 
 happiness we poor mere women can have. Is it not so, 
 madame?" said she to the Marquise, to remedy her blunder. 
 "But you have many compensations." 
 
 A hot tear welled up in Beatrix's eyes ; she turned hastily 
 away and went to the clumsy parapet at the edge of the rock, 
 whither Calyste followed her. 
 
 "Madame," said Camille in a low voice to Madame de 
 Kergarouet, "do you not know that the Marquise is separated 
 from her husband, that she has not seen her son for two years, 
 and does not know when they may meet again?" 
 
 "Dear!" cried Madame de Kergarouet! "Poor lady! 
 Is it a judicial separation?" 
 
 "No, incompatibility," said Camille. 
 
 "I can quite understand that," replied the Viscountess 
 undaunted. 
 
 Old Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel had intrenched herself a 
 few yards off with her dear Charlotte. Calyste, after assuring 
 himself that no one could see them, took the Marquise's hand 
 and kissed it, leaving a tear on it. Beatrix turned on him, 
 her eyes dried by anger ; some cruel word was on her tongue, 
 but she could say nothing as she saw the tears on the beautiful 
 face of the angelic youth, as deeply moved as she was.
 
 BEATRIX. 149 
 
 "Good heavens, Calyste ! " said Camille in a whisper as 
 he rejoined them with Madame de Rochefide, " you will have 
 that for a mother-in-law, and that little gaby for your wife." 
 
 " Because her aunt is rich," added Calyste sarcastically. 
 
 The whole party now moved toward the inn, and the Vis- 
 countess thought it incumbent on her part to make some 
 satirical remarks to Camille Maupin on the savages of Saint- 
 Nazaire. 
 
 " I love Brittany, madame," replied Felicite gravely. "I 
 was born at Guerande." 
 
 Calyste could not help admiring Mademoiselle des Touches, 
 who, by the tones of her voice, her steady gaze, and placid 
 manners, put him at his ease, notwithstanding the terrible 
 confessions of the scene that had taken place last night. Still, 
 she looked tired ; her features betrayed that she had not slept ; 
 they looked thickened, but the forehead suppressed the in- 
 ternal storm with relentless calm. 
 
 "What queens ! " said he to Charlotte, pointing to Beatrix 
 and Camille, as he gave the girl his arm, to Mademoiselle de 
 Pen-HoeTs great satisfaction. 
 
 "What notion was this of your mother's," said the old 
 lady, also giving a lean arm to her niece, " to throw us into 
 the company of this wretched woman?" 
 
 " Oh, aunt ! a woman who is the glory of Brittany." 
 
 " The disgrace, child ! Do not let me see you too cringing 
 to her." 
 
 "Mademoiselle Charlotte is right," said Calyste; "you 
 are unjust." 
 
 " Oh, she has bewitched you ! " retorted Mademoiselle de 
 Pen-Hoel. 
 
 "I have the same friendship for her that I have for you," 
 said Calyste. 
 
 " How long have the du Gu<nics taken to lying?" said the 
 old woman. 
 
 " Since the Pen-Hoels took to being deaf," retorted Calyste.
 
 150 BE A TRIX. 
 
 "Then you are not in love with her?" asked the aunt, 
 delighted. 
 
 " I was, but I am no longer," he replied. 
 
 " Bad boy ! Then why have you given us so much anxiety? 
 I knew that love was but a folly ; only marriage is to be relied 
 on," said she, looking at Charlotte. 
 
 Charlotte, somewhat reassured, hoped to reconquer her 
 advantages by an appeal to the memories of their childhood, 
 and clung to Calyste's arm ; but he vowed to himself that he 
 would come to a clear and candid understanding with the lit- 
 tle heiress. 
 
 " Oh, what famous games of mouchc we will have, Calyste," 
 said she, " and what capital fun ! " 
 
 The horses were put in ; Camille made the Viscountess and 
 Charlotte take the best seats, for Jacqueline had disappeared ; 
 then she and the Marquise sat with their back to the horses. 
 Calyste, forced to give up the pleasure he had promised him- 
 self, rode at the side of the carriage ; and the horses, all tired, 
 went slowly enough to allow of his gazing at Beatrix. 
 
 History has kept no record of the singular conversation of 
 these four persons, so strangely thrown together by chance in 
 this carriage ; for it is impossible to accept the hundred and 
 something versions which were current at Nantes as to the 
 stories, the repartees, and the witticisms which Madame de 
 Kergarouet heard from Camille Maupin himself. She took 
 good care not to repeat, nor even understand, the replies 
 made by Mademoiselle des Touches to all her ridiculous 
 inquiries such as writers so often hear, and by which they 
 are made to pay dearly for their few joys. 
 
 "How do you write your books?" asked Madame de 
 Kergarouet. 
 
 "Why, just as you do your needlework," said Camille, 
 "your netting, or cross-stitch." 
 
 " And where did you find all those deep observations and 
 attractive pictures ? ' '
 
 BEATRIX. 151 
 
 " Where you find all the clever things you say, madame. 
 Nothing is easier than writing, and if you chose " 
 
 "Ah, it all lies in the choosing? I should never have 
 thought it ! And which of your works do you yourself 
 prefer?" 
 
 "It is difficult to have any preference for these little 
 kittens." 
 
 "You are surfeited with compliments; it is impossible to 
 say anything new." 
 
 " Believe me, madame, I appreciate the form you give to 
 yours." 
 
 The Viscountess, anxious not to seem neglectful of the 
 Marquise, said, looking archly at her 
 
 " I shall never forget this drive, sitting between wit and 
 beauty." 
 
 The Marquise laughed. 
 
 " You flatter me, madame," said she. " It is not in nature 
 that wit should be noticed in the company of genius, and I 
 have not yet said much." 
 
 Charlotte, keenly alive to her mother's absurdity, looked 
 at her, hoping to check her; but the Viscountess still valiantly 
 showed fight against the two laughing Parisian ladies. 
 Calyste, trotting at an easy pace by the carriage, could only 
 see the two women on the back seat, and his eyes fell on them 
 alternately, betraying a very melancholy mood. Beatrix, 
 who could not help being seen, persistently avoided looking 
 at the youth ; with a placidity that is maddening to a lover, 
 she sat with her hands folded over her crossed shawl, and 
 seemed lost in deep meditation. 
 
 At a spot where the road is shaded and as moist and green 
 as a cool forest path, where the wheels of the carriage were 
 scarcely audible, and the wind brought a resinous scent, 
 Camille remarked on the beauty of the place, and, leaning 
 her hand on Beatrix's knee, she pointed to Calyste and 
 said
 
 152 BE A TRIX. 
 
 "How well he rides!" 
 
 " Calyste ? " said Madame de Kergarouet. " He is a capital 
 horseman." 
 
 " Oh, Calyste is so nice ! " said Charlotte. 
 
 " There are so many Englishmen just like him " replied 
 
 the Marquise indifferently, without finishing her sentence. 
 
 "His mother is Irish an O'Brien," said Charlotte, feeling 
 personally attacked. 
 
 Camille and the Marquise drove into Guerande with the 
 Vicomtesse de Kergarouet and her daughter, to the great as- 
 tonishment of the gaping townspeople ; they left their travel- 
 ing companions at the corner of the little Rue du Guenic, 
 where there was something very like a crowd. Calyste had 
 ridden on to announce to his mother the arrival of the party, 
 who were expected to dinner. The meal had been politely 
 put off till four o'clock. 
 
 The chevalier went back to give the ladies his arm ; he 
 kissed Camille's hand, hoping to touch that of the Marquise, 
 but she firmly kept her arms folded, and he besought her in 
 vain with eyes sparkling through wasted tears. 
 
 "You little goose ! " said Camille in his ear, with a light, 
 friendly kiss on it. 
 
 "True enough!" said Calyste to himself as the carriage 
 turned. " I forget my mother's counsels but I believe I 
 always shall forget them." 
 
 Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, who arrived valiantly mounted 
 on a hired nag, Madame de Kergarouet, and Charlotte found 
 the table laid, and were cordially, if not luxuriously, received 
 by the du Guenics. Old Zephirine had sent for certain bot- 
 tles of fine wine from the depths of the cellar, and Mariotte 
 had surpassed herself in Breton dishes. The Viscountess, de- 
 lighted to have traveled with the famous Camille Maupin, tried 
 to expatiate on modern literature and the place held in it by 
 Camille ; but as it had been with the game of whist, so it was 
 with literary matters ; neither the du Guenics, nor the cure,
 
 BEATRIX. 153 
 
 who looked in, nor the Chevalier du Halga understood any- 
 thing about them. The abbe and the old naval officer sipped 
 the liqueurs at dessert. 
 
 As soon as Mariotte, helped by Gasselin and by Madame 
 de Kergarouet's maid, had cleared the table, there was an en- 
 thusiastic clamor for mouche. Joy prevailed. Everybody 
 believed Calyste to be free, and saw him married ere long to 
 little Charlotte. Calyste sat silent. For the first time in his 
 life he was making comparisons between the Kergarouets and 
 the two elegant and clever women, full of taste, who, at this 
 very moment, were probably laughing at the two provincials, 
 if he might judge from the first glances they had exchanged. 
 Fanny, knowing Calyste's secret, noticed his dejection. Char- 
 lotte's coquetting and her mother's attacks had no effect on 
 him. Her dear boy was evidently bored ; his body was in this 
 room, where of yore he could have been amused by the ab- 
 surdities of mouche, but his spirit was wandering round les 
 Touches. 
 
 "How can I send him off to Camille's?" thought the 
 mother, who loved him, and who was bored because he was 
 bored. Her affection lent her inventiveness. 
 
 " You are dying to be off to les Touches to see her?" she 
 whispered to Calyste. 
 
 The boy's answer was a smile and a blush that thrilled this 
 devoted mother to her heart's very core. 
 
 " Madame," said she to the Viscountess, "you will be very 
 uncomfortable to-morrow in the carrier's chaise, and obliged 
 to start very early in the morning. Would it not be better 
 if you were to have Mademoiselle des Touches' carriage? Go 
 over, Calyste," said she, turning to her son, "and arrange 
 the matter at les Touches; but come back quickly." 
 
 "It will not take ten minutes," cried Calyste, giving his 
 mother a wild hug out on the steps, whither she followed him. 
 
 Calyste flew with the speed of a fawn, and was in the en- 
 trance hall of les Touches just as Camille and Beatrix came
 
 154 BE A TRIX. 
 
 out of the dining-room after dinner. He had the wit to offer 
 his arm to Felicite. 
 
 " You have deserted the Viscountess and her daughter for 
 us," said she, pressing his arm. " We are able to appreciate 
 the extent of the sacrifice." 
 
 "Are these Kergarouets related to the Portendueres and old 
 Admiral de Kergarouet, whose widow married Charles de Van- 
 denesse?" Madame de Rochefide asked Camille. 
 
 "Mademoiselle Charlotte is the admiral's grand-niece," 
 replied Camille. 
 
 "She is a charming young person," said Beatrix, seating 
 herself in a Gothic armchair; " the very thing for Monsieur 
 du Guenic." 
 
 "That marriage shall never be!" cried Camille vehe- 
 mently. 
 
 Calyste, overwhelmed by the cold indifference of the Mar- 
 quise, who spoke of the little country girl as the only creature 
 for whom he, the country chevalier, was a match, sat speech- 
 less and bewildered. 
 
 "And why not, Camille? " said Madame de Rochefide. 
 
 "My dear," said Camille, seeing Calyste's despair, " I did 
 not advise Conti to get married, and I believe I was delightful 
 to him you are ungenerous." 
 
 Beatrix looked at her with surprise mingled with indefinable 
 suspicions. Calyste almost understood Camille's self-immo- 
 lation as he saw the pale flush rise in her cheeks, which, in 
 her, betrayed the most violent emotions ; he went up to her 
 awkwardly enough, took her hand, and kissed it. Camille 
 sat down to the piano with an easy air, as if equally 
 sure of her friend and of the lover she had claimed, turn- 
 ing her back upon them, and leaving them to each other. 
 She improvised some variations on airs, unconsciously sug- 
 gested by her thoughts, for they were all deeply sad. The 
 Marquise appeared to be listening ; but she was watching 
 Calyste, who was too young and too guileless to play the part
 
 BEATRIX. 156 
 
 suggested to him by Camille, and sat lost in ecstasy before his 
 real idol. At the end of an hour, during which Mademoiselle 
 des Touches gave herself up to her jealous feelings, Beatrix 
 went to her room. 
 
 Camille at once led Calyste into her own room, so as not 
 to be overheard, for women have an admirable sense of dis- 
 trust. 
 
 "My child," said she, "you must pretend to love me or 
 you are lost ; you are a perfect child ; you know nothing about 
 women, you know only how to love. To love and to be 
 loved are two very different things. You are rushing into ter- 
 rible suffering. I want you to be happy. If you provoke 
 Beatrix, not in her pride, but in her obstinacy, she is capable 
 of flying off to join Conti at a few leagues from Paris. Then 
 what would become of you?" 
 
 " I should love her," replied Calyste. 
 
 "You would not see her again." 
 
 "Oh, yes, I should," said he. 
 
 "Pray, how?" 
 
 "I should follow her." 
 
 " But you are as poor as Job, my dear child." 
 
 " My father, Gasselin, and I lived in la Vended for three 
 months on a hundred and fifty francs, marching day and 
 night." 
 
 " Calyste," said Felicite, " listen to me. I see you are too 
 honest to act a part ; I do not wish to corrupt so pure a nature 
 as yours. I will take it all on myself. Beatrix shall love 
 you." 
 
 "Is it possible?" he cried, clasping his hands. 
 
 "Yes," said Camille. "But we must undo the vows she 
 had made to herself. I will lie for you. Only do not inter- 
 fere in any way with the arduous task I am about to undertake. 
 The Marquise has much aristocratic cunning ; she is intellec- 
 tually suspicious ; no hunter ever had to take more difficult 
 game ; so in this case, my poor boy, the sportsman must take
 
 156 BE A TRIX. 
 
 his dog's advice. Will you promise to obey me blindly ? I 
 will be your Fox," said she, naming Calyste's best hound. 
 
 " What then am I to do?" replied the young man. 
 
 " Very little," said Camille. " Come here every day at 
 noon. I, like an impatient mistress, shall always be at the 
 window of the corridor that looks out on the Gu6rande road 
 to see you coming. I shall fly to my room so as not to be 
 seen not to let you know the depth of a passion that is a 
 burden on you ; but sometimes you will see me and wave 
 your handkerchief to me. Then in the courtyard, and as 
 you come upstairs, you must put on a look of some annoy- 
 ance. That will be no dissimulation, my child," said she, 
 leaning her head on his breast, " will it ? Do not hurry up ; 
 look out of the staircase window on to the garden to look for 
 Beatrix. When she is there and she will be there, never 
 fear if she sees you, come straight, but very slowly, to the 
 little drawing-room, and thence to my room. If you should 
 see me at the window spying your treachery, you must start 
 back that I may not catch you imploring a glance from 
 Beatrix. Once in my room you will be my prisoner. Yes ; 
 we will sit there till four o'clock. You may spend the time 
 in reading; I will smoke. You will be horribly bored by 
 not seeing her, but I will provide you with interesting books. 
 You have read nothing of George Sand's ; I will send a man 
 to-night to buy her works at Nantes, and those of some other 
 writers that are unknown to you. 
 
 " I shall be the first to leave the room ; you must not put 
 down your book or come into the little drawing-room till 
 you hear Beatrix in there talking to me. Whenever you see a 
 music-book open on the piano, you can ask if you may stay. 
 You may be positively rude to me if you can ; I give you 
 leave ; all will be well." 
 
 "I know, Camille," said he, with delightful good faith, 
 " that you have the rarest affection for me ; it makes me quite 
 sorry that I ever saw Beatrix; but what do you hope for? "
 
 BEATRIX. 157 
 
 "In a week Beatrix will be crazy about you." 
 
 " Good God ! " cried he, " is that possible? " and, clasp- 
 ing his hands, he fell on his knees before Camille, who was 
 touched and happy to give him such joy at her own cost. 
 
 "Listen to me," said she. "If you speak to the Mar- 
 quise not merely in the way of conversation, but if you 
 exchange even a few words with her if you allow her to 
 question you, if you fail in the wordless part I set you to 
 play, and which is certainly easy enough, understand clearly," 
 and she spoke in a serious tone, " you will lose her for ever." 
 
 "I do not understand anything of all this, Camille," cried 
 Calyste, looking at her with adorable guilelessness. 
 
 " If you understood, you would not be the exquisite child 
 that you are, the noble, handsome Calyste," said she, taking 
 his hand and kissing it. 
 
 And Calyste did what he had never done before ; he put 
 his arm round Camille and kissed her gently on the neck, 
 without passion, but tenderly, as he kissed his mother. Made- 
 moiselle des Touches could not restrain a burst of tears. 
 
 "Now go, child," said she, "and tell your Viscountess 
 that my carriage is at her orders." 
 
 Calyste wanted to stay, but he was obliged to obey Ca- 
 mille's imperious and imperative gesture. He went home in 
 high spirits, for he was sure of being loved within a week 
 by the beautiful Rochefide. 
 
 The mouche players found in him the Calyste they had lost 
 these two months. Charlotte ascribed the change to her 
 own presence. Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel was affectionately 
 teasing. The Abbe Grimont tried to read in the Baroness' 
 eyes the reason for the calm he saw there. The Chevalier du 
 Halga rubbed his hands. 
 
 The two old maids were as lively as a couple of lizards. 
 The Viscountess owed five francs' worth of accumulated fines. 
 Zephirine's avarice was so keenly excited that she lamented 
 her inability to see the cards, and was sharply severe on her
 
 158 BEATRIX. 
 
 sister-in-law, who was distracted from the game by Calyste's 
 good spirits, and who asked him a question now and then 
 without understanding his replies. 
 
 The game went on until eleven o'clock. Two players had 
 retired ; the Baron and du Halga were asleep in their arm- 
 chairs. Mariotte had made some buckwheat cakes ; the 
 Baroness brought out her tea-caddy ; and before the Kerga- 
 roue'ts left, the noble house of du Guenic offered its guests 
 a collation, with fresh butter, fruit, and cream, for which the 
 silver teapot was brought out, and the English China tea- 
 service sent to the Baroness by one of her aunts. This air of 
 modern splendor in that antique room, the Baroness' exquisite 
 grace, accustomed as a good Irishwoman to make and pour 
 out tea, a great business with Englishwomen, were really de- 
 lightful. The greatest luxury would not have given such a 
 simple, unpretending, and dignified effect as this impulse of 
 glad hospitality. 
 
 When there was no one left in the room but the Baroness 
 and her son, she looked inquiringly at Calyste. 
 
 "What happened this evening at les Touches?" she 
 asked. 
 
 Calyste told her of the hope Camille had put into his heart 
 and of her strange instructions. 
 
 " Poor woman ! " exclaimed Fanny, clasping her hands, 
 and for the first time pitying Mademoiselle des Touches. 
 
 Some minutes after Calyste had left, Beatrix, who had 
 heard him leave the house, came into her friend's room, and 
 found her sunk on a sofa, her eyes wet with tears. 
 
 "What is the matter, Felicite?" asked the Marquise, with 
 concern. 
 
 " That I am forty and in love, my dear ! " said Mademoi- 
 selle des Touches, in a tone of terrible fury, her eyes suddenly 
 dry and hard. " If only you could know, Beatrix, how many 
 tears I shed daily over the lost days of my youth ! To be
 
 BEATRIX. 159 
 
 loved out of pity, to know that one's pittance of happiness 
 is earned by painful toil, by catlike tricks, by snares laid for 
 the innocence and virtue of a mere boy is not that shameful ? 
 Happily, we find a sort of absolution in the infinitude of pas- 
 sion, in the energy of happiness, in the certainty of being for 
 ever supreme above other women in a young heart, on which 
 our name is graven by unforgettable pleasure and insane self- 
 sacrifice. Yes, if he asked it of me, I would throw myself 
 into the sea at his least signal. Sometimes I catch myself 
 wishing that he would desire it ; it would be a sacrifice, and 
 not suicide. 
 
 " Oh ! Beatrix, in coming here you set me a cruel task ! I 
 know how difficult it is to triumph against you ; but you love 
 Conti, you are noble and generous, and you will not deceive 
 me ; on the contrary, you will help me to preserve my Calyste. 
 I was prepared for the impression you would make on him, 
 but I have not been so foolish as to seem jealous ; that would 
 but add fuel to the fire. On the contrary, I announced your 
 arrival, depicting you in such bright colors that you could 
 never come up to the portrait, and unluckily you are hand- 
 somer than ever. ' ' 
 
 This vehement lament, in which truth and untruth were 
 mingled, completely deceived Madame de Rochefide. Claud 
 Vignon had told Conti his reasons for leaving ; Beatrix was, 
 of course, informed, so she showed magnanimity by behaving 
 coldly to Calyste ; but at this instant there awoke in her that 
 thrill of joy which every woman feels at the bottom of her 
 heart on hearing that she is loved. The love she inspires in 
 any man implies an unfeigned flattery which it is impossible 
 not to appreciate; but when the man belongs to another 
 woman, his homage gives more than joy, it is heavenly bliss. 
 Beatrix sat down by her friend, and was full of little coaxing 
 ways. 
 
 " You have not a white hair," said she ; " you have not a 
 wrinkle ; your temples are smooth still, while I know many a
 
 160 BEA TRIX. 
 
 woman of thirty obliged to cover hers. Look, my dear," 
 she added, raising her curls, " what my journey cost me." 
 
 She showed the faintest pucker that ruffled the surface of 
 her exquisite skin ; she turned up her sleeve and displayed 
 the same wrinkles on her wrists, where the transparent texture 
 already showed lines, and a network of swollen veins, and 
 three deep marks made a bracelet of furrows. 
 
 " Are not these the two spots which can tell no lies, as a 
 writer, investigating our miseries, has said ? We must suffer 
 much before we see the truth of his terrible shrewdness ; but, 
 happily for us, most men know nothing about it, and do not 
 read that atrocious writer." 
 
 " Your letter told me all," replied Camille. " Happiness 
 is not fatuous ; you boasted too much of yours. In love, 
 truth is deaf, dumb, and blind. And I, knowing you had 
 reasons for throwing over Conti, dreaded your visit here. 
 My dear, Calyste is an angel ; he is as good as he is hand- 
 some ; the poor innocent will not resist one look from you, 
 he admires you too much not to love on the smallest encour- 
 agement ; your disdain will preserve him to me. I confess it 
 with the cowardice of true passion : if you take him from me, 
 you kill me. 'Adolphe,' that terrible book by Benjamin 
 Constant, has told us of Adolphe's sufferings ; but what of the 
 woman's, heh? He did not study them enough to depict 
 them, and what woman would dare reveal them ? They would 
 discredit our sex, humiliate our virtues, add to our vices. 
 Ah ! if I may measure them by my fears, these tortures are 
 like the torments of hell. But if he deserts me, my deter- 
 mination is fixed." 
 
 " And what have you determined ? " asked Beatrix, with an 
 eagerness that was a shock to Camille. 
 
 On this the two friends looked at each other with the keen- 
 ness of two Venetian inquisitors of State, a swift glance, in 
 which their souls met and struck fire like two flints. The 
 Marquise's eyes fell.
 
 SEA TRIX. 161 
 
 "Beside man there is only God ! " said the famous woman 
 gravely. " God is the unknown. I should cast myself into 
 it as into a gulf. Calyste has just sworn that he admires you 
 only as he might admire a picture ; but you are eight-and- 
 twenty, and in all the splendor of your beauty. So the 
 struggle between him and me has begun by a falsehood. 
 Happily I know how to win." 
 
 "And how is that?" 
 
 "That, my dear, is my secret. Leave me the advantages 
 of my age. Though Claud Vignon has cast me into the abyss 
 me, when I had raised myself to a spot which I believed to 
 be inaccessible I may at least pluck the pale blossoms, etio- 
 lated but delicious, which grow at the foot of the precipice." 
 
 Madame de Rochefide was moulded like wax by Mademoi- 
 selle des Touches, who reveled in savage pleasure as she in- 
 volved her in her meshes. Camille sent her to bed, nettled 
 with curiosity, tossed between jealousy and generosity, but 
 certainly thinking much about the handsome youth. 
 
 "She would be delighted if she could betray me," said 
 Camille to herself, as they kissed and said good-night. 
 
 Then, when she was alone, the author made way for the 
 woman she melted into tears; she filled her hookah with 
 tobacco dipped in opium, and spent the greater part of the 
 night smoking, and thus numbing the tortures of her love, 
 while seeing, through the clouds of smoke, Calyste's charming 
 head. 
 
 "What a fine book might be written containing the story 
 of my sorrows?" said she to herself; "but it has been done. 
 Sappho lived before me. Sappho was young ! A touching 
 and lovely heroine indeed is a woman of forty ! Smoke your 
 hookah, my poor Camille, you have not even the privilege of 
 making a poem out of your woes ; this crowns them all." 
 
 She did not go to bed till daybreak, mingling tears, spasms 
 of rage, and magnanimous resolutions in the long meditation 
 wherein she sometimes considered the mysteries of the Catholic 
 11
 
 162 BE A TRIX. 
 
 religion, of which she had never thought in the course of her 
 reckless life as an artist and an unbelieving writer. 
 
 Next day, Calyste, advised by his mother to act exactly on 
 Camille's instructions, came at noon and stole mysteriously 
 up to Mademoiselle des Touches' room, where he found 
 plenty of books. Felicite sat in an armchair by the window, 
 smoking, and gazing alternately at the wild marsh landscape, 
 at the sea, and at Calyste, with whom she exchanged a few 
 words concerning Beatrix. At a certain moment, seeing the 
 Marquise walking in the garden, she went to the window to 
 unfasten the curtains, so that her friend should see her, and 
 drew them to shut out the light, leaving only a strip that fell 
 on Calyste' s book. 
 
 " I shall ask you to stay to dinner this evening, my child," 
 said she, tumbling his hair, " and you must refuse, looking at 
 Beatrix; you will have no difficulty in making her understand 
 how deeply you regret being unable to remain here. ' ' 
 
 At about four o'clock Camille left him and went to play 
 the dreadful farce of her false happiness to the Marquise, 
 whom she brought back to the drawing-room. Calyste then 
 came out of the adjoining room ; at that moment he felt the 
 shame of his position. The look he gave Beatrix, though 
 watched for by Felicite, was even more expressive than she 
 had expected. Beatrix was beautifully dressed. 
 
 " How elegant you are, my sweetheart ! " said Camille, 
 when Calyste had left. 
 
 These manoeuvres went on for six days ; they were seconded, 
 without Calyste's knowledge, by the most ingenious conver- 
 sations between Camille and her friend. There was between 
 the two women a duel without truce, in which the weapons 
 were cunning, feints, generosity, false confessions, astute con- 
 fidences, in which one hid her love and the other stripped 
 hers bare, while nevertheless the iron sharpness, red hot with 
 Camille's treacherous words, pierced her friend's heart to the 
 core, implanting some of those evil feelings which good women
 
 BEATRIX. 163 
 
 find it so hard to suppress. Beatrix in the end took offense 
 at the suspicions betrayed by Camille ; she thought them dis- 
 honoring to both alike ; she was delighted to discover in the 
 great authoress the weakness of her sex, and longed for the 
 pleasure of showing her where her superiority ended, how she 
 might be humiliated. 
 
 "Well, my dear, what are you going to tell him to-day?" 
 she asked, with a spiteful glance at her friend, when the im- 
 aginary lover asked leave to remain. " On Monday we had 
 something to talk over ; on Tuesday you had too poor a din- 
 ner ; on Wednesday you were afraid of annoying the Baroness ; 
 on Thursday we were going out together ; yesterday you bid 
 him good-by as soon as he opened his mouth. Now, I want 
 him to stay to-day, poor boy ! " 
 
 " Already, my dear ! " said Camille, with biting irony. 
 
 Beatrix colored. 
 
 "Then stay, Monsieur du Guenic," said Mademoiselle des 
 Touches, assuming a queenly air, as though she were nettled. 
 
 Beatrix turned cold and hard ; she was crushing, satirical, 
 and intolerable to Calyste, whom Felicite sent off to play 
 mouche with Mademoiselle de Kergarouet. 
 
 " That girl is not dangerous ! " said Beatrix, smiling. 
 
 Young men in love are like starving people, the cook's 
 preparations do not satisfy them ; they think too much of the 
 end to understand the means. As he returned from les 
 Touches to Guerande, Calyste's mind was full of Beatrix ; he 
 did not know what deep feminine skill Felicitd was employing 
 to promote his interests to use a cant phrase. In the course 
 of this week the Marquise had written but one letter to Conti, 
 a symptom of indifference which had not escaped Camille. 
 
 Calyste's whole life was concentrated in the short mo- 
 ments when he saw Beatrix ; this drop of water, far from 
 quenching his thirst, only increased it. The magic words, 
 "You shall be loved," spoken by Camille and endorsed by 
 his mother, were the talisman by which he checked the fire
 
 164 BE A TRIX. 
 
 of his passion. He tried to kill time ; he could not sleep, 
 and cheated his sleeplessness by reading, bringing home a 
 barrow-load of books every evening, as Mariotte expressed it. 
 His aunt cursed Mademoiselle des Touches ; but the Baroness, 
 who had often gone up to her son's room on seeing a light 
 there, knew the secret of this wakefulness. Though Fanny 
 had never gotten beyond her timidity as an ignorant girl, and 
 love's books had remained close to her, her motherly tender- 
 ness guided her to certain notions ; still, the abysses of the 
 sentiment were dark to her and hidden by clouds, and she was 
 very much alarmed at the state in which she saw her son, ter- 
 rifying herself over the one absorbing and incomprehensible 
 desire that was consuming him. 
 
 Calyste had, in fact, but one idea : the image of Beatrix was 
 always before him. During the evening, over the cards, his 
 absence of mind was like his father's slumbers. Finding him 
 so unlike what he had been when he had believed himself in 
 love with Camille, his mother recognized with a sort of terror 
 the symptoms of a genuine passion, a thing altogether un- 
 known in the-old family home. Feverish irritability and con- 
 stant dreaming made Calyste stupid. He would often sit for 
 hours gazing at one figure in the tapestry. That morning she 
 had advised him to go no more to les Touches, but to give up 
 these two women. 
 
 " Not go to les Touches ! " cried he. 
 
 "Nay, go, my dear, go; do not be angry, my darling," 
 replied she, kissing his eyes, which had flashed flame at her. 
 
 In this state Calyste was within an ace of losing the fruits of 
 Camille's skilled manoeuvres by the Breton impetuosity of his 
 love, which he could no longer master. In spite of his 
 promises to Felicit6, he vowed that he would see and speak to 
 Beatrix. He wanted to read her eyes, to drown his gaze in 
 their depths, to study the little details of her dress, to breathe 
 its fragrance, to hear the music of her voice, follow the elegant 
 deliberateness of her movements, embrace her figure in a
 
 BE A TRIX. 165 
 
 glance to contemplate her, in short, as a great general 
 studies the field on which a decisive battle is to be fought. 
 He wanted her, as lovers want ; he was the prey of such desire 
 as closed his ears, dulled his intellect, and threw him into a 
 morbid condition, in which he no longer saw obstacles or dis- 
 tance, and was not even conscious of his body. 
 
 It struck him that he might go to les Touches before the 
 hour agreed upon, hoping to find Beatrix in the garden. He 
 knew that she walked there while waiting for breakfast. 
 Mademoiselle des Touches and her friend had been in the 
 morning to see the salt-marshes and the basin with its shore 
 of fine sand, into which the sea oozes, looking like a lake in 
 the midst of the sand-hills ; they had come home, and were 
 talking as they wandered about the yellow gravel paths in the 
 garden. 
 
 "If this landscape interests you," said Camille, "you 
 should go to le Croisic with Calyste. There are some very 
 fine rocks there, cascades of granite, little bays with natural 
 basins, wonders of capricious variety, and the seashore with 
 thousands of fragments of marble, a whole world of amuse- 
 ment. You will see women making wood; that is to say, 
 plastering masses of cow-dung against the wall to dry, and 
 then piling them to keep, like peat in Paris ; then, in winter, 
 they warm themselves by that fuel." 
 
 "And you will trust Calyste?" said the Marquise, laugh- 
 ing, in a tone which plainly showed that Camille, by sulking 
 with Beatrix the night before, had obliged her to think of 
 Calyste. 
 
 " Oh, my dear, when you know the angelic soul of a boy 
 like him you will understand me. In him beauty is as noth- 
 ing, you must know that pure heart, that guilelessness that is 
 amazed at every step taken in the realm of love. What 
 faith ! what candor ! what grace ! The ancients had good 
 reason to worship beauty as holy. 
 
 "Some traveler, I forget whom, tells us that horses in a
 
 166 BEATRIX. 
 
 state of freedom take the handsomest of them to be their 
 leader. Beauty, my dear, is the genius of matter ; it is the 
 hall-mark set by nature on her most perfect creations ; it is 
 the truest symbol, as it is the greatest chance. Did any one 
 ever imagine a deformed angel ? Do not they combine grace 
 and strength ? What has kept us standing for hours together 
 before certain pictures in Italy, in which genius has striven 
 for years to realize one of these caprices of nature ? Come, 
 with your hand on your conscience, was it not the ideal of 
 beauty which we combined in our minds with moral grandeur ? 
 Well, and Calyste is one of those dreams made real ; he has 
 the courage of the lion, who remains quiet without suspecting 
 his sovereignty. When he feels at ease he is brilliant ; I like 
 his girlish diffidence. In his heart, my soul is refreshed after 
 all the corruption, the ideas of science, literature, the world, 
 politics all the futile accessories under which we stifle happi- 
 ness. I am now what I never was before I am a child ! I 
 am sure of him, but I like to pretend jealousy ; it makes him 
 happy. Beside, it is part of my secret." 
 
 Beatrix walked on, silent and pensive ; Camille was en- 
 during unspoken martyrdom, and flashing side-glances at her 
 that looked like flames. 
 
 "Ah, my dear, you you are happy," said Beatrix, leaning 
 her hand on Camille' s arm like a woman weary of some covert 
 resistance. 
 
 "Yes! very happy!" replied poor Felicite, with savage 
 bitterness. 
 
 The women sank on to a bench, both exhausted. No crea- 
 ture of her sex was ever subjected to more elaborate seduction 
 or more clear-sighted Machiavellism than Madame de Roche- 
 fide had been during the last week. 
 
 " But I I who see Conti's infidelities, who swallow them, 
 who " 
 
 "And why do you not give him up?" said Camille, dis- 
 cerning a favorable moment for striking a decisive blow.
 
 BE A TRIX. 167 
 
 "Can I?" 
 "Oh! poorchild- 
 
 They both sat stupidly gazing at a clump of trees. 
 
 " I will go and hasten breakfast," said Camille, " this walk 
 has given me an appetite." 
 
 " Our conversation has taken away mine," said Beatrix. 
 
 Beatrix, a white figure in a morning dress, stood out against 
 the green masses of foliage. Calyste, who had stolen into the 
 garden through the drawing-room, turned down a path, 
 walking slowly to meet the Marquise by chance, as it were ; 
 and Beatrix could not help starting a little when she saw 
 him. 
 
 "How did I displease you yesterday, madame?" asked 
 Calyste, after a few commonplace remarks had been ex- 
 changed. 
 
 "Why, you neither please me nor displease me," said she 
 gently. 
 
 Her tone, her manner, her delightful grace encouraged 
 Calyste. 
 
 " I am indifferent to you? " said he, in a voice husky with 
 the tears that rose to his eyes. 
 
 "Must we not be indifferent to each other?" replied 
 Beatrix. " Each of us has a sincere attachment " 
 
 "Oh ! " said Calyste eagerly, "I did love Camille; but I 
 do not love her now." 
 
 "Then what do you do every day, all the morning long?" 
 asked she, with a perfidious smile. " I cannot suppose that, 
 in spite of her passion for tobacco, Camille prefers her cigar 
 to you ; or that, in spite of your admiration for authoresses, 
 you spend four hours in reading novels by women." 
 
 " Then you know? " said the innocent boy, his face flushed 
 with the joy of gazing at his idol. 
 
 " Calyste ! " cried Camille violently, as she appeared on 
 the scene, seizing him by the arm and pulling him some steps; 
 " Calyste, is this what you promised me?"
 
 168 BEATRIX. 
 
 The Marquise heard this reproof, while Mademoiselle des 
 Touches went off scolding and leading away Calyste ; she 
 stood mystified by Calyste' s avowal, and unable to understand 
 it. Madame de Rochefide was not so clear-sighted as Claud 
 Vignon. The truth of the terrible and sublime comedy per- 
 formed by Camille is one of those parts of magnanimous 
 infamy which a woman can conceive of only in the last 
 extremity. It means a breaking heart, the end of her feelings 
 as a woman, and the beginning of a sacrifice, which drags her 
 down to hell or leads her to heaven. 
 
 During breakfast, to which Calyste was invited, Beatrix, 
 whose feelings were lofty and proud, had already undergone 
 a revulsion, stifling the germs of love that were sprouting in 
 her heart. She was not hard or cold to Calyste, but her mild 
 indifference wrung his heart. Felicite proposed that they 
 should go on the next day but one to make an excursion 
 through the strange tract of country lying between les Touches, 
 le Croisic, and le Bourg de Batz. She begged Calyste to spend 
 the morrow in finding a boat and some men, in case they 
 should wish to go out by sea. She undertook to supply 
 provisions, horses, and everything necessary to spare them 
 any fatigue in this party of pleasure. 
 
 Beatrix cut her short by saying that she would not take the 
 risk of running about the country. Calyste's face, which had 
 expressed lively delight, was suddenly clouded. 
 
 " Why, what are you afraid of, my dear?" said Camille. 
 
 " My position is too delicate to allow of my compromising, 
 not my reputation, but my happiness," she said with mean- 
 ing, and she looked at the lad. "You know how jealous 
 Conti is ; if he knew ' ' 
 
 " And who is to tell him ? " 
 
 " Will he not come back to fetch me? " 
 
 At these words Calyste turned pale. Notwithstanding 
 Felicite's arguments and those of the young Breton, Madame 
 de Rochefide was inexorable and showed what Camille called
 
 BEATRIX. 169 
 
 her obstinacy. Calyste, in spite of the hopes Felicit6 gave 
 him, left les Touches in one of those fits of lover's distress of 
 which the violence often rises to the pitch of madness. 
 
 On his return home, Calyste did not quit his room till 
 dinner-time, and went back again soon after. At ten o'clock 
 his mother became uneasy and went up to him ; she found 
 him writing in the midst of a quantity of torn papers and 
 rough copy. He was writing to Beatrix, for he distrusted 
 Camille ; the Marquise's manner during their interview in the 
 garden had encouraged him strangely. 
 
 Never did a first love-letter spring in a burning fount from 
 the soul, as might be supposed. In all youths, as yet uncor- 
 rupted, such a letter is produced with a flow too hotly effer- 
 vescent not to be the elixir of several letters begun, rejected, 
 and re-written. 
 
 Here is that sent by Calyste, which he read to his poor, 
 astonished mother. To her, the old house was on fire ; her 
 son's love blazed up in it like the flare of a conflagration : 
 
 Calyste to Beatrix. 
 
 " MADAME : I loved you when as yet you were but a dream 
 to me ; imagine the fervor assumed by my love when I saw 
 you. The dream was surpassed by the reality. My regret is 
 that I have nothing to tell you that you do not know, when I 
 say how beautiful you are ; still, perhaps, your beauty never 
 gave rise to so many feelings in any one as in me. You are 
 beautiful in so many ways ; I have studied you so thoroughly 
 by thinking of you day and night, that I have penetrated the 
 mystery of your personality, the secrets of your heart, and 
 your misprized refinements. Have you ever been loved as 
 you deserve? 
 
 " Let me tell you, then, that there is nothing in you which 
 has not its interpretation in my heart : your pride answers to
 
 170 BEATRIX. 
 
 mine, the dignity of your looks, the grace of your mien, the 
 elegance of your movements everything in you is in har- 
 mony with the thoughts and wishes hidden in your secret 
 soul ; and it is because I can read them that I think myself 
 worthy of you. If I had not become, within these few days, 
 your second self, should I dare speak to you of myself? To 
 read myself would be egotistic ; it is you I speak of here, not 
 Calyste. 
 
 "To write to you, Beatrix, I have set my twenty years 
 aside ; I have stolen a march on myself and aged my mind 
 or, perhaps, you have aged it by a week of the most horrible 
 torments, caused, innocently indeed, by you. Do not take 
 me for one of those commonplace lovers at whom you laugh 
 with such good reason. What merit is there, indeed, in loving 
 a young, beautiful, clever, noble woman ! Alas, I cannot even 
 dream of deserving you ! What am I to you ? A boy at- 
 tracted by beauty and moral worth, as an insect is attracted 
 by light. You cannot do anything else than trample on the 
 flowers of my soul, yet all my happiness lies in seeing you 
 spurn them under foot. Absolute devotion, unlimited faith, 
 the maddest passion all these treasures of a true and loving 
 heart are nothing ; they help me to love, they cannot win 
 love. 
 
 " Sometimes I wonder that such fervent fanaticism should 
 fail to warm the idol ; and when I meet your severe, cold 
 eye, I feel myself turn to ice. Your disdain affects me then 
 and not my adoration. Why ? You cannot possibly hate me 
 so much as I love you ; so ought the weaker feeling to get the 
 mastery over the stronger? 
 
 "I loved FelicitS with all the strength of my heart; I 
 forgot her in a day, in an instant, on seeing you. She was a 
 mistake, you are the truth. You, without knowing it, have 
 wrecked my happiness, and you owe me nothing in exchange. 
 I loved Camille without hope, and you give me no hopes ; 
 nothing is changed but the divinity. I was a pagan, I am a
 
 SEA TRIX. 171 
 
 Christian ; that is all. Only, you have taught me to love 
 to be loved, does not come till later. Camille says it is not 
 love that loves only for a few days ; the love that does not 
 grow day by day is a contemptible passion ; to continue grow- 
 ing it must not foresee its end, and she could see the setting 
 of our sun. 
 
 " On seeing you, I understood these sayings which I had 
 struggled against with all my youth, all the rage of my de- 
 sires, all the fierce despotism of my twenty years. Then our 
 great and sublime Camille mingled her tears with mine. So I 
 may love you on earth and in heaven, as we love God. If you 
 loved me, you could not meet me with the reasoning by which 
 Camille annihilated my efforts. We are both young, we can 
 fly on the same wings, under the same sky, and never fear the 
 storm that threatened that eagle. 
 
 "But what am I saying? I am carried far beyond the 
 modesty of my hopes. You will cease to believe in the sub- 
 mission, the patience, the mute worship, which I implore you 
 not to wound needlessly. I know, Beatrix, that you cannot 
 love me without falling in your own esteem. And I ask for 
 no return. 
 
 "Camille said once that there was an innate fatality in 
 names, as in her own. I felt this fatality in yours when on 
 the pier at Guerande it struck my eyes on the seashore ; you 
 will come into my life as Beatrice came into Dante's. My 
 heart will be the pedestal for a white statue vindictive, jeal- 
 ous, and tyrannous. You are prohibited from loving me; 
 you would endure a thousand deaths ; you would be deceived, 
 mortified, unhappy. There is in you a diabolical pride which 
 binds you to the pillar you have laid hold on ; you will perish 
 while shaking the temple like Samson. I did not discover all 
 these things ; my love is too blind ; Camille told me. Here 
 it is not my mind that speaks, but hers ; I have no wits when 
 you are in question, a tide of blood comes up from my heart, 
 darkening my intellect with its waves, depriving me of my
 
 172 BEATRIX. 
 
 powers, paralyzing my tongue, making my knees quake and 
 bend. I can only adore you, whatever you do. Camille 
 calls your firmness obstinacy ; I defend you ; I believe it to 
 be dictated by virtue. You are only the more beautiful in 
 my eyes. I know my fate ; the pride of Brittany is a match 
 for the woman who has made a virtue of hers. 
 
 " And so, dear Beatrix, be kind and comforting to me. 
 When the victims were chosen, they were crowned with 
 flowers ; you owe me the garlands of compassion and music 
 for the sacrifice. Am I not the proof of your greatness, and 
 will you not rise to the height of my love, scorned in spite of 
 its sincerity, in spite of its undying fires ? 
 
 "Ask Camille what my conduct has been since the day 
 when she told me that she loved Claud Vignon. I was mute ; 
 I suffered in silence. Well, then, for you I could find yet 
 greater strength, if you do not drive me to desperation, if you 
 understand my heroism. One word of praise from you would 
 enable me to bear the torments of martyrdom. If you per- 
 sist in this cold silence, this deadly disdain, you will make 
 me believe that I am to be feared. Oh, be to me all you can 
 be charming, gay, witty, affectionate. Talk to me of Gen- 
 naro as Camille did of Claud. I have no genius but that of 
 love ; there is nothing formidable in me, and in your presence 
 I will behave as though I did not love you. 
 
 " Can you reject the prayer of such humble devotion, of a 
 hapless youth who only asks that his sun should give him 
 light and warm him ? The man you love will always see you ; 
 poor Calyste has but a few days before him, you will soon be 
 rid of him. So I may go to les Touches again to-morrow, 
 may I not ? You will not refuse my arm to guide you around 
 the shores of le Croisic and le Bourg de Batz ? If you should 
 not come, that will be an answer, and understood by Calyste." 
 
 There were four pages more of close small writing, in which 
 Calyste explained the terrible threat contained in these last
 
 BEATRIX. 173 
 
 words, by relating the story of his boyhood and life ; but he 
 told it in exclamatory phrases ; there were many of those dots 
 and dashes lavishly scattered through modern literature in 
 perilous passages, like planks laid before the reader to enable 
 him to cross the gulf. This artless picture would be a repeti- 
 tion of our narrative ; if it did not touch Madame de Roche- 
 fide, it could scarcely interest those who seek strong sensa- 
 tions ; but it made his mother weep and say 
 
 " Then you have not been happy? " 
 
 This terrible poem of feeling that had come like a storm on 
 Calyste's heart, and was to be sent like a whirlwind to another, 
 frightened the Baroness ; it was the first time in her life that 
 she had ever read a love-letter. 
 
 Calyste was standing up; there was one great difficulty: 
 he did not know how to send his letter. 
 
 The Chevalier du Halga was still in the sitting-room, where 
 they were playing off the last pool of a very lively mouche. 
 Charlotte de Kergarouet, in despair at Calyste's indifference, 
 was trying to charm the old people in the hope of thus secur- 
 ing her marriage. Calyste followed his mother, and came 
 back into the room with the letter in his breast-pocket it 
 seemed to scorch his heart ; he wandered about and up and 
 down the room like a moth that had come in by mistake. At 
 last the mother and son got Monsieur du Halga into the hall, 
 whence they dismissed Mariotte and Mademoiselle de Pen- 
 HoeTs little servant. 
 
 " What do they want of the chevalier? " said old Zephirine 
 to the other old maid. 
 
 " Calyste seems to me to be out of his mind," replied she. 
 " He pays no more heed to Charlotte than if she were one of 
 the marsh-girls." 
 
 The Baroness had very shrewdly supposed that the Chevalier 
 du Halga must, somewhere about the year 1780, have sailed 
 the seas of gallant adventure, and she advised Calyste to con- 
 sult him.
 
 174 BE A TRIX. 
 
 " What is the best way to send a letter secretly to a lady?" 
 said Calyste to the chevalier in a whisper. 
 
 "You can give the note to her lady's-maid, with a few 
 louis in her hand, for sooner or later the maid is in the 
 secret, and it is best to let her know it from the first," replied 
 the chevalier, who could not suppress a smile ; " but it is 
 better to deliver it yourself." 
 
 "A few louis ! " exclaimed the Baroness. 
 
 Calyste went away and fetched his hat ; then he flew off to 
 les Touches, and walked like an apparition into the little 
 drawing-room, where he heard Beatrix and Camille talking. 
 They were sitting on the divan, and seemed on the best possi- 
 ble terms. Calyste, with the sudden wit that love imparts, 
 flung himself heedlessly on the divan by the Marquise, seized 
 her hand, and pressed the letter into it, so that Felicite, 
 watchful as she might be, could not see it done. Calyste's 
 heart fluttered with an emotion that was at once acute and 
 delightful, as he felt Beatrix's hand grasp his, and without 
 even interrupting her sentence or seeming surprised, she 
 slipped the letter into her gloves. 
 
 "You fling yourself on a woman as if she were a divan," 
 said she with a laugh. 
 
 " He has not, however, adopted the doctrine of the Turks ! " 
 said Felicite, who could not forbear from this retort. 
 
 Calyste rose, took Camille's hand, and kissed it ; then he 
 went to the piano and made every note sound in a long scale 
 by running one finger over them. This glad excitement puz- 
 zled Camille, who told him to come to speak to her. 
 
 " What is it ? " she asked in his ear. 
 
 " Nothing," said he. 
 
 "There is something between them," said Mademoiselle 
 des Touches to herself. 
 
 The Marquise was impenetrable. Camille tried to make 
 Calyste talk, hoping that he might betray himself; but the 
 boy made an excuse of the uneasiness his mother would feel,
 
 BEATRIX. 175 
 
 and he left les Touches at eleven o'clock, not without having 
 stood the fire of a piercing look from Camille, to whom he 
 had never before made this excuse. 
 
 After the agitations of a night filled with Beatrix, after he 
 had been into the town twenty times in the course of the 
 morning, in the hope of meeting the answer which did not 
 come, the Marquise's maid came to the Hotel du Guenic, 
 and gave the following reply to Calyste, who went off to read 
 it in the arbor at the end of the garden : 
 
 Beatrix to Calyste. 
 
 " You are a noble boy, but you are a boy. You owe your- 
 self to Camille, who worships you. You will not find in me 
 either the perfections that distinguish her or the happiness 
 she lavishes on you. Whatever you may think, it is she who 
 is young and I who am old ; her heart is full of treasures, and 
 mine is empty. She is devoted to you in a way you do not 
 appreciate enough ; she has no selfishness, and lives wholly 
 in you. I should be full of doubts ; I should drag you into 
 a life that is weariful, ignoble, and spoiled by my own fault. 
 Camille is free, she comes and goes at her will ; I am a slave. 
 In short, you forget that I love and am loved. The position 
 in which I find myself ought to protect me against any hom- 
 age. To love me, to tell me that you love me, is an insult. 
 Would not a second lapse place me on the level of the most 
 abandoned women ? 
 
 " You, who are young and full of delicate feeling, how can 
 you compel me to say things which the heart cannot utter 
 without being torn. 
 
 " I preferred the scandal of an irreparable disaster to the 
 shame of perpetual deceit, my own ruin to the loss of my 
 self-respect. In the eyes of many people whose esteem I 
 value, I still stand high ; if I should change, I should fall 
 some steps lower. The world is still merciful to women
 
 176 BE A TRIX. 
 
 whose constancy cloaks their illicit happiness, but it is pitiless 
 to a vicious habit. 
 
 " I feel neither scorn nor anger; I am answering you with 
 frank simplicity. You are young, you know nothing of the 
 world, you are carried away by imagination, and, like all men 
 of pure life, you are incapable of the reflections induced by 
 disaster. I will go further : If I should be of all women the 
 most mortified ; if I had horrible misery to hide ; if I were 
 deceived and deserted at last and, thank God, nothing of 
 that is possible if, I say, by the vengeance of heaven these 
 things were, no one in the world would ever see me again. 
 And then I could find it in me to kill the man who should 
 speak to me of love, if a man could still find me where I 
 should be. There you have the whole of my mind. 
 
 " Perhaps I have to thank you for having written to me. 
 After your letter, and especially after my reply, I may be 
 quite at my ease with you at les Touches, follow the bent of 
 my humor, and be what you ask me to be. I say nothing of 
 the bitter ridicule I should incur if my eyes should cease to 
 express the sentiments of which you complain. To rob 
 Camille a second time would be an evidence of weakness to 
 which no woman could twice resign herself. If I loved you 
 madly, if I were blind, if I were forgetful of everything else, 
 I should always see Camille. Her love for you is a barrier 
 too high to be crossed by any force, even with the wings of 
 an angel ; only demons would not recoil from such base 
 treachery. 
 
 " In this, my child, lies a world of reasons which noble 
 and refined women keep to themselves, of which you men 
 know nothing, even when a man is so like a woman as you 
 are at this moment. 
 
 " Finally, you have a mother who has shown you what a 
 woman's life ought to be ; pure and spotless, she has fulfilled 
 her fate nobly ; all I know of her has filled my eyes with 
 tears of envy which has risen from the depths of my heart.
 
 BEATRIX. 177 
 
 I might have been like her ! Calyste, this is what your wife 
 ought to be; this is what her life ought to be. 
 
 " I will not again cast you back maliciously, as I have done, 
 on little Charlotte, who would bore you from the first, but on 
 some exquisite girl who is worthy of you. If I gave myself 
 to you, I should spoil your life. Either you would fail in 
 faithfulness, in constancy, or you would resolve to devote 
 your life to me : I will be honest I should take it ; I should 
 carry you off I know not whither, far from the world ; I 
 should make you very unhappy ; I am jealous. I see mon- 
 sters in a drop of water ; I am in despair over odious trifles 
 which many women put up with ; there are even inexorable 
 thoughts, originating in myself, not caused by you, which 
 would wound me to death. When a man is not as respectful 
 and as delicate in the tenth year of his happiness as he was 
 on the eve of the day when he was a beggar for a favor, he 
 seems to me a wretch and degrades me in my own eyes. 
 Such a lover no longer believes in the Amadis and Cyrus of 
 my dreams. In our day love is purely mythical ; and in you 
 I find no more than the fatuity of a desire which knows not 
 its end. I am not forty ; I cannot yet bring my pride to 
 bend to the authority of experience ; I know not the love 
 that could make me humble ; in fact, I am a woman whose 
 nature is still too youthful not to be detestable. I cannot 
 answer for my moods ; all my graciousness is on the surface. 
 Perhaps I have not suffered enough yet to have acquired the 
 indulgent ways, the perfect tenderness that we owe to cruel 
 deceptions. Happiness has its impertinence, and I am very 
 impertinent. Camille will always be your devoted slave, I 
 should be an unreasonable tyrant. 
 
 " Indeed, is not Camille set by your side by your good 
 angel, to guard you till you have reached the moment when 
 you must start on the life that is in store for you, and which 
 you must not fail in ? I know Felicite ! Her tenderness is 
 inexhaustible ; she may perhaps lack some of the graces of her 
 12
 
 178 BEATRIX. 
 
 sex, but she shows that vivifying strength, that genius for con- 
 stancy, and that lofty courage which make everything accept- 
 able. She will see you marry while suffering tortures; she will 
 find you a free Beatrix, if Beatrix fulfills your ideal of woman 
 and answers to your dreams; she will smooth out all the diffi- 
 culties in your future life. The sale of a single acre of her 
 land in Paris will redeem your estates in Brittany ; she will 
 make you her heir has she not already adopted you as a 
 son ? And I, alas ! What can I do for your happiness ? 
 Nothing. 
 
 " Do not be false to an immeasurable affection which has 
 made up its mind to the duties of motherliness. To me she 
 seems most happy this Camille ! The admiration you feel 
 for poor Beatrix is such a peccadillo as women of Camille' s 
 age view with the greatest indulgence. When they are sure 
 of being loved they will allow constancy a little infidelity ; 
 nay, one of their keenest pleasures is to triumph over the 
 youth of their rivals. 
 
 " Camille is superior to other women, all this does not bear 
 upon her ; I only say it to reassure your conscience. I have 
 studied Camille well ; she is in my eyes one of the grandest 
 figures of our time. She is both clever and kind, two quali- 
 ties rarely united in a woman ; she is generous and simple, two 
 more great qualities seldom found together. I have seen trust- 
 worthy treasures in the depths of her heart ; it would seem 
 as though Dante had written for her in the ' Paradise ' the 
 beautiful lines on eternal happiness which she was interpreting 
 to you the other evening, ending with Senza brama sicura 
 richezza, 
 
 " She has talked to me of her fate in life, told me all her 
 experience, and proved to me that love, the object of our de- 
 sires and dreams, had always evaded her; I replied that she 
 seemed to me a proof of that difficulty of matching anything 
 sublime, which accounts for much unhappiness. Yours is one 
 of the angelic souls whose sister-soul it seems impossible to
 
 BE A TRIX. 179 
 
 find. This misfortune, dear child, is what Camille will spare 
 you ; even if she should die for it, she will find you a being 
 with whom you may live happy as a husband. 
 
 " I offer you a friend's hand, and trust, not to your heart, 
 but to your sense, to find that we are henceforth to each other 
 a brother and sister, and to terminate our correspondence, 
 which, between les Touches and Guerande, is odd, to say the 
 least of it. 
 
 "BEATRIX DE CASTERAN." 
 
 The Baroness, in the highest degree excited by the details 
 and progress of her son's love affairs with the beautiful Roche- 
 fide, could not sit still in the room, where she was working at 
 her cross-stitch, looking up at every stitch to watch Calyste; 
 she rose from her chair and came up to him with a mixture of 
 diffidence and boldness. The mother had all the graces of a 
 courtesan about to ask a favor. 
 
 "Well?" said she, trembling, but not actually asking to 
 see the letter. 
 
 Calyste showed it her in his hand, and read it aloud to her. 
 The two noble souls, so simple and ingenuous, discovered in 
 this astute and perfidious reply none of the treachery and 
 snares infused into it by the Marquise. 
 
 "She is a noble and high-minded woman!" said the 
 Baroness, whose eyes glistened with moisture. "I will pray 
 to God for her. I never believed that a mother could desert 
 her husband and child and preserve so much virtue. She 
 deserves to be forgiven." 
 
 "Am I not right to worship her?" cried Calyste. 
 
 "But whither will this love lead you?" said his mother. 
 "Oh! my child, how dangerous are these women of noble 
 sentiments ! Bad women are less to be feared. Marry 
 Charlotte de Kergarouet, and release two-thirds of the family 
 estates. Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel can achieve this great 
 end by selling a few farms, and the good soul will devote
 
 180 BEATRIX. 
 
 herself to improving the property. You may leave your 
 children a noble name, a fine fortune " 
 
 "What, forget Beatrix?" said Calyste in a hollow voice, 
 his eyes fixed on the floor. 
 
 He left his mother, and went up to his room to reply to this 
 letter. 
 
 Madame du Guenic had Madame de Rochefide's words 
 stamped on her heart : she wanted to know on what Calyste 
 founded his hopes. At about this hour the chevalier would 
 be exercising his dog on the mall; the Baroness, sure of 
 finding him there, put on a bonnet and shawl and went out. 
 It was so extraordinary an event to see Madame du Guenic 
 out, excepting at church, or in one of the two pretty alleys 
 that were frequented on fete-days, when she would accompany 
 her husband and Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, that, within two 
 hours, every one was saying to every one else, " Madame du 
 Guenic was out to-day ; did you see her ? " Thus before long 
 the news came to Mademoiselle de Pen-HoeTs ears, and she 
 said to her niece 
 
 " Something very strange is certainly happening at the du 
 GuenicsV 
 
 "Calyste is madly in love with the beautiful Marquise de 
 Rochefide," said Charlotte. "I should do better to leave 
 Guerande and go back to Nantes." 
 
 At this moment the Chevalier du Halga, surprised at being 
 sought out by the Baroness, had released Thisbe from her 
 cord, recognizing the impossibility of attending to two ladies 
 at once. 
 
 " Chevalier, you have had some experience in love affairs ?" 
 said the Baroness. 
 
 Captain du Halga drew himself up with not a little of the 
 airs of a coxcomb. Madame du Guenic, without naming her 
 son or the Marquise, told him the contents of the love letter, 
 asking him what could be the meaning of such an answer. 
 The chevalier stood with his nose in the air caressing his
 
 BEA TRIX. 181 
 
 chin ; he listened with little grimaces ; and at last he looked 
 keenly at the Baroness. 
 
 " When a thoroughbred horse means to leap a fence, it goes 
 up to it first to smell it and examine it," he said. " Calyste 
 will be the happiest young rogue " 
 
 " Hush ! " said the Baroness. 
 
 "I am dumb. In old times that was my only point," said 
 the old man. " It is fine weather," he went on after a pause, 
 " the wind is northeasterly. By heaven ! how the Belle- 
 
 Poule danced before that wind on the day But," he 
 
 went on, interrupting himself, " I have a singing in my ears 
 and pains in the false-ribs; the weather will change. You 
 know that the fight of the Belle-Poule was so famous that 
 ladies wore Belle-Poule caps. Madame de Kergarouet was 
 the first to appear at the opera in such a head-dress. ' You 
 are dressed for conquest,' I said to her. The words were 
 repeated in every box." 
 
 The Baroness listened politely to the old man, who, faithful 
 to the laws of old-world etiquette, escorted her back to the 
 little street, neglecting Thisbe. He let out the secret of 
 Thisbe's birth. She was the granddaughter of that sweet 
 Thisbe that had belonged to Madame la Comtesse de Kerga- 
 rouet, the Admiral's first wife. This Thisbe the third was 
 eighteen years old. 
 
 The Baroness ran lightly up to Calyste's room, as gleeful as 
 if she were in love herself. Calyste was not there, but Fanny 
 saw a letter on the table addressed to Madame de Rochefide, 
 folded, but not sealed. Irresistible curiosity prompted the 
 anxious mother to read her son's answer. The indiscretion 
 was cruelly punished ; she felt horrible anguish when she saw 
 the precipice toward which love was driving Calyste. 
 
 Calyste to Beatrix. 
 
 "What do I care for the family of du Guenic in such times 
 as we live in, dearest Beatrix ! My name is Beatrix, the hap-
 
 182 BEATRIX. 
 
 piness of Beatrix is my happiness, her life is my life, and all 
 my fortune is in her heart. Our lands have been in pledge 
 these two hundred years, and may remain so for two hundred 
 more ; our farmers have them, no one can take them away. 
 To see and love you ! That is my religion. 
 
 "Marry! The idea has made me heartsick. Are there 
 two such as Beatrix ? I will marry no one but you ; I will 
 wait twenty years if I must ; I am young, and you will always 
 be beautiful. My mother is a saint, and it is not for me to 
 judge her. She never loved ! I know how much she has 
 lost, and what sacrifices she has made. You, Beatrix, have 
 taught me to love my mother better; she dwells in my heart 
 with you there will never be any one else ; she is your only 
 rival. Is not this as much as to say that no one shares 
 your throne ? So your reassuring letter has no effect on my 
 mind. 
 
 "As to Camille, you have only to give me a hint, and I will 
 beg her to tell you herself that I do not love her ; she is the 
 mother of my intelligence ; nothing more, nothing less. As 
 soon as I saw you she became a sister to me, my friend my 
 man friend what you will ; but we have no claims on each 
 other beyond those of friendship. I thought she was a woman 
 till the moment when I first saw you. But you show me that 
 Camille is a man ; she swims, hunts, rides ; she smokes and 
 drinks ; she writes, she can analyze a book or a heart ; she has 
 not the smallest weakness; she walks on in her strength; she 
 has not your free grace, your step like the flight of a bird, 
 your voice the voice of love your arch looks, your gracious 
 demeanor. She is Camille Maupin, and nothing else ; she has 
 nothing of the woman about her, and you have everything 
 that I love in woman ; I felt from the day when I first saw 
 you that you were mine. 
 
 "You will laugh at this feeling, but it has gone on in- 
 creasing ; it strikes me as monstrous that we should be divided ; 
 you are my soul, my life, and I cannot live where you are
 
 BE A TRIX. 183 
 
 not. Let me love you ! We will fly, we will go far, far from 
 the world, into some country where you will know nobody, 
 and where you will have no one but me and God in your 
 heart. My mother, who loves you, will come some day to 
 live with us. Ireland has many country houses, and my 
 mother's family will surely lend us one. Great God ! Let us 
 be off! A boat, some sailors, and we shall be there before 
 any one can guess whither we have fled from the world you 
 dread so greatly. 
 
 " You have never been loved; I feel it as I re-read your 
 letter, and I fancy I can perceive that, if none of the reasons 
 of which you speak existed, you would allow yourself to be 
 loved by me. Beatrix, a holy love will wipe out the past. 
 
 "Is it possible in your presence to think of anything but 
 you ? Oh ! I love so much that I could wish you a thousand 
 times disgraced, so as to prove to you the power of my love 
 by adoring you as if you were the holiest of creatures. You 
 call my love for you an insult. Oh, Beatrix, you do not think 
 that ! The love of ' a noble child ' you call me so would 
 do honor to a queen. 
 
 " So to-morrow we will wander lover-like along by the rocks 
 and the sea, and you shall tread the sands of old Brittany and 
 consecrate them anew for me. Give me that day of joy, and 
 the transient alms leaving perhaps, alas ! no trace on your 
 memory will be a perennial treasure to Calyste " 
 
 The Baroness dropped the letter unfinished ; she knelt on a 
 chair and put up a silent prayer to God, imploring Him to pre- 
 serve her son's wits, to deliver him from madness and error, 
 and snatch him back from the ways in which she saw him 
 rushing. 
 
 "What are you doing, mother? " said Calyste's voice. 
 
 "Praying for you," she replied, looking at him with eyes 
 full of tears. " I have been so wrong as to read this letter. 
 My Calyste is gone mad."
 
 184 BE A TRIX. 
 
 "It is the sweetest form of madness," said the youth, kiss- 
 ing his mother. 
 
 "I should like to see this woman, my child." 
 
 " Well, mamma, we shall take a boat to-morrow to cross 
 over to le Croisic; come to the jetty." 
 
 He sealed his letter and went off to les Touches. The 
 thing which above all others appalled the Baroness was to see 
 that, by sheer force of instinct, feeling could acquire the in- 
 sight of consummate experience. Calyste had written to 
 Beatrix as he might have done under the guidance of Monsieur 
 du Halga. 
 
 One of the greatest joys, perhaps, that a small mind can 
 know is that of duping a great soul and catching it in a snare. 
 Beatrix knew herself to be very inferior to Camille Maupin. 
 This inferiority was not merely in the sum-total of intellectual 
 qualities known as talent, but also in those qualities of the 
 heart that are called passion. At the moment when Calyste 
 arrived at les Touches, with the impetuous haste of first love 
 borne on the pinions of hope, the Marquise was conscious of 
 keen satisfaction in knowing herself to be loved by this charm- 
 ing youth. She did not go so far as to wish to be his accom- 
 plice in this feeling ; she made it a point of heroism to repress 
 this capriccio, as the Italians say, and fancied she would thus 
 be on a par with her friend ; she was happy to be able to 
 make her some sacrifice. In short, the vanities peculiar to a 
 Frenchwoman, which constitute the famous coquetterie whence 
 she derives her superiority, were in her flattered and amply 
 satisfied ; she was tempted by the utmost seduction, and she 
 resisted it ; her virtues sang a sweet concert of praise in her ear. 
 
 The two women, apparently indolent, were lounging on the 
 divan in that little drawing-room so full of harmony, in the 
 midst of a world of flowers, with the window open, for the 
 north winds had ceased to blow. A melting southerly breeze 
 dimpled the salt-water lake that they could see in front of
 
 BEATRIX. 185 
 
 them, and the sun scorched the golden sands. Their spirits 
 were as deeply tossed as nature lay calm, and not less burning. 
 Camille, broken on the wheel of the machinery she was work- 
 ing, was obliged to keep a guard over herself, the friendly foe 
 she had admitted into her cage was so prodigiously keen ; not 
 to betray her secret she gave herself up to observing the secrets 
 of nature ; she cheated her pain by seeking a meaning in the 
 motions of the spheres, and found God in the sublime solitude 
 of the sky. 
 
 When once an infidel acknowledges God, he throws him- 
 self headlong into Catholicism, which, viewed as a system, is 
 perfect. 
 
 That morning Camille had shown the Marquise a face still 
 radiant with the light of her research, carried on during a 
 night spent in lamentation. Calyste was always before her 
 like a heavenly vision. She regarded this beautiful youth, to 
 whom she devoted herself, as her guardian angel. Was it not 
 he who was leading her to the supernal regions where suffer- 
 ings have an end under the weight of incomprehensible im- 
 mensity? Still, Camille was made uneasy by Beatrix's tri- 
 umphant looks. One woman does not gain such an advantage 
 over another without allowing it to be guessed, while justifying 
 herself for having taken it. Nothing could be stranger than 
 this covert moral struggle between the two friends, each hiding 
 a secret from the other, and each believing herself to be the 
 creditor for unspoken sacrifices. 
 
 Calyste arrived holding his letter under his glove, ready to 
 slip it into Beatrix's hand. Camille, who had not failed to 
 mark the change in her guest's manner, affected not to look 
 at her, but studied her in a mirror just when Calyste made his 
 entrance. That is the sunken rock for every woman. The 
 cleverest and the most stupid, the most frank and the most 
 astute, are not then mistress of their secret ; at that moment 
 it blazes out to another woman's eyes. Too much reserve or 
 too much freedom, an open and a beaming glance, or a mys-
 
 186 BE A TRIX. 
 
 terious droop of the eyelids everything then reveals the feel- 
 ing above all others difficult to conceal, for indifference is so 
 absolutely cold that it can never be well acted. Women have 
 the genius of shades of manner they use them too often not 
 to know them all and on these occasions they take in a rival 
 from head to foot at a glance ; they see the slightest twitch 
 of a foot under a petticoat, the most imperceptible start in the 
 figure, and know the meaning of what to a man seems to have 
 none. Two women watching one another play one of the 
 finest comedies to be seen. 
 
 " Calyste has committed some folly," thought Camille, 
 observing in both of them the indefinable look of persons who 
 understand each other. 
 
 There was no formality or affected indifference in the Mar- 
 quise now ; she looked at Calyste as if he belonged to her. 
 Calyste explained matters ; he reddened like a guilty creature, 
 like a happy lover. He had just settled everything for their 
 excursion on the morrow. 
 
 " Then you are really going, my dear ? " said Camille. 
 
 "Yes," said Beatrix. 
 
 " How did you know that ? " said Mademoiselle des Touches 
 to Calyste. 
 
 " I have come to ask," he replied, at a glance shot at him 
 by Madame de Rochefide, who did not wish her friend to 
 have any suspicion of their correspondence. 
 
 "They have already come to an understanding," said Ca- 
 mille to herself, catching this look by a side-glance from the 
 corner of her eye. " It is all over; there is nothing left to 
 me but to disappear." 
 
 And under the pressure of this thought, a deathlike change 
 passed over her face that gave Beatrix a chill. 
 
 " What is the matter, dear ? " said she. 
 
 " Nothing. Then, Calyste, will you send on my horses 
 and yours so that we may find them ready on the other side 
 of le Croisic and ride back through le Bourg de Batz? We
 
 BE A TRIX. 187 
 
 will breakfast at le Croisic and dine here. You will under- 
 take to find boatmen. We will start at half-past eight in 
 the morning. Such fine scenery!" she added to Beatrix. 
 "You will see Cambremer, a man who is doing penance on a 
 rock for having murdered his son. Oh ! you are in a primi- 
 tive land where men do not feel like the common herd. 
 Calyste will tell you the story." 
 
 She went into her room ; she was stifling. Calyste deliv- 
 ered his letter and followed Camille. 
 
 " Calyste, she loves you, I believe ; but you are hiding 
 something ; you have certainly disobeyed my injunctions." 
 
 " She loves me ! " said he, dropping into a chair. 
 
 Camille looked out at the door. Beatrix had vanished. 
 This was strange. A woman does not fly from a room where 
 the man is whom she loves and whom she is certain to see 
 again, unless she has something better to do. Mademoiselle 
 des Touches asked herself, " Can she have a letter from Ca- 
 lyste ? " But she thought the innocent lad incapable of such 
 audacity. 
 
 " If you have disobeyed me, all is lost by your own 
 fault," said she gravely. "Go and prepare for the joys of 
 to-morrow." 
 
 She dismissed him with a gesture which Calyste could not 
 rebel against. There are silent sorrows that are despotically 
 eloquent. As he went to le Croisic to find the boatmen, Ca- 
 lyste had some qualms of fear. Camille's speech bore a stamp 
 of doom that revealed the foresight of a mother. 
 
 Four hours later, when he returned, very tired, counting on 
 dining at les Touches, he was met at the door by Camille's 
 maid, who told him that her mistress and the Marquise could 
 not see him this evening. Calyste was surprised, and wanted 
 to question the maid, but she shut the door and vanished. 
 
 Six o'clock was striking by the clocks of Guerande. Ca- 
 lyste went home, asked for some dinner, and then played 
 mouche, a prey to gloomy meditations. These alternations of
 
 188 BE A TRIX. 
 
 joy and grief, the overthrow of his hopes following hard 
 upon what seemed the certainty that he was loved, crushed 
 the young soul that had been soaring heavenward to the sky, 
 and had risen so high that the fall must be tremendous. 
 
 "What ails you, my Calyste ? " his mother whispered to 
 him. 
 
 "Nothing," said he, looking at her with eyes whence the 
 light of his soul and the flame of love had died out. 
 
 It is not hope but despair that gives the measure of our 
 ambitions. We give ourselves over in secret to the beautiful 
 poems of hope, while grief shows itself unveiled. 
 
 "Calyste, you are not at all nice," said Charlotte, after 
 vainly wasting on him those little provincial teasing ways 
 which always degenerate into annoyance. 
 
 "I am tired," he said, rising and bidding the party good- 
 night. 
 
 "Calyste is much altered," said Mademoiselle de Pen- 
 Hoel. 
 
 "We haven't fine gowns covered with lace; we don't 
 flourish our sleeves like this ; we don't sit so, or know how to 
 look on one side and wriggle our heads," said Charlotte, 
 imitating and caricaturing the Marquise's airs and attitude 
 and looks. " We haven't a voice with a squeak in the head, 
 or a little interesting cough, heugh ! heugh / like the sigh of 
 a ghost j we are so unfortunate as to have robust health, 
 and be fond of our friends without any nonsense ; when 
 we look at them we do not seem to be stabbing them 
 with a dart, or examining them with a hypocritical glance. 
 We don't know how to droop our heads like a weeping wil- 
 low, and appear quite affable merely by raising it, so ! " 
 
 Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel could not help laughing at her 
 niece's performance ; but neither the chevalier nor the Baron 
 understood this satire of the country on Paris. 
 
 "But the Marquise de Rochefide is very handsome," said 
 the old lady.
 
 BEATRIX. 389 
 
 "My dear," said the Baroness to her husband, "I happen 
 to know that she is going to-morrow to le Croisic ; we will 
 walk down there. I should very much like to meet her." 
 
 While Calyste was racking his brain to divine why the door 
 of les Touches should have been closed in his face, a scene 
 was taking place between the two friends which was to have 
 its effect on the events of the morrow. Calyste's letter had 
 given birth to unknown emotions in Madame de Rochefide's 
 heart. A woman is not often the object of a passion so youth- 
 ful, so guileless, so sincere and absolute as was this boy's. 
 Beatrix had loved more than she had been loved. After 
 being a slave she felt an unaccountable longing to be the 
 tyrant in her turn. 
 
 In the midst of her joy, as she read and re-read Calyste's 
 letter, a cruel thought pierced her like a stab. What had 
 Calyste and Camille been about together since Claud Vignon's 
 departure? If Calyste did not love Camille, and Camille 
 knew it, what did they do in those long mornings? The 
 memory of her brain insidiously compared this remark with 
 all Camille had said. It was as though a smiling devil held 
 up before her, as in a mirror, the portrait of her heroic friend, 
 with certain looks, certain gestures, which finally enlightened 
 Beatrix. Far from being Felicite's equal, she was crushed by 
 her ; far from deceiving her, it was she who was deceived ; 
 she herself was but a toy that Camille wanted to give the 
 child she loved with an extraordinary and never vulgar 
 passion. 
 
 To a woman like Beatrix this discovery was a thunderbolt. 
 She recalled every detail of the past week. In an instant 
 Camille's part and her own lay before her in their fullest 
 development ; she saw herself strangely abased. In the rush 
 of her jealous hatred she fancied she detected in Camille some 
 plot of revenge on Conti. All the events of the past two 
 years had perhaps led up to these two weeks. Once started 
 on the downward slope of suspicions, hypotheses, and anger,
 
 190 BEATRIX. 
 
 Beatrix did not check herself; she walked up and down her 
 rooms, spurred by impulses of passion, or, sitting down now 
 and again, tried to make a plan ; still, until the dinner-hour, 
 she remained a prey to indecision, and only went down when 
 dinner was served without changing her dress. 
 
 On seeing her rival come in, Camille guessed everything. 
 Beatrix, in morning dress, had a cold look and an expression 
 of reserve, which to an observer so keen as Camille betrayed 
 the animosity of embittered feelings. Camille immediately 
 left the room and gave the order that had so greatly astonished 
 Calyste ; she thought that if the guileless lad, with his insane 
 adoration, came into the middle of the quarrel he might never 
 see Beatrix again, and compromise the future of his passion by 
 some foolish bluntness. She meant to fight out this duel of 
 dupery without any witness. Beatrix, with no one to uphold 
 her, must certainly yield. Camille knew how shallow her 
 soul was, and how mean her pride, to which she had justly 
 given the name of obstinacy. 
 
 The dinner was gloomy. Both the women had too much 
 spirit and good taste to have any explanation before the 
 servants, or when they might listen at the doors. Camille 
 was gentle and kind ; she felt herself so much the superior ! 
 The Marquise was hard and biting ; she knew she was being 
 fooled like a child. There was, all through dinner, a warfare 
 of looks, shrugs, half-spoken words, to which the servants 
 could have no clue, but which gave warning of a terrible 
 storm. When they were going upstairs again Camille mis- 
 chievously offered Beatrix her arm ; the Marquise affected not 
 to see, and rushed forward alone. As soon as coffee was 
 served, Mademoiselle des Touches said to her servant, "You 
 can go," and this was the signal for battle. 
 
 " The romances you act out, my dear, are rather more 
 dangerous than those you write," said the Marquise. 
 
 "They have, however, one great merit," said Camille, 
 taking a cigarette.
 
 SEA TRIX. 191 
 
 " What is that ? " asked Beatrix. 
 
 "They are unpublished, my angel." 
 
 "Will that in which you have plunged me make a book?" 
 
 "I have no genius for the task of CEdipus; you have the 
 wit and beauty of the sphinx, I know, but do not ask me any 
 riddles; speak out, my dear Beatrix." 
 
 " When in order to make men happy, to amuse them, please 
 them, dispel their annoyances, we appeal to the devil himself 
 to help us " 
 
 ' ' The men blame us afterward for our endeavor, and be- 
 lieve it to be dictated by a spirit of depravity," said Camille, 
 taking her cigarette from her lips to interrupt her friend. 
 
 "They forget the love which carried us away, and which 
 justified our excesses for whither may we not be carried? 
 But they are only playing out their part as men, they are un- 
 grateful and unjust," said Beatrix. "Women know each 
 other ; they know how truly lofty and noble their attitude is 
 under all circumstances nay, I may say, how virtuous. 
 
 " Still, Camille, I have begun to perceive the truth of cer- 
 tain remarks I have heard you complain of. Yes, my dear, 
 there is something of the man in you ; you behave like men ; 
 nothing checks you ; and if you have not all their merits your 
 mind conducts itself like theirs, and you share their contempt 
 for us women. I have no reason to be pleased with you, my 
 dear, and I am too frank to conceal the fact. Nobody, per- 
 haps, will ever inflict so deep a wound on my heart as that I 
 am now suffering from. Though you are not always a woman 
 in love matters, you become one again in revenge. Only a 
 woman of genius could have discovered the tenderest spot in 
 our delicate sentiments I am speaking of Calyste, and of the 
 trickery, my dear, for that is the right word, that you have 
 employed against me. How low you have fallen, you, Camille 
 Maupin ; and to what end? " 
 
 "Still and still more the sphinx," said Camille, smiling. 
 
 " You wanted to make me throw myself at Calyste's head ;
 
 192 BEATRIX. 
 
 I am still too young for such doings. To me love is 
 love, with its intolerable jealousy and despotic demands. I 
 am not a writer; it is not possible to me to find ideas in 
 feelings " 
 
 " You think yourself capable of loving foolishly ? " Camille 
 asked her. " Be quite easy, you still have all your wits about 
 you. You malign yourself, my dear ; you are cold enough for 
 your head always to remain supreme judge of the achieve- 
 ments of your heart." 
 
 This epigram brought the color to the Marquise's face; she 
 shot a look full of hatred, an envenomed look, at Camille ; 
 and at once, without stopping to choose them, let fly all the 
 sharpest arrows in her quiver. Camille, smoking her cigarettes, 
 listened calmly to this furious attack, bristling with such viru- 
 lent abuse that it is impossible to record it. Beatrix, provoked 
 by her adversary's imperturbable manner, fell back on odious 
 personalities and Mademoiselle des Touches' age. 
 
 " Is that all? " asked Camille, blowing a cloud of smoke. 
 "Are you in love with Calyste? " 
 
 "Certainly not." 
 
 "So much the better," replied Camille. "I am, and far 
 too much for my happiness. He has, no doubt, a fancy for 
 you. You are the loveliest blonde in the world, and I am as 
 brown as a mole ; you are slim and slender, my figure is too 
 dignified. In short, you are young ; that is the great fact, 
 and you have not spared me. You have made an abuse of 
 your advantages over me as a woman, neither more nor less 
 than as a comic paper makes an abuse of humor. I have done 
 all in my power to prevent what is now inevitable," and she 
 raised her eyes to the ceiling. "However little I may seem 
 to be a woman, I still have enough of the woman in me for a 
 rival to need my help in order to triumph over me ! " This 
 cruel speech, uttered with an air of perfect innocence, went 
 to the Marquise's heart. " You must think me a very idiotic 
 person if you believe all that Calyste tries to make you believe
 
 SEA TRIX. 193 
 
 about me. I am neither lofty nor mean ; I am a woman, and 
 very much a woman. Throw off your airs and give me your 
 hand," said Camille, taking possession of Beatrix's hand. 
 "You do not love Calyste, that is the truth is it not? Then 
 do not get in a rage ! Be stern with him to-morrow, cold and 
 hard, and he will end by submitting after the scolding I shall 
 give him, for I have not exhausted the resources of our arsenal, 
 and, after all, pleasure always gets the better of desire. 
 
 " But Calyste is a Breton. If he persists in paying you his 
 addresses, tell me honestly, and you can go at once to a 
 little country-house of mine at six leagues from Paris, where 
 you will find every comfort, and where Conti can join you. 
 If Calyste slanders me ! Why, good heavens ! The purest 
 love lies six times a day ; its illusions prove its strength." 
 
 There was a proud coldness in Camille's expression that 
 made the Marquise uneasy and afraid. She did not know 
 what answer to make. 
 
 Camille struck the final blow. 
 
 "I am more trusting and less bitter than you," she went 
 on. "I do not imagine that you intended to hide under 
 recrimination an attack which would imperil my life; you 
 know me ; I should not survive the loss of Calyste, and I 
 must lose him sooner or later. But, indeed, Calyste loves 
 me, and I know it." 
 
 " Here is his answer to a letter from me in which I wrote 
 only of you," said Beatrix, holding out Calyste's letter. 
 
 Camille took it and read it. As she read her eyes filled 
 with tears ; she wept, as all women weep in acute suffering. 
 
 " Good God ! " said she. " He loves her ! Then I must 
 die without ever having been understood or loved ! " 
 
 She sat for some minutes with her head resting on her 
 friend's shoulder ; her pain was genuine ; she felt in her own 
 soul the same terrible blow that Madame du Gu6nic had re- 
 ceived on reading this letter. 
 
 " Do you love him?" said she, sitting up and looking at 
 13
 
 194 BE A TRIX. 
 
 Beatrix. " Do you feel for him that infinite devotion which 
 triumphs over all suffering and survives scorn, betrayal, even 
 the certainty of never being loved again ? Do you love him 
 for himself, for the very joy of loving? " 
 
 "My dearest friend!" said the Marquise, much moved. 
 " Well, be content, I will leave to-morrow." 
 
 " Do not go away ; he loves you, I see it ! And I love him 
 so well that I should be in despair if I saw him miserable and 
 unhappy. I had dreamed of many things for him ; but if he 
 loves you, that is all at an end." 
 
 "Yes, Camille, I love him," said the Marquise with de- 
 lightful simplicity, but coloring. 
 
 " You love him, and you can resist him ! " cried Camille. 
 " No, you do not love him ! " 
 
 " I do not know what new virtues he has aroused in me, 
 but he has certainly made me ashamed of myself," said 
 Beatrix. " I could wish to be virtuous and free, so as to 
 have something else to sacrifice to him beside the remnants 
 of a heart and disgraceful bonds. I will not accept an incom- 
 plete destiny either for him or for myself." 
 
 " Cold brain ! it can love and calculate ! " cried Camille, 
 with a sort of horror. 
 
 " Whatever you please, but I will not blight his life or be 
 a stone round his neck, an everlasting regret. As I cannot 
 be his wife, I will not be his mistress. He has you will not 
 laugh at me ? No ? Well, then, his beautiful love has puri- 
 fied me." 
 
 Camille gave Beatrix a look the wildest, fiercest look that 
 ever a jealous woman flung at her rival. 
 
 "On that ground," said she, "I fancied I stood alone. 
 Beatrix, that speech has parted us for ever ; we are no longer 
 friends. We are at the beginning of a hideous struggle. 
 Now, I tell you plainly, you must succumb or fly." 
 
 Felicite rushed away into her own room after showing to 
 Beatrix, who was amazed, a face like an infuriated lioness.
 
 BE A TRIX. 195 
 
 " Are you coming to le Croisic to-morrow ? " said Camille, 
 lifting the curtain. 
 
 " Certainly," said the Marquise loftily ; " I will not fly 
 nor will I succumb." 
 
 "I play with my hand on the table," retorted Camille ; "I 
 shall write to Conti." 
 
 Beatrix turned as white as her gauze scarf. 
 
 "For each of us life is at stake," replied Beatrix, who did 
 not know what to decide on. 
 
 The violent passions to which this scene had given rise be- 
 tween the two women subsided during the night. They both 
 reasoned with themselves and came back to a reliance on the 
 perfidious temporizing which fascinates most women an ex- 
 cellent system between them and men, but a bad one between 
 woman and woman. It was in the midst of this last storm 
 that Mademoiselle des Touches heard the great voice which 
 dominates even the bravest. Beatrix listened to the counsels 
 of worldly wisdom ; she feared the contempt of society. So 
 Felicite's last master-stroke, weighted with the accents of in- 
 tense jealousy, was perfectly successful. Calyste's blunder 
 was remedied, but any fresh mistake might ruin his hopes for- 
 ever. 
 
 The month of August was drawing to a close, the sky was 
 magnificently clear. On the horizon the ocean, like a southern 
 sea, had a hue as of molten silver, and fluttered to the strand 
 in sparkling ripples. A sort of glistening vapor, produced 
 by the sun's rays falling directly on the sand, made an atmos- 
 phere at least equal to that of the tropics. The salt blos- 
 somed into little white stars on the surface of the salt-pans. 
 The laborious marshmen, dressed in white on purpose to defy 
 the heat of the sun, were at their post by daybreak armed 
 with their long rakes, some leaning against the mud-walls 
 dividing the plots, and watching this process of natural chem- 
 istry, familiar to them from their infancy; others playing with
 
 196 BEA TRIX. 
 
 their little ones and wives. Those green dragons called ex- 
 cisemen smoked their pipes in peace. There was something 
 Oriental in the picture, and certainly a Parisian, suddenly 
 dropped there, would not have believed that he was in France. 
 
 The Baron and Baroness, who had made a pretext of their 
 wish to see how the salt-raking was going on, were on the 
 jetty, admiring the silent scene, where no sound was to be 
 heard but the sea moaning with regular rhythm, where boats 
 cut through the water, and the green belt of cultivated land 
 was all the more lovely in its effect because it is so uncommon 
 on the desert shores of the ocean. 
 
 " Well, my friends, I shall have seen the marshes of Guer- 
 ande once more before I die," said the Baron to the marsh- 
 men, who stood in groups at the fringe of the marsh to greet 
 him. 
 
 " As if the du Guenics died ! " said one of the men. 
 
 At this moment the little party from les Touches came 
 down the narrow road. The Marquise led the way alone, 
 Calyste and Camille followed arm in arm. About twenty 
 yards behind them came Gasselin. 
 
 " There are my father and mother," said Calyste to Camille. 
 
 The Marquise stopped. Madame du Guenic felt the most 
 vehement repulsion at the sight of Beatrix, though she was 
 dressed to advantage, in a broad-brimmed Leghorn hat 
 trimmed with blue cornflowers, her hair waved beneath it ; a 
 dress of gray linen stuff, and a blue sash with long ends ; in 
 short, the garb of a princess disguised as a shepherdess. 
 
 " She has no heart ! " said Fanny to herself. 
 
 "Mademoiselle," said Calyste to Camille, "here are 
 Madame du Guenic and my father." 
 
 Then he added to his parents 
 
 " Mademoiselle des Touches and Madame la Marquise de 
 Rochefide, nee de Casteran my father." 
 
 The Baron bowed to Mademoiselle des Touches, who bowed 
 with an air of humble gratitude to the Baroness.
 
 BEATRIX. 197 
 
 "She," thought the observant Fanny, "really loves my 
 boy; she seems to be thanking me for having brought him 
 into the world." 
 
 "You, like me, are come to see if the yield is good ; but 
 you have more reasons than I for curiosity, mademoiselle," 
 said the Baron to Camille, " for you have property here." 
 
 " Mademoiselle is the richest owner of them all," said one 
 of the marshmen ; " and God preserve her, for she is a very 
 good lady ! " 
 
 The two parties bowed and went their way. 
 
 "You would never suppose Mademoiselle des Touches to 
 be more than thirty," said the good man to his wife. " She 
 is very handsome. And Calyste prefers that jade of a Parisian 
 Marquise to that good daughter of Brittany?" 
 
 "Alas, yes ! " said the Baroness. 
 
 A boat was lying at the end of the jetty ; they got in, but 
 not in high spirits. Beatrix was cold and dignified. Camille 
 had scolded Calyste for his disobedience and explained to 
 him the position of his love affair. Calyste, sunk in gloomy 
 despair, cast eyes at Beatrix, in which love and hatred strug- 
 gled for the upper hand. 
 
 Not a word was spoken during the short passage from the 
 jetty of Guerande to the extreme point of the harbor of le 
 Croisic, the spot where the salt is shipped, being brought down 
 to the shore by women, in large earthen crocks, which they 
 carry on their heads, holding them in such a way as to look 
 like caryatides. These women are barefoot and wear a very 
 short skirt. Many of them leave the kerchief that covers 
 their shoulders to fly loose, and several wear only a shift, and 
 are the proudest, for the less clothes they wear the more they 
 display their modest beauties. 
 
 The little Danish bark was taking in her cargo. Thus the 
 landing of these two beautiful ladies excited the curiosity of 
 the salt-carriers ; and partly to escape them, as well as to do 
 Calyste a service, Camille hurried on toward the rocks, leav-
 
 198 BEATRIX. 
 
 ing him with Beatrix. Gasselin lingered at least two hundred 
 yards behind his master. 
 
 On the seaward side the peninsula of le Croisic is fringed 
 with granite rocks so singularly grotesque in form that they 
 can only be appreciated by travelers who are able from ex- 
 perience to make comparisons between the different grand 
 spectacles of wild nature. The rocks of le Croisic have, per- 
 haps, the same superiority over other similar scenes that the 
 road to the Grande Chartreuse is admitted to have over other 
 narrow gorges. Neither the Corsican shore, where the granite 
 forms very remarkable reefs, nor that of Sardinia, where nature 
 has reveled in grand and terrible effects, nor the basaltic 
 formations of northern seas, have quite so distinctive a char- 
 acter. Fancy seems to have disported itself there in endless 
 arabesques, where the most grotesque shapes mingle or stand 
 forth. Every form may be seen there. Imagination may, 
 perhaps, be weary of this vast collection of monsters, among 
 which, in furious weather, the sea rushes in, and has at last 
 polished down all the rough edges. 
 
 Under a natural vault, arched with a boldness only faintly 
 imitated by Brunelleschi for the greatest efforts of art are 
 but a timid counterpart of some work of nature you will 
 find a basin polished like a marble bath and strewn with 
 smooth, fine white sand, in which you may bathe in safety in 
 four feet of tepid water. As you walk on you admire the cool 
 little creeks, under shelter of porticoes rough-hewn but stately, 
 like those of the Pitti palace another imitation of the freaks 
 of nature. The variety is infinite ; nothing is lacking that 
 the most extravagant fancy could invent or wish for. 
 
 There is even a large shrub of box,* a thing so rare on 
 the shore of the Atlantic that perhaps this is the only speci- 
 men. This box-shrub, the greatest curiosity in le Croisic, 
 where trees cannot grow, is at about a league from the port, 
 on the utmost headland of the coast. On one of the promon- 
 
 * Buis t "whence (says Balzac) the word tutsson," shrub or bush.
 
 BEATRIX. 199 
 
 lories formed by the granite, rising so high above the sea that 
 the waves cannot reach it even in the wildest storms, and 
 facing the south, the floods have worn a hollow shelf about 
 four feet deep. In this cleft, chance, or perhaps man, has 
 deposited soil enough to enable a box, sown by some bird, to 
 grow thick and closely shorn. The gnarled roots would indi- 
 cate an age of at least three hundred years. Below it the 
 rock falls sheer. 
 
 Some shock, of which the traces are stamped in indelible 
 characters on this coast, has swept off the fragments of granite 
 I know not whither. The sea comes, without breaking over 
 any shoals, to the bottom of this cliff, where the water is more 
 than five hundred feet deep. On either hand some reefs, just 
 beneath the surface, form a sort of large cirque, traceable by 
 the foaming breakers. It needs some courage and resolution 
 to climb to the top of this little Gibraltar ; its cap is almost 
 spherical, and a gust of wind might carry the inquirer into 
 the sea, or, which would be worse, on to the rocks below. 
 This giant sentinel is like the lantern towers of old chateaux, 
 whence miles of country could be scanned and attacks guarded 
 against ; from its height are seen the steeple and the thrifty 
 fields of le Croisic, the sand-hills that threaten to encroach on 
 the arable land, and which have invaded the neighborhood 
 of le Bourg de Batz. Some old men declare that there was, 
 long ago, a castle on this spot. The sardine fishers have a 
 name for this headland, which can be seen from afar at sea; 
 but I must be forgiven for having forgotten that Breton name, 
 as hard to pronounce as it is to remember. 
 
 Calyste led Beatrix toward this height, whence the view is 
 superb, and where the forms of the granite surpass all the sur- 
 prises they can have caused along the sandy margin of the 
 shore. 
 
 It is vain to explain why Camille had hurried on in front ; 
 like a wounded animal, she longed for solitude ; she lost her- 
 self in the grottoes, reappeared on the boulders, chased the
 
 200 BE A TRIX. 
 
 crabs out of their holes or discovered them in the very act of 
 their eccentric behavior. Not to be inconvenienced by her 
 woman's skirts, she had put on Turkish trousers with embroid- 
 ered frills, a short blouse, and a felt hat ; and, by way of a 
 traveler's staff, she carried a riding-whip, for she was always 
 vain of her strength and agility. Thus attired, she was a 
 hundred times handsomer than Beatrix ; she had tied a little 
 red, China silk shawl across her bosom and knotted behind, as 
 we wrap a child. For some little time Beatrix and Calyste 
 saw her flitting over rocks and rifts like a will-o'-the-wisp, 
 trying to stultify grief by facing perils. 
 
 She was the first to arrive at the box-cliff, and sat down in 
 the shade of one of the clefts, lost in meditation. What 
 could such a woman as she do in old age, after drinking the 
 cup of fame which all great talents, too greedy to sip the dull 
 driblets of vanity, drain at one draught? She has since con- 
 fessed that then and there, one of the coincidences suggested 
 by a mere trifle, by one of the accidents which count for 
 nothing with ordinary people, though they open a gulf of 
 meditation to a great soul, brought her to a decision as to the 
 strange deed, which was afterward the close of her social 
 career. She drew out of her pocket a little box in which she 
 had brought, in case of thirst, some strawberry pastilles ; she 
 ate several ; but as she sucked them, she could not help re- 
 flecting that the strawberries, which were no more, yet lived 
 by their qualities. Hence she concluded that it might be the 
 same with us. The sea offered her an image of the infinite. 
 No great mind can get away from the infinite, granting the 
 immortality of the soul, without being brought to infer some 
 religious future. This idea still haunted her when she smelt 
 at her scent-bottle of Eau de Portugal. 
 
 Her manoeuvres for handing Beatrix over to Calyste then 
 struck her as very sordid ; she felt the woman die in her, and 
 she emerged as the noble angelic being hitherto veiled in the 
 flesh. Her vast intellect, her learning, her acquirements, her
 
 BE A TRIX. 201 
 
 spurious loves had brought her face to face with what ? Who 
 could have foretold it? With the yearning mother, the con- 
 soler of the sorrowing the Roman Church so mild toward 
 repentance, so poetical to poets, so artless with children, so 
 deep and mysterious to wild and anxious spirits, that they can 
 for ever plunge deeper into it and still satisfy their inextin- 
 guishable curiosity which is constantly excited. 
 
 She glanced back at the devious ways to which she had 
 been led by Calyste, comparing them to the tortuous paths 
 among these rocks. Calyste was still in her eyes the lovely 
 messenger from heaven, a divine leader. She smothered 
 earthly in sacred love. 
 
 After walking on for some time in silence, Calyste, at an 
 exclamation from Beatrix at the beauty of the ocean, very dif- 
 ferent from the Mediterranean, could not resist drawing a 
 comparison between that sea and his love, in its purity and 
 extent, its agitations, its depth, its eternity. 
 
 "It has a rock for its shore," said Beatrix with a little 
 mocking laugh. 
 
 "When you speak to me in that tone," replied he with a 
 heavenly flash, "I see you and hear you, and I can find an 
 angel's patience ; but when I am alone, you would pity me if 
 you could see me. My mother cries over my grief." 
 
 "Listen, Calyste, this must come to an end," said the Mar- 
 quise, stepping down on to the sandy path. " Perhaps we are 
 now in the one propitious spot for the utterance of such things, 
 for never in my life have I seen one where nature was more in 
 harmony with my thoughts. I have seen Italy, where every- 
 thing speaks of love ; I have seen Switzerland, where all is fresh 
 and expressive of true happiness, laborious happiness, where the 
 verdure, the calm waters, the most placid outlines are over- 
 powered by the snow-crowned Alps ; but I have seen nothing 
 which more truly paints the scorching barrenness of my life 
 than this little plain, withered by sea-gales, corroded by salt 
 mists, where melancholy tillage struggles in the face of the im-
 
 202 BE A TRIX. 
 
 mense ocean and under the hedgerows of Brittany, whence 
 rise the towers of your Guerande. 
 
 " Well, Calyste, that is Beatrix. Do not attach yourself to 
 that. I love you, but I will never be yours, for I am con- 
 scious of my inward desolation. Ah ! you can never know 
 how cruel I am to myself when I tell you this. No, you shall 
 never see your idol if I am your idol stoop ; it shall not 
 fall from the height where you have set it. I have now a 
 horror of a passion which the world and religion alike repro- 
 bate ; I will be humbled no more, nor will I steal happiness. 
 I shall remain where I am ; I shall be the sandy, unfertile 
 desert, without verdure or flowers, which lies before you." 
 
 "And if you should be deserted?" said Calyste. 
 
 " Then I should go and beg for mercy. I would humble 
 myself before the man I have sinned against, but I would 
 never run the risk of rushing into happiness which I know 
 would end." 
 
 "End?" cried Calyste. 
 
 " End," repeated the Marquise, interrupting the rhapsody 
 into which her lover was plunging, by a tone which reduced 
 him to silence. 
 
 This contradiction gave rise in the youth's soul to one of 
 those wordless rages which are known only to those who have 
 loved without hope. He and Beatrix walked on for about 
 three hundred yards in utter silence, looking neither at the 
 sea, nor the rocks, nor the fields of le Croisic. 
 
 " I should make you so happy ! " said Calyste. 
 
 "All men begin by promising us happiness, and they be- 
 queath to us shame, desertion, disgust. I have nothing of 
 which to accuse the man to whom I ought to be faithful ; he 
 made me no promises ; I went to him. But the only way to 
 make my fault less is to make it eternal." 
 
 " Say at once, madame, that you do not love me ! I who 
 love you, know by myself that love does not argue, it sees 
 nothing but itself, there is no sacrifice I could not make for
 
 BE A TKIX. 203 
 
 it. Command me, and I will attempt the impossible. The 
 man who of old scorned his mistress for having thrown her 
 glove to the lions and commanded him to rescue it did not 
 love ! He misprized your right to test us, to make sure of 
 our love, and never to lay down your arms but to superhuman 
 magnanimity. To you I would sacrifice my family, my name, 
 my future life." 
 
 "What an insult lies in that word sacrifice ! " replied she 
 in a reproachful tone, which made Calyste feel all the folly of 
 his expression. 
 
 Only women who loved wholly, or utter coquettes, can take 
 a word as a fulcrum, and spring to prodigious heights ; wit 
 and feeling act on the same lines ; but the woman who loves 
 is grieved, the coquette is contemptuous. 
 
 "You are right," said Calyste, dropping two tears, "the 
 word can only be applied to the achievement you demand 
 of me." 
 
 "Be silent," said Beatrix, startled by a reply in which for 
 the first time Calyste really expressed his love. " I have done 
 wrong enough. Do not tempt me." 
 
 They had just reached the base of the box-cliff. Calyste felt 
 intoxicating joys in helping the Marquise to climb the rock ; 
 she was bent on mounting to the very top. The poor boy 
 thought it the height of rapture to support her by the waist, 
 to feel her slightly tremulous : she needed him ! The un- 
 hoped-for joy turned his brain, he saw nothing, he put his 
 arm around her body. 
 
 " Well ! " she said with an imperious look. 
 
 " You will never be mine? " he asked in a voice choked 
 by a storm in his blood. 
 
 "Never, my dear," said she. "To you I can only be 
 Beatrix a dream. And is not a dream sweet? We shall 
 know no bitterness, no regrets, no repentance." 
 
 "And you will return to Conti? " 
 
 "There is no help for it."
 
 204 BEATRIX. 
 
 "Then you shall never more be any man's," cried Ca- 
 lyste, flinging her from him with mad violence. 
 
 He listened for her fall before throwing himself after her, 
 but he only heard a dull noise, the harsh rending of stuff, and 
 the heavy sound of a body falling on earth. Instead of tum- 
 bling head foremost, Beatrix had turned over ; she had fallen 
 into the box-tree ; but she would have rolled to the bottom 
 of the sea, nevertheless, if her gown had not caught on a 
 corner, and, by tearing, checked the force of her fall on the 
 bush. 
 
 Mademoiselle des Touches, who had witnessed the scene, 
 could not call out, for she was aghast, and could only signal 
 to Gasselin to hasten up. Calyste leaned over, prompted by 
 a fierce sort of curiosity ; he saw Beatrix as she lay, and shud- 
 dered. She seemed to be praying ; she thought she must die, 
 she felt the box-tree giving way. With the sudden presence 
 of mind inspired by love, and the supernatural agility of 
 youth in the face of danger, he let himself down the nine 
 feet of rock by his hands, clinging to the rough edges, to the 
 little shelf, where he was in time to rescue the Marquise by 
 taking her in his arms, at the risk of their both falling into 
 the sea. When he caught Beatrix she became unconscious ; 
 but he could dream that she was his, wholly his, in this aerial 
 bed where they might have to remain a long time, and his 
 first feeling was an impulse of gladness. 
 
 "Open your eyes, forgive me!" said Calyste. "Or we 
 die together." 
 
 "Die?" said she, opening her eyes and unsealing her 
 pale lips. 
 
 Calyste received the word with a kiss, and then was aware 
 of a spasmodic thrill in the Marquise, which was ecstasy to 
 him. At that instant Gasselin's nailed shoes were audible 
 above them. Camille followed the Breton, and they were 
 anxiously considering the means of saving the lovers. 
 
 "There is but one way, mademoiselle," said Gasselin.
 
 'OPEN YOUR EYES, FORGIVE ME!" SAID CALYSTE, "OR WE 
 DIE TOGETHER."
 
 BEATRIX. 205 
 
 " I will let myself down ; they will climb up on my shoulders, 
 and you will give them your hand." 
 
 "And you?" said Camille. 
 
 The man seemed astonished at being held of any account 
 when his young master was in danger. 
 
 "It will be better to fetch a ladder from le Croisic," said 
 Camille. 
 
 " She is a knowing one, she is ! " said Gasselin to himself, 
 as he went off. 
 
 Beatrix, in a feeble voice, begged to be laid on the ground ; 
 she felt faint. Calyste laid her down on the cool earth be- 
 tween the rock and the box-tree. 
 
 "I saw you, Calyste," said Camille. "Whether Beatrix 
 dies or is saved, this must never be anything but an accident." 
 
 "She will hate me ! " he cried, his eyes full of tears. 
 
 " She will worship you," replied Camille. " This is an end 
 to our excursion ; she must be carried to les Touches. What 
 would have become of you if she had been killed ? ' ' she said. 
 
 " I should have followed her." 
 
 "And your mother? and," she softly added after a pause, 
 "and me?" 
 
 Calyste stood pale, motionless, and silent, his back against 
 the granite. Gasselin very soon returned from one of the 
 little farms that lie scattered among the fields, running with 
 a ladder he had borrowed. Beatrix had somewhat recovered 
 her strength. When Gasselin had fixed the ladder, the 
 Marquise, helped by Gasselin, who begged Calyste to put 
 Camille's red shawl round Beatrix, under her arms, and to 
 give him up the ends, climbed up to the little plateau, where 
 Gasselin took her in his arms like a child, and carried her 
 down to the shore. 
 
 " Death I would not say nay to but pain ! " said she in a 
 weak voice to Mademoiselle des Touches. 
 
 The faintness and shock from which Beatrix was suffering 
 made it necessary that she should be carried as far as the farm
 
 206 BEATRIX. 
 
 whence Gasselin had borrowed the ladder. Calyste, Gasselin, 
 and Camille took off such garments as they could dispense 
 with, and made a sort of mattress on the ladder, on which 
 they laid Beatrix, carrying it like a litter. The farm-people 
 offered their bed. Gasselin hurried off to the spot where the 
 horses were waiting for them, took one, and fetched a surgeon 
 from le Croisic, after ordering the boatmen to come up the 
 creek that lay nearest to the farm. Calyste, sitting on a low 
 stool, answered Camille's remarks with nods and rare mono- 
 syllables, and Mademoiselle des Touches was equally uneasy 
 as to Beatrix's condition and Calyste's. 
 
 After being bled the patient felt better ; she could speak ; 
 she consented to go in the boat; and at about five in the 
 afternoon they crossed to Guerande, where the town doctor 
 was waiting for her. The news of the accident had spread 
 in this deserted and almost uninhabited land with amazing 
 rapidity. 
 
 Calyste spent the night at les Touches at the foot of Beatrix's 
 bed with Camille. The doctor promised that by next morn- 
 ing the Marquise would suffer from nothing worse than stiff- 
 ness. Through Calyste's despair a great happiness beamed. 
 He was at the foot of Beatrix's bed watching her asleep or 
 waking ; he could study her pale face, her lightest movements. 
 Camille smiled bitterly as she recognized in the lad all the 
 symptoms of a passion such as tinges the soul and mind of a 
 man by becoming a part of his life at a time when no thought, 
 no cares counteract this torturing mental process. 
 
 Calyste would never discern the real woman in Beatrix. 
 How guilelessly did the young Breton allow her to read his 
 most secret soul ! Why, he fancied she was his, merely be- 
 cause he found himself here, in her room, admiring her in the 
 disorder of the bed. He watched Beatrix in her slightest 
 movement with rapturous attention ; his face expressed such 
 sweet curiosity, his ecstasy was so artlessly betrayed, that
 
 BEATRIX. 207 
 
 there was a moment when the two women looked at each 
 other with a smile. As Calyste read in the invalid's fine sea- 
 green eyes a mixed expression of confusion, love, and amuse- 
 ment, he blushed and looked away. 
 
 " Did I not say to you, Calyste, that you men promised us 
 happiness and ended by throwing us over a precipice?" 
 
 As he heard this little jest, spoken in a charming tone of 
 voice, which betrayed some change in Beatrix's heart, Calyste 
 knelt down, took one of her moist hands, which she allowed 
 him to hold, and kissed it very submissively. 
 
 " You have every right to reject my love for ever," said he, 
 penitently, " and I have no right ever to say a single word to 
 you again." 
 
 "Ah! " cried Camille, as she saw the expression of her 
 friend's face, and compared it with that she had seen after 
 every effort of diplomacy; "love unaided will always have 
 more wit than all the world beside. Take your draught, my 
 dear, and go to sleep." 
 
 This evening spent by Calyste with Mademoiselle des 
 Touches, who read books on mystical theology, while Calyste 
 read " Indiana " the first work of Camille's famous rival, in 
 which he found the captivating picture of a young man who 
 loved with idolatry and devotion, with mysterious rapture, 
 and for his whole life a book of fatal teaching for him ! this 
 evening left an ineffaceable mark on the heart of the unhappy 
 youth, for Felicite at last convinced him that any woman who 
 was not a monster could only be happy and flattered in every 
 vanity, by knowing herself to be the object of a crime. 
 
 " You would never, never, have thrown me into the sea ! " 
 said poor Camille wiping away a tear. 
 
 Toward morning Calyste, quite worn out, fell asleep in his 
 chair. It was now the Marquise's turn to look at the pretty 
 boy, pale with agitation and his first love-watch ; she heard 
 him murmuring words in his sleep. 
 
 " He loves in his very dreams ! " said she to Camille.
 
 208 BE A TRIX. 
 
 "We must send him home to bed," said FelicitS, awaking 
 him. 
 
 No one was alarmed at the du Guenics' ; Mademoiselle des 
 Touches had written a few words to the Baroness. 
 
 Calyste dined at les Touches next day. He found Beatrix 
 up, pale, languid, and tired. But there was no hardness now 
 in her speech or looks. After that evening, which Camille 
 filled with music, seating herself at the piano to allow Calyste 
 to hold and press Beatrix's hands while they could say nothing 
 to each other, there was never a storm at les Touches. Felicite 
 completely effaced herself. 
 
 Women like Madame de Rbchefide, cold, fragile, hard, and 
 thin such women, whose throat shows a form of collar-bone 
 suggestive of the feline race have souls as pale and colorless 
 as their pale gray or green eyes ; to melt them, to vitrify these 
 flints, a thunderbolt is needed. To Beatrix this thunderbolt 
 had fallen in Calyste's rage of love and attempt on her life ; 
 it was such a flame as nothing can resist, changing the most 
 stubborn nature. Beatrix felt herself softened ; pure and true 
 love flooded her soul with its soothing, lapping glow. She 
 floated in a mild and tender atmosphere of feeling hitherto 
 unknown, in which she felt ennobled, elevated ; she had en- 
 tered into the heaven where, in all ages, woman has dwelt, in 
 Brittany. She enjoyed the respectful worship of this boy, 
 whose happiness cost her so little ; for a smile, a look, a word 
 was enough for Calyste. Such value set by feeling on such 
 trifles touched her extremely. To this angelic soul, the glove 
 she had worn could be more than her whole body was to the 
 man who ought to have adored her. What a contrast ! 
 
 What woman could have resisted this persistent idolatry? 
 She was sure of being understood and obeyed. If she had 
 bid Calyste to risk his life for her smallest whim, he would 
 not even have paused to think. And Beatrix acquired an in- 
 describable air of imposing dignity ; she looked at love on its 
 loftiest side, and sought in it a footing, as it were, which
 
 BEATRIX. 209 
 
 would enable her to remain, in Calyste's eyes, the supreme 
 woman; she wished her power over him to be eternal. She 
 coquetted all the more persistently because she felt herself 
 weak. 
 
 For a whole week she played the invalid with engaging 
 hypocrisy. How many times did she walk around and around 
 the green lawn that spread on the garden side of the house, 
 leaning on Calyste's arm, and reviving in Camille the tor- 
 ments she had caused her during the first week of her visit. 
 
 "Well, my dear, you are taking him the Grand Tour!" 
 said Mademoiselle des Touches to the Marquise. 
 
 One evening, before the excursion to le Croisic, the two 
 women had been discussing love, and laughing over the 
 various ways in which men made their declarations, confessing 
 that the most skillful, and, of course, therefore the least de- 
 voted, did not waste time in wandering through the mazes of 
 sentimentality, and were right ; so that those who loved best 
 were, at a certain stage, the worst used. 
 
 " They set to work as La Fontaine did to get into the 
 Academy," said Camille. 
 
 Her remark now recalled this conversation to Beatrix's 
 memory while reproving her Machiavellian conduct. Madame 
 de Rochefide had absolute power over Calyste, and could 
 keep him within the bounds she chose, reminding him by a 
 look or a gesture of his horrible violence by the seashore. 
 Then the poor martyr's eyes would fill with tears; he was 
 silent, swallowing down his arguments, his hopes, his griefs, 
 with a heroism that would have touched any other woman. 
 
 Her infernal coquetting brought him to such desperation 
 that he came one day to throw himself into Camille's arms 
 and ask her advice. Beatrix, armed with Calyste's letter, had 
 picked out the passage in which he said that loving was the 
 chief happiness, that being loved was second to it, and she 
 had made use of this axiom to suppress his passion to such a 
 degree of respectful idolatry as she chose to permit. She 
 14
 
 210 BEATRIX. 
 
 reveled in having her spirit soothed by the sweet concert of 
 praise and adoration which nature suggests to youth ; and 
 there is so much art too, though unconscious, so much inno- 
 cent seductiveness in their cries, their prayers, their exclama- 
 tions, their appeals to themselves, in their readiness to mort- 
 gage the future, that Beatrix took care not to answer him. 
 She had told him she doubted ! Happiness was not yet in 
 question, only the permission to love that the lad was con- 
 stantly asking for, persistently bent on taking the citadel 
 from the strongest side that of the mind and heart. 
 
 The woman who is bravest in word is often weak in action. 
 After seeing what progress he had made by his attempt to 
 push Beatrix into the sea, it is strange that Calyste should 
 not have continued the pursuit of happiness through violence ; 
 but love in these young lads is so ecstatic and religious that it 
 insists on absolute conviction. Hence its sublimity. 
 
 However, one day Calyste, driven to bay by desire, com- 
 plained vehemently to Camille of Madame de Rochefide's 
 conduct. 
 
 "I wanted to cure you by enabling you to know her from 
 the first," replied Mademoiselle des Touches, " but you spoilt 
 all by your impetuosity. Ten days since you were her master ; 
 now you are her slave, my poor boy. So you would never be 
 strong enough to carry out my orders." 
 
 "What must I do?" 
 
 "Quarrel with her on the ground of her cruelty. A 
 woman is always carried away by talk ; make her treat you 
 badly, and do not return to les Touches till she sends for 
 you." 
 
 There is a moment in every severe disease when the patient 
 accepts the most painful remedies and submits to the most 
 horrible operations. Calyste was at this crisis. He took 
 Camille's advice : he stayed at home for two days ; but on 
 the third he was tapping at Beatrix's door and telling her that 
 he and Camille were waiting breakfast for her.
 
 BEATRIX. 211 
 
 "Another chance lost!" said Camilla, seeing him sneak 
 back so tamely. 
 
 During those two days Beatrix had stopped frequently at 
 the window whence the Guerande road could be seen. When 
 Camille found her there she said that she was studying the 
 effect of the gorse by the roadside, its golden bloom blazing 
 under the September sun. Thus Camille had read her 
 friend's secret ; she had only to say the word for Calyste to 
 be happy. But she did not speak it ; she was still too much 
 a woman to urge him to the deed so dreaded by young 
 hearts, who seem aware of all that their ideal must lose by it. 
 
 Beatrix kept Camille and Calyste waiting some little time ; 
 if he had been any other man, the delay would have seemed 
 significant, for the Marquise's dress suggested her wish to 
 fascinate Calyste and prevent his absenting himself again. 
 After breakfast she went to walk in the garden, and en- 
 chanted him with joy, as she enchanted him with love, by 
 expressing her wish to go with him again to see the spot 
 where she had so nearly perished. 
 
 " Let us go alone," said Calyste in a broken voice. 
 
 "If I refused," said she, "I might give you reason to 
 think that you were dangerous. Alas ! as I have told you a 
 thousand times, I belong to another, and must forever be his 
 alone. I chose him, knowing nothing of love. The fault 
 was twofold, and the punishment double." 
 
 When she spoke thus, her eyes moist with the rare tears 
 such women can shed, Calyste felt a sort of pity that cooled 
 his furious ardor; he worshiped her then as a Madonna. 
 We must not expect that different natures should resemble 
 each other in the expression of their feelings, any more than 
 we look for the same fruits from different trees. Beatrix at 
 this moment was torn in her mind ; she hesitated between 
 herself and Calyste ; between the world, where she hoped 
 some day to be seen again, and perfect happiness; between 
 ruining herself finally by a second unpardonable passion and
 
 212 BE A TRIX. 
 
 social forgiveness. She was beginning to listen without even 
 affected annoyance to the language of blind love ; she allowed 
 herself to be soothed by the gentle hands of pity. Already 
 many times, she had been moved to tears by hearing Calyste 
 promising her love enough to make up for all she could lose 
 in the eyes of the world, and pitying her for being bound to 
 such an evil genius, to a man so false as Conti. More than 
 once she had not silenced Calyste when she had told him of 
 the misery and sufferings that overwhelmed her in Italy when 
 she found that she did not reign alone in Conti's heart. 
 Camille had given Calyste more than one lecture on this 
 subject, and Calyste had profited by them. 
 
 "I," said he, "love you wholly; you will find in me 
 none of the triumphs of art, nor the pleasures derived from 
 seeing a crowd bewildered by the wonders of talent ; my 
 only talent is for loving you, my only joys will be in yours ; 
 no woman's admiration will seem to me worthy of considera- 
 tion ; you need fear no odious rivals. You are misprized ; 
 and wherever you are accepted I desire also to be accepted 
 every day." 
 
 She listened to his words with a drooping head and down- 
 cast mien, allowing him to kiss her hands, and confessing to 
 herself silently but very readily that she was, perhaps, a misun- 
 derstood angel. 
 
 "I am too much humiliated," she replied; "my past de- 
 prives me of all security for the future." 
 
 It was a great day for Calyste when, on reaching les 
 Touches at seven in the morning, he saw from between two 
 gorse bushes Beatrix at a window, wearing the same straw hat 
 that she had worn on the day of their excursion. He felt 
 quite dazzled. These small details of passion make the world 
 wider. 
 
 Only Frenchwomen, perhaps, have the secret of these the- 
 atrical touches; they owe them to their graceful wit, of which
 
 BE A TRIX. 213 
 
 they infuse just so much into feeling as it can bear without 
 losing its force. 
 
 Ah ! how lightly she leaned on Calyste's arm. They went 
 out together by the garden gate leading to the sand-hills. Bea- 
 trix thought their wildness pleasing ; she saw the little rigid 
 plants that grow there with their pink blossoms, and gathered 
 several, with some of the Carthusian pinks, which also thrive 
 on barren sands, and divided the flowers significantly with 
 Calyste, to whom these blossoms and leaves were to have an 
 eternally sinister association. 
 
 "We will add a sprig of box ! " said she with a smile. 
 
 She stood for some time waiting for the boat on the jetty, 
 where Calyste told her of his childish eagerness the day of her 
 arrival. 
 
 "That expedition, which I heard of, was the cause of my 
 severity that first day," said she. 
 
 Throughout their walk Madame de Rochefide talked in the 
 half-jesting tone of a woman who loves, and with tenderness 
 and freedom of manner. Calyste might believe himself loved. 
 But when, as they went along the strand under the rocks, and 
 down into one of those pretty bays where the waves have 
 thrown up a marvelous mosaic of the strangest marbles, with 
 which they played like children at picking up the finest speci- 
 mens when Calyste, at the height of intoxication, proposed 
 in so many words that they should fly to Ireland, she assumed 
 a dignified and mysterious air, begged to take his arm, and 
 went on toward the cliff she had called her Tarpeian rock. 
 
 " My dear fellow," said she, as they slowly climbed the fine 
 block of granite she meant to take as her pedestal, " I have 
 not courage enough to conceal all you are to me. For the 
 last ten years I have known no happiness to compare with that 
 we have just enjoyed in hunting for shells among those tide- 
 washed rocks, in exchanging pebbles, of which I shall have a 
 necklace made, more precious in my eyes than if it were com- 
 posed of the finest diamonds. I have been a child again, a
 
 214 BE A TRIX. 
 
 little girl, such as I was at thirteen or fourteen, when I was 
 worthy of you. The love I have been so happy as to inspire 
 you with has elevated me in my own eyes. Understand this 
 in all its magical meaning. You have made me the proudest, 
 the happiest of my sex, and you will live longer in my memory 
 than I probably shall in yours." 
 
 At this moment she had reached the summit of the cliff, 
 whence the vast ocean was seen spreading on one side, and on 
 the other the Brittany coast with its golden islets, its feudal 
 towers, and its clumps of gorse. Never had a woman a finer 
 stage on which to make a grand avowal. 
 
 " But," she went on, " I am not my own ; I am more firmly 
 bound by my own act than I was by law. So you are pun- 
 ished for my misfortune ; you must be content to know that 
 we suffer together. Dante never saw Beatrice again, Petrarch 
 never possessed his Laura. Such disasters befall none but 
 great souls. 
 
 "Oh ! if ever I should be deserted, if I should fall a thou- 
 sand degrees lower in shame and infamy, if your Beatrix is 
 cruelly misunderstood by a world that will be loathsome to 
 her, if she should be the most despised of women ! Then, be- 
 loved child," she added, taking his hand, " you will know 
 that she is the foremost of them all, that she could rise to 
 heaven with your support. But, then, my friend," she added, 
 with a lofty glance at him, "when you want to throw her 
 down, do not miss your stroke; after your love, death ! " 
 
 Calyste had his arm around her waist ; he clasped her to 
 his heart. To confirm her tender words, Madame de Roche- 
 fide sealed Calyste's forehead with the most chaste and timid 
 kiss. Then they went down the path and returned slowly, 
 talking like two people who perfectly understand and enter 
 into each other's minds ; she believing she had secured peace, 
 he no longer doubting that he was to be happy and both 
 deceived. 
 
 Calyste hoped from what Camille had observed that Conti
 
 BEATRIX, 215 
 
 would be delighted to seize the opportunity of giving up 
 Beatrix. The Marquise, on her part, abandoned herself to 
 the uncertainty of things, waiting on chance. Calyste was 
 too deeply in love and too ingenuous to create the chance. 
 They both reached les Touches in the most delightful frame 
 of mind, going in by the garden gate, of which Calyste had 
 taken the key. 
 
 It was now about six o'clock. The intoxicating perfumes, 
 the mild atmosphere, the golden tones of the evening light 
 were all in harmony with their tender mood and talk. Their 
 steps were matched and equal as those of lovers are ; their 
 movements betrayed the unison of their mind. Such silence 
 reigned at les Touches that the sound of the opening and 
 closing gate echoed distinctly, and must have been heard all 
 over the grounds. As Calyste and Beatrix had said all they 
 had to say, and their agitating walk had tired them, they 
 came in slowly and without speaking. 
 
 Suddenly, as she turned an angle, Beatrix was seized with 
 a spasm of horror the infectious dread that is caused by the 
 sight of a reptile, and that chilled Calyste before he saw its 
 occasion. On a bench under a weeping ash Conti sat talking 
 to Camille Maupin. Madame de Rochefide's convulsive inter- 
 nal trembling was more evident than she wished. Calyste now 
 realized how dear he was to this woman who had just built 
 the barrier between herself and him, no doubt with a view 
 to securing a few days more for coquetting before overleap- 
 ing it. 
 
 In one instant a tragical drama in endless perspective was 
 felt in each heart. 
 
 "You did not expect me so soon, I dare say," said the 
 artist, offering Beatrix his arm. 
 
 The Marquise could not avoid relinquishing Calyste's arm 
 and taking Conti's. This undignified transition, so impera- 
 tively demanded, so full of offense to the later love, was too 
 much for Calyste, who went to throw himself on the bench
 
 216 BE A TRIX. 
 
 by Camille, after exchanging the most distant greeting with 
 his rival. He felt a hundred contending sensations. On dis- 
 cerning how much Beatrix loved him, his first impulse was to 
 rush at the artist and declare that she was his ; but the poor 
 woman's moral convulsion, betraying her sufferings for she 
 had in that one moment paid the forfeit of all her sins had 
 startled him so much that he remained stupefied, stricken, like 
 her, by relentless necessity. These antagonistic impulses pro- 
 duced the most violent storm of feeling he had yet known 
 since he had loved Beatrix. 
 
 Madame de Rochefide and Conti went past the seat where 
 Calyste had thrown himself by Camille's side, the Marquise 
 looking at her rival with one of those terrible flashes by which 
 a woman can convey everything. She avoided Calyste' s eye, 
 and seemed to listen to Conti, who was talking lightly. 
 
 "What can they be saying?" asked the agitated Calyste 
 of Camille. 
 
 " Dear child, you have no idea yet of the terrible hold a 
 man has over a woman on the strength of a dead passion. 
 Beatrix could not refuse him her hand. He is laughing at 
 her, no doubt, over her fresh love affair ; he guessed it, of 
 course, from your behavior and the way in which you came 
 in together when he saw you." 
 
 " He is laughing at her ! " cried the vehement youth. 
 
 "Keep calm," said Camille, "or you will lose the few 
 chances that remain to you. If he wounds Beatrix too much 
 in her vanities, she will trample him under foot like a worm. 
 But he is astute; he will know how to do it cleverly. He will 
 not suppose that the haughty Madame de Rochefide could 
 possibly be false to him ! It would be too base to love a 
 young man for his beauty ! He will no doubt speak of you 
 to her as a mere boy bewitched by the notion of possessing a 
 Marquise and of ruling the destinies of two women. Finally, 
 he will thunder with the rattling artillery of insulting insinu- 
 ations. Then Beatrix will be obliged to combat him with
 
 BE A TRIX. 217 
 
 false denials, of which he will take advantage and remain 
 master of the field." 
 
 "Ah ! " cried Calyste, "he does not love. I should leave 
 her free. Love demands a choice renewed every minute, con- 
 firmed every day. The morrow is the justification of yester- 
 day, and increases our hoard of joys. A few days later and 
 he would not have found us here. What brought him back? " 
 
 "A journalist's taunt," said Camille. "The opera on 
 whose success he had counted is a failure a dead failure. 
 These words spoken in the greenroom, perhaps by Claud 
 Vignon, ' It is hard to lose your reputation and your mistress 
 both at once ! ' stung him no doubt in all his vanities. Love 
 based on mean sentiments is merciless. 
 
 " I questioned him ; but who can trust so false and deceit- 
 ful a nature ? He seemed weary of poverty and of love, dis- 
 gusted with life. He regretted having connected himself so 
 publicly with the Marquise, and in speaking of their past 
 happiness fell into a strain of poetic melancholy rather too 
 elegant to be genuine. He hoped no doubt to extract the 
 secret of your love from the joy his flattery must give me." 
 
 "Well?" said Calyste, looking at Beatrix and Conti re- 
 turning, and listening no longer to Camille. 
 
 Camille had prudently kept on the defensive ; she had not 
 betrayed either Calyste's secret or Beatrix's. The artist was 
 a man to dupe any one in the world, and Mademoiselle des 
 Touches warned Calyste to be on his guard with him. 
 
 " My dear child," said she, " this is for you the most crit- 
 ical moment ; such prudence and skill are needed as you 
 have not, and you will be fooled by the most cunning 'man 
 on earth ; for I can do no more for you." 
 
 A bell announced that dinner was served. Conti offered 
 his arm to Camille, Beatrix took that of Calyste. Camille 
 let the Marquise lead the way; she had a moment to look at 
 Calyste and enjoin prudence by putting her finger to her lips. 
 
 All through dinner Conti was in the highest spirits. This
 
 218 BEA TRTX. 
 
 was perhaps a way of gauging Madame de Rochefide, who 
 played her part badly. As a coquette she might have de- 
 ceived Conti ; but, being seriously in love, she betrayed her- 
 self. The wily musician, far from watching her, seemed not 
 to observe her embarrassment. At dessert he began talking 
 of women and crying up their noble feelings. 
 
 " A woman who would desert us in prosperity will sacrifice 
 everything to us in adversity," said he. "Women have the 
 advantage of men in constancy ; a woman must be deeply 
 offended indeed to throw over a first lover ; she clings to him 
 
 as to her honor; a second love is a disgrace " and so 
 
 forth. 
 
 He was astoundingly moral ; he burnt incense before the 
 altar on which a heart was bleeding pierced by a thousand 
 stabs. Only Camille and Beatrix understood the virulence 
 of the acrid satire he poured out in the form of praises. 
 Now and again they both colored, but they were obliged to 
 control themselves; they went up to Camille's sitting-room 
 arm in arm, and with one consent passed through the larger 
 drawing-room, where there were no lights, and they could 
 exchange a few words. 
 
 "I cannot endure to let Conti walk over my prostrate body, 
 to give him a right over me," said Beatrix in an undertone. 
 " The convict on the hulks is always at the mercy of the man 
 he is chained to. I am lost ! I must go back to the hulks of 
 love ! And it is you who have sent me back. Ah, you made 
 him come a day too late or too soon. I recognize your in- 
 fernal gift of romance. Yes, the revenge is complete and the 
 climax perfect." 
 
 " I could threaten you that I would write to Conti, but as 
 to doing it ! I am incapable of such a thing ! " cried Camille. 
 "You are miserable, so I forgive you." 
 
 "What will become of Calyste?" said the Marquise, with 
 the exquisite artlessness of vanity. 
 
 "Then is Conti taking you away?" cried Camille.
 
 BE A TRIX. 219 
 
 "Ah ! you expect to triumph?" retorted Beatrix. 
 
 The Marquise spoke the hideous words with rage, her beauti- 
 ful features distorted, while Camille tried to conceal her glad- 
 ness under an assumed expression of regret ; but the light in 
 her eyes gave the lie to the gravity of her face, and Beatrix 
 could see through a mask ! When they saw each other by 
 candlelight, sitting on the divan where during the last three 
 weeks so many comedies had been played out, where the secret 
 tragedy of so many thwarted passions had had its beginning, 
 the two women studied each other for the last time ; they saw 
 that they were divided by a deep gulf of hatred. 
 
 " I leave you Calyste," said Beatrix, seeing her rival's eyes. 
 " But I am fixed in his heart, and no woman will oust me." 
 
 Camille retorted by quoting, in a tone of subtle irony 
 which stung the Marquise to the quick, the famous speech of 
 Mazarin's niece to Louis XIV.: "You reign, you love him, 
 and you are going ! " 
 
 Neither of them throughout this scene, which was a stormy 
 one, noticed the absence of Calyste and Conti. The artist 
 had remained at table with his rival, desiring him to keep him 
 company and finish a bottle of champagne. 
 
 " We have something to say to each other," said Conti, to 
 anticipate any refusal. 
 
 In the position in which they stood to each other, the 
 young Breton was obliged to obey the behest. 
 
 "My dear boy," said the singer in a soothing voice when 
 Calyste had drunk two glasses of wine, " we are a couple of 
 good fellows ; we may be frank with each other. I did not 
 come here because I was suspicious. Beatrix loves me." 
 And he assumed a fatuous air. " For my part, I love her no 
 longer ; I have come, not to carry her off, but to break with 
 her and leave her the credit of the rupture. You are young ; 
 you do not know how necessary it is to seem the victim when 
 you feel that you are the executioner. Young men spout fire 
 and flame, they make a parade of throwing over a woman,
 
 220 BEATRIX. 
 
 they often scorn her and make her hate them ; but a wise man 
 gets himself dismissed, and puts on a humiliated expression 
 which leaves the lady some regrets and a sweet sense of supe- 
 riority. The displeasure of the divinity is not irremediable, 
 while abdication is past all reparation. 
 
 " You, happily for you, do not yet know how our lives may 
 be hampered by the senseless promises which women are such 
 fools as to accept, when gallantry requires us to tie such slip- 
 knots to divert the idle hours of happiness. The pair then 
 swear eternal fidelity. A man has some adventure with a 
 woman he does not fail to assure her politely that he hopes 
 to live and die with her ; he pretends to be impatiently await- 
 ing the demise of a husband while earnestly wishing him per- 
 fect health. If the husband should die, there are women so 
 provincial or so tenacious, so silly or so wily, as to rush on the 
 man, crying, ' I am free here I am ! ' 
 
 " Not one of us is free. The spent ball recoils and falls 
 into the midst of our best-planned triumph or our greatest 
 happiness. 
 
 " I foresaw that" you would love Beatrix ; I left her in a 
 situation in which she must need flirt with you without abdi- 
 cating her sacred majesty, were it only to annoy that angel, 
 Camille Maupin. Well, my dear fellow, love her : you will 
 be doing me a service. I only want her to behave atrociously 
 to me. I dread her pride and her virtue. Perhaps, in spite 
 of good-will on my side, some time will be required for this 
 manoeuvre. On such occasions the one who does not take 
 the first step wins. Just now, as we walked around the lawn, 
 I tried to tell her that I knew all, and wished her joy of her 
 happiness. Well, she was very angry. 
 
 " I, at this moment, am in love with the youngest of our 
 singers, Mademoiselle Falcon, of the opera, and I want to 
 marry her. Yes, I have gotten so far as that ! But when 
 you come to Paris, you will say I have exchanged a marquise 
 for a queen ! "
 
 BEATRIX, 221 
 
 Joy shed its glory on Calyste's candid face ; he confessed 
 his love; this was all that Conti wanted. 
 
 There is not a man in the world, however blase, however 
 depraved, whose love does not revive as soon as it is threat- 
 ened by a rival. We may wish to be rid of a woman ; we do 
 not wish that she should throw us over. When lovers have 
 come to this extremity, men and women alike try to be first 
 in the field, so cruel is the wound to their self-respect. Per- 
 haps what is at stake is all that society has thrown into that 
 feeling ; it is indeed less a matter of self-respect than of life 
 itself, the whole future is in the balance ; we feel as if we were 
 losing not the interest, but the capital. 
 
 Calyste, cross-examined by the artist, related all that had 
 happened during these three weeks at les Touches, and was 
 delighted with Conti, who concealed his rage under a sem- 
 blance of delightful good-nature. 
 
 " Let us go upstairs," said he. "Women are not trustful ; 
 they will not understand how we can have sat together for so 
 long without clutching at each other's hair; they might come 
 down to listen. I will do all I can for you, my dear child. 
 I will be odious, rude, and jealous with the Marquise; I will 
 constantly suspect her of deceiving me there is nothing more 
 certain to lead a woman to a betrayal ; you will be happy, 
 and I shall be free. You, this evening, must assume the part 
 of a disconcerted lover ; I shall play the suspicious and jealous 
 man. Pity the angel for her inthrallment to a man without 
 fine feelings weep ! You can weep, you are young. I, alas, 
 can no longer weep ; it is a great advantage lost." 
 
 Calyste and Conti went upstairs. The musician, requested 
 to sing by his young rival, chose the greatest test known to 
 musical executants, the famous "Pria eke spunti T aurora" 
 which Rubini himself never attempts without a qualm, and in 
 which Conti had often triumphed. Never had he been more 
 wonderful than at this moment when so many feelings were 
 seething in his breast. Calyste was in ecstasies. At the first
 
 222 BEATRIX. 
 
 note of the cavatiiia the singer fired a glance at the Marquise 
 which gave cruel significance to the words, and which was 
 understood. Camille, playing the accompaniment, guessed 
 that it was a command that made Beatrix bow her head. She 
 looked at Calyste, and suspected that the boy had fallen into 
 some snare in spite of her warnings. She was certain of it 
 when the youth went gleefully to bid Beatrix good-night, 
 kissing her hand and pressing it with a little knowing and 
 confident look. 
 
 By the time Calyste had reached Guerande the ladies' maid 
 and servants were packing Conti's traveling carriage ; and 
 " before the dawn," as he had sung, he had carried off Beatrix, 
 with Camille's horses, as far as the first posting-house. 
 
 Under cover of the darkness, Madame de Rochefide was 
 able to look back at Guerande, whose tower, white in the 
 daybreak, stood out in the gray light. She gave herself up 
 to melancholy for she was leaving there one of the fairest 
 flowers of life love such as the purest girls may dream of. 
 Respect of persons was crushing the only true love this woman 
 had ever known, or could ever know, in all her life. The 
 woman of the world was obeying the laws of the world, sacri- 
 ficing love to appearances, as some women sacrifice it to re- 
 ligion or to duty. From this point of view, this terrible story 
 is that of many women. 
 
 Next day, at about noon, Calyste arrived at les Touches. 
 When he reached the turn in the road whence, yesterday, he 
 had seen Beatrix at the window, he caught sight of Camille, 
 who hurried out to meet him. At the bottom of the stairs 
 she said this cruel word 
 
 "Gone!" 
 
 " Beatrix? " cried Calyste, stunned. 
 
 "You were duped by Conti. You told me nothing; I 
 could do nothing." 
 
 She led the poor boy to her little drawing-room ; he sank 
 on the divan, in the place where he had so often seen the
 
 BE A TRIX. 223 
 
 Marquise, and melted into tears. Felicit6 said nothing j she 
 smoked her hookah, knowing that nothing can stem the first 
 rush of such suffering, which is always deaf and speechless. 
 Calyste, since there was nothing to be done, stayed there all 
 day in a state of utter torpor. Just before dinner, Camille 
 tried to say a few words to him, after begging that he would 
 listen to her. 
 
 "My dear boy," said she, "you have been the cause to 
 me of intense suffering, and I have not, as you have, a fair 
 future life in which to recover. To me the earth has no 
 further springtime, the soul no further love. So I, to find 
 comfort, must look higher. 
 
 " Here, the day before Beatrix came, I painted her por- 
 trait ; I would not darken it, you would have thought that I 
 was jealous. Now, listen to the truth. Madame de Roche- 
 fide is as far as possible from being worthy of you. The dis- 
 play of her fall was not necessary, but she would have been 
 nobody but for that scandal ; she made it on purpose to have 
 a part to play. She is one of those women who prefer the 
 parade of wrongdoing to the calm peace of happiness ; they 
 affront society to wring from it the evil gift of a slander ; 
 they must be talked about, at whatever cost. She was eaten 
 up by vanity. Her fortune and wit had not availed to give 
 her the feminine dominion which she had tried to conquer by 
 presiding over a salon ; she had fancied that she could achieve 
 the celebrity of the Duchesse de Langeais and the Vicomtesse 
 de Beauseant ; but the world is just, it bestows the honors of 
 its interest only on genuine passion. 
 
 " Her flight was not justified by any obstacles. Damocles' 
 sword did not hang glittering over her festivities ; and beside, 
 in Paris, those who love truly and sincerely may easily be 
 happy in a quiet way. In short, if she could be tender and 
 loving, she would not have gone off last night with Conti." 
 
 Camille talked for a long time, and very eloquently, but 
 this last effort was in vain ; she ceased on seeing a shrug, by
 
 224 BE A TRIX. 
 
 which Calyste conveyed his entire belief in Beatrix, and she 
 insisted on his coming down and sitting with her at dinner, 
 for he found it impossible to eat. 
 
 It is only while we are very young that these spasmodic 
 symptoms occur. At a later period the organs have formed 
 habits, and are, as it were, hardened. The reaction of the 
 moral system on the physical is never strong enough to induce 
 mortal illness unless the constitution preserves its original 
 delicacy. A man can resist a violent grief which kills a 
 youth, less because his feelings are not so strong than because 
 his organs are stronger. Mademoiselle des Touches was in- 
 deed alarmed from the first by Calyste's calm and resigned 
 attitude after the first flood of tears. Before leaving the 
 house, he begged to see Beatrix's room once more, and hid 
 his face in the pillow on which hers had rested. 
 
 "This is folly ! " said he, shaking hands with Camille and 
 leaving her, sunk in melancholy. 
 
 He returned home, found the usual party engaged in playing 
 mouche, and sat by his mother all the evening. The cure, 
 the Chevalier du Halga, and Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel all 
 knew of Madame de Rochefide's departure, and were all glad. 
 Calyste would now come back to them, and they all watched, 
 almost by stealth, seeing that he was silent. Nobody in that 
 old house could conceive of all that this death of a first love 
 must be to a heart so true and artless as Calyste's. 
 
 For some days Calyste went regularly to les Touches; he 
 would wander round the grass-plot where he had sometimes 
 walked arm in arm with Beatrix. He often went as far as 
 le Croisic, and climbed the rock whence he had tried to throw 
 her into the sea; he would sit for hours leaning on the box- 
 shrub, for by examining the projections on the riven rock he 
 had learned to climb up and down the face of it. His solitary 
 expeditions, his silence, and his lack of appetite at last made 
 his mother uneasy. At the end of a fortnight, while these
 
 BEATRIX. 225 
 
 proceedings lasted a good deal like those of an animal in its 
 cage, and the despairing lover's cage was, to adopt La Fon- 
 taine's phrase, " the spots honored by the footstep, illumi- 
 nated by the eyes ' ' of Beatrix Calyste could no longer cross 
 the little inlet ; he had only strength enough to drag himself 
 as far on the Guerande road as the spot whence he had seen 
 Beatrix at the window. 
 
 The family, glad at the departing of "the Parisians," to 
 use the provincial phrase, discerned nothing ominous or sickly 
 in Calyste. The two old maids and the cure, following up 
 their plan, had kept Charlotte de Kergarouet, who, in the 
 evening, made eyes at Calyste, and got nothing in return but 
 advice as to her game of mouche. All through the evening 
 Calyste would sit between his mother and his provincial 
 fiancee, under the eye of the cur6 and of Charlotte's aunt, 
 who, on their way home, would comment on his greater or 
 less dejection. They took the unhappy boy's indifference for 
 acquiescence in their plans. 
 
 One evening, when Calyste, being tired, had gone early to 
 bed, the players all left their cards on the table and looked at 
 each other as the young man shut his bedroom door. They 
 had listened anxiously to his footsteps. 
 
 "Something ails Calyste," said the Baroness, wiping her 
 eyes. 
 
 "There is nothing the matter with him," replied Made- 
 moiselle de Pen-Hoel ; " we must get him married as soon as 
 may be." 
 
 " Do you think that will divert him ? " said the chevalier. 
 
 Charlotte looked sternly at Monsieur du Halga, whom she 
 thought in very bad taste this evening, immoral, depraved, 
 irreligious, and quite ridiculous with his dog, in spite of her 
 aunt, who always took the old sailor's part. 
 
 "To-morrow morning I will lecture Calyste," said the old 
 Baron, whom they had thought asleep; " I do not want to go 
 out of this world without having seen my grandson, a little 
 15
 
 226 BE A TRIX. 
 
 pink~and-white du Guenic, with a Breton hood on, in his 
 cradle." 
 
 " He never speaks a word," said old Zephirine; "no one 
 knows what ails him ; he never ate less in his life ; what does 
 he live on ? If he eats at les Touches, the devil's cookery 
 does him no good." 
 
 " He is in love," said the chevalier, proffering this opinion 
 with extreme timidity. 
 
 " Now, then, old dotard, you have not put into the pool," 
 said Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel. "When you are thinking 
 of your young days, you forget everything else." 
 
 "Come to breakfast with us to-morrow morning," said old 
 Zephirine to Charlotte and Jacqueline; " my brother will talk 
 to his son, and we will settle everything. One nail drives out 
 another." 
 
 "Not in a Breton," said the chevalier. 
 
 The next morning Calyste saw Charlotte arrive, dressed with 
 unusual care, though it was still early, just as his father had 
 ended giving him, in the dining-room, a discourse on matri- 
 mony, to which the lad could find nothing to say. He knew 
 how ignorant his aunt, his father, and his mother were, and 
 all their friends ; he was gathering the fruits of knowledge ; 
 he found himself isolated, no longer speaking the language of 
 the household. So he only begged a few days' respite, and 
 his father rubbed his hands with joy and gave new life to the 
 Baroness by whispering the good news in her ear. 
 
 Breakfast was a cheerful meal. Charlotte, to whom the 
 Baron had given a wink, was in high spirits. A rumor filtered 
 through Gasselin, by which all the town knew that the du 
 Guenics and the Kergarouets had come to an understanding. 
 After breakfast Calyste went out of the hall by the steps on 
 the garden-side, and was followed by Charlotte ; he offered 
 her his arm, and led her to the arbor at the bottom of the 
 garden. The old folk, standing at the window, looked at 
 them with a sort of pathos. Charlotte looked back at the
 
 BEATRIX. 227 
 
 pretty house, somewhat uneasy at her companion's silence, and 
 took advantage of their presence to begin the conversation by 
 saying to Calyste, " They are watching us ! " 
 
 "They cannot hear us," he replied. 
 
 " No, but they can see us." 
 
 "Let us sit down," said Calyste gently, as he took her 
 hand. 
 
 " Is it true that your banner once floated from that twisted 
 pillar?" asked Charlotte, looking at the house as if it were 
 her own. "It would look well there! How happy one 
 might be here ! You will make some alterations in the ar- 
 rangement of your house, will you not, Calyste?" 
 
 "I shall have no time for it, my dear Charlotte," said the 
 young man, taking her hands and kissing them. " I will tell 
 you my secret. I love a woman whom you have seen, and 
 who loves me love her too well to make any other woman 
 happy; and I know that from our infancy you and I have 
 always been intended to marry." 
 
 "But she is married, Calyste," said Charlotte. 
 
 " I will wait," said the boy. 
 
 "And so will I," said Charlotte, her eyes full of tears. 
 " You cannot love that woman for long; she has gone off with 
 a singer, they say " 
 
 "Marry some one else, my dear Charlotte," said Calyste. 
 "With such a fortune as your aunt has to leave you, which is 
 enormous in Brittany, you can find a better match than I. 
 You will find a man with a title. I have not brought you out 
 here to tell you what you already know, but to entreat you in 
 the name of our long friendship to take the matter upon your- 
 self and to refuse me. Say that you can have nothing to say 
 to a man whose heart is not free, and my passion will at least 
 have been so far serviceable that I shall have done you no 
 wrong. You cannot think how life weighs upon me ! I 
 cannot endure any struggle, I am as weak as a body deserted 
 by its soul, by the very element of life. But for the grief that
 
 228 SEA TRIX. 
 
 my death would be to my mother and my aunt, I should have 
 thrown myself into the sea ere now, and I have never gone to 
 the rocks of le Croisic since the day when the temptation 
 began to be irresistible. Say nothing of this. Charlotte, fare- 
 well." 
 
 He took the girl's head in his hands, kissed her hair, went 
 out by the path under the gable, and made his escape to 
 Camille's, where he remained till midnight. 
 
 On returning at about one in the morning he found his 
 mother busy with her tapestry, waiting for him. He crept in 
 softly, took her hand, and asked 
 
 "Is Charlotte gone?" 
 
 "She is going to-morrow with her aunt; they are both in 
 despair. Come to Ireland, my Calyste," she added, caressing 
 him. 
 
 "How many times have I dreamed of flying thither!" 
 said he. 
 
 " Really ! " exclaimed the Baroness. 
 
 "With Beatrix," he added. 
 
 Some days after Charlotte's departure, Calyste was walking 
 with the Chevalier du Halga on the mall, and he sat down in 
 the sun on a bench whence his eye could command the whole 
 landscape, from the weathercocks of les Touches to the shoals 
 marked out by the foaming breakers which dance above the 
 reefs at high-tide. Calyste was thin and pale, his strength 
 was diminishing, he was beginning to have little periodical 
 shivering fits, symptomatic of fever. His eyes, with dark 
 marks round them, had the hard glitter which a fixed idea 
 will give to lonely persons, or which the ardor of the struggle 
 imparts to the bold leaders of the civilization of our age. 
 The chevalier was the only person with whom he sometimes 
 exchanged his ideas ; he had discerned in this old man an 
 apostle of his religion, and found in him the traces of a never- 
 dying love. 
 
 "Have you loved many women in your life?" he asked,
 
 BE A TRIX. 229 
 
 the second time that he and the old navy man sailed in com- 
 pany, as the captain called it, up and down the mall. 
 
 " Only one," said the captain. 
 
 "Was she free?" 
 
 "No," said the chevalier. "Ah, I suffered much! She 
 was my best friend's wife my patron's, my chief's; but we 
 loved each other so much ! " 
 
 "She loved you, then?" 
 
 "Passionately," replied du Halga with unwonted vehem- 
 ence. 
 
 " And you were happy ? " 
 
 "Till her death. She died at the age of forty-nine, an 
 emigree at Saint-Petersburg; the climate killed her. She 
 must be very cold in her coffin ! I have often thought of 
 going to bring her away and lay her in our beloved Brittany, 
 near me ! But she rests in my heart ? " 
 
 The chevalier wiped his eyes ; Calyste took his hands and 
 pressed them. 
 
 " I cling to that dog more than to my life," said he, point- 
 ing to Thisbe. "That little creature is in every particular 
 exactly like the dog she used to fondle with her beautiful 
 hands, and to take on her knees. I never look at Thisbe 
 without seeing Madame de Kergarouet's hands." 
 
 "Have you seen Madame de Rochefide?" asked Calyste. 
 
 "No," replied du Halga. "It is fifty-eight years now 
 since I looked at a woman, excepting your mother; there is 
 something in her coloring that is like the admiral's wife." 
 
 Three days later the chevalier said to Calyste as they met 
 on the mall 
 
 "My boy, all I have in the world is a hundred and eighty 
 louis. When you know where to find Madame de Rochefide, 
 come and ask me for them, to go to see her." 
 
 Calyste thanked the old man, whose life he envied. But 
 day by day he became more morose ; he seemed to care for 
 no one ; he was gentle and kind only to his mother. The
 
 230 BE A TRIX. 
 
 Baroness watched the progress of this mania with increasing 
 anxiety ; she alone, by much entreaty, could persuade Calyste 
 to take some nourishment. 
 
 By the beginning of October the young fellow could no 
 longer walk on the mall with the chevalier, who came in vain 
 to ask him out with an old man's attempts at coaxing. 
 
 " We will talk about Madame de Rochefide," said he. "I 
 will tell you the history of my first adventure. Your son is 
 very ill," said he to the Baroness, on the day when his 
 urgency proved useless. 
 
 Calyste replied to all who questioned him that he was 
 perfectly well, and, like all melancholy youths, relished the 
 notion of death ; but he never left the house now ; he sat 
 in the garden on the seat, warming himself in the pale, 
 mild autumn sunshine, alone with his thoughts, and avoid- 
 ing all company. 
 
 After the day when Calyste no longer went to call on her, 
 Felicite begged the cure of Guerande to go to see her. The 
 Abbe Grimont's regularity in going to les Touches almost 
 every morning, and dining there from time to time, became 
 the news of the moment ; it was talked of in all the neigh- 
 borhood, and even at Nantes. However, he never missed 
 spending the evening at Guerande, where despair reigned. 
 Masters and servants, all were grieved by Calyste's obstinacy, 
 though they did not think him in any danger. It never oc- 
 curred to any one of these good people that the poor youth 
 could die of love. The chevalier had no record of such a 
 death in all his travels or reminiscences. Everybody ascribed 
 Calyste's emaciation to want of nutrition. His mother would 
 go on her knees to beseech him to eat. To please her, Ca- 
 lyste tried to overcome his repugnance, and the food thus 
 taken against his will added to the low fever that was consum- 
 ing the handsome boy. 
 
 At the end of October the beloved son no longer went up to
 
 BEATRIX. 231 
 
 his room on the second floor ; he had his bed brought down 
 into the sitting-room, and lay there generally, in the midst of 
 the family, who at last sent for the Guerande doctor. 
 
 The medical man tried to check the fever by quinine, and 
 for a few days it yielded to the treatment. The doctor also 
 ordered Calyste to take exercise and to amuse himself. The 
 Baron rallied his strength and shook off his torpor ; he grew 
 young as his son grew old. He took out Calyste, Gasselin, 
 and the two fine sporting dogs. Calyste obeyed his father, 
 and for a few days the three men went out together; they 
 went through the forest and visited their friends in neighbor- 
 ing chateaux ; but Calyste had no spirit, no one could beguile 
 him of a smile, his pale, rigid face revealed a perfectly passive 
 creature. 
 
 The Baron, broken by fatigue, fell into a state of collapse 
 and was forced to come home, bringing Calyste with him in 
 the same condition. Within a few days both father and son 
 were so ill that, at the request of the Guerande doctor him- 
 self, the two first physicians of Nantes were called in. The 
 Baron had been quite knocked over by the visible alteration 
 in Calyste. With the terrible prescience that nature bestows 
 on the dying, he trembled like a child at the thought that his 
 family would be extinct ; he said nothing, he only clasped 
 his hands, praying as he sat in his chair, to which he was tied 
 by weakness. He sat facing the bed occupied by Calyste, 
 and watched him constantly. At his child's slightest move- 
 ment he was greatly agitated, as if the flame of his life were 
 fluttered by it. 
 
 The Baroness never left the room, and old Zephirine sat 
 knitting by the fire in a state of agonizing anxiety. She was 
 constantly being asked for wood, for the father and son both 
 felt the cold, and her stores were invaded. She had made up 
 her mind to give up her keys, for she was no longer brisk 
 enough to go with Mariotte ; but she insisted on knowing 
 everything ; every minute she questioned Mariotte or her sis-
 
 232 BEATRIX. 
 
 ter-in-law, and would take them aside to hear about the state 
 of her brother and nephew. 
 
 One evening, when Calyste and his father were dozing, old 
 Mademoiselle de Pen-Hocl remarked that they would no 
 doubt have to resign themselves to losing the Baron, whose 
 face was quite white, and had assumed a waxen look. Made- 
 moiselle du Guenic dropped her knitting, fumbled in her 
 pocket, and pulled out an old rosary of black wooden beads, 
 which she proceeded to tell with a fervency that gave such a 
 glory of energy to her ancient parched features that the other 
 old maid followed her example ; and then, at a sign from the 
 cure, they all united in the silent exaltation of the old blind 
 lady. 
 
 "I was the first to pray to God," said the Baroness, re- 
 membering the fateful letter written by Calyste, " but He did 
 not hear me ! " 
 
 "Perhaps," said the Abbe Grimont, "we should be wise 
 to beg Mademoiselle des Touches to come to see Calyste." 
 
 " She ! " cried old Zephirine, " the author of all our woes, 
 she who lured him away from his family, who tore him from 
 us, who made him read impious books, who taught him the 
 language of heresy ! Curse her, and may God never forgive 
 her ! She has crushed the du Guenics ! " 
 
 "She may perhaps raise them up again," said the cure in a 
 mild voice. "She is a saintly and virtuous woman: I am 
 her warranty. She has none but good intentions as regards 
 Calyste. May she be able to realize them ! " 
 
 " Give me notice the day she is to set foot here, and I will 
 go out," cried the old lady. " She has killed both father and 
 son. Do you suppose I cannot hear how weak Calyste's voice 
 is ! he hardly has strength to speak." 
 
 Just then the three physicians came in. They wearied 
 Calyste with questions. As to his father, their examination 
 was brief; they knew all in a moment ; the only wonder was 
 that he still lived. The Guerande doctor quietly explained
 
 BE A TRIX. 233 
 
 to the Baroness that it would probably be necessary to take 
 Calyste to Paris to consult the most eminent authorities, for 
 that it would cost more than a hundred louis to bring them to 
 Guerande. 
 
 " A man must die of something, but love is nothing," said 
 Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel. 
 
 "Alas, whatever the cause may be, Calyste is dying," said 
 his mother. " I recognize every symptom of consumption, 
 the most horrible malady of my native land." 
 
 "Calyste is dying?" said the Baron, opening his eyes, 
 whence trickled two large tears which, caught in the many 
 furrows of his face, slowly fell to the bottom of his cheeks 
 the only tears, no doubt, that he had ever shed in his life. 
 
 He dragged himself on to his feet, shuffled to his son's bed, 
 took his hands, and looked at him. 
 
 "What do you want, father?" said the boy. 
 
 " I want you to live ! " cried the Baron. 
 
 "I cannot live without Beatrix," said Calyste to the old 
 man, who sank back into his chair. 
 
 "Where can I find a hundred louis to fetch the doctors 
 from Paris?" cried the Baroness. "We have yet time." 
 
 "A hundred louis!" exclaimed Zephirine. "Will they 
 save him?" 
 
 Without waiting for her sister-in-law's reply, the old woman 
 put her hands into her pocket-holes and untied an under pet- 
 ticoat, which fell with a heavy sound. She knew so well 
 where she had sewn in her louis that she ripped them out 
 with a rapidity that seemed magical. The gold-pieces rang 
 as they dropped one by one. Old Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel 
 looked on with stupefied amazement. 
 
 " They can see you ! " she whispered, as a warning, in her 
 friend's ear. 
 
 "Thirty-seven," said Zephirine, counting the gold. 
 
 "Every one will know how much you have." 
 
 "Forty-two."
 
 234 BEATRIX. 
 
 "Double louis, and all new! how did you get them, you 
 who cannot see them? " 
 
 "I could feel them. Here are a hundred and four louis," 
 cried Zephirine. " Is that enough? " 
 
 "What are you doing?" asked the Chevalier du Halga, 
 coming in, and unable to imagine what was the meaning of 
 the old lady's holding out her lap full of louis d'or. 
 
 Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel explained the case in two words. 
 
 " I had heard of it," said he, "and I came to bring you 
 a hundred and forty louis I had kept at Calyste's service, as 
 he knows." 
 
 The chevalier took out of his pocket two rolls of coin, 
 which he showed them. Mariotte, seeing all these riches, 
 bid Gasselin lock the door. 
 
 "Gold will not restore him to health," said the Baroness, 
 in tears. 
 
 "But it may enable him to run after his Marquise," said 
 du Halga. " Come, Calyste ! " 
 
 Calyste sat up in bed, and exclaimed gleefully 
 
 "Let us be off! " 
 
 "Then he will live," said the Baron, in a stricken voice, 
 "and I may die. Go and fetch the cure." 
 
 These words struck them all with terror. Calyste, seeing 
 his father turn ghastly pale from the painful agitation of this 
 scene, could not restrain his tears. The cure, who knew the 
 decision the doctors had come to, had gone off to fetch 
 Mademoiselle des Touches ; for at this moment he displayed 
 as much admiration for her as he had not long since felt 
 repugnance, and could defend her as a pastor defends one of 
 the favorites of his flock. 
 
 On hearing of the Baron's desperate extremity, a crowd 
 gathered in the little street ; the peasants, the marshmen, and 
 the townsfolk all kneeling in the courtyard, while the priest 
 administered the last sacrament to the old Breton warrior. 
 Everybody was deeply touched to think of the father dying
 
 BE A TRIX. 235 
 
 by the bed of his sick son. The extinction of the old family 
 was regarded as a public calamity. 
 
 The ceremony struck Calyste ; for a while his grief silenced 
 his passion. All through the death-struggles of this heroic 
 defender of the monarchy he remained on his knees, watch- 
 ing the approach of death, and weeping. 
 
 The old man died in his chair, in the presence of the as- 
 sembled family. 
 
 "I die faithful to the King and religion. Great God, as 
 the reward of my efforts, let Calyste live ! " he said. 
 
 "I will live, father, and obey you," replied the young 
 man. 
 
 "If you would make my death as easy as Fanny has made 
 my life, swear that you will marry." 
 
 " I promise it, father." 
 
 It was touching to see Calyste, or rather his ghost, leaning 
 on the old chevalier, a spectre leading a shade, following the 
 Baron's bier as chief mourner. The church and the little 
 square before the porch were full of people, who had come 
 from ten leagues round. 
 
 The Baroness and Zephirine were deeply grieved when 
 they saw that, in spite of his efforts to obey his father, 
 Calyste was still sunk in an ominous stupor. On the first day 
 of their mourning the Baroness led her son to the seat at the 
 bottom of the garden, and questioned him. Calyste replied 
 with gentle submissiveness, but his answers were heartbreak- 
 ing. 
 
 "Mother," said he, " there is no life left in me; what I 
 eat does not nourish me, the air I breathe into my lungs does 
 not renew my blood ; the sun seems cold to me, and when it 
 shines for you on the front of the house as at this moment, 
 where you see carvings bathed in light I see dim forms 
 wrapped in mist. If Beatrix were here, all would be bright 
 once more. There is but one thing in the world that has her 
 color and form this flower and these leaves," and he drew
 
 236 BEATRIX. 
 
 out of his bosom the withered blossoms that the Marquise 
 had given him. 
 
 The Baroness dared ask him no more ; the madness be- 
 trayed by his replies seemed worse than the sorrow of his 
 silence. 
 
 But Calyste was thrilled as he caught sight of Mademoiselle 
 des Touches through the windows at opposite ends of the 
 room. Felicite reminded him of Beatrix. Thus it was to 
 her that the two women owed the one gleam of joy that 
 lightened their griefs. 
 
 "Well, Calyste," said Mademoiselle des Touches, when 
 she saw him, " the carriage is ready ; we will go together and 
 find Beatrix. Come." 
 
 The pale, thin face of the boy, all in black, was brightened 
 by a flush, and a smile dawned on his features. 
 
 "We will save him ! " said Mademoiselle des Touches to 
 the mother, who wrung her hand, shedding tears of joy. 
 
 A week after the Baron's death, Mademoiselle des Touches, 
 the Baronne du Guenic, and Calyste set out for Paris, leaving 
 the business matters in the hands of old mademoiselle. 
 
 Felicite' s affection for Calyste had planned a brilliant future 
 for the poor boy. She was connected with the Grandlieus, 
 and the ducal branch was ending in a family of five daughters. 
 She had written to the Duchesse de Grandlieu, telling her the 
 whole story of Calyste, and announcing her intention of sell- 
 ing her house in the Rue du Mont-Blanc, for which a com- 
 pany of speculators had offered two million five hundred 
 thousand francs. Her business manager had already bought 
 for her one of the finest houses in the Rue de Bourbon, at a 
 cost of seven hundred thousand francs. Out of the surplus 
 money from the sale of the house in the Rue Mont-Blanc she 
 meant to devote one million to repurchasing the estates of the 
 du Guenics, and would leave the rest of her fortune among 
 the five de Grandlieu girls.
 
 BEATRIX. 237 
 
 Felicite knew the plans made by the Duke and Duchess, 
 who intended that their youngest daughter should marry the 
 Vicomte de Grandlieu, the heir to their titles ; Clotilde-Fr6d- 
 erique, the second, meant, she knew, to remain unmarried, 
 without taking the veil, however, as her eldest sister had done ; 
 so the only one to be disposed of was Sabine, a pretty creature 
 just twenty years of age, on whom she counted to cure Calyste 
 of his passion for Madame de Rochefide. 
 
 During their journey Felicite told Madame du Gudnic of 
 all these plans. The house in the Rue de Bourbon was now 
 being furnished, and in it Calyste was to live if these schemes 
 should succeed. 
 
 They all three went straight to the Hotel Grandlieu, where 
 the Baroness was received with all the respect due to her 
 name as a girl and as a wife. Mademoiselle des Touches, of 
 course, advised Calyste to see all he could of Paris while she 
 made inquiries as to where Beatrix might be, and she left him 
 to the fascinations of every kind which awaited him there. 
 The Duchess, her daughters, and their friends did the honors 
 of the capital for Calyste just at the season when it was begin- 
 ning to be gayest. 
 
 The bustle of Paris entirely diverted the young Breton's 
 mind. He fancied there was some likeness in the minds of 
 Madame de Rochefide and Sabine de Grandlieu, who at that 
 time was certainly one of the loveliest and most charming 
 girls in Paris society, and he thenceforward paid an amount 
 of attention to her advances which no other woman would 
 have won from him. Sabine de Grandlieu played her part 
 all the more successfully because she liked Calyste. 
 
 Matters were so skillfully managed that, in the course of the 
 winter of 1837, the young Baron, who had recovered his color 
 and youthful beauty, could listen without disgust when his 
 mother reminded him of his promise to his dying father, and 
 spoke of his marrying Sabine de Grandlieu. Still, while 
 keeping his promise, he concealed an indifference which the
 
 238 BE A TRIX. 
 
 Baroness could discern, while she hoped it might be dispelled 
 by the satisfactions of a happy home. 
 
 On the day when the Grandlieu family and the Baroness, 
 supported on this occasion by her relations from England, 
 held a sitting in the large drawing-room of the Duke's house, 
 while Leopold Hannequin, the family notary, explained the 
 conditions of the marriage-contract before reading it through, 
 Calyste, whose brow was clouded, as all could see, refused point- 
 blank to accept the benefactions offered to him by Made- 
 moiselle des Touches. He still trusted to Felicite's devotion 
 and believed that she was seeking Beatrix. 
 
 At this moment, in the midst of the dismay of both 
 families, Sabine came in, dressed so as to remind Calyste of 
 the Marquise de Rochefide, though her complexion was dark, 
 and she placed in Calyste' s hand the following letter : 
 
 Camille to Calyste. 
 
 " Calyste, before retiring into my cell as a novice, I may 
 be allowed to glance back at the world I am quitting to enter 
 the world of prayer. This glance is solely for you, who in 
 these later days have been all the world to me. My voice will 
 reach you, if I have calculated exactly, in the middle of a 
 ceremony which I could not possibly witness. On the day 
 when you stand before the altar, to give your hand to a young 
 and lovely girl who is free to love before heaven and the 
 world, I shall be in a religious house at Nantes before the 
 altar too, but plighted for ever to Him who can never deceive 
 nor disappoint. 
 
 " I write, not to sadden you, but to beseech you not to 
 allow any false delicacy to hinder the good I have always 
 wished to do you since our first meeting. Do not deny the 
 right I have so hardly earned. If love is suffering, then I 
 have loved you well, Calyste; but you need feel no remorse. 
 The only pleasures I have known in my life I owe to you, and
 
 BEA TRIX. 
 
 239 
 
 the pain has come from myself. Compensate me for all this 
 past suffering by giving me one eternal joy. Let me, dear, 
 be in some sort a perfume in the flowers of your life, and 
 mingle with it always without being importunate. I shall 
 certainly owe to you my happiness in life eternal ; will you 
 not let me pay my debt by the offering of some transient and 
 perishable possessions? You will not fail in generosity? 
 You will not regard this as the last subterfuge of scorned 
 love? 
 
 "Calyste, the world was nothing to me without you; you 
 made it a fearful desert, and you have led the infidel Camille 
 Maupin, the writer of books and dramas, which I shall 
 solemnly disown you have led that audacious and perverted 
 woman, tied hand and foot, to the throne of God. I am 
 now, what I ought always to have been, an innocent child. 
 Yes, I have washed my robes in the tears of repentance, and 
 I may go to the altar presented by an angel by my dearly 
 loved Calyste ! How sweet it is to call you so now that my 
 resolution has sanctified the word. I love you without self- 
 interest, as a mother loves her son, as the church loves her 
 children. I can pray for you and yours without the infusion 
 of a single desire but that for your happiness. 
 
 "If you knew the supreme peace in which I live after 
 having lifted myself by thought above the petty interests of 
 the world, and how exquisite is the feeling of having done 
 one's duty, in accordance with your noble motto, you would 
 enter on your happy life with a firm step, nor glance behind 
 nor around you. So I am writing to beseech you to be true 
 to yourself and to your family. 
 
 " My dear, the society in which you must live cannot exist 
 without the religion of duty ; and you will misunderstand life, 
 as I have misunderstood it, if you give yourself up to passion 
 and to fancy as I have done. Woman can only be equal with 
 man by making her life a perpetual sacrifice, as man's must be 
 perpetual action. Now my life has been, as it were, one long
 
 240 SEA TRIX. 
 
 outbreak of egoism. God, perhaps, brought you in its evening 
 to my door, as a messenger charged with my punishment and 
 pardon. Remember this confession from a woman to whom 
 fame was a pharos whose light showed her the right way. Be 
 great ! sacrifice your fancy to your duties as the head of a 
 house, as husband and father. Raise the downtrodden banner 
 of the old du Guenics ; show the present age, when principles 
 and religion are denied, what a gentleman may be in all his 
 glory and distinction. 
 
 " Dear child of my soul, let me play the mother a little : 
 the angelic Fanny will not be jealous of a woman dead to the 
 world, of whom you will henceforth know nothing but that 
 her hands are always raised to heaven. In these days the no- 
 bility need fortune more than ever, so accept a part of mine, 
 dear Calyste, and make a good use of it. It is not a gift ; it 
 is trust-money. I am thinking more of your children and 
 your old Breton estate than of yourself when I offer you the 
 interest which time has accumulated for me on my Paris 
 property. ' ' 
 
 "I am ready to sign," said the young Baron, to the great 
 delight of the assembly.
 
 PART III. 
 
 RETROSPECTIVE ADULTERY. 
 
 The week after this, when the marriage service had been 
 celebrated at Saint-Thomas d'Aquin, at seven in the morning, 
 as was the custom in some families of the Faubourg Saint- 
 Germain Calyste and Sabine got into a neat traveling-car- 
 riage in the midst of the embracing, congratulations, and tears 
 of a score of persons gathered in groups under the awning of 
 the Hotel de Grandlieu. The congratulations were offered 
 by the witnesses and the men ; the tears were to be seen in 
 the eyes of the Duchesse de Grandlieu and her daughter Clo- 
 tilde both tremulous, and from the same reflection. 
 
 " Poor Sabine ! she is starting in life at the mercy of a man 
 who is married not altogether willingly." 
 
 Marriage does not consist solely of pleasures, which are as 
 fugitive under those conditions as under any others ; it in- 
 volves a consonance of tempers and physical sympathies, a 
 concord of character, which make this social necessity an ever- 
 new problem. Girls to be married know the conditions and 
 dangers of this lottery fully as well as their mothers do ; this 
 is why women shed tears as they look on at a marriage, while 
 men smile ; the men think they risk nothing ; the women 
 know pretty well how much they risk. 
 
 In another carriage, which had started first, was the Baronne 
 du Guenic, to whom the Duchess had said at parting 
 
 "You are a mother though you have only a son. Try to 
 fill my place to my darling Sabine." 
 
 On the box of that carriage sat a groom, serving as a courier, 
 
 and behind it two ladies'-maids. The four postillions, in 
 
 splendid liveries each carriage having four horses all had 
 
 nosegays in their button-holes and favors in their hats. The 
 
 . 16 (241)
 
 242 BE A TRIX. 
 
 Due de Grandlieu, even by paying them, had the greatest dif- 
 ficulty in persuading them to remove the ribbons. The 
 French postillion is eminently intelligent, but he loves his 
 joke ; and these took the money and replaced the favors out- 
 side the city walls. 
 
 " Well, well, good-by, Sabine ! " said the Duchess. " Re- 
 member your promise, and write often. Calyste, I say no 
 more, but you understand me." 
 
 Clotilde, leaning on the arm of her youngest sister Athenai's, 
 who was smiling at the Vicomte Juste de Grandlieu, gave the 
 bride a keen glance through her tears and watched the carriage 
 till it disappeared amid the repeated salvoes of four postillions' 
 whips, noisier than pistol-shots. In a very short time the gay 
 procession reached the Esplanade of the Invalides, followed 
 the quay to the Pont d'lena, the Passy Gate, the Versailles 
 avenue, and, finally, the high-road to Brittany. 
 
 Is it not strange, to say the least, that the artisan class of 
 Switzerland and Germany, and the greatest families of France 
 and England, obey the same custom, and start on a journey 
 after the nuptial ceremony ? The rich pack themselves into 
 a box on wheels. The poor walk gayly along the roads, resting 
 in the woods, feeding at every inn, so long as their glee, or 
 rather their money, holds out. A moralist would find it diffi- 
 cult to decide which is the finest flower of modesty that 
 which hides from the public eye, inaugurating the domestic 
 hearth and bed as the worthy citizen does, or that which flies 
 from the family and displays itself in the fierce light of the 
 high-road to the eyes of strangers? Refined natures must 
 crave for solitude, and avoid the world and the family alike. 
 The rush of love that begins a marriage is a diamond, a pearl, 
 a gem cut by the highest of all arts, a treasure to be buried 
 deep in the heart. 
 
 Who could tell the tale of a honeymoon except the bride ? 
 And how many women would here admit that this period of 
 uncertain duration sometimes of only a single night is the
 
 BEATRIX. 243 
 
 preface to married life? Sabine's first three letters to her 
 mother betrayed a state of things which, unfortunately, will 
 not seem new to some young wives, nor to many old women. 
 All who have become sick-nurses, so to speak, to a man's 
 heart have not found it out so quickly as Sabine did. But 
 the girls of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, when they are keen- 
 witted, are women already in mind. Before marriage they 
 have received the baptism of fine manners from the world and 
 from their mothers. Duchesses, anxious to perpetuate the 
 tradition, are often unaware of all the bearings of their les- 
 sons when they say to their daughters "No one ever does 
 that." "Do not laugh at such things." " You must never 
 fling yourself on a sofa, you must sit down quietly." " Never 
 do such a thing again." "It is most incorrect, my dear! " 
 and so forth. 
 
 And critical middle-class folk refuse to recognize any inno- 
 cence or virtue in young creatures who, like Sabine, are virgin 
 souls, but perfected by cleverness, by the habits of good style, 
 and good taste, knowing from the age of sixteen how to use 
 an opera-glass. Sabine, to lend herself to Mademoiselle des 
 Touches' schemes for her marriage, could not but be of the 
 school of Mademoiselle de Chaulieu. This innate mother-wit, 
 these gifts of birth, may perhaps make this young wife as in- 
 teresting as the heroine of the "Memoires de deux jeunes 
 Mariees " (Letters of Two Brides), in which we see the vanity 
 of such social advantages in the great crises of married life, 
 where they are often crushed under the double weight of un- 
 happiness and passion. 
 
 I. 
 
 To Madame la Duchesse de Grandlitu. 
 
 GufeRANDE, April, 1838. 
 
 "DEAR MOTHER : You can easily understand why I did 
 not write to you on the journey ; one's mind turns like the
 
 244 BEATRIX. 
 
 wheels. So here I have been these two days in the depths of 
 Brittany, at the Hotel du Guenic, a house carved all over like 
 a cocoanut-box. Notwithstanding the affectionate attentions 
 of Calyste's family, I feel an eager longing to fly away to 
 you and tell you a thousand things which I feel can only be 
 told to a mother. 
 
 " Dear mamma, Calyste married me cherishing a great sor- 
 sow in his soul ; we all of us knew it, and you did not disguise 
 the difficulties of my position ; but, alas ! they are greater 
 than you imagined. Oh, dear mamma, how much experience 
 we may acquire in a few days why should I not say to you in 
 a few hours ? All your counsels proved useless, and you will 
 understand why by this simple fact : I love Calyste as if he 
 were not my husband. That is to say, if I were married to 
 another man and were traveling with Calyste, I should love 
 him and hate my husband. Consider him, then, as a man 
 loved entirely, involuntarily, absolutely, and as many more 
 adverbs as you choose to supply. So, in spite of your warn- 
 ings, my slavery is an established fact. 
 
 " You advised me to keep myself lofty, haughty, dignified, 
 and proud, in order to bring Calyste to a state of feeling 
 which should never undergo any change throughout life ; in 
 the esteem and respect which -must sanctify the wife in the 
 home and family. You spoke warmly, and with reason, no 
 doubt, against the young women of the day who, under the 
 excuse of living on good terms with their husbands, begin by 
 being docile, obliging, submissive, with a familiarity, a free- 
 and-easiness which are, in your opinion, rather too cheap a 
 word I own to not understanding yet, but we shall see by- 
 and-by and which, if you are right, are only the early and 
 rapid stages toward indifference and, perhaps, contempt. 
 
 " ' Remember that you are a Grandlieu,' you said in my 
 ear. 
 
 " This advice, full of the maternal eloquence of Dedalus, 
 has shared the fate of mythological things. Dear, darling
 
 BEATRIX. 245 
 
 mother, could you believe that I should begin by the catas- 
 trophe which, according to you, closes the honeymoon of the 
 young wives of our day? 
 
 " When Calyste and I were alone in the carriage, each 
 thought the other as silly as himself, as we both perceived the 
 importance of the first word, the first look ; and each, bewil- 
 dered by the marriage sacrament, sat looking out of a window. 
 It was so preposterous that, as we got near the city gate, 
 monsieur made me a little speech in a rather broken voice a 
 speech prepared, no doubt, like all extempore efforts, to 
 which I listened with a beating heart, and which I take the 
 liberty of epitomizing for your benefit. 
 
 "'My dear Sabine,' said he, 'I wish you to be happy, 
 and, above all, to be happy in your own way,' he added. 'In 
 our position, instead of deceiving each other as to our charac- 
 ters and sentiments, by magnanimous concessions, let us both 
 be now what we should be a few years hence. Regard me as 
 being your brother, as I would wish to find a sister in you.' 
 
 " Though this was most delicately meant, I did not find in 
 this first speech of married love anything answering to the 
 eagerness of my soul, and, after replying that I felt quite as 
 he did, I remained pensive. After this declaration of rights 
 to be equally cold, we talked of the weather, the dust, the 
 houses, and the scenery with the most gracious politeness, I 
 laughing a rather forced laugh, he lost in dreams. 
 
 " Finally, as we left Versailles, I asked Calyste point-blank 
 calling him 'my dear Calyste,' as he called me 'my dear 
 Sabine ' if he could tell me the history of the events which 
 had brought him to death's door, and to which I owed the 
 honor of being his wife. He hesitated for a long time. In 
 fact, it was the subject of a little discussion lasting through 
 three stages ; I trying to play the part of a willful girl deter- 
 mined to sulk; he debating with himself on the ominous 
 question asked as a challenge to Charles X. by the public 
 press : ' Will the King give in ? ' At last, when we had left
 
 246 BEATRIX. 
 
 Verneuil, and after swearing often enough to satisfy three 
 dynasties that I would never remind him of his folly, never 
 treat him coldly, and so on, he painted his passion for 
 Madame de Rochefide : 'I do not wish,' he said, in conclu- 
 sion, ' that there should be any secrets between us.' 
 
 "Poor dear Calyste did not know, I suppose, that his friend 
 Mademoiselle des Touches and you had been obliged to tell 
 me all ; for a girl cannot be dressed as I was on the day of 
 the contract without being taught her part. 
 
 "I cannot but tell everything to so good a mother as you 
 are. Well, then, I was deeply hurt at seeing that he had 
 yielded far less to my request than to his own wish to talk 
 about the unknown object of his passion. Will you blame 
 me, dearest mother, for having wanted to know the extent of 
 this sorrow, of the aching wound in his heart of which you 
 had told me? 
 
 "Thus, within eight hours of having been blessed by the 
 cure of Saint-Thomas d'Aquin, your Sabine found herself in 
 the rather false position of a young wife hearing from her 
 husband's own lips his confidences as to a cheated passion 
 and the misdeeds of a rival. Yes, I was playing a part in the 
 drama of a young wife, officially informed that she owed her 
 marriage to the disdain of an old beauty ! 
 
 " By this narrative I gained what I sought. ' What ? ' you 
 will ask. Oh, my dear mother ! on clocks and chimney carv- 
 ings I have often enough seen Loves leading each other on, 
 hand in hand, to put the lesson into practice ! Calyste ended 
 the romance of his memories with the most vehement protes- 
 tations that he had entirely gotten over what he called his mad- 
 ness. Every protest needs a signature. The happy hapless 
 one took my hand, pressed it to his lips, and then held it for 
 a long time. A declaration followed. This one seemed to 
 me more suitable than the first to our position as man and 
 wife, though our lips did not utter a single word. This hap- 
 piness I owed to my spirited indignation against the bad taste
 
 BE A TRIX. 247 
 
 of a woman so stupid as not to love my handsome and delight- 
 ful Calyste. 
 
 " I am called away to play a game of cards, which I have 
 not yet mastered. I will continue my letter to-morrow. That 
 I should have to leave you just now to make the fifth at a 
 game of mouche ! Such a thing is impossible anywhere but in 
 the depths of Brittany. 
 
 "May. 
 
 " I resume the tale of my Odyssey. By the third day your 
 children had dropped the ceremonial vous (you) and adopted 
 the loverlike tu (thou). My mother-in-law, delighted to see 
 us happy, tried to fill your place, dearest mother ; and, as is 
 always the case with those who take a part with the idea of 
 effacing past impressions, she is so delightful that she has been 
 almost as much to me as you could be. She, no doubt, 
 guessed how heroic my conduct was ; at the beginning of our 
 journey she hid her anxiety too carefully not to betray it by 
 her excessive precautions. 
 
 " When I caught sight of the towers of Guerande I said in 
 your son-in-law's ear, ' Have you quite forgotten her?' 
 
 "And my husband, now my angel, had perhaps never 
 known the depth of an artless and genuine affection, for that 
 little speech made him almost crazy with joy. 
 
 "Unluckily my desire to make him forget Madame de 
 Rochefide led me too far. How could I help it ! I love him, 
 and I am almost Portuguese, for I am like you rather than my 
 father. Calyste accepted everything, as spoilt children do; 
 he is above everything an only son. Between you and me, I 
 will never let my daughter if I ever should have a daughter 
 marry an only son. It is quite enough to have to manage one 
 tyrant, and in an only son there are several. And so we 
 exchanged parts; I played the devoted wife. There are 
 dangers in self-devotion to gain an end ; it is loss of dignity. 
 So I have to announce the wreck in me of that serai-virtue ;
 
 248 BEATRIX. 
 
 dignity is really no more than a screen set up by pride, behind 
 which we may fume at our ease. How could I help myself, 
 mamma ; you were not here, and I looked into a gulf. If I 
 had maintained my dignity, I should have known the chill 
 pangs of a sort of brotherliness, which would certainly have 
 become simple indifference. And what future would have 
 lain before me ? 
 
 " As a result of my devotion, I am Calyste's slave. Shall 
 I get out of that position ? We shall see ; for the present I 
 like it. I love Calyste I love him entirely with the frenzy 
 of a mother who thinks everything right that her son can do, 
 even when he punishes her a little. 
 
 "May 15. 
 
 " So far, dear mother, marriage has come to me in a most 
 attractive form. I lavish all my tenderest affection on the 
 handsomest of men, who was thrown over by a fool for the 
 sake of a wretched singer for the woman is evidently a fool, 
 and a fool in cold blood, the worst sort of fool. I am chari- 
 table in my lawful passion, and heal his scars while inflicting 
 eternal wounds on myself. Yes, for the more I love Calyste, 
 the more I feel that I should die of grief if anything put an 
 end to our present happiness. And I am worshiped, too, by 
 all the family, and by the little company that meets at the 
 Hotel du Guenic, all of them born figures in some ancient 
 tapestry, and having stepped out of it to show that the im- 
 possible can exist. One day when I am alone I will describe 
 them to you Aunt Zephirine, Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel, 
 the Chevalier du Halga, the Demoiselles de Kergarouet, and 
 the rest, down to the two servants, whom I shall be allowed, 
 I hope, to take to Paris Mariotte and Gasselin, who regard 
 me as an angel alighted on earth from heaven, and who are 
 still startled when I speak to them they are all figures to put 
 under glass shades. 
 
 " My mother-in-law solemnly installed us in the rooms she
 
 BEATRIX. 249 
 
 and her deceased husband had formerly inhabited. The 
 scene was a touching one. ' I lived all my married life here,' 
 said she, ' quite happy. May that be a happy omen for you, 
 my dear children ! ' And she has taken Calyste's room. 
 The saintly woman seemed to wish to divest herself of her 
 memories and her admirable life as a wife to endow us with 
 them. 
 
 "The Province of Brittany, this town, this family with its 
 antique manners the whole thing, in spite of the absurdities, 
 which are invisible to any but a mocking Parisian woman, has 
 something indescribably grandiose, even in its details, to be 
 expressed only by the word sacred. The tenants of the vast 
 estates of the du Guenics, repurchased, as you know, by 
 Mademoiselle des Touches whom we are to visit in the con- 
 vent all came out to receive us. These good folk in their 
 holiday dresses, expressing the greatest joy at greeting Calyste 
 as really their master once more, made me understand what 
 Brittany is, and feudality, and old France. It was a festival 
 I will not write about ; I will tell you when we meet. The 
 terms of all the leases have been proposed by the tenants 
 themselves, and we are to sign after the tour of inspection we 
 are to make round our lands that have been pledged this 
 century and a half. Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel tells us that 
 these yeomen have assessed the returns with an accuracy that 
 Paris folk would not believe in. We are to start three days 
 hence and ride everywhere. 
 
 " On my return I will write again, dear mother ; but what 
 can I have to say to you, since my. happiness is already com- 
 plete ? So I must write what you know already, namely, how 
 much I love you."
 
 250 BEATRIX. 
 
 II. 
 
 From the same to the same. 
 
 " NANTES, June. 
 
 "After playing the part of the Lady of the Castle, wor- 
 shiped by her vassals as though the revolutions of 1830 and 
 1789 had never torn down our banners; after riding through 
 woods, halting at farms, dining at old tables spread with 
 cloths a century old, and groaning under Homeric dishes 
 served in antediluvian plate; after drinking delicious wine 
 out of goblets like those we see in the hands of conjurers ; 
 after salvoes fired at dessert, and deafening shouts of 'Vive 
 les du Guenics ! ' and balls, where the orchestra is a bagpipe, 
 which a man blows at for ten hours on end ! and such bou- 
 quets ! and brides who insist on having our blessing ! and 
 healthy fatigue, cured by such sleep as I had never known, 
 and a delicious waking to love as radiant as the sun that 
 shines above us, twinkling on a myriad insects that hum in 
 genuine Bretagne ! Finally, after a grotesque visit to the Cas- 
 tle of du Guenic, where the windows are open gates, and the 
 cows might pasture on the grass grown in the halls ; but we 
 have vowed to restore it, and furnish it, so as to come here 
 every year and be hailed by the vassals of the clan, one of 
 whom carried our banner. Ouf ! here I am at Nantes. 
 
 "What a day we had when we went to le Guenic! The 
 priest and all the clergy came out to meet us, all crowned 
 with flowers, mother, and blessed us with such joy ! The 
 tears come into my eyes as I write about it. And my lordly 
 Calyste played his part as a liege like a figure of Walter 
 Scott's. Monsieur received homage as if we had stepped 
 back into the thirteenth century. I heard girls and women 
 saying, ' What a handsome master we have ! ' just like the 
 chorus of a comic opera. 
 
 " The old folk discussed Calyste's likeness to the du
 
 BEATRIX. 251 
 
 Gu6nics whom they had known. Oh ! Brittany is a noble 
 and sublime country, a land of faith and religion. But prog- 
 ress has an eye on it ; bridges and roads are to be made, ideas 
 will invade it, and farewell to the sublime. The peasants 
 will certainly cease to be as free and proud as I saw them 
 when it has been proved to them that they are Calyste's 
 equals, if, indeed, they can be brought to believe it. 
 
 "So after the poetry of this pacific restoration, when we 
 had signed the leases we left that delightful country, flowery 
 and smiling, gloomy and barren by turns, and we came here 
 to kneel before her, to whom we owe our good fortune, and 
 give her thanks. Calyste and I both felt the need to thank 
 the novice of the visitation. In memory of her he will bear 
 on his shield quarterly the arms of des Touches : party per 
 pale engrailed or and vert. He will assume one of the silver 
 eagles as a supporter, and place in its beak the pretty womanly 
 motto, 'Seuv&gm-Vffus.' So we went yesterday to the Con- 
 vent of the Ladies of the Visitation, conducted by the Abb6 
 Grimont, a friend of the Gu6nic family ; he told us that your 
 beloved Felicit, dear mamma, is a saint; indeed, she can be 
 no less to him, since this illustrious conversion has led to his 
 being made vicar-general of the diocese. Mademoiselle des 
 Touches would not see Calyste ; she received me alone. I 
 found her a little altered, paler and thinner; she seemed ex- 
 tremely pleased by my visit. 
 
 "'Tell Calyste,' said she in a low voice, 'that my not 
 seeing him is a matter of conscience and self-discipline, for I 
 have permission ; but I would rather not purchase the happi- 
 ness of a few minutes with months of suffering ! Oh, if you 
 could only know how difficult I find it to answer when I am 
 asked, " What are you thinking about ? " The mistress of the 
 novices can never understand the vastness and multiplicity of 
 the ideas which rush through my brain like a whirlwind. 
 Sometimes I see Italy once more, or Paris, with all their dis- 
 play, always with Calyste, who,' she said with the poetic turn
 
 252 SEA TRIX. 
 
 you know so well, ' is the sun of my memory. I was too old 
 to be admitted to the Carmelites, so I chose the order of 
 Saint Francis de Sales, solely because he said, "I will have 
 you bareheaded instead of barefoot ! " disapproving of such 
 austerities as only mortify the body. In fact, the head is the 
 sinner. The holy bishop did well to make his rule stern to 
 the brain and merciless to the will ! This was what I needed, 
 for my mind is the real culprit ; it deceived me as to my heart 
 till the age of forty, when, though we are sometimes for a 
 moment forty times happier than younger women, we are some- 
 times fifty times more wretched. Well, my child, and are 
 you happy ? ' she ended by asking me, evidently glad to say 
 no more about herself. 
 
 " 'You see me in a rapture of love and happiness,' I told 
 her. 
 
 " ' Calyste is as kind and genuine as he is noble and hand- 
 some,' she said gravely. 'You are my heiress; you have, 
 beside my fortune, the twofold ideal of which I dreamed. I 
 am glad of what I have done,' she added after a pause. 
 ' Now, my child, do not be blinded. You have easily 
 grasped happiness, you had only to put out your hand ; now 
 try to keep it. If you had come here merely to carry away 
 the advice of my experience, your journey would be well 
 rewarded. Calyste at this moment is fired by an infection of 
 passion ; you did not inspire it. To make your happiness 
 durable, dear child, strive to add this element to the former 
 one. In your own interest and your husband's, try to be 
 capricious, coy, a little severe if necessary. I do not advise 
 a spirit of odious calculation, nor tyranny, but the science of 
 conduct. Between usury and extravagance there is economy. 
 Learn to acquire a certain decent control of your husband. 
 
 " ' These are the last worldly words I shall ever speak ; I 
 have been waiting to say them to you, for my conscience 
 quaked at the notion of having sacrificed you to save Calyste ; 
 attach him to you, give him children, let him respect you as
 
 BE A TRIX. 
 
 253 
 
 their mother. Finally,' she added in an agitated voice, 
 * manage that he shall never see Beatrix again ! ' 
 
 "This name was enough to produce a sort of torpor in us 
 both ; we remained looking into each other's eyes, exchanging 
 our vague sentiments of uneasiness. 
 
 " ' Are you going home to Guerande? ' she asked. 
 
 " ' Yes,' said I. 
 
 " 'Well, never go to les Touches. I was wrong to give 
 you the place.' 
 
 "'Why?' 
 
 " ' Child, les Touches is for you a Bluebeard's cupboard, 
 for there is nothing so dangerous as again rousing a sleeping 
 passion.' 
 
 "I have given you the substance of our conversation, my 
 dear mother. If Mademoiselle des Touches made me talk, 
 on the other hand she gave me much to think about all the 
 more because in the excitement of our travels, and my happi- 
 ness with my Calyste, I had forgotten the serious matter of 
 which I spoke in my first letter. 
 
 "After admiring Nantes, a delightful and splendid city; 
 after going to see, in the Place -de Bretagne, the spot where 
 Charette so nobly fell, we arranged to return to Saint-Nazaire 
 down the Loire, since we had already gone from Nantes to 
 Guerande by the road. Public traveling is an invention of 
 the modern monster the Monopole. Two rather pretty 
 women belonging to Nantes were behaving rather noisily on 
 deck, suffering evidently from Kergarouetism a jest you will 
 understand when I shall have told you what the Kergarouets 
 are. Calyste behaved very well. Like a true gentleman, he 
 did not parade me as his wife. Though pleased by his good 
 taste, like a child with his first drum, I thought this an admir- 
 able opportunity for practicing the system recommended by 
 Camille Maupin for it was certainly not the novice that had 
 spoken to me. I put on a little sulky face, and Calyste was 
 very flatteringly distressed. In reply to his question, whis-
 
 254 BE A TRIX. 
 
 pered in my ear, ' What is the matter ? ' I answered the 
 truth 
 
 " ' Nothing whatever.' 
 
 " And I could judge at once how little effect the truth has 
 in the first instance. Falsehood is a decisive weapon in cases 
 where rapidity is the only salvation for a woman or an empire. 
 Calyste became very urgent, very anxious. I led him to the 
 forepart of the boat, among a mass of ropes, and there, in a 
 voice full of alarms, if not of tears, I told him all the woes 
 and fears of a woman whose husband happens to be the hand- 
 somest of men. 
 
 " ' Oh, Calyste ! ' said I, ' there is one dreadful blot on our 
 marriage. You did not love me ; you did not choose me ! 
 You did not stand fixed like a statue when you saw me for the 
 first time. My heart, my attachment, my tenderness cry out 
 to you for affection, and some day you will punish me for 
 having been the first to offer the treasure of my pure and in- 
 voluntary girlish love ! I ought to be grudging and capri- 
 cious, but I have no strength for it against you. If that odious 
 woman who scorned you had been in my place now, you 
 would not even have seen those two hideous provincial crea- 
 tures who would be classed with cattle by the Paris octroi. '* 
 
 " Calyste, my dear mother, had tears in his eyes, and 
 turned away to hide them ; he saw la Basse Indre, and ran to 
 desire the captain to put us on shore. No one can hold out 
 against such a response, especially as it was followed by a stay 
 of three hours in a little country inn, where we breakfasted 
 off fresh fish, in a little room such as genre painters love, 
 while through the windows came the roar of the ironworks of 
 Indret across the broad waters of the Loire. Seeing the happy 
 result of the experiments of experience, I exclaimed, ' Oh, 
 sweet Felicite ! ' 
 
 " Calyste, who of course knew nothing of the advice I had 
 received, or of the artfulness of my behavior, fell into a de- 
 * Tax-collectors at the city gates.
 
 BEATRIX. 255 
 
 lightful punning blunder by replying, ' Never let us forget it ! 
 We will send an artist here to sketch the scene.' 
 
 "I laughed, dear mamma! well, I laughed until Calyste 
 was quite disconcerted and on the point of being angry. 
 
 " ' Yes,' said I, ' but there is in my heart a picture of this 
 landscape, of this scene, which nothing can ever efface, and 
 inimitable in its color.' 
 
 "Indeed, mother, I find it impossible to give my love the 
 appearance of a warfare or hostility. Calyste can do what he 
 likes with me. That tear is, I believe, the first he ever be- 
 stowed on me ; is it not worth more than a second declaration 
 of a wife's rights? A heartless woman, after the scene on the 
 boat, would have been mistress of the situation ; I lost all I 
 had gained. By your system, the more I am a wife, the more 
 I become a sort of harlot, for I am a coward in happiness; I 
 cannot hold out against a glance from my lord. I do not 
 abandon myself to love ; I hug it as a mother clasps her child 
 to her breast for fear of some harm." 
 
 III. 
 
 From the same to the same. 
 
 "July, GufeRANDE. 
 
 " Oh ! my dear mother, to be jealous after three months 
 of married life ! My heart is indeed full. I feel the deepest 
 hatred and the deepest love. I am worse than deserted, I 
 am not loved ! Happy am I to have a mother, another heart 
 to which I may cry at my ease. 
 
 " To us wives who are still to some extent girls, it is quite 
 enough to be told ' Here, among the keys of your palace, is 
 one all rusty with remembrance ; go where you will, enjoy 
 everything, but beware of visiting les Touches ' to make us 
 rush in hot-foot, our eyes full of Eve's curiosity. What a 
 provoking element Mademoiselle des Touches had infused
 
 256 BEATRIX. 
 
 into my love ! And why was I forbidden les Touches? What ! 
 does such happiness as mine hang on an excursion, on a visit 
 to an old house in Brittany? What have I to fear? In short, 
 add to Mrs. Bluebeard's reasons the craving that gnaws at 
 every woman's heart to know whether her power is precarious 
 or durable, and you will understand why one day I asked, 
 With an air of indifference 
 
 " ' What sort of place is les Touches ? ' 
 
 " ' Les Touches is your own,' said my adorable mother-in- 
 law. 
 
 " ' Ah ! If only Calyste had never set his foot there ! ' 
 
 said Aunt Zephirine, shaking her head. 
 
 " ' He would not now be my husband,' said I. 
 
 " ' Then you know what happened there ? ' thus my mother- 
 in-law, sharply. 
 
 " ' It is a place of perdition,' said Mademoiselle de Pen- 
 Hoel. ' Mademoiselle des Touches committed many sins 
 there, for which she now begs forgiveness of God.' 
 
 "'And has it not saved that noble creature's soul, beside 
 making the fortune of the convent ? ' cried the Chevalier du 
 Halga. ' The Abbe Grimont tells me that she has given a 
 hundred thousand francs to the Ladies of the Visitation.' 
 
 " ' Would you like to go to les Touches? ' said the Baroness. 
 ' It is worth seeing.' 
 
 " * No, no ! ' cried I, eagerly. 
 
 " Now, does not this little scene strike you as taken from 
 some diabolical drama? And it was repeated under a hun- 
 dred pretenses. At last my mother-in-law said 
 
 " ' I understand why you should not wish to go to les 
 Touches. You are quite right.' 
 
 " Confess, dear mamma, that such a stab, so unintentionally 
 given, would have made you determine that you must know 
 whether your happiness really rested on so frail a basis that it 
 must perish under one particular roof? I must do this justice 
 to Calyste, he had never proposed to visit this retreat which
 
 BEA TRIX. 257 
 
 is now his property. Certainly when we love, we become 
 bereft of our senses, for his silence and reserve nettled me, 
 till I said one day, ' What are you afraid of seeing at les 
 Touches that you never mention it even ? ' 
 " ' Let us go there,' said he. 
 
 " I was caught, as every woman is who wishes to be caught, 
 and who trusts to chance to cut the Gordian knot of her 
 hesitancy. So we went to les Touches. 
 
 "It is a delightful spot, most artistically tasteful, and I 
 revel in the abyss whither Mademoiselle des Touches had 
 warned me never to go. All poison-flowers are beautiful. 
 The devil sows them for there are flowers of Satan's and 
 flowers from God ! We have only to look into our own 
 hearts to see that they went halves in the work of creation. 
 What bitter-sweet joys I found in this place where I played, 
 not with fire, but with ashes. I watched Calyste ; I wanted 
 to know if every spark was dead, and looked out for every 
 chance draught of air, believe me ! I noted his face as we 
 went from room to room, from one piece of furniture to an- 
 other, exactly like children seeking some hidden object. He 
 seemed thoughtful ; still, at first, I fancied I had conquered. 
 I felt brave enough to speak of Madame de Rochefide, who, 
 since the adventure of her fall at le Croisic, is called Roche- 
 perfide. Finally, we went to look at the famous box-shrub on 
 which Beatrix was caught when Calyste pushed her into the 
 sea that she might never belong to any man. 
 
 " ' She must be very light to have rested there ! ' said I, 
 laughing. 
 
 " Calyste said nothing. ' Peace to the dead,' I added. 
 
 " Still he was silent. ' Have I vexed you? ' I asked. 
 
 " ' No. But do not galvanize that passion,' he replied. 
 
 " What a speech ! Calyste, seeing it had saddened me, 
 was doubly kind and tender to me. 
 
 17
 
 268 BE A TRIX. 
 
 "August. 
 
 " Alas ! I was at the bottom of the pit and amusing myself, 
 like the innocents in a melodrama, with plucking the flowers. 
 Suddenly a horrible idea came galloping across my happiness 
 like the horse in the German ballad. I fancied I could dis- 
 cern that Calyste's love was fed by his reminiscences, that he 
 was wreaking on me the storms I could revive in him, by re- 
 minding him of that horrible coquette Beatrix. That unwhole- 
 some, cold, limp, tenacious nature akin to the mollusc and 
 the coral insect dares to be called Beatrix ! 
 
 " So already, dear mother, I am forced to have an eye on a 
 suspicion when my heart is wholly Calyste's, and is it not a 
 terrible misfortune that the eye should get the better of the 
 heart ; that the suspicion, in short, has been justified ? And 
 in this way 
 
 " 'I love this place,' I said to Calyste one morning, ' for I 
 owe my happiness to it so I forgive you for sometimes mis- 
 taking me for another woman ' 
 
 " My loyal Breton colored, and I threw my arms round his 
 neck ; but I came away from les Touches, and shall never go 
 back there. 
 
 " The depth of my hatred, which makes me long for the 
 death of Madame de Rochefide oh dear, a natural death, of 
 course, from a cold, or some accident revealed to me the 
 extent and vehemence of my love for Calyste. This woman 
 has haunted my slumbers; I have seen her in my dreams. 
 Am I fated to meet her? Yes, the novice in the convent was 
 right ; les Touches is a fatal spot. Calyste renewed his im- 
 pressions there, and they are stronger than the pleasures of 
 our love. 
 
 " Find out, my dear mother, whether Madame de Rochefide 
 is in Paris ; for, if so, I shall remain on our estates in Brittany. 
 Poor Mademoiselle des Touches, who is now sorry that she 
 dressed me like Beatrix on the day when our marriage-contract 
 was signed, to carry out her scheme if she could now know
 
 BEATRIX. 269 
 
 how completely I am a substitute for our odious rival ! What 
 would she say? Why, it is prostitution! I am no longer 
 myself ! I am put to shame. I am suffering from a mad 
 desire to flee from Guerande and the sands of le Croisic. 
 
 "August 2$. 
 
 "I am quite resolved to return to the ruins of le Gue*nic. 
 Calyste, troubled at seeing me so uneasy, is taking me thither. 
 Either he does not know much of the world or he guesses 
 nothing ; or, if he knows the reason of my flight, he does not 
 love me. I am so afraid of discovering the hideous certainty 
 if I seek it, that, like the children, I cover my eyes with my 
 hands not to hear the explosion. Oh, mother ! I am not 
 loved with such love as I feel in my own heart. Calyste, to 
 be sure, is charming ; but what man short of a monster would 
 not be, like Calyste, amiable and gracious, when he is given 
 all the opening blossoms of the soul of a girl of twenty, 
 brought up by you, pure as I am, and loving, and as many 
 women have told you very pretty 
 
 " LE GulNlC, September iStfi. 
 
 "Has he forgotten her? This is the one thought which 
 echoes like remorse in my soul. Dear mother, has every wife, 
 like me, some such memory to contend with ? Pure girls ought to 
 marry none but innocent youths ! And yet that is an illusory 
 Utopia j and it is better to have a rival in the past than in 
 the future. Pity me, mamma, though at this moment I am 
 happy ; happy as a woman is who fears to lose her happiness 
 and clings to it ! a way of killing it sometimes, says wise 
 Clotilde. 
 
 " I perceive that for the last five months I have thought 
 only of myself; that is, of Calyste. Tell my sister Clotilde 
 that the dicta of her melancholy wisdom recur to me some- 
 times. She is happy in being faithful to the dead ; she need 
 fear no rival.
 
 280 BE A TRJX. 
 
 " A kiss to my dear Athena'is ; I see that Juste is madly in 
 love with her. From what you say in your last letter, all he 
 fears is that he may not win her. Cultivate that fear as a 
 precious flower. Athena'is will be mistress ; I, who dreaded 
 lest I should not win Calyste from himself, shall be the hand- 
 maid. A thousand loves, dearest mother. Indeed, if my 
 fears should not prove vain, I shall have paid very dear for 
 Camille Maupin's fortune. Affectionate respects to my 
 father." 
 
 These letters fully explain the secret attitude of this hus- 
 band and wife. Where Sabine saw a love-match, Calyste saw 
 a manage de convenance. And the joys of the honeymoon 
 had not altogether fulfilled the requirements of the law as to 
 community of goods. 
 
 During their stay in Brittany the work of restoring, ar- 
 ranging, and decorating the Hotel du Guenic in Paris had 
 been carried on by the famous architect Grindot, under the 
 eye of Clotilde and the Duchesse and Due de Grandlieu. 
 Every step was taken to enable the young couple to return to 
 Paris in December, 1838; and Sabine was glad to settle in the 
 Rue de Bourbon, less for the pleasure of being mistress of 
 the house than to discover what her family thought of her 
 married life. Calyste, handsome and indifferent, readily al- 
 lowed himself to be guided in matters of fashion by Clotilde 
 and his mother-in-law, who were gratified by his docility. 
 He filled the place in the world to which his name, his for- 
 tune, and his connection entitled him. His wife's success, 
 regarded as she was as one of the most charming women of 
 the year, the amusements of the best society, duties to be 
 done, and the dissipations of a Paris season, somewhat re- 
 cruited the happiness of the young couple by supplying 
 excitement and interludes. The Duchesse and Clotilde be- 
 lieved in Sabine's happiness, ascribing Calyste's cold manners 
 to his English blood, and the young wife got over her gloomy
 
 BEATRIX. 261 
 
 notions ; she heard herself envied by so many less happy 
 wives, that she banished her terrors to the limbo of bad 
 dreams. Finally, Sabine's prospect of motherhood was the 
 crowning guarantee for the future of this neutral-tinted union, 
 a good augury on which women of experience rely. 
 
 In October, 1839, the young Baronne du Guenic had a son, 
 and was so foolish as to nurse him herself, like almost every 
 woman under similar circumstances. How can she help being 
 wholly a mother when her child is the child of a husband so 
 truly idolized ? Thus by the end of the following summer 
 Sabine was preparing to wean her first child. 
 
 In the course of a two years' residence in Paris, Calyste 
 had entirely shed the innocence which had cast the light of 
 its prestige on his first experience in the world of passion. 
 Calyste, as the comrade of the young Due de Maufrigneuse 
 like himself, lately married to an heiress, Berthe de Cinq-Cygne 
 of the Vicomte Savinien de Portenduere, of the Due and 
 Duchesse de Rhetore, the Due and Duchesse de Lenoncourt- 
 Chaulieu, and all the company that met in his mother-in-law's 
 drawing-room, learned to see the differences that divide pro- 
 vincial from Paris life. Wealth has its dark hours, its tracts 
 of idleness, for which Paris, better than any other capital, can 
 provide amusement, diversion, and interest. Hence, under 
 the influence of these young husbands, who would leave the 
 noblest and most beautiful creatures for the delights of the 
 cigar or of whist, for the sublime conversation at a club or 
 the absorbing interests of the turf, many of the domestic 
 virtues were undermined in the young Breton husband. The 
 maternal instinct in a woman who cannot endure to bore her 
 husband is always ready to support young married men in 
 their dissipations. A woman is so proud of seeing the man 
 she leaves perfectly free come back to her side. 
 
 One evening, in October this year, to escape the cries of a 
 weaned child, Calyste on whose brow Sabine could not bear 
 to see a cloud was advised by her to go to the Theatre des
 
 262 BE A TRIX. 
 
 Vari&e's, where a new piece was being acted. The servant 
 sent to secure a stall had taken one quite near to the stage- 
 boxes. Between the first and second acts, Calyste, looking 
 about him, saw in one of these boxes on the ground tier, not 
 four yards away, Madame de Rochefide. 
 
 Beatrix in Paris ! Beatrix in public ! The two ideas 
 pierced Calyste's brain like two arrows. He could see her 
 again after nearly three years ! Who can describe the com- 
 motion in the soul of this lover who, far from forgetting, had 
 sometimes so completely identified Beatrix with his wife that 
 Sabine had been conscious of it ? Who can understand how 
 this poem of a lost and misprized love, ever living in the 
 heart of Sabine's husband, overshadowed the young wife's 
 dutiful charms and ineffable tenderness? Beatrix became 
 light, the day-star, excitement, life, the unknown; while 
 Sabine was duty, darkness, the familiar ! In that instant one 
 was pleasure, the other satiety. It was a thunderbolt. 
 
 Sabine's husband in a loyal impulse felt a noble prompting 
 to leave the house. As he went out from the stalls, the door 
 of the box was open, and in spite of himself his feet carried 
 him in. He found Beatrix between two very distinguished 
 men, Canalis and Nathan a politician and a literary celeb- 
 rity. During nearly three years, since Calyste had last seen 
 Madame de Rochefide, she had altered very much; but 
 though the metamorphosis had changed the woman's nature, 
 she seemed all the more poetical and attractive in Calyste's 
 eyes. Up to the age of thirty, clothing is all a pretty Paris- 
 ian demands of dress ; but when she has crossed the threshold 
 of the thirties, she looks to finery for armor, fascinations, and 
 embellishment ; she composes it to lend her graces ; she finds 
 a purpose in it, assumes a character, makes herself young 
 again, studies the smallest accessories in short, abandons 
 nature for art. 
 
 Madame de Rochefide had just gone through the changing 
 scenes of the drama which, in this history of the manners of
 
 BEATRIX. 263 
 
 the French in the nineteenth century, is called " The De- 
 serted Woman." Conti having thrown her over, she had 
 naturally become a great artist in dress, in flirtation, and in 
 artificial bloom of every description. 
 
 "How is it that Conti is not here?" asked Calyste of 
 Canalis in a whisper, after the commonplace greetings which 
 begin the most momentous meeting when it takes place in 
 public. 
 
 The erewhile poet of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, twice 
 minister, and now for the fourth time a speaker hoping for 
 fresh promotion, laid his finger with meaning on his lips. 
 This explained all. 
 
 "I am so glad to see you," said Beatrix, in a kittenish 
 way. " I said to myself as soon as I saw you, before you saw 
 me, that you, at any rate, would not disown me ! Oh, my 
 Calyste ! " she murmured in his ear, " why are you married ? 
 and to such a little fool, too ! " 
 
 As soon as a woman whispers to a new-comer in her box, 
 and makes him sit down by her, men of breeding always find 
 some excuse for leaving them together. 
 
 "Are you coming, Nathan?" said Canalis; "Madame la 
 Marquise will excuse me if I go to speak a word to d'Arthez, 
 whom I see with the Princesse de Cadignan. I must talk 
 about a combination of speakers for to-morrow's sitting." 
 
 This retreat, effected with good taste, gave Calyste a chance 
 of recovering from the shock he had sustained ; but he lost 
 all his remaining strength and presence of mind as he inhaled 
 the, to him, intoxicating and poisonous fragrance of the poem 
 called Beatrix. 
 
 Madame de Rochefide, who had grown bony and stringy, 
 whose complexion was almost ruined, thin, faded, with dark 
 circles around her eyes, had that evening wreathed the un- 
 timely ruin with the most ingenious devices of Parisian frip- 
 pery. Like all deserted women, she had tried to give herself 
 a virgin grace, and by the effect of various white draperies to
 
 264 BEATRIX. 
 
 recall the maidens of Ossian, with names ending in a, so poet- 
 ically represented by Girodet. Her fair hair fell about her 
 long face in bunches of curls, reflecting the flare of the foot- 
 lights in the sheen of scented oil. Her pale forehead shone ; 
 she had applied an imperceptible touch of rouge over the dull 
 whiteness of her skin, bathed in bran-water, and its brilliancy 
 cheated the eye. A scarf, so fine that it was hard to believe 
 that man could have woven it of silk, was wound about her 
 neck so as to diminish its length by hiding it, and barely 
 revealing the treasures enticingly displayed by her stays. The 
 bodice was a masterpiece of art. As to her attitude, it is 
 enough to say that it was well worth the pains she had taken 
 to elaborate it. Her arms, lean and hard, were scarcely 
 visible through the carefully arranged puffs of her wide sleeves. 
 She presented that mixture of false glitter and sheeny silk, of 
 flowing gauze and frizzled hair, of liveliness, coolness, and 
 movement which has been called je ne sais quoi.* Every one 
 knows what is meant by this/*? ne sais quoi. It is a compound 
 of cleverness, taste, and temperament. Beatrix was, in fact, a 
 drama, a spectacle, all scenery, and transformations, and mar- 
 velous machinery. 
 
 The performance of these fairy pieces, which are no less 
 brilliant in dialogue, turns the head of a man blessed with 
 honesty ; for, by the law of contrast, he feels a frenzied desire 
 to play with the artificial thing. It is false and seductive, 
 elaborate, but pleasing, and there are men who adore these 
 women who play at being charming as one plays a game of 
 cards. This is the reason man's desire is a syllogism, and 
 argues from this external skill to the secret theorems of volup- 
 tuous enjoyment. The mind concludes, though not in words, 
 " A woman who can make herself so attractive must have 
 other resources of passion." And it is true. The women 
 who are deserted are the women who love ; the women who 
 keep their lovers are those know how to love. Now, though 
 
 * I know not what.
 
 BEATRIX. 265 
 
 this lesson in Italian had been a hard one for Beatrix's vanity, 
 her nature was too thoroughly artificial not to profit by it. 
 
 " It is not a matter of loving you men," she had been say- 
 ing some minutes before Calyste went in ; "we have to worry 
 you when we have got you ; that is the secret of keeping you. 
 Dragons who guard treasures are armed with talons and 
 wings ! " 
 
 " Your idea might be put into a sonnet," Canalis was saying 
 just as Calyste entered the box. 
 
 At one glance Beatrix read Calyste's condition ; she saw, 
 still fresh and raw, the marks of the collar she had put on him 
 at les Touches. Calyste, offended by her phrase about his 
 wife, hesitated between his dignity as a husband, defending 
 Sabine, and finding a sharp word to cast on the heart whence, 
 for him, arose such fragrant reminiscences a heart he believed 
 to be yet bleeding. The Marquise discerned this hesitancy ; 
 she had spoken thus solely to gauge the extent of her power 
 over Calyste, and, seeing him so weak, she came to his assist- 
 ance to get him out of his difficulty. 
 
 "Well, my friend," said she, when the two courtiers had 
 left, " you see me alone yes, alone in the world ! " 
 
 "And you never thought of me?" said Calyste. 
 
 " You? " she replied ; " are you not married ? It has been 
 one of my great griefs among the many I have endured since 
 we last met. ' Not merely have I lost love,' I said to myself, 
 'but friendship, too, a friendship I believed to be wholly 
 Breton.' We get used to anything. I now suffer less, but I 
 am broken. This is the first time for a long while that I have 
 unburdened my heart. Compelled to be reserved in the 
 presence of indifferent persons, and as arrogant to those who 
 court me as though I had never fallen, and having lost my 
 dear Felicite", I have no ear into which to breathe the words, 
 I am wretched ! ' And even now, can I tell you what my 
 anguish was when I saw you a few yards away from me, not 
 recognizing me ; or what my joy is at seeing you close to me?
 
 266 BEATRIX. 
 
 Yes," said she, at a movement on Calyste's part, "it is almost 
 fidelity ! In this you see what misfortune means ! A nothing, 
 a visit, is everything. 
 
 "Yes, you really loved me, as I deserved to be loved by 
 the man who has chosen to trample on all the treasures I cast 
 at his feet. And, alas ! to my woe, I cannot forget ; I love, 
 and I mean to be true to the past, which can never return." 
 
 As she poured out this speech, a hundred times rehearsed, 
 she used her eyes in such a way as to double the effect of 
 words which seemed to surge up from her soul with the vio- 
 lence of a long-restrained torrent. Calyste, instead of speak- 
 ing, let fall the tears that had been gathering in his eyes. 
 Beatrix took his hand and pressed it, making him turn pale. 
 
 " Thank you, Calyste ; thank you, my poor boy ; that is 
 the way a true friend should respond to a friend's sorrow. 
 We understand each other. There, do not add another word ! 
 Go now; if we were seen, you might cause your wife grief if 
 by chance any one told her that we had met though inno- 
 cently enough, in the face of a thousand people. Good-by, I 
 
 am brave, you see " And she wiped her eyes by what 
 
 should be called in feminine rhetoric the antithesis of action. 
 
 "Leave me to laugh the laugh of the damned with the 
 people I do not care for, but who amuse me," she went on. 
 " I see artists and writers, the circle that I knew at our poor 
 Camille's she was right, no doubt ! Enrich the man you 
 love, and then disappear, saying, ' I am too old for him ! ' It 
 is to die a martyr. And that is best when one cannot die a 
 virgin." 
 
 She laughed, as if to efface the melancholy impression she 
 might have made on her adorer. 
 
 " But where can I call on you ? " asked Calyste. 
 
 "I have hidden myself in the Rue de Courcelles, close to 
 the Pare Monceaux, in a tiny house suited to my fortune, and 
 I cram my brain with literature but for my own satisfaction 
 only, to amuse myself. Heaven preserve me from the mania
 
 BE A TRIX. 267 
 
 of writing ! Go, leave me ; I do not want to be talked about, 
 and what will not people say if they see us together ? And, 
 beside, Calyste, I tell you, if you stay a minute longer I shall 
 cry, for I can't help it." 
 
 Calyste withdrew, after giving his hand to Beatrix, and 
 feeling a second time the deep strange sensation of a pressure 
 on both sides full of suggestive incitement. 
 
 "My God ! Sabine never stirred my heart like this," was 
 the thought that assailed him in the corridor. 
 
 Throughout the rest of the evening the Marquise de Roche- 
 fide did not look three times straight at Calyste ; but she sent 
 him side-glances which rent the soul of the man who had given 
 himself up wholly to his first and rejected love. 
 
 When the Baron du Guenic was at home again, the magnifi- 
 cence of his rooms reminded him of the sort of mediocrity 
 to which Beatrix had alluded, and he felt a hatred for the 
 fortune that did not belong to that fallen angel. On hearing 
 that Sabine had been in bed some time, he was happy in 
 having a night to himself to live in his emotions. 
 
 He now cursed the perspicacity given to Sabine by her 
 affection. When it happens that a man is adored by his wife, 
 she can read his face like a book, she knows the slightest quiver 
 of his muscles, she divines the reason when he is calm, she 
 questions herself when he is in the least sad, wondering if she 
 is in fault, she watches his eyes ; to her those eyes are colored 
 by his ruling thought they love or they love not. Calyste 
 knew himself to be the object of a worship so complete, so 
 artless, so jealous, that he doubted whether he could assume 
 a countenance that would preserve the secret of the change 
 that had come over him. 
 
 "What shall I do to-morrow morning?" said he to him- 
 self as he fell asleep, fearing Sabine's scrutiny. 
 
 For when they first met, or even in the course of the day, 
 Sabine would ask him, " Do you love me as much as ever? " 
 or, "I don't bore you?" Gracious questionings, varying
 
 268 BEATRIX. 
 
 according to the wife's wit or mood, and covering real or 
 imaginary terrors. 
 
 A storm will stir up mud and bring it to the top of the noblest 
 and purest hearts. And so, next morning, Calyste, who was 
 genuinely fond of his child, felt a thrill of joy at hearing that 
 Sabine was anxious as to the cause of some symptoms, and, 
 fearing croup, could not leave the infant Calyste. The Baron 
 excused himself on the score of business from breakfasting at 
 home, and went out. He fled as a prisoner escapes, happy 
 in the mere act of walking, in going across the Pont Louis 
 XVI. and the Champs-Elysees to a cafe on the boulevard, 
 where he breakfasted alone. 
 
 What is there in love ? Does nature turn restive under the 
 social yoke ? Does nature insist that the spring of a devoted 
 life shall be spontaneous and free, its flow that of a wild 
 torrent tossed by the rocks of contradiction and caprice, in- 
 stead of a tranquil stream trickling between two banks the 
 mairie on one side and the church on the other? Has she 
 schemes of her own when she is hatching those volcanic erup- 
 tions to which perhaps we owe our great men ? 
 
 It would have been difficult to find a young man more 
 piously brought up than Calyste, of purer life, or less tainted 
 by infidelity; and he was rushing toward a woman quite 
 unworthy of him, when a merciful and glorious chance 
 brought to him, in Sabine, a girl of really aristocratic beauty, 
 with a refined and delicate mind, pious, loving, and wholly 
 attached to him ; her angelic sweetness still touched with the 
 pathos of love, passionate love in spite of marriage such 
 love as his for Beatrix. 
 
 The greatest men, perhaps, have still some clay in their com- 
 position ; the mire still has charms. So, in spite of folly and 
 frailty, the woman would then be the less imperfect creature. 
 Madame de Rochefide in the midst of the crowd of artistic 
 pretenders who surrounded her, and in spite of her fall,
 
 BE A TRIX. 269 
 
 belonged to the highest nobility all the same ; her nature was 
 ethereal rather than earth-born, and she hid the courtesan 
 she meant to be under the most aristocratic exterior. So this 
 explanation cannot account for Calyste's strange passion. 
 
 The reason may perhaps be found in a vanity so deeply 
 buried that moralists have not yet discerned that side of vice. 
 There are men, truly noble as Calyste was, and as handsome, 
 rich, elegant, and well bred, who weary unconsciously per- 
 haps of wedded life with a nature like their own ; beings 
 whose loftiness is not amazed by loftiness, who are left cold 
 by a dignity and refinement on a constant level with their own, 
 but who crave to find in inferior or fallen natures a corrobora- 
 tion of their own superiority though they would not ask their 
 praises. The contrast of moral degradation and magnanimity 
 fascinates their sight. What is pure shines so vividly by the 
 side of what is impure ? This comparison is pleasing. Calyste 
 found nothing in Sabine to protect ; she was irreproachable ; 
 all the wasted energies of his heart went forth to Beatrix. 
 And if we have seen great men playing the part of Jesus, 
 raising up the woman taken in adultery, how should common- 
 place folk be any wiser ? 
 
 Calyste lived till two o'clock on the thought, " I shall see 
 her again ! " a poem which ere now has proved sustaining 
 during a journey of seven hundred leagues. Then he went 
 with a light step to the Rue de Courcelles; he recognized the 
 house though he had never seen it ; and he, the Due de 
 Grandlieu's son-in-law, he, as rich, as noble as the Bourbons, 
 stood at the foot of the stairs, stopped by the question from 
 an old butler, "Your name, if you please, sir?" 
 
 Calyste understood that he must leave Madame de Roche- 
 fide free to act, and he looked out on the garden and the 
 walls streaked with black and yellow lines left by the rain on 
 the stucco of Paris. 
 
 Madame de Rochefide, like most fine ladies when they 
 break their chain, had fled, leaving her fortune in her hus-
 
 270 BEA TRIX. 
 
 band's hands, and she would not appeal for help to her tyrant. 
 Conti and Mademoiselle des Touches had spared Beatrix all 
 the cares of material life, and her mother from time to time 
 sent her a sum of money. Now that she was alone, she was 
 reduced to economy of a rather severe kind to a woman used 
 to luxury. So she had taken herself to the top of the hill on 
 which lies the Pare Monceaux, sheltering herself in a little 
 old house of some departed magnate, facing the street, but 
 with a charming little garden behind it, at a rent of not more 
 than eighteen hundred francs. And still, with an old man- 
 servant, a maid and a cook from Alencon, who had clung to 
 her in her reverses, her poverty would have seemed opulence 
 to many an ambitious middle-class housewife. 
 
 Calyste went up a flight of well-whitened stone stairs, the 
 landings gay with flowers. On the second floor the old butler 
 showed Calyste into the rooms through a double door of red 
 velvet paneled with red silk and gilt nails. The rooms he 
 went through were also hung with red silk and velvet. Dark- 
 toned carpets, hangings across the windows and doors, the 
 whole interior was in contrast with the outside, which the 
 owner was at no pains to keep up. 
 
 Calyste stood waiting for Beatrix in a drawing-room, quite 
 in style, where luxury affected simplicity. It was hung with 
 bright crimson velvet set off by cording of dull yellow silk ; 
 the carpet was a darker red, the windows looked like conserva- 
 tories, they were so crowded with flowers, and there was so little 
 daylight that he could scarcely see two vases of fine, old red 
 porcelain, and between them a silver cup attributed to Ben- 
 venuto Cellini, and brought from Italy by Beatrix. The 
 furniture of gilt wood upholstered with velvet, the handsome 
 consoles, on one of which stood a curious clock, the table 
 covered with a Persian cloth, all bore witness to past wealth, 
 of which the remains were carefully arranged. On a small 
 table Calyste saw some trinkets, and a book half-read, in 
 which the place was marked by a dagger symbolical of criti-
 
 BEATRIX. 271 
 
 cism its handle sparkling with jewels. On the walls ten 
 water-color drawings, handsomely framed, all representing 
 bedrooms in the various houses where Beatrix had lived in 
 the course of her wandering life, gave an idea of her supreme 
 impertinence. 
 
 The rustle of a silk dress announced the unfortunate lady, 
 who appeared in a studied toilet, which, if Calyste had been 
 an older hand, would certainly have shown him that he was 
 expected. The dress, made like a dressing-gown to show a 
 triangle of the white throat, was of pearl-gray watered silk 
 with open hanging sleeves, showing the arms covered with an 
 undersleeve made with puffs divided by straps, and with lace 
 ruffles. Her fine hair, loosely fastened with a comb, escaped 
 from under a cap of lace and flowers. 
 
 "So soon," said she with a smile. "A lover would not 
 have been so eager. So you have some secrets to tell me, I 
 suppose?" And she seated herself on a sofa, signing to 
 Calyste to take a place by her. 
 
 By some chance not perhaps unintentional, for women 
 have two kinds of memory, that of the angels and that of the 
 devils Beatrix carried about her the same perfume that she 
 had used at les Touches when she had first met Calyste. The 
 breath of this scent, the touch of that dress, the look of those 
 eyes, which in the twilight seemed to focus and reflect light, 
 all went to Calyste's brain. The unhappy fellow felt the 
 same surge of violence as had already so nearly killed Beatrix ; 
 but now the Marquise was on the edge of a divan, not of the 
 ocean ; she rose to ring the bell, putting her finger to her 
 lips. At this Calyste, called to order, controlled himself; he 
 understood that Beatrix had no hostile intentions. 
 
 " Antoine, I am not at home," said she to the old servant. 
 " Put some wood on the fire. You see, Calyste, I treat you 
 as a friend," she added with dignity when the old man was 
 gone. " Do not treat me as your mistress. I have two re- 
 marks to make ; First, that I should not make any foolish
 
 272 BE A TRIX. 
 
 stipulations with a man I loved ; next, that I will never belong 
 again to any man in the world. For I believed myself loved, 
 Calyste, by a sort of Rizzio whom no pledges could bind, a 
 man absolutely free, and you see whither that fatal infatuation 
 has brought me. As for you, you are tied to the most sacred 
 duties ; you have a young, amiable, delightful wife ; and you 
 are a father. I should be as inexcusable as you are, and we 
 should both be mad " 
 
 " My dear Beatrix, all your logic falls before one word. I 
 have never loved any one on earth but you, and I married in 
 spite of myself." 
 
 "A little trick played us by Mademoiselle des Touches," 
 said she with a smile. 
 
 For three hours Madame de Rochefide kept Calyste faithful 
 to his conjugal duties by pressing on him the horrible ulti- 
 matum of a complete breach with Sabine. Nothing less, she 
 declared, could reassure her in the dreadful position in which 
 she would be placed by Calyste' s passion. And, indeed, she 
 thought little of ruthlessly sacrificing Sabine ; she knew her so 
 well. 
 
 " Why, my dear boy, she is a woman who fulfills all the 
 promise of her girlhood. She is a thorough Grandlieu, as 
 brown as her Portuguese mother, not to say orange-colored, 
 and as dry as her father. To speak the truth, your wife will 
 never be lost to you ; she is just a great boy, and can walk 
 alone. Poor Calyste ! is this the wife to suit you ? She has 
 fine eyes, but such eyes are common in Italy, Spain, and 
 Portugal. Can a woman so lean be really tender ? Eve was 
 fair ; dark women are descended from Adam, fair women 
 from God, whose hand left a last touch on Eve when all crea- 
 tion was complete." 
 
 At about six o'clock Calyste in desperation took up his hat 
 to go. 
 
 " Yes, go, my poor friend ; do not let her have the disap- 
 pointment of dining without you."
 
 BEATRIX. 273 
 
 Calyste stayed. He was so young, so easy to take on the 
 wrong side. 
 
 " You would really dare to dine with me? " said Beatrix* 
 affecting the most provoking surprise. " My humble fare 
 does not frighten you away, and you have enough independ- 
 ence of spirit to crown my joy by this little proof of genuine 
 affection ? ' ' 
 
 "Only let me write a line to Sabine," said he, " for she 
 would wait for me till nine o'clock." 
 
 " There is my writing-table," said Beatrix. 
 
 She herself lighted the candles and brought one to the 
 table to see what Calyste would write. 
 
 " My dear Sabine." 
 
 "My DEAR! Is your wife still dear to you?" said she, 
 looking at him so coldly that it froze the marrow in his bones. 
 " Go, then, go to dine with her." 
 
 " I am dining at an eating-house with some friends " 
 
 " That is a lie. For shame ! You are unworthy of her 
 love or mine. All men are cowards with us. That will do, 
 monsieur ; go and dine with your dear Sabine ! " 
 
 Calyste threw himself back in his armchair and turned paler 
 than death. Bretons have a sort of obstinate courage which 
 makes them hold their own under difficulties. The young 
 Baron sat up again with his elbow firmly set on the table, his 
 chin in his hand, and his sparkling eyes fixed on Beatrix, who 
 was relentless. He looked so fine that a true northern or 
 southern woman would have fallen on her knees, saying, 
 "Take me ! " But in Beatrix, born on the border between 
 Normandy and Brittany, of the race of Casteran, desertion 
 had brought out the ferocity of the Frank and the malignity 
 of the Norman ; she craved a tremendous and terrible re- 
 venge ; she did not yield to his noble impulse. 
 
 " Dictate what I am to write, and I will obey," said the 
 poor boy. " But then " 
 
 "Then, yes," she replied, " for you will love me then as 
 18
 
 274 BE A TRIX. 
 
 you loved me at Guerande. Write, ' I am dining in town ; 
 do not wait.' " 
 
 " And ? " said Calyste, expecting something more. 
 
 "Nothing. Sign it. Good," she. said, seizing this note 
 with covert joy. " I will send it by a messenger." 
 
 " Now ! " cried Calyste, starting up like a happy man. 
 
 "I have preserved my liberty of action, I believe," said 
 she, looking around and pausing half-way between the table 
 and the fireplace, where she was about to ring. 
 
 " Here, Antoine, have this note taken to the address. 
 Monsieur will dine with me." 
 
 Calyste went home at about two in the morning. 
 
 After sitting up till half-past twelve, Sabine had gone to 
 bed, tired out. She slept, though she had been cruelly star- 
 tled by the brevity of her husband's note ; still, she accounted 
 for it. True love in a woman can always explain everything 
 to the advantage of the man she loves. 
 
 " Calyste was in a hurry ! " thought she. 
 
 Next day the child had recovered, the mother's alarms 
 were past. Sabine came in smiling with the little Calyste in 
 her arms to show him to his father just before breakfast, full 
 of the pretty nonsense, and saying the silly things that all 
 young mothers are full of. This little domestic scene enabled 
 Calyste to put a good face on matters, and he was charming 
 to his wife while feeling that he was a wretch. He played 
 like a boy himself with Monsieur le Chevalier ; indeed, he 
 overdid it, overacting his part ; but Sabine had not reached 
 that pitch of distrust in which a wife notes so subtle a shade. 
 
 At last, during breakfast, Sabine asked 
 
 " And what were you doing yesterday? " 
 
 " Portenduere," said he, "kept me to dinner, and we went 
 to the club to play a few rubbers of whist." 
 
 "It is a foolish life, my Calyste," replied Sabine. " The 
 young men of our day ought rather to think of recovering all 
 the estates in the country that their fathers lost. They can-
 
 BEATRIX. 275 
 
 not live by smoking cigars, playing whist, and dissipating 
 their idleness by being content with making impertinent 
 speeches to the parvenus who are ousting them from all their 
 dignities, by cutting themselves off from the masses, whose 
 soul and brain they ought to be, and to whom they should 
 appear as Providence. Instead of being a party, you will 
 only be an opinion, as de Marsay said. Oh ! if you could 
 only know how my views have expanded since I have rocked 
 and suckled your child. I want to see the old name of du 
 Guenic figure in history." 
 
 Then, suddenly looking straight into Calyste's eyes, which 
 were pensively fixed on her, she said 
 
 " You must admit that the first note you ever wrote me was 
 a little abrupt?" 
 
 "I never thought of writing till I reached the club." 
 
 " But you wrote on a woman's paper ; it had some womanly 
 scent." 
 
 " The club managers do such queer things " 
 
 The Vicomte de Portenduere and his wife, a charming young 
 couple, had become so intimate with the du Gunnies that they 
 shared a box at the Italian opera. The two young women, 
 Sabine and Ursule, had been drawn into this friendship by a 
 delightful exchange of advice, anxieties, and confidences about 
 their babies. While Calyste, a novice in falsehood, was 
 thinking to himself, "I must go to warn Savinien," Sabine 
 was reflecting, " I fancied that the paper was stamped with a 
 coronet ! " 
 
 The suspicion flashed like lightning through her conscious- 
 ness, and she blamed herself for it; but she made up her 
 mind to look for the note, which, in the midst of her alarms 
 on the previous day, she had tossed into her letter-box. 
 
 After breakfast Calyste went out, telling his wife he should 
 soon return ; he got into one of the little low one-horse car- 
 riages which were just beginning to take the place of the in-
 
 276 BE A TRIX. 
 
 convenient cabriolet of our grandfathers. In a few minutes 
 he reached the Rue des Saints-Peres, where the Vicomte lived, 
 and begged him to do him the little kindness of lying in case 
 Sabine should question the Vicomtesse he would do as much 
 for him next time. Then, when once out of the house, Calyste, 
 having first bidden the coachman to hurry as much as possible, 
 went in a few minutes from the Rue des Saints-Peres to the 
 Rue de Courcelles. He was anxious to know how Beatrix had 
 spent the rest of the night. 
 
 He found the happy victim of fate just out of her bath, 
 fresh, beautified, and breakfasting with a good appetite. He 
 admired the grace with which his angel ate boiled eggs, and 
 was delighted with the service of gold, a present from a music- 
 mad lord for whom Conti had written some songs, on ideas 
 supplied by his lordship, who had published them as his own. 
 Calyste listened to a few piquant anecdotes related by his 
 idol, whose chief aim was to amuse him, though she got angry 
 and cried when he left her. He fancied he had been with her 
 half an hour, and did not get home till three o'clock. His 
 horse, a fine beast given him by the Vicomtesse de Grandlieu, 
 looked as if it had come out of the river, it was so streaming 
 with sweat. 
 
 By such a chance as a jealous woman always plans, Sabine 
 was on guard at a window looking out into the courtyard, out 
 of patience at Calyste's late return, and uneasy without 
 knowing why. She was struck by the condition of the horse, 
 its mouth full of foam. 
 
 "Where has he been?" 
 
 The question was whispered in her ear by that power which 
 is not conscience not the devil, nor an angel the power 
 which sees, feels, knows, and shows us the unknown ; which 
 makes us believe in the existence of spiritual beings, creatures 
 of our own brain, going and coming, and living in the invisible 
 sphere of ideas. 
 
 "Where have you come from, my darling?" said she,
 
 BEATRIX. 277 
 
 going down to the first landing to meet Calyste. "Abd-el- 
 Kader is half-dead ; you said you would lie out but a few 
 minutes, and I have been expecting you these three hours." 
 
 "Well, well," said Calyste to himself, improving in the 
 art of dissimulation, "I must get out of the scrape by a 
 present. Dear little nurse," said he, putting his arm round 
 his wife's waist with a more coaxing pressure than he would 
 have given it if he had not felt guilty, " it is impossible, I 
 see, to keep a secret, however innocent, from a loving wife 
 who " 
 
 " We don't tell secrets on the stairs," she replied, laughing. 
 "Come along! " 
 
 In the middle of the drawing-room that led to the bed- 
 room, she saw, reflected in a mirror, Calyste's face, in which, 
 not knowing that it could be seen, his fatigue and his real 
 feelings showed ; he had ceased to smile. 
 
 " That secret?" said she, turning round. 
 
 "You have been such a heroic nurse that the heir-presump- 
 tive of the du Guenics is dearer to me than ever; I wanted 
 to surprise you just like a worthy citizen of the Rue Saint- 
 Denis. A dressing-table is being fitted for you which is a 
 work of art my mother and Aunt Zephirine have helped " 
 
 Sabine threw her arms round Calyste, and held him clasped 
 to her heart, her head on his neck, trembling with the weight 
 of happiness, not on account of the dressing-table, but be- 
 cause her suspicions were blown to the winds. It was one of 
 those glorious gushes of joy which can be counted in a life- 
 time, and of which even the most excessive love cannot be 
 prodigal, for life would be too quickly burnt out. Men 
 ought, in such moments, to kneel at the woman's feet in 
 adoration, for the impulse is sublime; all the powers of the 
 heart and intellect overflow as water gushes from the urn 
 of fountain-nymphs. Sabine melted into tears. 
 
 Suddenly, as if stung by a viper, she pushed Calyste from 
 her, dropped on to a divan, and fainted away ; the sudden
 
 278 BEATRIX. 
 
 chill on her glowing heart had almost killed her. As she 
 held Calyste, her nose in his necktie, given up to happiness, 
 she had smelt the same perfume as that on the note-paper ! 
 Another woman's head had lain there, her face and hair had 
 left the very scent of adultery. She had just kissed the spot 
 where her rival's kisses were still warm. 
 
 " What is the matter? " said Calyste, after bringing Sabine 
 back to her senses by bathing her face with a wet handker- 
 chief. 
 
 "Go and fetch the doctor and the accoucheur both. 
 
 Yes, I feel the milk has turned to fever They will not 
 
 come at once unless you go yourself " Vous, she said, 
 
 not tu, and the vous startled Calyste, who flew off in alarm. 
 As soon as Sabine heard the outer gate shut she sprang to her 
 feet like a frightened deer, and walked round and round the 
 room like a crazy thing, exclaiming, " My God ! my God ! 
 my God ! " 
 
 The two words took the place of thought. The crisis she 
 had used as a pretext really came on. The hair on her head 
 felt like so many eels, made red-hot in the fire of nervous 
 torment. Her heated blood seemed to her to have mingled 
 with her nerves, and to be bursting from every pore. For a 
 moment she was blind. " I am dying ! " she shrieked. 
 
 At this fearful cry of an insulted wife and mother, her 
 maid came in ; and when she had been carried to her bed and 
 had recovered her sight and senses, her first gleam of intelli- 
 gence made her send the woman to fetch her friend Madame 
 de Portenduere. Sabine felt her thoughts swirling in her 
 brain like straws in a whirlwind. 
 
 " I saw myraids of them at once," she said afterward. 
 
 Then she rang for the manservant, and in the transport of 
 fever found strength enough to write the following note, for 
 she was possessed by a mania, she must be sure of the truth :
 
 BE A TRIX. 279 
 
 To Madame la Baronnc du Guenic. 
 
 "DEAR MAMMA: When you come to Paris, as you have 
 led us to hope you may, I will thank you in person for the 
 beautiful present by which you and Aunt Zephirine and Cal- 
 yste propose to thank me for having done my duty. I have 
 been amply paid by my own happiness. I cannot attempt 
 to express my pleasure in this beautiful dressing-table : when 
 you are here I will try to tell you. Believe me, when I dress 
 before this glass, I shall always think, like the Roman lady, 
 that my choicest jewel is our darling angel," and so on. 
 
 She had this letter posted by her own maid. 
 
 When the Vicomtesse de Portenduere came in, the shivering 
 fit of a violent fever had succeeded the first paroxysm of 
 madness. 
 
 " Ursule, I believe I am going to die," said she. 
 
 "What ails you, my dear?" 
 
 "Tell me, what did Calyste and Savinien do yesterday 
 evening after dinner at your house? " 
 
 "What dinner?" replied Ursule, to whom her husband 
 had as yet said nothing, not expecting an immediate inquiry. 
 "Savinien and I dined alone last evening, and went to the 
 opera without Calyste." 
 
 " Ursule, dear child, in the name of your love for Savinien, 
 I adjure you, keep the secret of what I have asked you and 
 what I will tell you. You alone will know what I am dying 
 of I am betrayed, at the end of three years when I am not 
 yet three-and-twenty " 
 
 Her teeth chattered ; her eyes were lifeless and dull ; her 
 face had the greenish hue and surface of old Venetian glass. 
 
 " You so handsome ! But for whom ? " 
 
 "I do not know. But Calyste has lied to me twice. 
 Not a word ! Do not pity me, do not be indignant, affect
 
 280 BEATRIX. 
 
 ignorance; you will hear who, perhaps, through Savinien. 
 Oh ! yesterday's note ' ' 
 
 And, shivering in her shift, she flew to a little cabinet and 
 took out the letter. 
 
 " A marquise's coronet ! " she said, getting into bed again. 
 " Find out whether Madame de Rochefide is in Paris. Have 
 I a heart left to weep or groan? Oh, my dear, to see my 
 beliefs, my poem, my idol, my virtue, my happiness, all, all 
 destroyed, crushed, lost ! There is no God in heaven now, 
 no love on earth, no more life in my heart nothing ! I do 
 not feel sure of the daylight ; I doubt if there is a sun. In 
 short, my heart is suffering so cruelly that I hardly feel the 
 horrible pain in my breast and my face. Happily the child 
 is weaned. My milk would have poisoned him! " And at 
 this thought a torrent of tears relieved her eyes, hitherto dry. 
 
 Pretty Madame de Portenduere, holding the fatal note 
 which Sabine had smelt of for certainty, stood speechless at 
 this desperate woe, amazed by this death of love, and unable 
 to say anything in spite of the incoherent fragments in which 
 Sabine strove to tell her all. Suddenly Ursule was enlight- 
 ened by one of those flashes which come only to sincere souls. 
 
 "I must save her ! " thought she. " Wait until I return, 
 Sabine," cried she. " I will know the truth." 
 
 " Oh, and I shall love you in my grave ! " cried Sabine. 
 
 Madame de Portenduere went to the Duchesse de Grandlieu, 
 insisted on absolute secrecy, and informed her as to the state 
 Sabine was in. 
 
 "Madame," said she, in conclusion, "are you not of 
 opinion that, to save her from some dreadful illness, or per- 
 haps even madness who can tell ? we ought to tell the 
 doctor everything, and invent some fables about that abomin- 
 able Calyste, so as to make him seem innocent, at any rate, 
 for the present." 
 
 " My dear child," said the Duchess, who had felt a chill at 
 this revelation, " friendship has lent you for the nonce the
 
 BEATRIX. 281 
 
 experience of a woman of my age. I know how Sabine wor- 
 ships her husband ; you are right, she may go mad." 
 
 " And she might lose her beauty, which would be worse," 
 said 'the Vicomtesse. 
 
 " Let us go at once ! " cried the Duchess. 
 
 They, happily, were a few minutes in advance of the famous 
 accoucheur Dommanget, the only one of the two doctors whom 
 Calyste had succeeded in finding. 
 
 " Ursule has told me all," said the Duchess to her daughter. 
 "You are mistaken. In the first place, Beatrix is not in 
 Paris. As to what your husband was doing yesterday, my 
 darling, he lost a great deal of money, and does not know 
 where to find enough to pay for your dressing-table " 
 
 " And this ? " interrupted Sabine, holding out the note. 
 
 "This!" said the Duchess, laughing, "is Jockey Club 
 paper. Every one writes on coroneted paper the grocers 
 will have titles soon " 
 
 The prudent mother tossed the ill-starred document into 
 the fire. 
 
 When Calyste and Dommanget arrived, the Duchess, who 
 had given her orders, was informed ; she left Sabine with 
 Madame de Portenduere, and met the doctor and Calyste in 
 the drawing-room. 
 
 " Sabine's life is in danger, monsieur," said she to Calyste. 
 "You have been false to her with Madame de Rochefide" 
 Calyste blushed like a still decent girl caught tripping "and 
 as you do not know how to deceive," the Duchess went on, 
 " you were so clumsy that Sabine guessed everything. You 
 do not wish my daughter's death, I suppose ? All this, Mon- 
 sieur Dommanget, gives you a clue to my daughter's illness 
 and its cause. As for you, Calyste, an old woman like me 
 can understand your error, but I do not forgive you. Such 
 forgiveness can only be purchased by a life of happiness. If 
 you desire my esteem, first save my child's life. Then forget 
 Madame de Rochefide she is good for nothing after the first
 
 282 BEATRIX. 
 
 time ! Learn to lie, have the courage and impudence of a 
 criminal. I have lied, God knows ! I, who shall be com- 
 pelled to do cruel penance for such mortal sin." 
 
 She explained to him the fictions she had just invented. 
 The skillful doctor, sitting by the bed, was studying the 
 patient's symptoms and the means of staving off the mischief. 
 While he was prescribing measures, of which the success must 
 depend on their immediate execution, Calyste, at the foot of 
 the bed, kept his eyes fixed on Sabine, trying to give them 
 an expression of tender anxiety. 
 
 " Then it is gambling that has given you those dark marks 
 round your eyes ? " she said in a feeble voice. 
 
 The words startled the doctor, the mother, and Ursule, 
 who looked at each other ; Calyste turned as red as a cherry. 
 
 "That comes of suckling your child," said Dommanget, 
 cleverly but roughly. " Then husbands are dull, being so 
 much separated from their wives, they go to the club and 
 play high. But do not lament over the thirty thousand 
 francs that Monsieur le Baron lost last night " 
 
 " Thirty thousand francs ! " said Ursule like a simpleton. 
 
 "Yes, I know it for certain," replied Dommanget. "I 
 heard this morning at the house of the Duchesse Berthe de 
 Maufrigneuse that you lost the money to Monsieur de Trailles," 
 he added to Calyste. " How can you play with such a man ? 
 Honestly, Monsieur le Baron, I understand your being ashamed 
 of yourself." 
 
 Calyste, a kind and generous soul, when he saw his mother- 
 in-law the pious Duchess, the young Viscountess a happy 
 wife, and a selfish old doctor all lying like curiosity dealers, 
 understood the greatness of the danger ; he shed two large 
 tears which deceived Sabine. 
 
 "Monsieur," said she, sitting up in bed, and looking 
 wrathfully at Dommanget, " Monsieur du Guenic may lose 
 thirty, fifty, a hundred thousand francs if he chooses without 
 giving any one a right to find fault with him or lecture him.
 
 BEA TRIX. 283 
 
 It is better that Monsieur de Trailles should have won the 
 money from him than that we, we, should have won from 
 Monsieur de Trailles ! " 
 
 Calyste rose and put his arm round his wife's neck. Kissing 
 her on both cheeks, he said in her ear, " Sabine, you are an 
 angel ! " 
 
 Two days later the young Baroness was considered out of 
 danger. On the following day Calyste went to Madame de 
 Rochefide, and making a virtue of his infamy 
 
 "Beatrix," said he, "you owe me .much happiness. I 
 sacrificed my poor wife to you, and she discovered everything. 
 The fatal note-paper on which you made me write, with your 
 initial and coronet on it, which I did not happen to see I 
 saw nothing but you ! The letter B, happily, was worn away ; 
 but the scent you left clinging to me, the lies in which I en- 
 tangled myself like a fool, have ruined my happiness. Sabine 
 has been at death's door; the milk went to her brain, she has 
 erysipelas, and will perhaps be disfigured for life " 
 
 Beatrix, while listening to this harangue, had a face of Arctic 
 coldness, enough to freeze the Seine if she had looked at it. 
 
 "Well, so much the better; it may bleach her a little, per- 
 haps." And Beatrix, as dry as her own bones, as variable as 
 her complexion, as sharp as her voice, went on in this tone, a 
 tirade of cruel epigrams. 
 
 There can be no greater blunder than for a husband to talk 
 to his mistress of his wife, if she is virtuous, unless it be to talk 
 to his wife of his mistress if she is handsome. But Calyste 
 had not yet had the sort of Parisian education which may be 
 called the good manners of the passions. He could neither 
 tell his wife a lie nor tell his mistress the truth an indispen- 
 sable training to enable a man to manage women. So he was 
 obliged to appeal to all the powers of passion for two long 
 hours, to wring from Beatrix the forgiveness he begged, denied 
 him by an angel who raised her eyes to heaven not to see the
 
 284 BE A TRIX. 
 
 culprit, and who uttered the reasons peculiar to marquises in 
 a voice choked with well-feigned tears, that she furtively wiped 
 away with the lace edge of her handkerchief. 
 
 " You can talk to me of your wife the very day after I have 
 yielded ! Why not say at once that she is a pearl of virtue ! 
 I know, she admires your beauty ! That is what I call de- 
 pravity ! I I love your soul ! For I assure you, my dear 
 boy, you are hideous compared with some shepherds of the 
 Roman Campagna ," etc., etc. 
 
 This tone may seem strange, but it was the part of a system 
 deliberately planned by Beatrix. In her third incarnation 
 for a woman completely changes with each fresh passion she 
 is far advanced in fraud that is the only word that can de- 
 scribe the result of the experience gained in such adventures. 
 The Marquise de Rochefide had sat in judgment on herself in 
 front of her mirror. Clever women have no delusions about 
 themselves ; they count their wrinkles ; they watch the begin- 
 ning of crows'-feet ; they note the appearance of every speck 
 in their skin ; they know themselves by heart, and show it too 
 plainly by the immense pains they take to preserve their beauty. 
 And so, to contend against a beautiful young wife, to triumph 
 over her six days a week, Beatrix sought to win by the weapons 
 of the courtesan. Without confessing to herself the baseness 
 of her conduct, and carried away to use such means by a Turk- 
 like passion for the handsome young man, she resolved to 
 make him believe that he was clumsy, ugly, ill-made, and to 
 behave as if she hated him. 
 
 There is no more successful method with men of a domi- 
 neering nature. To them the conquest of such disdain is the 
 triumph of the first day renewed on every morrow. It is 
 more ; it is flattery hidden under the mask of aversion, and 
 owing to it the charm and truth which underlie all the meta- 
 morphoses invented by the great nameless poets. Does not a 
 man then say to himself, "I am irresistible!" or "I must 
 love her well, since I conquer her repugnance!" If you
 
 BE A TRIX. 285 
 
 deny this principle, which flirts and courtesans of every social 
 grade discovered long ago, you must discredit the pursuers of 
 science, the inquirers into secrets, who have long been re- 
 pulsed in their duel with hidden causes. 
 
 Beatrix seconded her use of contempt as a moral incitement 
 by a constant comparison between her comfortable, poetic 
 home and the Hotel du Guenic. Every deserted wife neglects 
 her home out of deep discouragement. Foreseeing this, 
 Madame de Rochefide began covert innuendoes as to the 
 luxury of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, which she stigmatized 
 as absurd. The reconciliation scene, when Beatrix made 
 Calyste swear to hate the wife who, as she said, was playing 
 the farce of spilt milk, took place in a perfect bower, where 
 she put herself into attitudes in the midst of beautiful flowers 
 and jardinieres of lavish costliness. She carried the art of 
 trifles, of fashionable toys, to an extreme. Beatrix, sunk into 
 contempt since Conti's desertion, was bent on gaining such 
 fame as may be had by sheer perversity. The woes of a 
 young wife, a Grandlieu, rich and lovely, were to build her a 
 pedestal. 
 
 When a woman reappears in society after nursing her first 
 child, she comes out again improved in charm and beauty. 
 If this phase of maternity can rejuvenate even women no 
 longer in their first youth, it gives young wives a splendid 
 freshness, a cheerful activity, a brio of life if we may apply 
 to the body a word which the Italians have invented for the 
 mind. But while trying to resume the pleasant habits of the 
 honeymoon, Sabine did not find the same Calyste. The un- 
 happy girl watched him instead of abandoning herself to 
 happiness. She expected the fatal perfume, and she smelt it ; 
 and she no longer confided in Ursule, nor in her mother, who 
 had so charitably deceived her. She wanted certainty, and 
 she had not long to wait for it. Certainty is never coy ; it is 
 like the sun, we soon need to pull down the blinds before it. 
 In love it is a repetition of the fable of the Woodman calling
 
 286 BEATRIX. 
 
 on Death. We wish that certainty would blind us. One 
 morning, a fortnight after the first catastrophe, Sabine received 
 this dreadful letter : 
 
 To Madame la Baronne du Guenic. 
 
 " GufeRANDE. 
 
 "Mv DEAR DAUGHTER: My sister Zephirine and I are 
 lost in conjectures as to the dressing-table mentioned in your 
 letter ; I am writing about it to Calyste, and beg your forgive- 
 ness for my ignorance. You cannot doubt our affection. We 
 are saving treasure for you. Thanks to Mademoiselle de Pen- 
 HoeTs advice as to the management of your land, you will in 
 a few years find yourself possessed of a considerable capital 
 without having to diminish your expenditure. 
 
 " Your letter, dearest daughter whom I love as much as if 
 I had borne you and fed you at my own breast surprised me 
 by its brevity, and especially by your making no mention of 
 my dear little Calyste ; you had nothing to tell me about the 
 elder Calyste; he, I know, is happy," etc. 
 
 Sabine wrote across this letter, "Brittany is too noble to lie 
 with one accord !" and laid it on Calyste's writing-table. He 
 found it and read it. After recognizing Sabine's writing in 
 the line across it, he threw it into the fire, determined never 
 to have seen it. Sabine spent a whole week in misery, of 
 which the secret may be understood by those celestial or 
 hermit souls that have never been touched by the wing of the 
 fallen angel. Calyste's silence terrified Sabine. 
 
 "I, who ought to be all sweetness, all joy to him I have 
 vexed him, hurt him ! My virtue is become hateful ; I have 
 perhaps humiliated my idol," said she to herself. 
 
 These thoughts ploughed furrows in her soul. She thought 
 of asking forgiveness for this fault, but certainty brought her 
 fresh proofs.
 
 BE A TRIX. 287 
 
 Beatrix, insolently bold, wrote to Calyste one day at his 
 own house. The letter was put into Madame du Guenic's 
 hands ; she gave it to her husband unopened, but she said, 
 with death in her soul, and in a broken voice 
 
 " My dear, this note is from the Jockey Club; I know the 
 scent and the paper." 
 
 Calyste blushed and put the letter in his pocket. 
 
 "Why do you not read it?" 
 
 "I know what they want." 
 
 The young wife sat down. She did not get an attack of 
 fever, she did not cry, but she felt one of those surges of rage 
 which in such feeble creatures bring forth monsters of crime, 
 which arm them with arsenic for themselves or for their rivals. 
 Little Calyste was presently brought to her, and she took him 
 on her lap; the child, but just weaned, turned to find the 
 breast under her dress. 
 
 " He remembers ! " said she in a whisper. 
 
 Calyste went to his room to read the letter. When he was 
 gone the poor young creature burst into tears, such tears as 
 women shed when they are alone. Pain, like pleasure, has 
 its initiatory stage ; the first anguish, like that of which 
 Sabine had so nearly died, can never recur, any more than a 
 first experience of any kind. It is the first wedge of the 
 torture of the heart ; the others are expected, the wringing 
 of the nerves is a known thing, the capital of strength has 
 accumulated a deposit for firm resistance. And Sabine, sure 
 now of the worst, sat by the fire for three hours with her boy 
 on her knee, and was quite startled when Gasselin, now their 
 house-servant, came to announce that dinner was on the table. 
 
 "Let monsieur know." 
 
 " Monsieur is not dining at home, Madame la Baronne." 
 
 Who can tell all the misery for a young woman of three- 
 and-twenty, the torture of finding herself alone in the midst 
 of a vast dining-room, in an ancient house, served by silent 
 men and in such circumstances ?
 
 288 BE A TRIX. 
 
 " Order the carriage," she said suddenly ; " I am going to 
 the opera." 
 
 She dressed splendidly ; she meant to show herself alone, 
 and smiling like a happy woman. In the midst of her re- 
 morse for the endorsement on that letter she was determined 
 to triumph, to bring Calyste back to her by the greatest gen- 
 tleness, by wifely virtues, by the meekness of a Paschal lamb. 
 She would lie to all Paris. She loved him, she loved him as 
 courtesans love, or angels, with pride and with humility. 
 
 But the opera was " Othello." When Rubini sang // mio 
 cor si divide, she fled. Music is often more powerful than the 
 poet and the actor, the two most formidable natures com- 
 bined. Savinien de Portenduere accompanied Sabine to the 
 portico and put her into her carriage, unable to account for 
 her precipitate escape. 
 
 Madame du Guenic now entered on a period of sufferings 
 such as only the highest classes can know. You who are 
 poor, envious, wretched, when you see on ladies' arms those 
 snakes with diamond heads, those necklaces and pins, tell 
 yourselves that those vipers sting, that those necklaces have 
 poisoned teeth, that those light bonds cut into the tender 
 flesh to the very quick. All this luxury must be paid for. In 
 Sabine's position women can curse the pleasures of wealth; 
 they cease to see the gilding of their rooms, the silk of sofas 
 is as tow, exotic flowers as nettles, perfumes stink, miracles 
 of cookery scrape the throat like barley-bread, and life has 
 the bitterness of the Dead Sea. 
 
 Two or three instances will so plainly show the reaction 
 of a room or of a woman on happiness, that every one who 
 has experienced it will be reminded of their home-life. 
 
 Sabine, warned of the dreadful truth, studied her husband 
 when he was going out, to guess at the day's prospects. 
 With what a surge of suppressed fury does a woman fling 
 herself on to the red-hot pikes of such torture? What joy 
 for Sabine when he did not go to the Rue de Courcelles !
 
 SEA TRIX. 289 
 
 When he came in she would look at his brow, his hair, 
 his eyes, his expression and attitude, with a horrible interest 
 in trifles, and the studious observation of the most recondite 
 details of his dress, by which a woman loses her self-respect 
 and dignity. These sinister investigations, buried in her 
 heart, turned sour there and corroded the slender roots, 
 whence grow the blue flowers of holy confidence, the golden 
 stars of saintly love, all the blossoms of memory. 
 
 One day Calyste looked around at everything with ill- 
 humor, but he stayed at home. Sabine was coaxing and 
 humble, cheerful and amusing. 
 
 "You are cross with me, Calyste; am I not a good wife? 
 What is there here that you do not like? " 
 
 " All the rooms are so cold and bare," said he. " You do 
 not understand this kind of thing." 
 
 "What is wanting?" 
 
 " Flowers " 
 
 " Very good," said Sabine to herself; " Madame de Roche- 
 fide is fond of flowers, it would seem." 
 
 Two days later the rooms at the Hotel du Gu6nic were com- 
 pletely altered. No house in Paris could pride itself on finer 
 flowers than those that decorated it. 
 
 Some time after this Calyste, one evening after dinner, 
 complained of the cold. He shivered in his chair, looking 
 about him to see whence the draught came, and evidently 
 seeking something close about him. It was some time before 
 Sabine could guess the meaning of this new whim, for the house 
 was fitted with a hot-air furnace to warm the staircase, ante- 
 rooms and passages. Finally, after three days' meditation, it 
 struck her that her rival had a screen, no doubt, so as to pro- 
 duce the subdued light that was favorable to the deterioration 
 of her face ; so Sabine purchased a screen made of glass, and 
 of Jewish magnificence. 
 
 " Which way will the wind blow now? " she wondered. 
 
 This was not the end of the mistress' indirect criticism. 
 19
 
 290 BEATRIX. 
 
 Calyste ate so little at home as to drive Sabine crazy; 
 he sent away his plate after nibbling two or three mouth- 
 fuls. 
 
 "Is it not nice?" asked Sabine, in despair, seeing all 
 the pains wasted which she devoted to her conferences with 
 the cook. 
 
 "I do not say so, my darling," replied Calyste, without 
 annoyance. " I am not hungry, that is all." 
 
 A wife given up to a legitimate passion and to such a con- 
 test as this, feels a sort of fury in her desire to triumph 
 over her rival, and often outruns the mark even in the 
 most secret regions of married life. This cruel struggle, 
 fierce and ceaseless, over the visible and outward facts of 
 home life was carried on with equal frenzy over the feelings 
 of the heart. Sabine studied her attitude and dress, and 
 watched herself in the smallest trivialities of love. 
 
 This matter of the cookery went on for nearly a month. 
 Sabine, with the help of Mariotte and Gasselin, invented 
 stage tricks to discover what dishes Madame de Rochefide 
 served up for Calyste. Gasselin took the place of the coach- 
 man, who fell ill to order, and was thus enabled to make 
 friends with Beatrix's cook; so at last Sabine could give 
 Calyste the same fare, only better ; but again she saw him 
 give himself airs over it. 
 
 " What is wanting? " she said. 
 
 "Nothing," he answered, looking round the table for 
 something that was not there. 
 
 " Ah ! " cried Sabine to herself, as she woke next morning, 
 "Calyste is pining for powdered cockroaches* and all the 
 English condiments which are sold by the druggist in cruets ; 
 Madame de Rochefide has accustomed him to all sorts of 
 spices." 
 
 She bought an English cruet-stand and its scorching con- 
 
 * Balzac has hannetom, cockchafers. It was an old joke that Soy was 
 made of cockroaches. TRANSLATOR.
 
 BE A TRIX, 291 
 
 tents ; but she could not pursue her discoveries down to every 
 dainty devised by her rival. 
 
 This phase lasted for several months ; nor need we wonder 
 when we remember all the attractions of such a contest. It 
 is life; with all its wounds and pangs, it is preferable to the 
 blank gloom of disgust, to the poison of contempt, to the 
 blankness of abdication, to the death of the heart that we 
 call indifference. Still, all Sabine's courage oozed out one 
 evening when she appeared dressed, as women only dress by 
 a sort of inspiration, in the hope of winning the victory over 
 another, and when Calyste said with a laugh 
 
 " Do what you will, Sabine, you will never be anything but 
 a lovely Andalusian ! " 
 
 " Alas ! " said she, sinking on to her sofa, "I can never 
 be fair. But if this goes on, I know that I shall soon be five- 
 and-thirty." 
 
 She refused to go to the Italian opera; she meant to stay 
 in her room all the evening. When she was alone she tore the 
 flowers from her hair and stamped upon them, she undressed, 
 trampled her gown, her sash, all her finery under foot, exactly 
 like a goat caught in a loop of its tether, which never ceases 
 struggling till death. Then she went to bed. The maid pres- 
 ently came in. Imagine her surprise ! 
 
 " It is nothing," said Sabine. "It is monsieur." 
 
 Unhappy wives know this superb vanity, these falsehoods, 
 where, of two kinds of shame both in arms, the more 
 womanly wins the day. 
 
 Sabine was growing thin under these terrible agitations, 
 grief ate into her soul ; but she never forgot the part she had 
 forced on herself. A sort of fever kept her up; her life sent 
 back to her throat the bitter words suggested to her by grief; 
 she sheathed the lightnings of her fine black eyes and made 
 them soft, even humble. 
 
 Her fading health was soon perceptible. The Duchess, an
 
 292 BEA TRIX. 
 
 admirable mother, though her piety had become more and 
 more Portuguese, thought there was some mortal disease in the 
 really sickly condition which Sabine evidently encouraged. 
 She knew of the acknowledged intimacy of Calyste and 
 Beatrix. She took care to have her daughter with her to try 
 to heal her wounded feelings, and, above all, to save her 
 from her daily martyrdom ; but Sabine for a long time re- 
 mained persistently silent as to her woes, fearing some inter- 
 vention between herself and Calyste. She declared she was 
 happy ! Having exhausted sorrow, she fell back on her pride, 
 on all her virtues. 
 
 At the end of a month, however, of being petted by her 
 sister Clotilde and her mother, she confessed her griefs, told 
 them all her sufferings, and cursed life, saying that she looked 
 forward to death with delirious joy. She desired Clotilde, 
 who meant never to marry, to be a mother to Iktle Calyste, 
 the loveliest child any royal race need wish for as its heir- 
 presumptive. 
 
 One evening, sitting with her youngest sister AthenaVs 
 who was to be married to the Vicomte de Grandlieu after 
 Lent with Clotilde and the Duchess, Sabine uttered the last 
 cry of her anguish of heart, wrung from her by the extremity 
 of her last humiliation. 
 
 "Athenai's," said she, when at about eleven o'clock the 
 young Vicomte Juste de Grandlieu took his leave, " you are 
 going to be married ; profit by my example ! Keep your 
 best qualities to yourself as if they were a crime, resist the 
 temptation to display them in order to please Juste. Be calm, 
 dignified, cold ; measure out the happiness you give in pro- 
 portion to what you receive ! It is mean, but it is necessary. 
 You see, I am ruined by my merits. All I feel within me 
 that is the best of me, that is fine, holy, noble all my virtues 
 have been rocks on which my happiness is shipwrecked. I 
 have ceased to be attractive because I am not six-and-thirty !
 
 BE A TRIX. 293 
 
 In some men's eyes youth is a defect ! There is no guess- 
 work in a guileless face. 
 
 " I laugh honestly, and that is quite wrong when, to be 
 fascinating, you ought to be able to elaborate the melan- 
 choly, suppressed smile of the fallen angels who are obliged 
 to hide their long yellow teeth. A fresh complexion is so 
 monotonous ; far preferable is a doll's waxen surface, com- 
 pounded of rouge, spermaceti, and cold-cream. I am straight- 
 forward, and double dealing is more pleasing ! I am frankly 
 in love like an honest woman, and I ought to be trained to 
 tricks and manoeuvres like a country actress. I am intoxi- 
 cated with the delight of having one of the most charming 
 men in France for my husband, and I tell him sincerely how 
 fine a gentleman he is, how gracefully he moves, how hand- 
 some I think him ; to win him I ought to look away with 
 affected aversion, to hate love-making, to tell him that his air 
 of distinction is simply an unhealthy pallor and the figure of 
 a consumptive patient, to cry up the shoulders of the Farnese 
 Hercules, to make him angry, keep him at a distance as 
 though a struggle were needed to hide from him at the mo- 
 ment of happiness some imperfection which might destroy 
 love. I am so unlucky as to be able to admire a fine thing 
 without striving to give myself importance by bitter and envi- 
 ous criticism of everything glorious in poetry or beauty. I 
 do not want to be told in verse and in prose by Canalis and 
 Nathan that I have a superior intellect ! I am a mere simple 
 girl ; I see no one but Calyste ! 
 
 " If I had only run over all the world as she has; if, like 
 her, I had said, 'I love you,' in every European tongue, I 
 should be made much of, and pitied, and adored, and could 
 serve him up a Macedonian banquet of cosmopolitan loves ! 
 A man does not thank you for your tenderness till you have 
 set it off by contrast with malignity. So I, a well-born wife, 
 
 must learn all impurity, the interested charms of a harlot ! 
 
 And Calyste, the dupe of this grimacing ! Oh, mother !
 
 294 BEATRIX. 
 
 oh, my dear Clotilde 1 I am stricken to death. My pride is 
 a deceptive aegis ; I am defenseless against sorrow ; I still 
 love my husband like a fool, and to bring him back to me I 
 need to borrow the keen wit of indifference." 
 
 "Silly child," whispered Clotilde, "pretend that you are 
 bent on vengeance." 
 
 " I mean to die blameless, without even the appearance of 
 wrong-doing," replied Sabine. " Our vengeance should be 
 worthy of our love." 
 
 " My child," said the Duchess, "a mother should look on 
 life with colder eyes than yours. Love is not the end but the 
 means of family life. Do not imitate that poor little Baronne 
 de Macumer. Excessive passion is barren and fatal. And 
 God sends us our afflictions for reasons of His own which we 
 cannot understand. 
 
 " Now that Athenais' marriage is a settled thing, I shall 
 have time to attend to you. I have already discussed the 
 delicate position in which you are placed with your father and 
 the Due de Chaulieu and d'Ajuda. We shall find means to 
 bring Calyste back to you." 
 
 " With the Marquise de Rochefide there is no cause for 
 despair," said Clotilde, smiling at her sister. " She does 
 not keep her adorers long." 
 
 " D'Ajuda, my darling, was Monsieur de Rochefide's 
 brother-in-law. If our good confessor approves of the little 
 manoeuvres we must achieve to insure the success of the plan 
 I have submitted to your father, I will guarantee Calyste's 
 return. My conscience loathes the use of such methods, and 
 I will lay them before the Abbe Brossette. We need not 
 wait, my child, till you are in extremis to come to your assist- 
 ance. Keep up your hopes. Your grief this evening is so 
 great that I have let out my secret ; I cannot bear not to give 
 you a little encouragement." 
 
 "Will it cause Calyste any grief?" asked Sabine, looking 
 anxiously at the Duchess.
 
 BEATRIX. 295 
 
 " Bless me, shall I be such another fool?" asked Athenais 
 simply. 
 
 " Oh ! child, you cannot know the straits into which virtue 
 can plunge us when she allows herself to be overruled by 
 love ? ' ' replied Sabine, so bewildered with grief that she fell 
 into a vein of poetry. 
 
 The words were spoken with such intense bitterness that the 
 Duchess, enlightened by her daughter's tone, accent, and look, 
 understood that there was some unconfessed trouble. 
 
 "Girls, it is midnight; go to bed," said she to the two 
 others, whose eyes were sparkling. 
 
 "And am I in the way, too, in spite of my six-and-thirty 
 years?" asked Clotilde ironically. And while Athenais was 
 kissing her mother, she whispered in Sabine' s ear 
 
 " You shall tell me all about it. I will dine with you to- 
 morrow. If mamma is afraid of compromising her con- 
 science, I myself will rescue Calyste from the hands of the 
 infidels." 
 
 "Well, Sabine," said the Duchess, leading her daughter 
 into her bedroom, "tell me, my child, what is the new 
 trouble?" 
 
 " Oh, mother, I am done for ! " 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " I wanted to triumph over that horrible woman ; I suc- 
 ceeded, I have another child coming, and Calyste loves her 
 so vehemently that I foresee being absolutely deserted. When 
 she has proof of this infidelity to her she will be furious. Oh, 
 I am suffering such torments that I must die. I know when 
 he is going to her, know it by his glee ; then his surliness 
 shows me when he has left her. In short, he makes no secret 
 of it ; he cannot endure me. Her influence over him is as 
 unwholesome as she is herself, body and soul. You will see ; 
 as her reward for making up some quarrel, she will insist on a 
 public rupture with me, a breach like her own ; she will carry 
 him off to Switzerland, perhaps, or to Italy. He has been
 
 296 BEATRIX. 
 
 saying that it is ridiculous to know nothing of Europe, and I 
 can guess what these hints mean, thrown out as a warning. 
 If Calyste is not cured within the next three months, I do not 
 know what will come of it I shall kill myself, I know ! " 
 
 " Unhappy child ! And your son ? Suicide is a mortal 
 sin." 
 
 " But you do not understand she might bear him a child ; 
 
 and if Calyste loved that woman's more than mine Oh ! 
 
 this is the end of my patience and resignation." 
 
 She dropped on a chair; she had poured out the inmost 
 thoughts of her heart ; she had no hidden pang left ; and sor- 
 row is like the iron prop that sculptors place inside a clay 
 figure it is supporting, it is a power. 
 
 " Well, well, go home now, poor little thing ! Face to face 
 with so much suffering, perhaps the abbe will give me absolu- 
 tion for the venial sins we are forced to commit by the trickery 
 of the world. Leave me, daughter," she said, going to her 
 prie-Dieu; "I will beseech the Lord and the blessed Virgin 
 more especially for you. Above all, do not neglect your 
 religious duties if you hope for success." 
 
 " Succeed as we may, mother, we can only save the family 
 honor. Calyste has killed the sacred fervor of love in me by 
 exhausting all my powers, even of suffering. What a honey- 
 moon was that in which from the first day I was bitterly con- 
 scious of his retrospective adultery ! " 
 
 At about one in the afternoon of the following day one of 
 the priests of the Faubourg Saint-Germain a man distin- 
 guished among the clergy of Paris, designate as a bishop in 
 1840, but who had three times refused a see the Abbe Bros- 
 sette, was crossing the courtyard of the Hotel Grandlieu with 
 the peculiar gait one must call the ecclesiastical gait, so ex- 
 pressive is it of prudence, mystery, calmness, gravity, and 
 dignity itself. He was a small, lean man, about fifty years 
 of age, with a face as white as an old woman's, chilled by
 
 LEAVE ME, DAUGHTER," SHE SAID, GOING TO HER 
 PR1E-DIEU.
 
 BE A TRIX. 297 
 
 priestly fasting, furrowed by all the sufferings he made his 
 own. Black eyes, alight with faith, but softened by an ex- 
 pression that was mysterious rather than mystical, gave life to 
 this apostolic countenance. He almost smiled as he went up 
 the steps, so little did he believe in the enormity of the case 
 for which his penitent had sent for him ; but, as the Duchess' 
 hand was a sieve for alms, she was well worth the time her 
 guileless confessions stole from the serious troubles of his 
 parish. On hearing him announced, the Duchess arose and 
 went forward a few steps to meet him, an honor she did to 
 none but cardinals, bishops, priests of every grade, duchesses 
 older than herself, and personages of the blood royal. 
 
 "My dear abbe," said she, pointing to an armchair, and 
 speaking in a low tone, "I require the authority of your ex- 
 perience before I embark on a rather nasty intrigue, from 
 which, however, I hope for a good result ; I wish to learn 
 from you whether I shall find the way of salvation very thorny 
 in consequence." 
 
 "Madame la Duchesse," said the Abbe Brossette, "do not 
 mix up spiritual and worldly matters ; they are often irrecon- 
 cilable. In the first place, what is this business?" 
 
 "My daughter Sabine, you know, is dying of grief. Mon- 
 sieur duGunic neglects her for Madame de Rochefide." 
 
 " It is terrible a very serious matter; but you know what 
 the beloved Saint-Franc.ois de Sales says of such a case. And 
 remember Madame de Guyon, who bewailed the lack of mys- 
 ticism in the proofs of conjugal love ; she would have been 
 only too glad to find a Madame de Rochefide for her husband." 
 
 "Sabine is only too meek, she is only too completely 
 the Christian wife; but she has not the smallest taste for 
 mysticism." 
 
 " Poor young thing ! " said the cure slily. " And what is 
 your plan for remedying the mischief?" 
 
 " I have been so sinful, my dear director, as to think that 
 I might let loose at her a smart little gentleman, willful, and
 
 298 BEATRIX. 
 
 stocked with evil characteristics, who will certainly get my 
 son-in-law out of the way." 
 
 " Daughter," said he, stroking his chin, " we are not in the 
 tribunal of the repentant ; I need not speak as your judge. 
 From a worldly point of view, I confess it would be final 
 
 " Such a proceeding strikes me as truly odious ! " she put in. 
 
 "And why? It is, no doubt, far more the part of a Chris- 
 tian to snatch a woman from her evil ways than to push her 
 forward in them ; still, when she has already gone so far as 
 Madame de Rochefide, it is not the hand of man, but the 
 hand of God, that can rescue the sinner. She needs a special 
 sign from heaven." 
 
 " Thank you, father, for your indulgence," said the Duchess. 
 " But we must remember that my son-in-law is brave and a 
 Breton ; he was heroic at the time of that poor MADAME'S 
 attempted rising. Now, if the young scapegrace who should 
 undertake to charm Madame de Rochefide were to fall out 
 with Calyste, and a duel should ensue " 
 
 "There, Madame la Duchesse, you show your wisdom; 
 this proves that in such devious courses we always find some 
 stumbling-block. ' ' 
 
 " But I hit upon a means, my dear abbe, of doing good, of 
 rescuing Madame de Rochefide from the fatal path she is 
 following, of bringing Calyste back to his wife, and of saving 
 a poor wandering soul perhaps from hell ' ' 
 
 "But, then, why consult me?" said the cure, smiling. 
 
 "Well," said the Duchess, "I should have to do some 
 ugly things " 
 
 " You do not mean to rob any one? " 
 
 " On the contrary, I shall probably spend a good deal of 
 money." 
 
 "You will not slander anybody, nor " 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 " Nor do any injury to your neighbor? " 
 
 "Well, well, I cannot answer for that."
 
 BEATRIX. 299 
 
 " Let us hear this new plan," said the cur6, really curious. 
 
 " If, instead of driving one nail out by another, thought 
 I, as I knelt on my prie-Dieu, after beseeching the blessed 
 Virgin to guide me, I were to get Monsieur de Rochefide to 
 take back his wife and pack off Calyste then, instead of 
 abetting evil to do good, I should be doing a good action 
 through another by means of a no less good deed of my 
 
 own ' ' The priest looked at the lady, and seemed 
 
 thoughtful. 
 
 " The idea has evidently come to you from so far that " 
 
 "Yes," said the simple and humble-minded woman, "and 
 I have thanked the Virgin. And I vowed that beside paying 
 for a novena, I would give twelve hundred francs to some 
 poor family if I should succeed. But when I spoke of the 
 matter to Monsieur de Grandlieu, he burst out laughing, and 
 said ' I really believe that at your time of life you women 
 have a special devil all to yourselves.' " 
 
 "Monsieur le Due said, in a husband's fashion, just what I 
 was about to observe when you interrupted me," replied the 
 abbe, who could not helping smiling. 
 
 " Oh, father, if you approve of the plan, will you approve 
 of the method of execution ? The point will be to do with a 
 certain Madame Schontz a Beatrix of the Saint-Georges quar- 
 terwhat I had intended to do with Beatrix ; the Marquis will 
 then return to his wife." 
 
 " I am sure you will do no wrong," said the abb6 dexter- 
 ously, not choosing to know more, as he thought the result 
 necessary. " And you can consult me if your conscience 
 makes itself heard," he added. "Supposing that instead of 
 affording the lady in the Rue Saint-Georges some fresh occa- 
 sion of misconduct, your were to find her a husband? " 
 
 "Ah, my dear director, you have set right the only bad 
 feature of my scheme. You are worthy to be an archbishop, 
 and I hope to live to address you as your Eminence." 
 
 " In all this, I see but one hitch," the priest went on.
 
 300 BEATRIX. 
 
 "And what is that?" 
 
 " Madame de Rochefide might keep your son-in-law even 
 if she returned to her husband ? " 
 
 "That is my affair," said the Duchess. "We, who so 
 rarely intrigue, when we do " 
 
 "Do it badly, very badly," said the abbe. "Practice is 
 needed for everything. Try to annex one of the rascally race 
 who live on intrigue and employ him without betraying 
 yourself." 
 
 " Oh ! Monsieur le Cure, but if we have recourse to hell, 
 will heaven be on our side? " 
 
 "You are not in the confessional," replied the abbe; 
 "save your child." 
 
 The good Duchess, delighted with the keeper of her con- 
 science, escorted him as far as the drawing-room door. 
 
 A storm, it will be seen, was gathering over Monsieur de 
 Rochefide, who, at this time, was enjoying the greatest share 
 of happiness that a Parisian need desire, finding himself quite 
 as much the master in Madame Schontz's house as in his wife's; 
 as the Duke had very shrewdly remarked to his wife, it would 
 seem impossible to upset so delightful and perfect a plan of 
 life. This theory of the matter necessitates a few details as to 
 the life led by Monsieur de Rochefide since his wife had placed 
 him in the position of a deserted husband. We shall thus un- 
 derstand the enormous difference in the view taken by law 
 and by custom of the two sexes in the same circumstances. 
 Everything that works woe to a deserted wife becomes happi- 
 ness to the deserted husband. This striking antithesis may 
 perhaps induce more than one young wife to remain in her 
 home and fight it out, like Sabine du Guenic, by practicing 
 the most cruel or the most inoffensive virtues, whichever she 
 may prefer. 
 
 A few days after Beatrix's flight, Arthur de Rochefide an 
 only child after the death of his sister, the first wife of the
 
 BEATRIX. sol 
 
 Marquis d'Ajuda-Pinto, who left him no children found 
 himself master of the family mansion of the Rochefides, Rue 
 d'Anjou-Saint-Honore, and of two hundred thousand francs a 
 year, left to him by his father. This fine fortune, added to 
 that which he had when he married, raised his income, includ- 
 ing his wife's portion, to a thousand francs a day. To a 
 gentleman of such a character as Mademoiselle des Touches 
 had sketched to Calyste, such a fortune was happiness. While 
 his wife was occupied with lovemaking and motherhood, 
 Rochefide was enjoying his vast possessions, but he did not 
 waste the money any more than he would waste his intel- 
 ligence. His burly, good-natured conceit, amply satisfied 
 with the reputation for being a fine man, to which he owed 
 some success, entitling him, as he believed, to condemn 
 women as a class, gave itself full play in the sphere of intellect. 
 He was gifted with the sort of wit which may be termed re- 
 fracting, by the way he repeated other persons' jests and wit- 
 ticisms from plays or the newspapers ; he appropriated them 
 as his own ; he affected to ridicule them, caricaturing them in 
 repetition, and using them as a formula of criticism ; then his 
 military high spirits for he had served in the King's Guard 
 lent spice to his conversation, so that dull women called him 
 witty, and the rest dared not contradict them. 
 
 Arthur carried this system out in everything ; he owed to 
 nature the useful trick of being an imitator without being an 
 ape ; he could imitate quite seriously. And so, though he had 
 no taste, he was always the first to take up and to drop a 
 fashion. He was accused of giving too much time to his 
 toilet and of wearing stays; but he was a typical example of 
 those men who, by accepting the notions and the follies of 
 others, never offend any one, who, always being up to date, 
 never grow any older. They are the heroes of the second- 
 rate. 
 
 This husband was pitied ; Beatrix was held inexcusable for 
 having run away from the best fellow in the world ; ridicule
 
 302 BEATRIX. 
 
 fell only on the wife. This worthy, loyal, and very silly 
 gentleman, a member of every club, a subscriber to every 
 absurdity to which blundering patriotism and party-spirit gave 
 rise, with a facile good-nature which brought him to the front 
 on every occasion, was, of course, bent on glorifying himself 
 by some fashionable hobby. His chief pride was to be the 
 sultan of a four-footed seraglio, managed by an old English 
 groom, and this kennel cost him from four to five thousand 
 francs a month. His favorite fad was running horses; he 
 patronized breeders, and paid the expenses of a paper in the 
 racing interest ; but he knew little about horses, and from the 
 bridle to the shoes trusted to his groom. This is enough to 
 show that this "grass-husband" had nothing of his own 
 neither wit, nor taste, nor position, nor even absurdities ; and 
 his fortune had come to him from his forefathers. 
 
 After having tasted all the annoyances of married life, he 
 was so happy to find himself a bachelor again that he would 
 say among friends, "I was born to good luck!" He re- 
 joiced especially in being able to live free of the expenses to 
 which married folk are compelled ; and his house, in which 
 nothing had been altered since his father's death, was in the 
 state of a man's home when he is traveling ; he rarely went 
 there, never fed there, and scarcely ever slept there. 
 
 This was the history of this neglect : After many love 
 affairs, tired of women of fashion, who are indeed weariful 
 enough, and who set too many dry thorn-hedges round the 
 happiness they have to give, he had practically married 
 Madame Schontz, a woman notorious in the world of Fanny 
 Beaupre and Suzanne du Val-Noble, of Mariettes, Floren- 
 tines, Jenny Cadines, and the like. This world of which 
 one of our draughtsmen wittily remarked, as he pointed to 
 the whirl of an opera ball, "When you think that all that 
 mob is well housed, and dressed, and fed, you can form a 
 good idea of what men are!" this dangerous world has 
 already been seen in this History of Manners in the typical
 
 BEATRIX. 303 
 
 figures of Florine and the famous Malaga (of "A Daughter 
 of Eve" and "The Imaginary Mistress"); but to paint it 
 faithfully, the historian would have to represent such persons 
 in some numerical proportion to the variety of their strange 
 individual lives, ending in poverty of the most hideous kind, 
 in early death, in ease, in happy marriages, or sometimes in 
 great wealth. 
 
 Madame Schontz, at first known as la Petite Aurelie, to 
 distinguish her from a rival far less clever than herself, be- 
 longed to the higher class of these women on whose social 
 uses no doubt can be thrown either by the prefect of the 
 Seine or by those who take an interest in the prosperity of the 
 city of Paris. Certainly the "rats" accused of devouring 
 fortunes, which are often imaginary, in some respects are 
 more like a beaver. Without the Aspasias of the Notre- Dame 
 de Lorette quarter, fewer houses would be built in Paris. 
 Pioneers of fresh stucco, in tow of speculation, pitch their 
 outlying tents along the hillsides of Montmartre, beyond 
 those deserts of masonry which are to be seen in the streets 
 round the Place de 1'Europe Amsterdam, Milan, Stockholm, 
 London, and Moscow architectural steppes betraying their 
 emptiness by endless placards announcing APARTMENTS TO 
 LET. 
 
 The position of these ladies is commensurate with that of 
 their lodgings in these innominate regions. If the house is 
 near the line marked by the Rue de Provence, the woman 
 has money in the Funds, her income is assured ; but if she 
 lives out near the exterior boulevards, or on the height toward 
 the horrible suburb of Batignolles, she is certainly poor. 
 
 Now when Monsieur de Rochefide first met Madame 
 Schontz, she was lodging on the fourth floor of the only 
 house then standing in the Rue de Berlin. The name of this 
 unmarried wife, as you will have understood, was neither 
 Aurelie nor Schontz. She concealed her father's name that 
 of an old soldier of the Empire, the perennial colonel who
 
 304 BEATRIX. 
 
 always adorns the origin of these existences, as the father or 
 the seducer. Madame Schontz had enjoyed the benefits of a 
 gratuitous education at Saint-Denis, where the young persons 
 are admirably taught, but where the young persons are not 
 provided on leaving with husbands or a living an admirable 
 foundation of the Emperor's, the only thing lacking being 
 the Emperor himself! " I shall be there to provide for the 
 daughters of my legionaries," said he, in answer to one of his 
 ministers who looked forward to the future. And in the same 
 way Napoleon said "I shall be there" to the members of 
 the Institute, to whom it would be better to give no honor- 
 arium at all than to pay them eighty-three francs a month, less 
 than the wages of many an office clerk. 
 
 Aurelie was very certainly the daughter of the valiant Col- 
 onel Schiltz, a leader of those daring Alsatian partisans who 
 so nearly succeeded in saving the Emperor in the French 
 campaign ; he died at Metz, robbed, neglected, and ruined. 
 In 1814 Napoleon sent little Josephine Schiltz, then nine 
 years old, to school at Saint-Denis. Without father or mother, 
 home or money, the poor child was not driven out of the 
 institution on the second return of the Bourbons. She re- 
 mained there as under-teacher until 1827 ; but then her 
 patience failed and her beauty led her astray. When she 
 was of age, Josephine Schiltz, the Empress' god-daughter, 
 embarked on the adventurous life of the courtesan, tempted 
 to this doubtful career by the fatal example of some of her 
 school-fellows as destitute as she was, and who rejoiced in 
 their decision. She substituted on for il in her father's name, 
 and placed herself under the protection of Saint Aurelia. 
 
 Clever, witty, and well informed, she made more mistakes 
 than her more stupid companions, whose wrong-doing was 
 always based on self-interest. After various connections with 
 writers, some poor but unmannerly, some clever but in debt ; 
 after trying her fortune with some rich men as close-fisted as 
 they were silly ; after sacrificing ease to a true passion, and
 
 BE A TRIX. 305 
 
 learning in every school where experience may be gained, one 
 day, when, in the depths of poverty, she was dancing at Val- 
 entino's the first stage to Musard's dressed in a borrowed 
 gown, hat, and cape, she attracted Rochefide's attention ; he 
 had come to see the famous galop ! Her cleverness bewitched 
 the gentleman, who had exhausted every sensation ; and when, 
 two years after, being deserted by Beatrix, whose wit had 
 often disconcerted him, he allied himself with a second-hand 
 Beatrix "of the Thirteenth Arrondissement," no one thought 
 of blaming him. 
 
 We may here give a sketch of the four seasons of such a 
 happy home. It is desirable to show how the theory of " a 
 marriage in the Thirteenth Arrondissement " includes all the 
 whole connection. Whether a marquis of forty or a retired 
 storekeeper of sixty, a millionaire six times over or a man of 
 narrow private means, a fine gentleman or a middle-class citi- 
 zen, the tactics of passion, barring the differences inseparable 
 from dissimilar social spheres, never vary. Heart and banking 
 account maintain an exact and definite relation. And you 
 will be able to form an idea of the obstacles the Duchess 
 must meet with to her charitable scheme. 
 
 Few persons understand the power of words over ordinary 
 folk in France, or the mischief done by the wits who invent 
 them. For instance, no bookkeeper could add up the figures 
 of the sums of money which have lain unproductive and rusty 
 at the bottom of generous hearts and full coffers in conse- 
 quence of the mean phrase Tirer une carotte to fleece or 
 bleed a victim. The words have become so common that 
 they must be allowed to deface this page. Beside, if we ven- 
 ture into the "Thirteenth Arrondissement," we must needs 
 adopt its picturesque language. 
 
 Monsieur de Rochefide, like all small minds, was constantly 
 
 in fear of being bled. From the beginning of his attachment 
 
 to Madame Schontz, Arthur was on his guard, and was at that 
 
 time a dreadful screw, very rat, to use another slang word of 
 
 20
 
 306 BEATRIX. 
 
 the studio and the brothel. This word rat (which in French 
 has many slang uses) when applied to a young girl means the 
 person entertained, but applied to a man means the stingy 
 entertainer. Madame Schontz had too much intelligence, 
 and knew men too thoroughly, not to found high hopes on 
 such a beginning. Monsieur de Rochefide allowed Madame 
 Schontz five hundred francs a month, furnished, meagrely 
 enough, a set of rooms at twelve hundred francs a year on 
 the second floor of a house in the Rue Coquenard, and set 
 himself to study Aurelie's character; and she, finding herself 
 spied upon, gave him character to study. 
 
 Rochefide was delighted to have come across a woman of 
 such a noble nature, but it did not astonish him ; her mother 
 was a Barnheim of Baden, quite a lady ! And then Aurelie 
 had been so well brought up ! Speaking English, German, 
 and Italian, she was versed in foreign literature ; she could 
 pit herself, without discomfiture, against pianists of the second 
 class. And, note the point ! she behaved as regarded her 
 talents like a woman of breeding : she never talked about 
 them. In a painter's studio she would take up a brush in 
 fun and sketch a head with so much go as to amaze the com- 
 pany. As a pastime, when she was pining as a school-teacher, 
 she had dabbled in some sciences, but her life as a kept mis- 
 tress had sown salt over all this good seed, and, of course, she 
 laid the flowers of these precious growths, revived for him, at 
 Arthur's feet. Thus did Aurelie at first make a display of 
 disinterestedness to match the pleasures she could give, which 
 enabled this light corvette to cast her grappling-irons firmly 
 on board the statelier craft. Still, even at the end of the 
 first year, she made a vulgar noise in the anteroom, managing 
 to come in just when the Marquis was waiting for her, and 
 tried to hide the disgracefully muddy hem of her gown in 
 such a way as to make it more conspicuous. In short, she so 
 cleverly contrived to persuade her Gros Papa that her utmost 
 ambition, after so many vicissitudes, was to enjoy a simple,
 
 BEATRIX. 307 
 
 middle-class existence, that by the end of ten months the 
 second phase of their connection began. 
 
 Then Madame Schontz had a fine apartment in the Rue 
 Saint-Georges. Arthur, who could no longer conceal from 
 her the fact of his wealth, gave her handsome furniture, a 
 service of plate, twelve hundred francs a month, and a little, 
 low carriage, with a single horse, by the week, and he granted 
 her a little groom with a fairly good grace. She knew what 
 this munificence was worth ; she detected the motives of her 
 Arthur's conduct, and saw in them the calculations of a close- 
 fisted man. Tired of living at restaurants, where the food is 
 generally execrable, where the simplest dinner of any refine- 
 ment cost sixty francs, and two hundred for a party of four 
 friends, Rochefide offered Madame Schontz forty francs a day 
 for his dinner and a friend's, wine included. Aurelie had no 
 mind to refuse. After getting all her moral bills of exchange 
 accepted, drawn on Monsieur de Rochefide's habits at a 
 year's date, she was favorably heard when she asked for five 
 hundred francs a year more for dress; on the plea that her 
 Gros Papa, whose friends all belonged to the Jockey Club, 
 might not be ashamed of her. 
 
 " A pretty thing, indeed," said she, " if Rastignac, Maxime 
 de Trailles, la Roche-Hugon, Ronquerolles, Laginski, Lenon- 
 court, and the rest should see you with a Madame Everard ! 
 Put your trust in me, Gros Perc, and you will be the gainer." 
 
 And Aurelie did, in fact, lay herself out for a fresh display 
 of virtues in these new circumstances. She sketched a part 
 for herself as the housewife, in which she won ample credit. 
 She made both ends meet, said she, at the end of the month, 
 and had no debts, on two thousand five hundred francs, such 
 a thing as had never been seen in the Faubourg Saint-Germain 
 of the Thirteenth Arrondissement the upper ten of the demi- 
 reps world ; and she gave dinners infinitely better than Nucin- 
 gen's, with first-class wines at ten and twelve francs a bottle. 
 So that Rochefide, amazed and delighted to be able to ask
 
 308 BEATRIX. 
 
 his friends pretty often to his mistress' house as a matter of 
 economy, would say to her, with his arm round her waist, 
 " You are a perfect treasure ! " 
 
 Before long he took a third share in an opera box for her, 
 and at last went with her to first-night performances. He 
 began to take counsel of his Aurelie, acknowledging the 
 soundness of her advice ; she allowed him to appropriate the 
 wit she was always ready with ; and her sallies, being new, 
 won him the reputation for being an amusing man. At last 
 he felt perfectly sure that she loved him truly, and for himself. 
 Aurelie refused to make a Russian prince happy at the rate 
 of five thousand francs a month. 
 
 "You are a happy man, my dear Marquis," cried old 
 Prince Galathionne as they ended a rubber of whist at the 
 club. " Yesterday, when you left us together, I tried to get 
 her away from you; but ' Mon Prince,' said she ' you are not 
 handsomer than Rochefide though you are older ; you would 
 beat me, and he is like a father to me ; show me then the 
 quarter of a good reason for leaving him ! I do not love 
 Arthur with the crazy passion I had for the young rogues with 
 patent-leather shoes, whose bills I used to pay ; but I love him 
 as a wife loves her husband when she is a decent woman.' 
 And she showed me to the door. ' ' 
 
 This speech, which had no appearance of exaggeration, had 
 the effect of adding considerably to the state of neglect and 
 shabbiness that disfigured the home of the Rochefides. Ere 
 long Arthur had transplanted his existence and his pleasures 
 to Madame Schontz's lodgings, and found it answer ; for by 
 the end of three years he had four hundred thousand francs 
 to invest. 
 
 Then began the third phase. Madame Schontz became the 
 kindest of mothers to Arthur's son ; she fetched him from 
 school and took him back herself; she loaded him with 
 presents, sweetmeats, and pocket-money ; and the child, who 
 adored her, called her his " little mamma." She advised her
 
 BEATRIX. 309 
 
 Arthur in the management of his money-matters, making him 
 buy consols at the fall before the famous treaty of London, 
 which led to the overthrow of the Ministry on the ist of 
 March. Arthur made two hundred thousand francs, and 
 Aurelie did not ask for a sou. Rochefide, being a gentleman, 
 invested his six hundred thousand francs in bank bills, half of 
 them in the name of Mademoiselle Josephine Schiltz. 
 
 A small house, rented in the Rue de la Bruyere, was placed 
 in the hands of Grindot, that great architect on a small scale, 
 with instructions to make it a delicious jewel case. Thence- 
 forth Rochefide left everything in the hands of Madame 
 Schontz, who received the dividends and paid the bills. Thus 
 installed in his wife's place, she justified him by making her 
 Gros Papa happier than ever. She understood his whims and 
 satisfied them, as Madame de Pompadour humored the fancies 
 of Louis XV. She was, in fact, maitrcssc en titre absolute 
 mistress. 
 
 She now allowed herself to patronize certain charming 
 young men, artists and literary youths newly born to glory, 
 who disowned the ancients and the moderns alike, and tried 
 to achieve a great reputation by achieving nothing else. 
 Madame Schontz's conduct, a masterwork of tactics, shows 
 her superior intelligence. In the first place, a party of ten or 
 twelve young men amused Arthur, supplied him with witty 
 sayings and shrewd opinions on every subject, and never cast 
 any doubt on the fidelity of the mistress of the house; in the 
 second place, they looked up to her as a highly intellectual 
 woman. These living advertisements, these walking " puffs," 
 reported that Madame Schontz was the most charming woman 
 to be found on the borderland dividing the Thirteenth Arron- 
 dissement from the other twelve. 
 
 Her rivals, Suzanne Gaillard, who since 1838 had the ad- 
 vantage over her of being a legitimately married wife, Fanny 
 Beaupre, Mariette, and Anton ia, spread more than scandalous 
 reports as to the beauty of these youths and the kindness with
 
 310 BEATRIX. 
 
 which Monsieur de Rochefide welcomed them. Madame 
 Schontz, who could, she declared, give these ladies a start of 
 three bad jokes and beat them, exclaimed one evening, at a 
 supper given by Florine after an opera, when she had set forth 
 to them her good fortune and her success, " Do thou like- 
 wise 1" a retort which had been remembered against her. At 
 this stage of her career Madame Schontz got the racers sold, 
 in deference to certain considerations, which she owed no 
 doubt to the critical acumen of Claud Vignon, a frequent 
 visitor. 
 
 " I could quite understand," said she one day, after lashing 
 the horses with her tongue, " that princes and rich men should 
 take horse-breeding to heart, but for the good of the country 
 and not for the childish satisfaction of a gambler's vanity. 
 If you had stud stables on your estates and could breed a 
 thousand or twelve hundred horses, if each owner sent the 
 best horse in his stable, and if every breeder in France and 
 Navarre should compete every time, it would be a great and 
 fine thing ; but you buy a single horse, as the manager of a 
 theatre engages his artists, you reduce an institution to the 
 level of a game, you have a Bourse for legs as you have a 
 Bourse for shares. It is degrading. Would you spend sixty 
 thousand francs to see in the papers ' Monsieur cle Roche- 
 fide's Lelia beat Monsieur le Due de Rhetore's Fleur-de Genet 
 
 by a length ' Why, you had better give the money to a 
 
 poet who will hand you down to immortality in verse or in 
 prose, like the late lamented Montyon ! " 
 
 By dint of such goading the Marquis was brought to see 
 the hollowness of the turf; he saved his sixty thousand francs ; 
 and next year Madame Schontz could say to him : "I cost 
 you nothing now, Arthur." 
 
 Many rich men envied the Marquis his Aurelie, and tried 
 to win her from him ; but, like the Russian prince, they 
 wasted their old age. 
 
 "Listen to me, my dear fellow," she had said a fortnight
 
 BEATRIX. 3n 
 
 ago to Finot, now a very rich men, " I know that Rochefide 
 would forgive me for a little flirtation if I really fell in love 
 with another man, but no woman would give up a marquis 
 who is such a thorough good fellow to take up with a parvenu 
 like you. You would never keep me in such a position as 
 Arthur has placed me in. He has made me all but his wife, 
 and half a lady, and you could never do as much for me even 
 if you married me." 
 
 This was the last rivet that held the fortunate slave. The 
 speech reached those absent ears for which it was intended. 
 
 Thus began the fourth phase, that of habit, the crowning 
 victory of the plan of campaign which enables a woman of 
 this stamp to say of the man, " I have him safe ! " Rochefide, 
 who had just bought a pretty house in the name of Mademoi- 
 selle Josephine Schiltz, a mere trifle of eighty thousand francs, 
 had, at the time when the Duchess was laying her plans, come 
 to the point when he was vain of his mistress, calling her 
 Ninon II., and boasting of her strict honesty, her excellent 
 manners, her information, and wit. He had concentrated his 
 good and bad qualities, his tastes and pleasures all in Madame 
 Schontz, and had reached that stage of life when from weari- 
 ness, indifference, or philosophy a man changes no more, but 
 is faithful to his wife or his mistress. 
 
 The importance to which Madame Schontz had risen in 
 five years may be understood when it is said that to be intro- 
 duced to her a man had to be mentioned to her some time in 
 advance. She had refused to make the acquaintance of 
 certain tiresome rich men, and others of fly-blown reputa- 
 tions ; she made no exceptions to this strict rule but in the 
 case of certain great aristocratic names. 
 
 " They have a right to be stupid," she would say, "because 
 they are swells." 
 
 Ostensibly she possessed the three hundred thousand francs 
 that Rochefide had given her, and that a thorough good 
 fellow, a stockbroker named Gobenheim the only stock-
 
 312 BEATRIX. 
 
 broker she allowed in her house managed for her ; but she 
 also managed for herself a little private fortune of two hun- 
 dred thousand francs, formed of her savings on her house 
 allowance for three years, by constantly buying and selling 
 with the three hundred thousand francs, which were all she 
 would ever confess to. 
 
 "The more you make, the less you seem to have," Goben- 
 heim remarked one day. 
 
 " Water is so dear ! " said she. 
 
 This unrevealed store was increased by the jewelry and 
 diamonds which Aurelie would wear for a month and then 
 sell, and by money given her for fancies she had forgotten. 
 When she heard herself called rich, Madame Schontz would 
 reply that, at present rates, three hundred thousand francs 
 brought in twelve thousand francs, and that she had spent it 
 all in the hard times of her life when Lousteau had been her 
 lover. 
 
 Such method showed a plan ; and Madame Schontz, you 
 may be sure, had a plan. For the last two years she had been 
 jealous of Madame du Bruel, and the desire to be married at 
 the mayor's and in church gnawed at her heart. Every social 
 grade has its forbidden fruit, some little thing exaggerated by 
 desire, till it seems as weighty as the globe. This ambition 
 had, of course, its duplicate in the ambition of a second 
 Arthur, whom watchfulness had entirely failed to discover. 
 Bixiou would have it that the favorite was Leon de Lora ; the 
 painter believed that it was Bixiou, who was now past forty, 
 and should be thinking of settling. Suspicion also fell on 
 Victor de Vernisset, a young poet of the Canalis school, 
 whose passion for Madame Schontz was a perfect madness ; 
 while the poet accused Stidmann, a sculptor, of being his 
 favored rival. This artist, a very good-looking young man, 
 worked for goldsmiths, for bronze dealers, and jewelers j he 
 dreamed of being a Benvenuto Cellini. Claud Vignon, the
 
 BEATRIX. 313 
 
 young Comte de la Palferine, Gobenheim, Vermanton, a 
 cynic philosopher, and other frequenters of this lively salon 
 were suspected by turns, but all acquitted. No one was a 
 match for Madame Schontz, not even Rochefide, who fancied 
 she had a weakness for la Palferine, a clever youth ; she was, 
 in fact, virtuous in her own interests, and thought only of 
 making a good match. 
 
 Only one man of equivocal repute was ever to be seen at 
 Madame Schontz' s, and that was Couture, who had more 
 than once been howled at on the Bourse ; but Couture was 
 one of Madame Schontz's oldest friends, and she alone re- 
 mained faithful to him. The false alarm of 1840 swept away 
 this speculator's last capital ; he had trusted to the ist of 
 March Ministry ; Aurelie, seeing that luck was against him, 
 made Rochefide play for the other side. It was she who 
 spoke of the last overthrow of this inventor of premiums and 
 joint-stock companies as a Decouture (unripping a rip). 
 
 Couture, delighted to find a knife and fork laid for him at 
 Aurelie's, and getting from Finot the cleverest or, perhaps, 
 the luckiest of parvenus a few thousand-franc notes now 
 and then, was the only man shrewd enough to offer his name 
 to Madame Schontz, who studied him to ascertain whether 
 this bold speculator would have strength enough to make a 
 political career for himself, and gratitude enough not to 
 desert his wife. A man of about forty-three years old, and 
 worn for his age, Couture did not redeem the ill-repute of his 
 name by his birth ; he had little to say of his progenitors. 
 Madame Schontz was lamenting the rarity of men of business 
 capacity, when one day Couture himself introduced to her a 
 provincial gentleman who happened to be provided with the 
 two handles by which women hold this sort of pitcher when 
 they mean not to drop it. 
 
 A sketch of this personage will be a portrait of a certain 
 type of young man of the day. A digression will, in this 
 case, be history.
 
 314 EA TRIX. 
 
 In 1838 Fabien du Ronceret, the son of a president of the 
 Chamber at the King's Court of Caen, having lost his father 
 about a year before, came from Alencon, throwing up his 
 appointment as magistrate, in which, as he said, his father 
 had made him waste his time, and settled in Paris. His in- 
 tention now was to get on in the world by cutting a dash, a 
 Norman scheme somewhat difficult of accomplishment, since 
 he had scarcely eight thousand francs a year, his mother still 
 being alive and enjoying the life-interest of some fine house- 
 property in the heart of Alencon. This youth had already, 
 in the course of various visits to Paris, tried his foot on the 
 tight-rope ; he had discerned the weak point of the social 
 stucco restoration of 1830, and meant to work on it for his 
 own profit, following the lead of the sharpers of the middle 
 class. To explain this, we must glance at one of the results 
 of the new state of things. 
 
 Modern notions of equality, which in our day have assumed 
 such extravagant proportions, have inevitably developed in 
 private life in a parallel line with political life pride, con- 
 ceit, and vanity, the three grand divisions of the social /. 
 Fools wish to pass for clever men, clever men want to be men 
 of talent, men of talent expect to be treated as geniuses : as 
 to the geniuses, they are more reasonable ; they consent to be 
 regarded as no more than demi-gods. This tendency of the 
 spirit of the time, which in the Chamber of Deputies makes 
 the manufacturer jealous of the statesman, and the adminis- 
 trator jealous of the poet, prompts fools to run down clever 
 men, clever men to run down men of talent, men of talent to 
 run down those who are a few inches higher than themselves, 
 and the demi-gods to threaten institutions, the throne itself, 
 in short, everything and everybody that does not worship 
 them unconditionally. 
 
 As soon as a nation is so impolitic as to overthrow recog- 
 nized social superiority, it opens the sluice-gates, through 
 which rushes forthwith a torrent of second-rate ambitions, the
 
 BEATRIX. 315 
 
 least of which would fain be first. According to the demo- 
 crats, its aristocracy was a disease, but a definite and circum- 
 scribed disease ; it has exchanged this for ten armed and 
 contending aristocracies, the worst possible state of things. 
 To proclaim the equality of all is to declare the rights of the 
 envious. We are enjoying now the Saturnalia of the Revolution 
 transferred to the apparently peaceful sphere of intelligence, 
 industry, and politics ; it seems as though the reputations 
 earned by hard work, good service, and talent were a privi- 
 lege granted at the expense of the masses. The agrarian law 
 will ere long be extended to the field of glory. 
 
 Thus, at no time have men demanded public recognition 
 on more puerile grounds. They must be remarked at any 
 cost for an affectation of devotion to the cause of Poland, to 
 the penitential system, to the future prospects of released con- 
 victs, to that of small rogues under or over the age of twelve, 
 to any kind of social quackery. These various manias give 
 rise to spurious dignities presidents, vice-presidents, and 
 secretaries of societies, which, in Paris, outnumber the social 
 questions to be solved. Society on a grand scale has been 
 demolished to make way for a thousand small ones in the 
 image of the dead one. 
 
 Do not all these parasitical organisms point to decomposi- 
 tion ? Are they not the worms swarming in the carcase ? 
 All these social bodies are the daughters of one mother 
 Vanity. Not thus does Catholic charity act, or true benevo- 
 lence ; these study disease while healing its sores, and do not 
 speechify in public on morbid symptoms for the mere pleasure 
 of talking. 
 
 Fabien du Ronceret, without being a superior man, had 
 divined, by the exercise of that acquisitive spirit peculiar to 
 the Norman race, all the advantage he might take of this 
 public distemper. Each age has its characteristic, which 
 clever men trade on. Fabien's only aim was to get himself 
 talked about.
 
 316 BEATRIX. 
 
 " My dear fellow, a man must make his name known if he 
 wants to get on," said he as he left, to du Bousquier, a friend 
 of his father's, and the King of Alengon. " In six months I 
 shall be better known than you." 
 
 This was how Fabien interpreted the spirit of his time ; he 
 did not rule it, he obeyed it. 
 
 He had first appeared in bohemia, a district of the moral 
 topography of Paris (see "A Prince of Bohemia"), and was 
 known as "The Heir," in consequence of a certain premedi- 
 tated parade of extravagance. Du Ronceret had taken advan- 
 tage of Couture's follies in behalf of pretty Madame Cadine 
 one of the newer actresses, who was considered extremely clever 
 at the second-class theatres for whom he had furnished a 
 charming first-floor apartment with a garden, in the Rue 
 Blanche. 
 
 This was the way in which the men made acquaintance : 
 The Norman, in search of ready-made luxury, bought the 
 furniture from Couture, with all the decorative fixtures he 
 could not remove from the rooms, a garden-room for smoking 
 in, with a veranda built of rustic woodwork, hung with Indian 
 matting, and decorated with pottery, to get to the smoking- 
 room in rainy weather. When the Heir was complimented 
 on his rooms, he called them his den. The provincial took 
 care not to mention that Grindot the architect had lavished 
 all his art there, as had Stidmann on the carvings, and Leon 
 de Lora on the paintings ; for his greatest fault was that form 
 of conceit which goes so far as lying with a view to self-glorifi- 
 cation. 
 
 The Heir put the finishing touch to this splendor by build- 
 ing a conservatory against a south wall, not because he loved 
 flowers, but because he meant to attack public repute by means 
 of horticulture. At this moment he had almost attained his 
 end. As vice-president of some gardening society, under the 
 presidency of the Due de Vissembourg, brother of the Prince 
 de Chiavari, the younger son of the late Marechal Vernon, he
 
 BE A TRIX. 317 
 
 had been able to decorate the vice-presidential coat with the 
 ribbon of the Legion of Honor, after an exhibition of horti- 
 cultural produce, which he opened by an address given out as 
 his own, but purchased of Lousteau for five hundred francs. 
 He was conspicuous by wearing a flower given to him by old 
 Blondet of Alencon, Emile Blondet's father, which he said had 
 bloomed in his conservatory. 
 
 But this triumph was nothing. Du Ronceret, who was 
 anxious to pass as a man of superior intelligence, had schemed 
 to ally himself with a set of famous men, to shine by a reflected 
 light, a plan very difficult to carry out on the basis of an in- 
 come of eight thousand francs. And, in fact, he had looked 
 by turns, but in vain, to Bixiou, Stidmann, and Leon de Lora 
 to introduce him to Madame Schontz, so as to become a 
 member of that menagerie of lions of every degree. Then he 
 dined Couture so often that Couture proved categorically to 
 Madame Schontz that she had to admit such an eccentric 
 specimen, were it onty to secure him as one of those graceful 
 unpaid messengers whom house-mistresses are glad to employ 
 on the errands for which servants are unsuited. 
 
 By the end of the third evening Madame Schontz knew 
 Fabien through and through, and said to herself, " If Couture 
 does not serve my turn, I am perfectly certain of this man. 
 My future life runs on wheels." 
 
 So this simpleton, laughed at by every one, was the man of 
 her choice ; but with a deliberate purpose which made the 
 preference an insult, and the choice was never suspected from 
 its utter improbability. Madame Schontz turned Fabien's 
 brain by stolen smiles, by little scenes on the threshold when 
 she saw him out the last, if Monsieur de Rochefide spent the 
 evening there. She constantly invited Fabien to be the third 
 with Arthur in her box at the Italiens or at first-night per- 
 formances ; excusing herself by saying that he had done her 
 this or that service, and that she had no other way of return- 
 ing it.
 
 318 BEATRIX. 
 
 Men have a rivalry of conceit among themselves in com- 
 mon indeed with women in their desire to be loved for 
 themselves. Hence of all flattering attachments, none is 
 more highly valued than that of a Madame Schontz for the 
 man she makes the object of her heart's affections in contrast 
 with the other kind of love. Such a woman as Madame 
 Schontz, who played at being a fine lady, and who was in 
 truth a very superior woman, was, as she could not fail to be, 
 a subject of pride to Fabien, who fell so desperately in love 
 with her that he never appeared in her presence but in full 
 dress, patent-leather shoes, lemon-colored gloves, an em- 
 broidered and frilled shirt, an endless variety of vests; in 
 short, every external symptom of the sincerest adoration. 
 
 A month before the conference between the Duchess and 
 the abbe, Madame Schontz had confided the secret of her 
 birth and her real name to Fabien, who could not understand 
 the object of this disclosure. A fortnight later Madame 
 Schontz, puzzled by the Norman's lack of comprehension, 
 exclaimed to herself 
 
 " Good heavens, what an idiot I am ! Why, he believes 
 that I am in love with him ! " 
 
 So then she took him out for a drive in the Bois, in her 
 carriage, for she had had a low phaeton with a pair of horses 
 for a year past. 
 
 In the course of this public tte-a-tlte she discussed the 
 question of her ultimate fate, and explained that she wished 
 to get married. 
 
 "I have seven hundred thousand francs," said she; "and 
 I may confess to you that if I could meet with a man of 
 great ambition, who could understand me thoroughly, I would 
 change my condition ; for, do you know, the dream of my 
 life is to be a good citizen's wife, connected with a respectable 
 family, and to make my husband and children all very happy." 
 
 The Norman was content to be a favorite with Madame 
 Schontz ; but to marry her seemed madness beyond discussion
 
 BEATRIX. 319 
 
 to a bachelor of eight-and-thirty, of whom the revolution of 
 July had made a judge. Seeing his hesitation, Madame 
 Schontz made the Heir a butt for the arrows of her wit, her 
 irony, and her scorn, and turned to Couture. Within a week 
 the speculator, tempted by a hint of her savings, offered her 
 his hand, his heart, and his future prospects all three of 
 equal value. 
 
 Madame Schontz's manoeuvres had reached this stage when 
 Madame de Grandlieu began to inquire as to the manners and 
 customs of this Beatrix of the Rue Saint-Georges. 
 
 Following the Abbe Brossette's advice, the Duchess begged 
 the Marquis d'Ajuda to bring to her house that prince of 
 political jugglers, the famous Comte de Trailles, the Arch- 
 duke of bohemia, and the youngest of the young, though he 
 was now fifty. Monsieur d'Ajuda arranged to dine with 
 Maxime at the club in the Rue de Beaune, and proposed that 
 they should go on together to play dummy whist with the 
 Due de Grandlieu, who, having had an attack of the gout 
 before dinner, would be alone. Though the Duke's son-in- 
 law, the Duchess' cousin, had every right to introduce him 
 into a house where he had never as yet set foot, Maxime de 
 Trailles was under no misapprehension as to the invitation 
 thus conveyed ; he concluded that either the Duke or the 
 Duchess wanted to make use of him. A not unimportant 
 feature of the time is the club life, where men gamble with 
 others whom they would never receive in their own houses. 
 
 The Duke so far honored Maxime as to confess that he was 
 ill ; after fifteen games of whist he went to bed, leaving his 
 wife with Maxime and d'Ajuda. The Duchess, supported 
 by the Marquis, explained her plans to Monsieur de Trailles 
 and asked his assistance, while seeming only to ask his advice. 
 Maxime listened to the end without saying anything decisive, 
 and would not speak till the Duchess had asked him point- 
 blank to help her.
 
 320 BE A TRIX. 
 
 11 1 quite understand the matter, madame," said he, after 
 giving her one of those looks keen, astute, and comprehen- 
 sive by which these old hands can compromise their allies. 
 " D'Ajuda will tell you that I, if any one in Paris, can man- 
 age this double business, without your appearing in it, without 
 its being known even that I have been here this evening. But 
 first of all, we must settle the preliminaries of Leoben. What 
 do you propose to sacrifice for this end ? ' ' 
 
 "Everything that is required." 
 
 "Very good, Madame la Duchesse. Then, as the reward 
 of my services, you will do me the honor of receiving here 
 and giving your countenance to Madame la Comtesse de 
 Trailles?" 
 
 "Are you married?" exclaimed d'Ajuda. 
 
 "I am going to be married in a fortnight to the only 
 daughter of a wealthy family, but to the last degree middle- 
 class ! It is a sacrifice to opinion ; I am adopting the strict- 
 est principles of my government. I am now casting my old 
 skin. 
 
 " So you will understand, Madame la Duchesse, how im- 
 portant for me it would be that you and your family should 
 take up my wife. I am quite certain to be elected deputy 
 when my father-in-law retires from his post, as he intends 
 doing, and I have been promised a diplomatic appointment 
 that befits my new fortune. I cannot see why my wife should 
 not be as well received as Madame de Portenduere in a society 
 of young wives where such stars are to be seen as Mesdames 
 de la Bastie, Georges de Maufrigneuse, de 1'Estorade, du 
 Gu6nic, d'Ajuda, de Restaud, de Rastignac, and de Van- 
 denesse. My wife is pretty, and I will undertake to wake 
 her up. 
 
 " Does this meet your views, have you any objections, 
 Madame la Duchesse? 
 
 "You are a religious woman; and if you say yes, your 
 promise, which I know will be sacred, will help me immensely
 
 BEATRIX. 321 
 
 in my changed life. And it will be another good action ! 
 Alas, I have long been the chief of a rascally crew; but I 
 want to be quit of all that. After all, our arms are good : 
 Azure, a chimera or, spouting fire, armed gules, scaled vert ; 
 a chief counter ermine ; granted by Francis I., who thought 
 it desirable to give a patent of nobility to Louis XL's groom 
 of the chambers and we have been counts since the time of 
 Catherine de Medicis." 
 
 "I will receive and introduce your wife," replied the 
 Duchess solemnly, "and my family shall never turn its back 
 on her, I give you my word." 
 
 "Oh, Madame la Duchesse," exclaimed Maxime, visibly 
 touched, " if Monsieur le Due will also condescend to treat 
 me kindly, I promise you on my part to make your plan suc- 
 ceed with no great loss to yourself. But," he went on, 
 after a pause, " you must pledge yourself to obey my instruc- 
 tions This is the last intrigue of my bachelor life ; it 
 
 must be carried through with all the more care because it is a 
 good action," he said, smiling. 
 
 "Obey?" said the Duchess. "But must I appear in all 
 this?" 
 
 "Indeed, madame, I will not compromise you," cried 
 Maxime, " and I respect you too implicitly to ask for security. 
 You have only to follow my advice. Thus, for instance, du 
 Guenic must be carried off by his wife like a sacred object, 
 and kept away for two years ; she must take him to see Swit- 
 zerland, Italy, Germany, the more strange and distant lands 
 the better " 
 
 "Ah, that answers a fear expressed by my director," ex- 
 claimed the Duchess guilelessly, as she remembered the Abbe 
 Brossette's judicious observation. Maxime and d'Ajuda could 
 not help smiling at the idea of this coincidence of heaven and 
 
 hell. 
 
 "To prevent Madame de Rochefide from ever seeing Calyste 
 again," she added, "we will all travel, Juste and his wife, 
 21
 
 322 BE A TRIX. 
 
 Calyste and Sabine, and I. I will leave Clotilde with her 
 father " 
 
 "Do not let us shout ' Victory ' just yet, madame," said 
 Maxime. "I foresee immense difficulties; I shall conquer 
 them, no doubt. Your esteem and favor are a prize for which 
 I will plunge through much dirt; but it will be " 
 
 " Dirt ! " said the Duchess, interrupting the modern condot- 
 tiere with a face equally expressive of disgust and surprise. 
 
 "Ay, and you will have to step in it, madame, since I act 
 for you. Are you really so ignorant of the pitch of blindness 
 to which Madame de Rochefide has brought your son-in-law ? 
 I know it, through Nathan and Canalis, between whom she 
 was hesitating when Calyste threw himself into that lioness' 
 maw. Beatrix has made the noble Breton believe that she 
 never loved any one but him, that she is virtuous, that her 
 attachment to Conti was of the head only, and that her heart 
 and the rest had very little to do with it a musical passion, 
 in short. As to Rochefide, that was a matter of duty. 
 
 " So, you understand, she is virginal. And she proves it 
 by forgetting her son ; for a year past she has not made the 
 smallest attempt to see him. The little Count is, in point of 
 fact, nearly twelve years old, and he has found a mother in 
 Madame Schontz ; motherhood is the mania, as you know, of 
 women of that stamp. 
 
 " Du Guenic would be cut in pieces, and let his wife be cut 
 in pieces, for Beatrix. And do you suppose that it is easy to 
 drag a man back from the depths of the abyss of credulity? 
 Why, madame, Shakespeare's lago would waste all his hand- 
 kerchiefs in such a task. It is generally imagined that Othello, 
 his younger brother Orosmane, and Saint-Preux, and Ren6, 
 and Werther, and other lovers who are famous, typify love ! 
 Their icy-hearted creators never knew what was meant by an 
 absorbing passion, Moliere alone had a suspicion of it. Love, 
 Madame la Duchesse, is not an attachment to a noble woman, 
 to a Clarissa ; a great achievement that, on my word ! Love 

 
 BEATRIX. 323 
 
 is to say to one's self: ' The woman I worship is a wretch ; she 
 is deceiving me, she will deceive me again, she is an old hand, 
 she smells of the burning pit ! ' and to fly to her, to find the 
 blue of heaven, the flowers of Paradise. That is how Moliere 
 loved, and how we love, we scamps and rips ; for I can cry at 
 the great scene in ' Arnolphe ! ' That is how your son-in-law 
 loves Beatrix. 
 
 "I shall have some difficulty in getting Rochefide from 
 Madame Schontz ; however, Madame Schontz can, no doubt, 
 be got to abet us ; I will study her household. As to Calyste 
 and Beatrix, it will need an axe to divide them, treachery of 
 the best quality, infamy so base that your virtuous imagination 
 could not go so low unless your director held your hand. 
 You have asked for the impossible, you shall have it. Still, in 
 spite of my determination to employ the sword and fire, I can- 
 not absolutely pledge myself to success. I know lovers who 
 do not shrink under the most entire disenchantment. You 
 are too virtuous to understand the power of women who have 
 no virtue." 
 
 " Do not attempt these infamies till I shall have consulted 
 the Abbe Brossette, to know how far I am involved in them," 
 cried the Duchess, with an artlessness that revealed how selfish 
 religion can be. 
 
 "You know nothing about it, my dear mother," said the 
 Marquis d'Ajuda. 
 
 On the steps, while waiting for Ajuda's carriage to come up, 
 the Marquis said to Maxime 
 
 "You have frightened our good Duchess." 
 
 " But she has no idea of the difficulty of the thing she wants 
 done ! Are we going to the Jockey Club? Rochefide must 
 ask me to dine to-morrow at Schontz 1 s rooms ; in the course 
 of to-night my plans will be laid, and I shall have chosen the 
 pawns in my chessboard that are to move in the game I mean 
 to play. In the days of her splendor Beatrix would have 
 nothing to say to me; I will settle accounts with her, and
 
 324 BE A TRIX. 
 
 avenge your sister-in-law so cruelly, that perhaps she will 
 think I have overdone it." 
 
 On the following day Rochefide told Madame Schontz that 
 Maxime de Trailles was coming to dinner. This was to warn 
 her to display the utmost luxury, and prepare the very best 
 fare for this distinguished connoisseur, who was the terror of 
 every woman of Madame Schontz's class; and she gave as 
 much care to her toilet as to arranging her house in a fitting 
 way to receive the great man. 
 
 In Paris there are almost as many royal heads as there are 
 different arts or special sciences, faculties, or professions; the 
 best of those who exercise each has a royal dignity proper to 
 himself; he is revered and respected by his peers, who know 
 the difficulties of his work, and admire unreservedly the man 
 who can defy them. In the eyes of the corps de ballet and 
 courtesans Maxime was an extremely powerful and capable 
 man, for he had succeeded in being immensely loved. He 
 was admired by everybody who knew how hard it is to live 
 in Paris on decent terms with your creditors; and he had 
 never had any rival in elegance, demeanor, and wit but the 
 famous de Marsay, who had employed him on political mis- 
 sions. This is enough to account for his interview with the 
 Duchess, his influence over Madame Schontz, and the au- 
 thority of his tone in a conference he intended to hold on the 
 Boulevard des Italiens with a young man, who was already 
 famous though recently introduced to the bohemia of Paris. 
 
 As he arose next morning, Maxime de Trailles heard Finot 
 announced, to whom he had sent the night before ; he begged 
 him to arrange a fortuitous meeting at breakfast at the Cafe 
 Anglais between Couture, Lousteau, and himself, where they 
 would chat in his hearing. Finot, who was to Maxime de 
 Trailles as a lieutenant in the presence of a marshal of Francd, 
 could refuse him nothing ; it was indeed too dangerous to 
 provoke this lion. So when Maxime came in to breakfast, he
 
 BEATRIX. 325 
 
 found Finot and his two friends at a table ; the conversation 
 had already been directed toward the subject of Madame 
 Schontz. Couture, cleverly steered by Finot and Lousteau, 
 who, unknown to himself, was Finot's abettor, let out every- 
 thing that the Comte de Trailles wanted to know about 
 Madame Schontz. 
 
 By one o'clock, Maxime, chewing his toothpick, was talking 
 to du Tillet on the steps of Tortoni's, where speculators form 
 a little Bourse preliminary to real dealings on 'Change. He 
 seemed to be absorbed in business, but he was waiting to see the 
 young Comte de la Palfe"rine, who must pass that way sooner 
 or later. The Boulevard des Italiens is now what the Pont 
 Neuf was in 1650; everybody who is anybody crosses it at 
 least once a day. 
 
 In fact, within ten minutes, Maxime took his hand from du 
 Tillet's arm, and, nodding to the young Prince of bohemia, 
 said with a smile, " Two words with you, Count ! " 
 
 The rivals, one a setting star, the other a rising sun, took 
 their seat on four chairs outside the Caf de Paris. Maxime 
 was careful to place himself at a sufficient distance from cer- 
 tain old fogies who, from sheer habit, plant themselves in a 
 row against the wall after one in the afternoon, to dry out 
 their rheumatic pains. He had ample reasons for distrusting 
 these old men. (See "A Man of Business.") 
 
 " Have you any debts ? " asked Maxime de Trailles of the 
 young man. 
 
 " If I had not, should I be worthy to succeed you ? " re- 
 plied la Palferine. 
 
 " When I ask you such a question, it is not to cast any 
 doubt on the matter," said de Trailles. " I only want to know 
 if they amount to a respectable sum-total, running into five or 
 six." 
 
 " Five or six what ? " said la Palfe'rine. 
 
 "Six figures! Do you owe 50,000, 100,000? My debts 
 ran up to 600,000 francs."
 
 326 BE A TRIX. 
 
 La Palferine took off his hat with an air of mocking re- 
 spect. 
 
 " If I had credit enough to borrow a hundred thousand 
 francs," replied he, " I would cut my creditors and go to live 
 at Venice in the midst of its masterpieces of painting, spend- 
 ing the evening at the theatre, the night with pretty women, 
 and " 
 
 "At my age where would you be? " 
 
 " I should not last so long," replied the young Count. 
 
 Maxime returned his rival's civility by just raising his hat 
 with an -expression of comical gravity. 
 
 " That is another view of life," he replied, as a connoisseur 
 answering a connoisseur. " Then you owe ? " 
 
 " Oh, a mere trifle, not worth confessing to an uncle, if I 
 had one. He would disinherit me for such a contemptible 
 sum ; six thousand francs. ' ' 
 
 " Six thousand give one more trouble than a hundred thou- 
 sand," said Maxime sententiously. "La Palferine, you have 
 a bold wit, you have even more wit than boldness ; you may 
 go far and become a political personage. Look here of all 
 the men who have rushed into the career which I have run, 
 and who have been pitted against me, you are the only one I 
 ever liked." 
 
 La Palferine colored, so greatly was he flattered by this con- 
 fession, made with gracious bluntness, by the greatest of 
 Parisian adventurers. This instinct of vanity was a confession 
 of inferiority which annoyed him; but Maxime understood 
 the reaction easy to foresee in so clever a man, and did his 
 best to correct it at once by placing himself at the young 
 man's discretion. 
 
 "Will you do something for me now that I am retiring 
 from the Olympian course by marrying, and marrying well ? 
 I would do a good deal for you," he added. 
 
 " You make me very proud," said la Palferine; " this is to 
 put the fable of the lion and the mouse into practice."
 
 BE A TRIX. 327 
 
 " In the first place, I will lend you twenty thousand francs," 
 Maxime went on. 
 
 "Twenty thousand francs? I knew that if I walked this 
 boulevard long enough ! " said la Palferine in a paren- 
 thesis. 
 
 " My dear boy, you must set yourself up in some sort of 
 style," said Maxime, smiling. "Do not trot about on your 
 two feet ; set up six. Do as I have done ; I never got lower 
 than a tilbury " 
 
 " But then you must want me to do something quite beyond 
 my powers." 
 
 " No. Only to make a woman fall in love with you within 
 a fortnight." 
 
 "A woman of the town?" 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 " That would be out of the question ; but if she is a lady, 
 quite a lady, and very clever " 
 
 " She is a marquise of the first water." 
 
 " You want her letters," said the young Count. 
 
 "Ah, you are a man after my own heart ! " cried Maxime. 
 " No. That is not what is wanted." 
 
 " I am really to love her? " 
 
 "Yes, really and truly." 
 
 " If I am to go beyond aesthetics, it is quite impossible," 
 said la Palferine. " With regard to women, you see, I have 
 a kind of honesty; we may trick them, but not 
 
 "Then I have not been mistaken," exclaimed Maxime. 
 " Do you suppose I am the man to scheme for some little 
 
 tu'penny meanness? No, you must go, you must dazzle 
 
 and conquer I give you twenty thousand, and ten days 
 to win in. Till this evening at Madame Schontz's." 
 
 " I am dining there." 
 
 "Good," said Maxime. "By-and-by, when you want 
 me, you will find me, Monsieur le Comte," he added, with 
 the air of a king pledging his word rather than promising.
 
 328 BEATRIX. 
 
 " The poor woman has done you some terrible mischief 
 then? " asked la Palferine. 
 
 "Do not try to sound the depth of my waters, my son ; but 
 let me tell you that, if you succeed, you will secure such 
 powerful interest, that when you are tired of your bohemian 
 life you may, like me, retire on the strength of a rich 
 marriage." 
 
 " Does a time come, then, when we are tired of amusing 
 ourselves," said la Palferine, "of being nothing, of living as 
 the birds live, of hunting in Paris like wild men, and laugh- 
 ing at all that turns up? " 
 
 "We tire of everything, even of hell ! " said Maxime with 
 a laugh. " Till this evening." 
 
 The two scamps, the old one and the young one, rose. As 
 Maxime got into his one-horse cab, he said to himself 
 
 "Madame d'Espard cannot endure Beatrix; she will help 
 me. To the Hotel Grandlieu," he cried to the coachman, 
 seeing Rastignac pass. (Find a great man without a weakness.) 
 
 Maxime found the Duchess, Madame du Guenic, and Clo- 
 tilde in tears. 
 
 " What has happened ? " he asked the Duchess. 
 
 " Calyste did not come in it is the first time, and my 
 poor Sabine is in despair." 
 
 "Madame la Duchesse," said Maxime, drawing the pious 
 lady into a window-bay, " in the name of God, who will 
 judge us, do not breathe a word as to my devotion ; pledge 
 d'Ajuda to secrecy ; never let Calyste know anything of our 
 plots, or we shall fight a duel to the death. When I told you 
 this would not cost you much, I meant that you would not 
 have to spend any monstrous sum. I want about twenty 
 thousand francs, but everything else is my business ; you may 
 have to find some good appointments one receiver-general's, 
 perhaps. ' ' 
 
 The Duchess and Maxime left the room. When Madame 
 de Grandlieu came back to her two daughters, she heard a
 
 BEATRIX. 329 
 
 fresh lament from Sabine, full of domestic details, even more 
 heartbreaking than those which had put an end to the young 
 wife's happiness. 
 
 "Be calm, my child," said the Duchess to her daughter; 
 " Beatrix will pay dearly for all your tears and misery ; she 
 will endure ten humiliations for each one of yours." 
 
 Madame Schontz had sent word to Claud Vignon, who had 
 frequently expressed a wish to make the acquaintance of 
 Maxime de Trailles ; she invited Couture, Fabien, Bixiou, 
 Leon de Lora, la Palferine, and Nathan, whom Rochefide 
 begged to have for Maxime's benefit. Thus she had a party 
 of nine, all of the first water, excepting du Ronceret ; but 
 the Heir's Norman vanity and brutality were a match for 
 Claud Vignon's literary force, for Nathan's poetry, la Pal- 
 ferine's acumen, Couture's keen eye to the main chance, 
 Bixiou's wit, Finot's foresight, Maxime's depth, and Leon de 
 Lora's genius. 
 
 Madame Schontz, who aimed at appearing young and hand- 
 some, fortified herself in such a toilet as women of that class 
 alone can achieve a point-lace cape of spider-web fineness; 
 a blue velvet dress, of which the elegant bodice was buttoned 
 with opals ; her hair in smooth bands and shining like ebony. 
 Madame Schontz owed her fame as a beauty to the brilliancy 
 and color of a warm, creamy complexion like a Creole's, a 
 face full of original details, with the clean-cut, firm features 
 of which the Comtesse de Merlin was the most famous ex- 
 ample and the most perennially young peculiar perhaps to 
 southern faces. Unluckily, since her life had been so calm, 
 so easy, little Madame Schontz had grown decidedly fat. 
 Her neck and shoulders, bewitchingly round, were getting 
 coarse. Still, in France a woman's face is thought all-impor- 
 tant, and a fine head will secure a long life to an ungraceful 
 shape. 
 
 "My dear child," said Maxime as he came in and kissed
 
 330 BE A TRIX. 
 
 Aurelie on the forehead, "Rochefide wanted me to see your 
 home, where I have not yet been ; it is almost worthy of his 
 income of four hundred thousand francs. Well, he had less 
 by fifty thousand a year when he first knew you ; in less than 
 five years you have gained for him as much as any other 
 woman Antonia, Malaga, Cadine, or Florentine would 
 have devoured." 
 
 "I am not a baggage I am an artist!" said Madame 
 Schontz, with some dignity. " I hope to end by founding a 
 family of respectable folk, as they say in the play." 
 
 "It is dreadful, we all getting married," said Maxime, 
 dropping into a chair by the fire. " Here am I within a few 
 days of making a Comtesse Maxime." 
 
 " Oh ! how I should like to see her !" cried Madame Schontz. 
 " But allow me," she went on, " to introduce Monsieur Claud 
 Vignon Monsieur Claud Vignon, Monsieur de Trailles." 
 
 "Ah, it was you who let Camille Maupin mine hostess of 
 literature go into a convent ? " cried Maxime. " After you, 
 God ! No one ever did me so much honor. Mademoiselle 
 des Touches made a Louis XIV. of you, monsieur." 
 
 "And this is how history is written ! " said Claud Vignon. 
 " Did you not know that her fortune was spent in releasing 
 Monsieur du Guenic's estates ? If she knew that Calyste had 
 
 fallen into the arms of her ex-friend ! ' (Maxime kicked 
 
 the critic's foot, looking at Monsieur de Rochefide) " on my 
 word, I believe she would come out of her nunnery to snatch 
 him from her." 
 
 "I declare, my dear Rochefide," said Maxime, finding 
 that his warning had failed to check Claud Vignon, " in your 
 place I would give my wife her fortune, that the world might 
 not suppose that she had taken up Calyste du Guenic for want 
 of money." 
 
 " Maxime is right ! " said Madame Schontz, looking at 
 Arthur, who colored violently. " If I have saved you some 
 thousand francs to invest, you could not spend them better.
 
 BE A TRIX. 331 
 
 I should have secured the happiness of both husband and wife. 
 What a good-conduct stripe ! " 
 
 " I never thought of it," replied the Marquis. Then, after 
 a pause, " But it is true ; one is a gentleman first, and a hus- 
 band after." 
 
 " Let me advise you of the appropriate moment for your 
 generosity," said Maxirae. 
 
 " Arthur," said Aurelie, " Maxime is right. Our generous 
 actions, you see, old boy, must be done as Couture's shares 
 must be sold," and she looked in the glass to see who was 
 coming in, " in the nick of time." 
 
 Couture was followed by Finot, and in a few minutes all 
 the guests were assembled in the handsome blue-and-gold 
 drawing-room of the "Hotel Schontz," as the men called 
 their place of meeting since Rochefide had bought it for his 
 Ninon II. On seeing la Palferine come in the last, Maxime 
 went up to him, drew him into a recess, and gave him the 
 twenty bank-notes. 
 
 "Above all, do not be stingy with them," said he, with 
 the native grace of a spendthrift. 
 
 " No one knows so well as you how to double the value of 
 what appears to be a gift," replied la Palferine. 
 
 " Then you agree ? " 
 
 "Well, since I take the money!" replied the youth, with 
 some pride and irony. 
 
 "Very well. Nathan, who is here, will take you within 
 two days to call on the Marquise de Rochefide," said Maxime 
 in his ear. 
 
 La Palferine jumped as he heard the name. 
 
 " Do not fail to declare yourself madly in love with her ; 
 and, to arouse no suspicions, drink wine, liqueurs no end! 
 I will tell Aurelie to put you next to Nathan. Only, my son, 
 we must now meet every night on the Boulevard de la Made- 
 leine, at one in the morning; you to report progress, and I 
 to give you instructions."
 
 332 BE A TRIX. 
 
 " I will be there, master," said the young Count, with a 
 bow. 
 
 " What makes you ask a fellow to dine with us who comes 
 dressed like a waiter?" said Maxime to Madame Schontz in 
 a whisper and looking at du Ronceret. 
 
 " Have you never seen ' The Heir?' Du Ronceret, from 
 Alengon." 
 
 "Monsieur," said Maxime to Fabien, "you must know 
 my friend d'Esgrignon ? " 
 
 " Victorien dropped the acquaintance long since," replied 
 Fabien ; " but we were very intimate as boys." 
 
 The dinner was such as can only be given in Paris, and in 
 the houses of these perfectly reckless women, for their refined 
 luxury amazes the most fastidious. It was at a supper of this 
 kind, given by a rich and handsome courtesan like Madame 
 Schontz, that Paganini declared that he had never eaten such 
 food at the table of any sovereign, nor drunk such wine in 
 any prince's house, nor heard such witty conversation, nor 
 seen such attractive and tasteful magnificence. 
 
 Maxime and Madame Schontz were the first to return to the 
 drawing-room, at about ten o'clock, leaving the other guests, 
 who had ceased to veil their anecdotes, and who boasted of 
 their powers, with sticky lips glued to liqueur-glasses that they 
 could not empty. 
 
 "Well, pretty one," said Maxime, "you are quite right. 
 Yes, I came to get something out of you. It is a serious mat- 
 ter ; you must give up Arthur. But I will see that he gives 
 you two hundred thousand francs." 
 
 "And why am I to give him up, poor old boy?" 
 
 "To marry that noodle who came from Alencon on pur- 
 pose. He has already been a judge ; I will get him made 
 president of the court in the place of old Blondet, who is 
 nearly eighty-two, and, if you know how to catch the wind, 
 your husband will be elected deputy. You will be people of 
 importance, and crush Madame la Comtesse du Bruel "
 
 BE A TRIX. 333 
 
 "Never!" cried the wily Madame Schontz ; "she is a 
 countess." 
 
 " Is he of the stuff they make counts of ? " 
 
 " Well, he has a coat-of-arms," said Aurelie, seeking a letter 
 in a handsome bag that hung by the fireplace and handing 
 it to Maxime. " What does it all mean ? There are combs 
 on it." 
 
 " He bears : Quarterly, the first argent three combs gules, 
 second and third three bunches of grapes with stems and 
 leaves all proper, fourth azure four pens or, laid in fret. 
 Motto, Servtr, and a squire's helmet. No great things ! 
 They were granted by Louis XV. They must have had some 
 haberdasher grandfather, the maternal ancestry made money 
 in wine, and the du Ronceret who got the arms must have 
 been a registrar. But if you succeed in throwing off Arthur, 
 the du Roncerets shall be Barons at least, I promise you, my 
 pretty pigeon. You see, child, you must lie in pickle for five 
 or six years in the country if you want to bury la Schontz in 
 Madame la Presidente. The rascal cast eyes at you, of which 
 the meaning was quite clear ; you have hooked him." 
 
 " No," said Aurelie. "When I offered him my hand, he 
 was as quiet as brandy is in the market." 
 
 " I will make up his mind for him if he is tipsy. Go and 
 see how they are all getting on." 
 
 " It is not worth the trouble of going. I hear no one but 
 Bixiou giving one of his caricatures, to which nobody is lis- 
 tening; but I know my Arthur; he thinks it necessary to be 
 polite to Bixiou, and he is staring at him still, even if his eyes 
 are shut." 
 
 " Let us go back then." 
 
 "By-the-by, for whose benefit am I doing all this, 
 Maxime ? " said Madame Schontz suddenly. 
 
 "For Madame de Rochefide," replied Maxime bluntly. 
 " It is impossible to patch up matters between her and Arthur 
 so long as you keep hold of him. To her it is a matter of
 
 334 BEATRIX. 
 
 being at the head of her house and having four hundred 
 thousand francs a year." 
 
 "And she only offers me two hundred thousand francs 
 down ? I will have three hundred thousand if she is at the 
 bottom of it. What, I have taken every care of her brat and 
 her husband, I have filled her place in every way, and she is 
 to beat me down ? Look here, my dear fellow, I shall then 
 have just a million. And beside that, you promise me the 
 presidency of the court at Alenson if only I can make up for 
 Madame du Ronceret " 
 
 " Right you are ! " said Maxime. 
 
 " How I shall be bored in that little town ! " said Aurelie 
 philosophically. " I have heard so much about that part of 
 the country from d'Esgrignon and Madame Val-Noble that 
 it is as though I had lived there already." 
 
 " But if I could promise you the help of the title? " 
 
 "Oh, Maxime, if you can really do that. Ay, but the 
 pigeon refuses to fly " 
 
 "And he is very ugly, with his skin like a plum; he has 
 bristles instead of whiskers, and looks like a wild boar, 
 though he has eyes like a bird of prey. He will be the finest 
 president ever seen. Be easy ! In ten minutes he will be 
 singing you Isabelle's song in the fourth act of ' Robert le 
 Diable,' l je suis a tes genoux ' (I am at thy knees). But you 
 must undertake to send Arthur back to fall at Beatrix's feet." 
 
 ".It is difficult, but among us we may manage it." 
 
 At about half-past ten the gentlemen came into the drawing- 
 room to take coffee. In the position in which Madame 
 Schontz, Couture, and du Ronceret found themselves, it is 
 easy to imagine the effect that was produced on the ambitious 
 Norman by the following conversation between Couture and 
 Maxime in a corner, carried on indeed in an undertone that 
 they might not be overheard, but which Fabien contrived to 
 hear. 
 
 "My dear fellow, if you were wise, you would accept the place
 
 BEATRIX. 335 
 
 of receiver-general in some out-of-the-way place; Madame de 
 Rochefide would get it for you. Aurelie's million francs 
 would enable you to deposit the security, and you would 
 settle everything on her as your wife. Then, if you steered 
 your boat cleverly, you would be made deputy, and the only 
 premium I ask for having saved you will be your vote in the 
 Chamber." 
 
 " I shall always be proud to serve under you." 
 
 "Oh, my boy, you have had a very close shave! Just 
 fancy, Aurelie thought herself in love with that Norman from 
 Alengon ; she wanted to have him made a baron, president 
 of the court in his native town, and officer of the Legion of 
 Honor. The noodle never guessed what Madame Schontz 
 was worth, and you owe your good fortune to her disgust ; so 
 do not give such a clever woman time to change her mind. 
 For my part, I will go and put the irons in the fire." 
 
 So Maxime left Couture in the seventh heaven of happiness, 
 and said to la Pal ferine, " Shall I take you with me, my son ? " 
 
 By eleven o'clock Aurelie found herself left with Couture, 
 Fabien, and Rochefide. Arthur was asleep in an armchair ; 
 Couture and Fabien were trying to outstay each other, but 
 without success. Madame Schontz put an end to this contest 
 by saying to Couture, "Till to-morrow, dear boy! " which 
 he took in good part. 
 
 "Mademoiselle," said Fabien, in a low voice, "when you 
 saw me so unready to respond to the proposal you made me 
 indirectly, do not imagine that there was the smallest hesita- 
 tion on my part ; but you do not know my mother ; she 
 would never consent to my happiness 
 
 "You are of age to address her with a sommation respec- 
 tueusc* my dear fellow," retorted Aurelie quite insolently. 
 " However, if you are afraid of mamma, you are not the man 
 for my money." 
 
 * A legal form by which French sons can reduce the obstinacy of recal- 
 citrant parents when they refuse their consent to a marriage.
 
 336 BEATRIX. 
 
 "Josephine!" said the Heir affectionately, as he boldly 
 put his right arm around Madame Schontz's waist, "I be- 
 lieved that you loved me." 
 
 "And what then?" 
 
 " I might perhaps pacify my mother, and gain more than 
 her consent." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 " If you would use your influence " 
 
 " To get you created baron, officer of the Legion of Honor, 
 and president of the court, my boy is that it ? Listen to 
 me, I have done so many things in the course of my life that 
 I am capable of being virtuous ! I could be an honest woman, 
 a loyal wife, and take my husband in tow to upper regions ; 
 but I insist on being so loved by him that not a glance, not 
 a thought, shall ever be given to any heart but mine, not even 
 
 in a wish How does that do for you ? Do not bind 
 
 yourself rashly; it is for life, my boy." 
 
 " With a woman like you, done, without looking twice ! " 
 cried Fabien, as much intoxicated by a look as he was by the 
 West Indian liqueurs. 
 
 " You shall never repent of that word, my brave boy ; you 
 shall be a peer of France. As to that poor old chap," she 
 went on, looking at Rochefide asleep, " it is a, double 1, all, 
 o-v-e-r, ver all over ! ' ' 
 
 She said it so cleverly and so prettily that Fabien seized 
 Madame Schontz and kissed her with an impulse of passion 
 and joy, in which the intoxication of love and wine were 
 second to that of happiness and ambition. 
 
 "But now, my dear child," said she, "you must remem- 
 ber henceforth to behave respectfully to your wife, not to 
 play the lover, and to leave me to get out of my slough as 
 decently as may be. And Couture, who believed himself a 
 rich man and receiver-general ! " 
 
 "I have a horror of the man," said Fabien. "I wish I 
 might never see him again !"
 
 BEATRIX. 337 
 
 "I will have him here no more," said the courtesan with 
 a little prudish air. "Now that we understand each other, 
 my Fabien, go; it is one o'clock." 
 
 This little scene gave rise in the Schontz household, hith- 
 erto so perfectly happy, to a phase of domestic warfare be- 
 tween Arthur and Aurelie, such as any covert interest on the 
 part of one of the partners is certain to give rise to. 
 
 The very next day Arthur woke to find himself alone; 
 Madame Schontz was cold, as women of that sort know 
 how to be. 
 
 " What happened last night? " asked he at breakfast, look- 
 ing at Aurelie. 
 
 "That is the way of it in Paris," said she. "You go 
 to bed on a wet night, next morning the pavement is dry, 
 and everything so frozen that the dust flies ; would you like 
 a brush ? ' ' 
 
 " But what ails you, dear little woman ? " 
 
 " Go, go to your great gawk of a wife ! " 
 
 "My wife?" cried the unhappy Marquis. 
 
 "Couldn't I guess why you brought Maxime here? You 
 wanted to make it up with Madame de Rochefide, who wants 
 you perhaps for some tell-tale baby. And I, whom you think 
 so cunning, was advising you to give her back her money ! 
 Oh, I know your tricks. After five years my gentleman is 
 tired of me. I am fat, Beatrix is bony ; it will be a change. 
 You are not the first man I have known with a taste for 
 skeletons. Your Beatrix dresses well, too, and you are one 
 of the men who like a clotheshorse. Beside, you want to 
 send Monsieur de Guenic packing ! That would be a tri- 
 umph ! How well it will look ! Won't it be talked about ! 
 You will be quite a hero ! " 
 
 At two o'clock Madame Schontz had not come to an end 
 
 of her ironical banter, in spite of Arthur's protestations. She 
 
 said she was engaged to dine out. She desired the " faithless 
 
 one " to go without her to the Italiens ; she was going to a 
 
 23
 
 338 BEATRIX. 
 
 first-night performance at the Ambigu-Comique, and to make 
 the acquaintance of a charming woman, Lousteau's mistress, 
 Madame de la Baudraye. 
 
 To prove his eternal attachment to his little Aurelie and 
 his aversion for his wife, Arthur offered to set out the very 
 next day for Italy and to live as her husband in Rome, Na- 
 ples, or Florence, whichever Aurelie might prefer, giving her 
 sixty thousand francs a year. 
 
 "All that is pure whims," said she. " That will not hinder 
 your making it up with your wife, and you will be wise to 
 do so." 
 
 At the end of this formidable discussion, Arthur and Aurelie 
 parted, he to play and dine at the club, she to dress and spend 
 the evening ttte-a-tite with Fabien. 
 
 Monsieur de Rochefide found Maxime at the club, and 
 poured out his complaints, as a man who felt happiness being 
 torn up from his heart by the roots that clung by every fibre. 
 Maxime listened to the Marquise's lament as polite people can 
 listen while thinking of something else. 
 
 "I am a capital counselor in such cases, my dear fellow," 
 said he. " Well, you make a great mistake in letting Aurelie 
 see how much you care for her. Let me introduce you to 
 Madame Antonia a heart to let. You will see la Schontz 
 sing very small. Why, she is seven-and-thirty, is your Schontz, 
 and Antonia is but twenty-six ! And such a woman ! Her 
 wits are not all in her brains, I can tell you. Indeed, she is 
 my pupil. If Madame Schontz still struts out her pride, do 
 you know what it means? " 
 
 "On my honor, no." 
 
 "That she means to get married; and then nothing can 
 hinder her from throwing you over. After a six years' lease 
 the woman has a right to do it. But if you will listen to me, 
 you can do better than that. At the present time your wife 
 is worth a thousand Schontzes and Antonias of the Saint- 
 Georges quarter. She will be hard to win, but not impos-
 
 BEATRIX. 339 
 
 sible ; and she will make you as happy as Orgon ! At any 
 rate, if you do not wish to look like a fool, corae to supper to- 
 night at Antonia's." 
 
 " No, I love Aurelie too well ; I will not allow her to have 
 any cause for blaming me." 
 
 " Oh, my dear fellow ! what a life you are making for your- 
 self ! " cried Maxime. 
 
 "It is eleven o'clock. She will have returned from the 
 Ambigu," said Rochefide, going off. And he roared at the 
 coachman to drive as fast as he could to the Rue de la 
 Bruyere. 
 
 Madame Schontz had given distinct orders, and monsieur 
 was admitted exactly as though he and madame were the best 
 of friends ; but madame, informed of monsieur's return, took 
 care to let monsieur hear the slam of her dressing-room door, 
 shut as doors are shut when a lady is taken by surprise. Then, 
 on the corner of the piano was Fabien's hat, intentionally for- 
 gotten, and conspicuously fetched away by the maid as soon 
 as monsieur and madame were engaged in conversation. 
 
 " So you did not go to the play, little woman ? " 
 
 " No, I changed my mind." 
 
 "And who has been here ? " he asked quite simply, seeing 
 the maid carry away the hat. 
 
 "Nobody." 
 
 To this audacious falsehood Arthur could only bow his 
 head ; this was passing under the Caudine forks of submission. 
 True love has this magnanimous cowardice. Arthur behaved 
 to Madame Schontz as Sabine did to Calyste, as Calyste did 
 to Beatrix. 
 
 Within a week there was a change like that of a grub to a 
 butterfly in the handsome and clever young Count, Charles- 
 Edouard Rusticoli de la Palferine (the hero of the sketch 
 called "A Prince of Bohemia," which makes it unnecessary 
 to describe his person and character in this place). Hitherto
 
 340 BE A TRIX. 
 
 he had lived very poorly, making up his deficits with the 
 audacity of a Danton ; now he paid his debts, by Maxime's 
 advice he had a little low carriage, he was elected to the 
 Jockey-Club, to the club in the Rue de Grammont, he be- 
 came superlatively elegant. Finally, he published in the 
 "Journal des Debats " a novel which earned him in a few 
 days such a reputation as professional writers do not achieve 
 after many years of labor and success, for in Paris nothing is 
 so vehement as what is to prove ephemeral. Nathan, per- 
 fectly certain that the Count would never write anything 
 more, praised this elegant and impertinent youth to Madame 
 de Rochefide in such terms that Beatrix, spurred on by the 
 poet's account of him, expressed a wish to see this prince of 
 fashionable vagabonds. 
 
 " He will be all the more delighted to come here," replied 
 Nathan, " because I know he is so much in love with you as 
 to commit any folly." 
 
 " But he has committed every folly already, I am told," 
 said Beatrix. 
 
 "Every folly? No," replied Nathan, "he has not yet 
 been so foolish as to love a decent woman." 
 
 A few days after the plot of the boulevard had been laid 
 between Maxime and the seductive Count Charles-Edouard, 
 this young gentleman, on whom nature had bestowed in 
 irony, no doubt a pathetically melancholy countenance, 
 made his first incursion into the nest in the Rue de Cour- 
 celles, where the dove, to receive him, fixed an evening when 
 Calyste was obliged to go out with his wife. If ever you meet 
 la Palferine or when you come to the " Prince of Bohemia " 
 in the third part of this long picture of modern manners 
 you will at once understand the triumph achieved in a single 
 evening by that sparkling wit, those astonishing high spirits, 
 especially if you can conceive of the capital by-play of the 
 sponsor who agreed to second him on this occasion. Nathan 
 was a good fellow ; he showed off the young Count as a jeweler
 
 BEATRIX. r,41 
 
 shows off a necklace he wams to sell, by making the stones 
 sparkle in the light. 
 
 La Palferine discreetly was the first to leave ; he left Nathan 
 and the Marquise together, trusting to the great author's co- 
 operation, which was admirable. Seeing the Marquise quite 
 amazed, he fired her fancy by a certain reticence, which 
 stirred in her such chords of curiosity as she did not know 
 existed in her. Nathan gave her to understand that it was 
 not so much la Palferine's wit that won him his successes with 
 women as his superior gifts in the art of love ; and he cried 
 him up beyond measure. 
 
 This is the place for setting forth a novel result of the great 
 law of contrasts, which gives rise to many a crisis in the 
 human heart, and accounts for so many vagaries that we are 
 forced to refer to it sometimes, as well as to the law of affini- 
 ties. Courtesans including all that portion of the female 
 sex which is named, unnamed, and renamed every quarter of 
 a century all preserve, in the depths of their hearts, a vigor- 
 ous wish to recover their liberty, to feel a pure, saintly, and 
 heroic love for some man to whom they can sacrifice every- 
 thing. (See "A Harlot's Progress.") They feel this anti- 
 thetical need so keenly, that it is rare to find a woman of the 
 kind who has not many times aspired to become virtuous 
 through love. The most frightful deception cannot discour- 
 age them. Women who are, on the contrary, restrained by 
 education, and by their rank in life, fettered by the dignity 
 of their family, living in the midst of wealth, crowned by a 
 halo of virtue, are tempted secretly, of course to try the 
 tropical regions of passion. These two antagonistic types of 
 women have, at the bottom of their hearts, the one a little 
 craving for virtue, the other a little craving for dissipation, 
 which Jean-Jacques Rousseau first had the courage to point 
 out. In those it is the last gleam of the divine light not yet 
 extinct ; in these it is a trace of the primitive clay. 
 
 This remaining claw of the beast was tickled, this hair of
 
 342 BEATRIX. 
 
 the devil was pulled with the greatest skill, by Nathan. The 
 Marquise seriously wondered whether she had not hitherto 
 been the dupe of her intellect, whether her education was 
 complete. Vice ! is perhaps the desire to know everything. 
 
 Next day Calyste was seen by Beatrix as what he was a 
 perfect and loyal gentleman, devoid of spirit and wit. 
 
 In Paris, to be known as a wit, a man's wit must flow as 
 water flows from a spring ; for all men of fashion, and Paris- 
 ians in general, are witty. But Calyste was too much in love, 
 he was too much absorbed to observe the change in Beatrix, 
 and satisfy her by opening up fresh veins ; he was very color- 
 less in the reflected light of the previous evening and could 
 not give the greedy Beatrix the smallest excitement. A great 
 love is a credit account open to such voracious drafts on it 
 that the moment of bankruptcy is inevitable. 
 
 In spite of the weariness of this day the day when a 
 woman is bored by her lover ! Beatrix shuddered with fears 
 as she thought of a duel between la Palferine, the successor 
 of Maxime de Trailles, and Calyste du Guenic, a brave man 
 without brag. She therefore hesitated to see the young 
 Count any more ; but the knot was cut by a simple incident. 
 Beatrix had a third share in a box at the Italiens a dark box 
 on the pit tier where she might not be seen. For some few days 
 Calyste had been so bold as to accompany the Marquise and 
 sit behind her, timing their arrival late enough to attract no 
 attention. Beatrix was always one of the first to leave before 
 the end of the last act, and Calyste escorted her, keeping an 
 eye on her, though old Antoine was, as usual, in waiting on 
 his mistress. 
 
 Maxime and la Palferine studied these tactics, dictated by 
 the proprieties, by the love of concealment characteristic of 
 the "Eternal Baby," and also by a dread that weighs on 
 every woman who, having once been a constellation of fashion, 
 has fallen for love from her rank in the zodiac. She then 
 fears humiliation as a worse agony than death ; but this agony
 
 BEATRIX. :;i;i 
 
 of pride, this shipwreck, which women who have kept their 
 place on Olympus inflict on those who have fallen, came upon 
 her, by Maxime's contriving, under the most horrible circum- 
 stances. 
 
 At a performance of "Lucia," which ended, as is well 
 known, by one of Rubini's greatest triumphs, Madame de 
 Rochefide, before she was called by Antoine, came out from 
 the corridor into the vestibule of the theatre, where the stairs 
 were crowded with pretty women, grouped on the steps, or 
 standing in knots till their servants should bring up their 
 carriages. Beatrix was at once recognized by all ; a whisper 
 ran through every group, rising to a murmur. In the twink- 
 ling of an eye every woman vanished ; the Marquise was left 
 alone as if plague-stricken. Calyste, seeing his wife on one 
 of the staircases, dared not join the outcast, and it was in 
 vain that Beatrix twice gave him a tearful look, an entreaty to 
 come to her support. At that moment la Palfe'rine, elegant, 
 lordly, and charming, quitted two other women, and came, 
 with a bow, to talk to the Marquise. 
 
 " Take my arm and come defiantly with me ; I can find 
 your carriage," said he. 
 
 "Will you finish the evening with me?" she replied, as 
 she got into her carriage and made room for him by her side. 
 
 La Palferine said to his groom, " Follow madame's car- 
 riage," and got in with Madame de Rochefide, to Calyste's 
 amazement. He was left standing, planted on his feet as 
 though they were made of lead, for it was on seeing him 
 looking pale and blank that Beatrix had invited the young 
 Count to accompany her. Every dove is a Robespierre in 
 white feathers. 
 
 Three carriages arrived together at the Rue de Courcelles 
 with lightning swiftness Calyste's, la Palferine's, and the 
 Marquise's. 
 
 " So you are here ? " said Beatrix, on going into her draw- 
 ing-room leaning on the young Count's arm, and finding
 
 344 BEATRIX. 
 
 Calyste already there, his horse having out-distanced the 
 other two carriages. 
 
 " So you are acquainted with this gentleman ! " said Calyste 
 to Beatrix with suppressed fury. 
 
 " Monsieur le Comte de la Palferine was introduced to me 
 by Nathan ten days ago," said Beatrix; " and you, monsieur, 
 have known me for four years " 
 
 "And I am ready, madame," said la Palferine, " to make 
 Madame d'Espard repent of having been the first to turn her 
 back on you down to her grandchildren " 
 
 " Oh, it was she I" cried Beatrix. " I will pay her out." 
 
 "If you want to be revenged, you must win back your 
 husband, but I am prepared to bring him back to you," said 
 la Palferine in her ear. 
 
 The conversation thus begun was carried on until two in 
 the morning, without giving Calyste an opportunity of speak- 
 ing two words apart to Beatrix, who constantly kept his rage 
 in subjection by her glances. La Palferine, who was not in 
 love with her, was as superior in good taste, wit, and charm 
 as Calyste was beneath himself; writhing on his seat like a 
 worm cut in two, and thrice starting to his feet with an im- 
 pulse to stop la Palferine. The third time that Calyste flew 
 at his rival, the Count said, "Are you in pain, monsieur?" 
 in a tone that made Calyste sit down on the nearest chair, 
 and remain as immovable as an image. 
 
 The Marquise chatted with the light ease of a Celimene, 
 ignoring Calyste's presence. La Palferine was so supremely 
 clever as to depart on a last witty speech, leaving the two 
 lovers at war. 
 
 Thus, by Maxime's skill, the flames of discord were raging 
 in the divided households of Monsieur and Madame de 
 Rochefide. 
 
 On the morrow, having heard from la Palferine, at the 
 Jockey-Club, where the young Count was playing whist with 
 great profit, of the success of the scene he had plotted, Maxime
 
 BE A TRIX. 345 
 
 went to the Hotel Schontz to ascertain how Aure"lie was man- 
 aging her affairs. 
 
 "My dear fellow," cried Madame Schontz, laughing as she 
 saw him, " I am at my wits' end. I am closing my career 
 with the discovery that it is a misfortune to be clever." 
 
 "Explain your meaning." 
 
 " In the first place, my dear friend, I kept my Arthur for a 
 week on a regimen of kicking his shins, with the most patri- 
 otic old stories and the most unpleasant discipline known in 
 our profession. 'You are ill,' said he with fatherly mild- 
 ness, ' for I have never been anything but kind to you, and I 
 perfectly adore you.' 'You have one fault, my dear,' said I; 
 'you bore me.' 'Well, but have you not all the cleverest 
 men and the handsomest young fellows in Paris to amuse 
 you ? ' said the poor man. I was shut up. Then I felt that I 
 loved him." 
 
 "Hah!" said Maxime. 
 
 " What is to be done ? These ways are too much for us ; it 
 is impossible to resist them. Then I changed the stop; I 
 made eyes at that wild boar of a lawyer, my future husband, 
 as great a sheep now as Arthur ; I made him sit there in Roche- 
 fide's armchair, and I thought him a perfect fool. How 
 bored I was ! But, of course, I had to keep Fabien there 
 that we might be discovered together " 
 
 "Well," cried Maxime, " get on with your story ! When 
 Rochefide found you together, what next?" 
 
 " You would never guess, my good fellow. By your in- 
 structions the banns are published, the marriage-contract is 
 being drawn, Notre-Dame de Lorette is out of court. When 
 it is a case of matrimony, something may be paid on account. 
 When he found us together, Fabien and me, poor Arthur stole 
 off on tiptoe to the dining-room, and began growling and 
 clearing his throat and knocking the chairs about. That 
 great gaby Fabien, to whom I cannot tell everything, was 
 frightened, and that, my dear Maxime, is the point we have
 
 346 BEATRIX. 
 
 reached. Why, if Arthur should find the couple of us some 
 morning on coming into my room, he is capable of saying, 
 ' Have you had a pleasant night, children ? ' ' 
 
 Maxime nodded his head, and for some minutes sat twirling 
 his cane. 
 
 "I know the sort of man," said he. "This is what you 
 must do ; there is no help for it but to throw Arthur out the 
 window and keep the door tightly shut. You must begin 
 again the same scene with Fabien " 
 
 " How intolerable ! For, after all, you see, the sacrament 
 has not yet blessed me with virtue " 
 
 "You must contrive to catch Arthur's eye when he finds 
 you together," Maxime went on ; "if he gets angry, there is 
 an end of the matter. If he only growls as before, there is 
 yet more an end of it." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 "Well, you must be angry; you must say, 'I thought you 
 loved and valued me ; but you have ceased to care for me ; 
 
 you feel no jealousy ' but you know it all, chapter and 
 
 verse. ' Under such circumstances Maxime ' (drag me in) 
 ' would kill his man on the spot ' (and cry). ' And Fabien ' 
 (make him ashamed of himself by comparing him with Fabien) 
 ' Fabien would have a dagger ready to stab you to the heart. 
 That is what I call love ! There, go ! Good-night, good-by ! 
 Take back your house; I am going to marry Fabien. He 
 will give me his name, he will ! He has thrown over his old 
 mother ! ' In short, you " 
 
 "Of course, of course! I will be magnificent!" cried 
 Madame Schontz. "Ah, Maxime ! There will never be but 
 one Maxime, as there never was but one de Marsay." 
 
 " La Palferine is greater than I," said de Trailles modestly. 
 " He is getting on famously." 
 
 " He has a tongue, but you have backbone and a grip. 
 How many people you have kept going ! How many you 
 have doubled up ! "
 
 BE A TRIX. 347 
 
 " La Palferine has every qualification ; he is deep and well 
 informed, while lam ignorant," replied Maxime. "I have 
 seen Rastignac, who came to terms at once with the keeper of 
 the seals. Fabien will be made president of the court and 
 officer of the Legion of Honor after a year's probation." 
 
 "I will take up religion," replied Madame Schontz, em- 
 phasizing the phrase so as to win an approving look from 
 Maxime. 
 
 " Priests are worth a hundred of us ! " said Maxime. 
 
 " Really? " said Aurelie. " Then I may find some one to 
 talk to in a country town. I have begun my part. Fabien 
 has already told his mother that grace has dawned on me, and 
 he has bewitched the good woman with my million and his 
 presidency ; she agrees that we are to live with her ; she asked 
 for a portrait of me and has sent me hers ; if Love were to 
 look at it, he would fall backward. Go then, Maxime; I 
 will demolish the poor man this evening. It goes to my 
 heart." 
 
 Two days later la Palferine and Maxime met at the door of 
 the Jockey-Club. 
 
 "It is done," said Charles-Edouard. 
 
 The words, containing a whole horrible and terrible drama, 
 such as vengeance often carries out, made the Comte de 
 Trailles smile. 
 
 " We shall have all de Rochefide's jeremiads," said Maxime, 
 "for you and Aurelie have finished together. Aurelie has 
 turned Arthur out of doors, and now we must get hold of him. 
 He is to give three hundred thousand francs to Madame du 
 Ronceret and return to his wife. We will prove to him that 
 Beatrix is superior to Aurelie.", 
 
 "We have at least ten days before us," said Charles- 
 Edouard sapiently, "and not too much in all conscience; 
 for now I know the Marquise, and the poor man will be hand- 
 somely fleeced."
 
 348 BEATRIX. 
 
 "What will you do when the bomb bursts?" asked Max- 
 ime de Trailles. 
 
 " We can always be clever when we have time to think it 
 out ; I am grand when I am able to prepare for it." 
 
 The two gamblers went into the drawing-room together, 
 and found the Marquis de Rochefide looking two years older; 
 he had no stays on ; he had sacrificed his elegance ; his beard 
 had grown. 
 
 " Well, my dear Marquis ? " said Maxime. 
 
 "Oh, my dear fellow, my life is broken " and for ten 
 
 minutes Arthur talked and Maxime gravely listened; he 
 was thinking of his marriage, which was to take place a week 
 hence. 
 
 " My dear Arthur, I advised you of the only means I knew 
 of to keep Aurelie, and you did not choose " 
 
 "What means?" 
 
 " Did I not advise you to go to supper with Antonia? " 
 
 " Quite true. How can I help it? I love her. And you, 
 you make love as Grisier fences." 
 
 "Listen to me, Arthur; give her three hundred thousand 
 francs for her little house, and I promise you I will find you 
 something better. I will speak to you again of the unknown 
 fair one by-and-by ; I see d'Ajuda, who wants to say two 
 words to me." 
 
 And Maxime left the inconsolable man to talk to the rep- 
 resentative of the family needing consolation. 
 
 " My dear fellow," said the other Marquis in an undertone, 
 " the Duchess is in despair ; Calyste has quietly packed up 
 and procured a passport. Sabine wants to follow the fugi- 
 tives, catch Beatrix, and claw her. She is expecting another 
 child ; and the whole thing looks rather murderous, for she 
 has gone quite openly and bought pistols." 
 
 "Tell the Duchess that Madame de Rochefide is not going, 
 and within a fortnight the whole thing will be settled. Now, 
 your hand on it, d'Ajuda. Neither you nor I have said any-
 
 BEATRIX. 349 
 
 thing or known anything. We shall admire the effects of 
 chance. ' ' 
 
 ' ' The Duchess has already made me swear secrecy on the 
 Gospels and the cross. ' ' 
 
 " You will receive my wife a month hence? " 
 
 " With pleasure." 
 
 "Everybody will be satisfied," replied Maxime. "Only 
 warn the Duchess that something is about to happen which 
 will delay her departure for Italy for six weeks ; it concerns 
 Monsieur du Guenic. You will know all about it later." 
 
 "What is it?" asked d'Ajuda, who was looking at la 
 Palferine. 
 
 " Socrates said before his death, ' We owe a cock to ^Bs- 
 culapius.' But your brother-in-law will be let off for the 
 comb," replied la Palferine without hesitation. 
 
 For ten days Calyste endured the burden of a woman's 
 anger, all the more implacable because it was seconded by a 
 real passion. Beatrix felt that form of love so roughly but 
 truly described to the Duchess by Maxime de Trailles. Per- 
 haps there is no highly organized being that does not expe- 
 rience this overwhelming passion once in a lifetime. The 
 Marquise felt herself quelled by a superior force, by a young 
 man who was not impressed by her rank, who, being of as 
 noble birth as herself, could look at her with a calm and pow- 
 erful eye, and from whom her greatest feminine efforts could 
 scarcely extract a smile of admiration. Finally, she was 
 crushed by a tyrant, who always left her bathed in tears, 
 deeply hurt, and believing herself wronged. Charles-Edouard 
 played the same farce on Madame de Rochefide that she had 
 been playing these six months on Calyste. 
 
 Since the scene of her mortification at the Italiens, Beatrix 
 had adhered to one formula 
 
 " You preferred the world and your wife to me, so you do 
 not love me. If you wish to prove that you do love me, 
 sacrifice your wife and the world. Give up Sabine, leave
 
 350 SEA TRIX. 
 
 her, and let us go to live in Switzerland, in Italy, or in 
 Germany." 
 
 Justifying herself by this cool ultimatum, she had estab- 
 lished the sort of blockade which women carry into effect by 
 cold looks, scornful shrugs, and a face like a stone citadel. 
 She believed herself rid of Calyste ; she thought he would 
 never venture on a breach with the Grandlieus. To give up 
 Sabine, to whom Mademoiselle des Touches had given her 
 fortune, meant poverty for him. 
 
 However, Calyste, mad with despair, had secretly pro- 
 cured a passport, and begged his mother to forward him a 
 considerable sum. While waiting for the money to reach 
 him, he kept watch over Beatrix, himself a victim to the 
 jealousy of a Breton. At last, nine days after the fateful 
 communication made by la Palf^rine to Maxime at the club, 
 the Baron, to whom his mother had sent thirty thousand 
 francs, flew to the Rue de Courcelles, determined to force the 
 blockade, to turn out la Palferine, and to leave Paris with his 
 idol appeased. 
 
 This was one of those fearful alternatives when a woman 
 who has preserved a fragment of self-respect may sink for ever 
 into the depths of vice, but may, on the other hand, return 
 to virtue. Hitherto Madame de Rochefide had regarded 
 herself as a virtuous woman, whose heart had been invaded 
 by two passions ; but to love Charles-Edouard, and allow her- 
 self to be loved by Calyste, would wreck her self-esteem ; for 
 where falsehood begins, infamy begins. She had granted 
 rights to Calyste, and no human power could hinder the 
 Breton from throwing himself at her feet and watering them 
 with the tears of abject repentance. Many persons wonder to 
 see the icy insensibility under which women smother their 
 passions; but if they could not thus blot out the past, life 
 for them would be bereft of dignity ; they could never escape 
 from the inevitable collusion to which they had once suc- 
 cumbed,
 
 BEATRIX. Sol 
 
 In her entirely new position Beatrix would have been saved 
 if la Palferine had come to her ; but old Antoine's alertness 
 was her ruin. 
 
 On hearing a carriage stop at the door, she exclaimed to 
 Calyste, "Here are visitors!" and she hurried away to 
 prevent a castastrophe. 
 
 Antoine, a prudent man, replied to Charles-Edouard, who 
 had called solely to hear these very words, " Madame is gone 
 out." 
 
 When Beatrix heard from the old servant that the young 
 Count had called, and what he had been told, she said, 
 ''Quite right," and returned to the drawing-room, saying to 
 herself, "I will be a nun !" 
 
 Calyste, who had made so bold as to open the window, 
 caught sight of his rival. 
 
 " Who was it? " he asked. 
 
 " I do not know ; Antoine has not come up yet." 
 
 " It was la Palferine " 
 
 " Very possibly." 
 
 "You love him, and that is why you find fault with me. 
 I saw him ! " 
 
 "You saw him?" 
 
 "I opened the window." 
 
 Beatrix dropped half-dead on the sofa. Then she tried to 
 temporize to save the future ; she put off their departure for 
 ten days on the plea of business, and vowed to herself that 
 she would close her door against Calyste if only she could 
 pacify la Palferine, for these are the terrible consequences, 
 the horrible compromises and burning torments that underlie 
 lives that have gone off the rails on which the great train of 
 society runs. 
 
 As soon as Beatrix was alone she felt so miserable, so deeply 
 humiliated, that she went to bed ; she was ill ; that fearful 
 struggle that rent her heart seemed to leave a horrible reac- 
 tion, and she sent for the doctor; but at the same time she
 
 352 BEATRIX. 
 
 dispatched to la Palferine the following note, in which she 
 avenged herself on Calyste with a sort of frenzy : 
 
 " Come to see me, my friend, I am in desperation. An- 
 toine turned you away when your visit would have put an end 
 to one of the most horrible nightmares of my life by rescuing 
 me from a man I hate, whom I hope never to see again. I 
 love no one on earth but you, and I never shall love any one 
 but you, though I am so unhappy as not to please you so much 
 as I could wish " 
 
 She covered four pages, which, having begun thus, ended 
 in a rhapsody, far too poetical to be reproduced in print, in 
 which Beatrix so effectually compromised herself that in con- 
 clusion she said 
 
 "Am I not wholly at your mercy? Ah, no price would be 
 too great for me to prove how dearly you are loved ! ' ' 
 
 And she signed her name, a thing she had never done for 
 either Calyste or Conti. 
 
 On the following day, when the young Count called on the 
 Marquise, she was taking a bath. Antoine begged him to 
 wait. But he dismissed Calyste in his turn, when, starving with 
 passion, he also came early ; and la Palferine could see him as 
 he got into his carriage again in despair. 
 
 "Oh, Charles," said the Marquise, coming into the draw- 
 ing-room, " you have ruined me ! " 
 
 "I know it, madame," replied he coolly. "You swore 
 that you loved me alone, you offered to give me a letter in 
 which you will set down the reasons you would have had for 
 killing yourself, so that in the event of your being unfaithful 
 to me I might poison you without fear of human justice as if 
 superior souls needed to resort to poison to avenge themselves ! 
 You wrote, ' No price would be too great for me to prove how 
 dearly you are loved ! ' Well, I find a contradiction between 
 these closing words of your letter and your speech, ' You have
 
 BEATRIX. 353 
 
 ruined me.' I will know now whether you have had the 
 courage to break with du Guenic." 
 
 " You are revenged on him beforehand," said she, throw- 
 ing her arms round his neck. "And that matter is enough 
 to bind you and me for ever " 
 
 " Madame," said the Prince of bohemia coldly, " if you 
 desire my friendship, I consent; but there are condi- 
 tions " 
 
 "Conditions?" 
 
 "Yes, conditions as follows: You must be reconciled with 
 Monsieur de Rochefide, resume the honors of your position, 
 return to your fine house in the Rue d' Anjou you will be one 
 of the queens of Paris. You can achieve this by making 
 Rochefide play a part in politics and guiding your conduct 
 with such skill and tenacity as Madame d'Espard has dis- 
 played. This is the position which any woman must fill whom 
 I am to honor with my devotion " 
 
 " But you forget that Monsieur de Rochefide's consent is 
 necessary." 
 
 " Oh, my dear child," replied la Palferine, "we have pre- 
 pared him for it. I have pledged my honor as a gentleman 
 that you were worth all the Schontzes of the Quartier Saint- 
 Georges put together, and you owe it to my honor " 
 
 For eight days, every day, Calyste called on Beatrix and 
 was invariably sent away by Antoine, who put on a grave face 
 and assured him, " Madame la Marquise is seriously ill." 
 
 From thence Calyste rushed off to la Palferine, whose ser- 
 vant always explained, " Monsieur le Comte is gone hunting." 
 And each time Calyste left a letter for the Count. 
 
 At last, on the ninth day, Calyste, in reply to a note from 
 la Palferine fixing a time for an explanation, found him at 
 home, but with him Maxime de Trailles, to whom the younger 
 rake wished, no doubt, to give proof of his abilities by getting 
 him to witness the scene. 
 23
 
 354 BEATRIX. 
 
 " Monsieur le Baron," said Charles-^douard quietly, " here 
 are the six notes you have done me the honor of writing me. 
 They are unopened, just as you sent them ; I knew beforehand 
 what might be in them when I heard that you had been seek- 
 ing me everywhere since the day when I looked at you out of 
 the window, while you were at the door of a house where, 
 on the previous day, I had been at the door while you were 
 at the window. I thought it best to remain ignorant of an 
 ill-judged challenge. Between you and me, you have too 
 much good taste to owe a woman a grudge because she has 
 ceased to love you. And to fight your preferred rival is a 
 bad way to reinstate yourself. 
 
 "Also, in the present case, your letters were invalidated, 
 null, and void, as lawyers say, in consequence of a radical 
 error : you have too much good sense to quarrel with a hus- 
 band for taking back his wife. Monsieur de Rochefide feels 
 that the Marquise's position is undignified. You will no 
 longer find Madame de Rochefide in the Rue de Courcelles ; 
 six months hence, next winter, you will see her in her hus- 
 band's home. You very rashly thrust yourself into the midst 
 of a reconciliation between a married couple, to which you 
 yourself gave rise by failing to shelter Madame de Rochefide 
 from the mortification she endured at the opera-house. As 
 we left, Beatrix, to whom I had already brought some friendly 
 advances on her husband's part, took me in her carriage, and 
 her first words were, ' Go and bring Arthur ! ' ' 
 
 "Oh, heavens!" cried Calyste, "she was right; I had 
 failed in my devotion " 
 
 "But, unfortunately, monsieur, poor Arthur was living with 
 one of those dreadful women that Madame Schontz, who for 
 a long time had expected every hour to find herself deserted. 
 Madame Schontz, who, on the strength of Beatrix's complex- 
 ion, cherished a desire to see herself some day the Marquise 
 de Rochefide, was furious when she saw her castles in the air 
 fallen. Those women, monsieur, will lose an eye if they can
 
 BEATRIX. 355 
 
 spoil two for an enemy; la Schontz, who has just left Paris, 
 has been the instrument of spoiling six ! And if I had been 
 so rash as to love Beatrix, the sum-total would have been 
 eight. You, monsieur, must have discovered that you need 
 an oculist." 
 
 Maxime could not help smiling at the change in Calyste's 
 face ; he turned pale as his eyes were opened to the situation. 
 
 " Would you believe, Monsieur le Baron, that that wretched 
 woman has consented to marry the man who furnished her 
 with means of revenge ? Oh ! women ! You understand now 
 why Beatrix should shut herself up with Arthur for a few 
 months at Nogent-sur-Marne, where they have a charming 
 little house ; they will recover their sight there. Meanwhile 
 their house will be entirely redecorated ; the Marquise means 
 to display a princely style of splendor. When a man is sin- 
 cerely in love with so noble a woman, so great, so exquisite, 
 the victim of conjugal devotion, as soon as she has the courage 
 to return to her duties as a wife, the part of those who adore 
 her as you do, who admire her as I do, is to remain her friends 
 when they can be nothing more. 
 
 "You will forgive me for having thought it well to invite 
 Monsieur de Trailles to be present at this explanation, but I 
 was particularly anxious to make this all perfectly clear. For 
 my part, I especially wished to assure you that, though I ad- 
 mire Madame de Rochefide's cleverness as a woman, she is to 
 me supremely odious." 
 
 " And that is what our fairest dreams, our celestial loves end 
 in ! " said Calyste, overwhelmed by so many revelations and 
 disenchantments. 
 
 " In a fish's tail," cried Maxime, " or, which is worse, in 
 an apothecary's gallipot ! I have never known a first love 
 that did not end idiotically. Ah, Monsieur le Baron, what- 
 ever there may be that is heavenly in man finds its nourish- 
 ment in heaven alone ! This is the excuse for us rakes. I, 
 monsieur, have gone deeply into the question, and, as you see,
 
 356 BEATRIX. 
 
 I am just married. I shall be faithful to my wife, and I 
 would urge you to return to Madame du Guenic but three 
 months hence. 
 
 " Do not regret Beatrix ; she is a pattern of those vain 
 natures, devoid of energy, but flirts out of vainglory a 
 Madame d'Espard without political faculty, a woman devoid 
 of heart and brain, frivolous in wickedness. Madame de 
 Rochefide loves no one but Madame de Rochefide ; she would 
 have involved you in an irremediable quarrel with Madame du 
 Guenic, and then have thrown you over without a qualm ; in 
 fact, she is as inadequate for vice as for virtue." 
 
 "I do not agree with you, Maxime," said la Palferine ; 
 " she will be the most delightful mistress of a great house in 
 all Paris." 
 
 Calyste did not leave the house without shaking hands with 
 Charles-Edouard and Maxime de Trailles, thanking them for 
 having cured him of his illusions. 
 
 Three days later the Duchesse de Grandlieu, who had not 
 seen her daughter Sabine since the morning of the great con- 
 ference, called one morning and found Calyste in his bath- 
 room. Sabine was sewing at some new finery for her baby- 
 clothes. 
 
 " Well, how are you children getting on ? " asked the kind 
 Duchess. 
 
 " As well as possible, dear mamma," replied Sabine, look- 
 ing at her mother with eyes bright with happiness. "We 
 have acted out the fable of the Two Pigeons that is all." 
 
 Calyste held out his hand to his wife and pressed hers ten- 
 derly. 
 
 1838-1844.
 
 THE PURSE. 
 
 Translated by CLARA BELL. 
 
 To Sofka. 
 
 "Have you observed, mademoiselle, that the painters 
 and sculptors of the Middle Ages, when they placed 
 two figures in adoration, one on each side of a fair 
 Saint, never failed to give them a family likeness ? 
 When you here see your name among those that are 
 dear to me, and under whose auspices I place my 
 works, remember that touching harmony, and you will 
 see in this not so much an act of homage as an expres- 
 sion of the brotherly affection of your devoted servant, 
 
 "DE BALZAC." 
 
 FOR souls to whom effusiveness is easy there is a delicious 
 hour that falls when it is not yet night, but is no longer day; 
 the twilight gleam throws softened lights or tricksy reflections 
 on every object, and favors a dreamy mood which vaguely 
 weds itself to the play of light and shade. The silence which 
 generally prevails at that time makes it particularly dear to 
 artists, who grow contemplative, stand a few paces back from 
 the pictures on which they can no longer work, and pass 
 judgment on them, rapt by the subject whose most recondite 
 meaning then flashes on the inner eye of genius. He who 
 has never stood pensive by a friend's side in such an hour of 
 poetic dreaming can hardly understand its inexpressible sooth- 
 ingness. Favored by the clear-obscure, the material skill 
 employed by art to produce illusion entirely disappears. If 
 the work is a picture, the figures represented seem to speak 
 and walk; the shade is shadow, the light is day; the flesh 
 
 (357)
 
 358 THE PURSE. 
 
 lives, eyes move, blood flows in their veins, and stuffs have 
 a changing sheen. Imagination helps the realism of every 
 detail, and only sees the beauties of the work. At that hour 
 illusion reigns despotically ; perhaps it awakes at nightfall ! 
 Is not illusion a sort of .night to the mind, which we people 
 with dreams? Illusion then unfolds its wings, it bears the 
 soul aloft to the world of fancies, a world full of voluptuous 
 imaginings, where the artist forgets the real world, yesterday 
 and the morrow, the future everything down to its miseries, 
 the good and the evil alike. 
 
 At this magic hour a young painter, a man of talent, who 
 saw in art nothing but Art itself, was perched on a step-ladder 
 which helped him to work at a large, high painting, now 
 nearly finished. Criticising himself, honestly admiring him- 
 self, floating on the current of his thoughts, he then lost 
 himself in one of those meditative moods which ravish and 
 elevate the soul, soothe it, and comfort it. His reverie had 
 no doubt lasted a long time. Night fell. Whether he meant 
 to come down from his perch, or whether he made some ill- 
 judged movement, believing himself to be on the floor the 
 event did not allow of his remembering exactly the cause of 
 his accident he fell, his head struck a footstool, he lost con- 
 sciousness and lay motionless during a space of time of which 
 he knew not the length. 
 
 A sweet voice aroused him from the stunned condition into 
 which he had sunk. When he opened his eyes the flash of a 
 bright light made him close them again immediately; but 
 through the mist that veiled his senses he heard the whisper- 
 ing of two women, and felt two young, two timid hands on 
 which his head was resting. He soon recovered conscious- 
 ness, and by the light of an old-fashioned argand lamp he 
 could make out the most charming girl's face he had ever 
 seen, one of those heads which are often supposed to be a 
 freak of the brush, but which to him suddenly realized the 
 theories of the ideal beauty which every artist creates for him-
 
 THE PURSE. 359 
 
 self, and whence his art proceeds. The features of the un- 
 known belonged, so to say, to the refined and delicate type 
 of Prudhon's school, but had also the poetic sentiment which 
 Girodet gave to the inventions of his phantasy. The fresh- 
 ness of the temples, the regular arch of the eyebrows, the 
 purity of outline, the virginal innocence so plainly stamped 
 on every feature of her countenance, made the girl a perfect 
 creature. Her figure was slight and graceful, and frail in 
 form. Her dress, though simple and neat, revealed neither 
 wealth nor penury. 
 
 As he recovered his senses, the painter gave expression to 
 his admiration by a look of surprise, and stammered some 
 confused thanks. He found a handkerchief pressed to his 
 forehead, and above the smell peculiar to a studio, he 
 recognized the strong odor of ether, applied no doubt to 
 revive him from his fainting fit. Finally he saw an old 
 woman, looking like a marquise of the old school, who held 
 the lamp and was advising the young girl. 
 
 "Monsieur," said the younger woman in reply to one of 
 the questions put by the painter during the few minutes when 
 he was still under the influence of the vagueness that the 
 shock had produced in his ideas, " my mother and I heard 
 the noise of your fall on the floor, and we fancied we heard 
 a groan. The silence following on the crash alarmed us, 
 and we hurried up. Finding the key in the latch, we happily 
 took the liberty of entering, and we found you lying motion- 
 less on the ground. My mother went to fetch what was 
 needed to bathe your head and revive you. You have cut 
 your forehead there. Do you feel it ? " 
 
 "Yes, I do now," he replied. 
 
 "Oh, it will be nothing," said the old mother. " Hap- 
 pily your head rested against this lay-figure." 
 
 "I feel infinitely better," replied the painter. "I need 
 nothing further but a hackney cab to take me home. The 
 porter's wife will go for one."
 
 360 THE PURSE. 
 
 He tried to repeat his thanks to the two strangers ; but at 
 each sentence the elder lady interrupted him, saying, " To- 
 morrow, monsieur, pray be careful to put on leeches or to be 
 bled, and drink a few cups of something healing. A fall may 
 be dangerous." 
 
 The young girl stole a look at the painter and at the 
 pictures in the studio. Her expression and her glances 
 revealed perfect propriety; her curiosity seemed rather ab- 
 sence of mind, and her eyes seemed to speak the interest 
 which women feel, with the most engaging spontaneity, in 
 everything which causes us suffering. The two strangers 
 seemed to forget the painter's works in the painter's mis- 
 hap. When he had reassured them as to his condition 
 they left, looking at him with an anxiety that was equally 
 free from insistence and from familiarity, without asking 
 any indiscreet questions, or trying to incite him to any 
 wish to visit them. Their proceedings all bore the hall- 
 mark of natural refinement and good taste. Their noble 
 and simple manners at first made no great impression on 
 the painter, but subsequently, as he recalled all the details 
 of the incident, he was greatly struck by them. 
 
 When they reached the floor beneath that occupied as 
 the painter's studio, the old lady gently observed, "Ade- 
 laide, you left the door open." 
 
 "That was to come to my assistance," said the painter, 
 with a grateful smile. 
 
 "You came down just now, mother," replied the young 
 girl, with a blush. 
 
 " Would you like us to accompany you all the way down 
 stairs?" asked the mother. "The stairs are dark." 
 
 "No, thank you, indeed, madame; I am much better." 
 
 "Hold tightly by the rail." 
 
 The two women remained on the landing to light the 
 young man, listening to the sound of his steps as he de- 
 scended the stairs.
 
 THE PURSE. 361 
 
 In order to set forth clearly all the exciting and unex- 
 pected interest this scene might have for the young painter, 
 it must be told that he had only a few days since estab- 
 lished his studio in the attics of this house, situated in the 
 darkest and, therefore, the mo/t muddy part of the Rue de 
 Suresnes, almost opposite the church of the Madeleine, and 
 quite close to his rooms in the Rue des Champs-Elysees. 
 The fame his talent had won him having made him one of 
 the artists most dear to his country, he was beginning to 
 feel free from want, and, to use his own expression, was 
 enjoying his last privations. Instead of going to his work 
 in one of the studios near the city gates, where the mod- 
 erate rents had hitherto been in proportion to his humble 
 earnings, he had gratified a wish that was new every morning, 
 by sparing himself a long walk, and the loss of much time, 
 now more valuable than ever. 
 
 No man in the world would have inspired feelings of a 
 greater interest than Hippolyte Schinner if he would ever 
 have consented to make acquaintance ; but he did not lightly 
 intrust to others the secrets of his life. He was the idol 
 of a necessitous mother, who had brought him up at the 
 cost of the severest privations. Mademoiselle Schinner, the 
 daughter of an Alsatian farmer, had never been married. Her 
 tender soul had been cruelly crushed, long ago, by a rich 
 man, who did not pride himself on any great delicacy in his 
 love affairs. The day when, as a young girl, in all the radi- 
 ance of her beauty and all the triumph of her life, she suffered, 
 at the cost of her heart and her sweet illusions, the disen- 
 chantment which falls on us so slowly and yet so quickly 
 for we try to postpone as long as possible our belief in evil, 
 and it seems to come too soon that day was a whole age of 
 reflection, and it was also a day of religious thought and 
 resignation. She refused the alms of the man who had be- 
 trayed her, renounced the world, and made a glory of her 
 shame. She gave herself up entirely to her motherly love,
 
 362 THE PURSE, 
 
 seeking in it all her joys in exchange for the social pleasures 
 to which she bid farewell. She lived by work, saving up a 
 treasure in her son. And, in after years, a day, an hour, 
 repaid her amply for the long and weary sacrifices of her 
 indigence. 
 
 At the last exhibition her son had received the Cross of the 
 Legion of Honor. The newspapers, unanimous in hailing an 
 unknown genius, still rang with sincere praises. Artists 
 themselves acknowledged Schinner as a master, and dealers 
 covered his canvasses with gold-pieces. At five-and-twenty 
 Hippolyte Schinner, to whom his mother had transmitted her 
 woman's soul, understood more clearly than ever his position 
 in the world. Anxious to restore to his mother the pleasures 
 of which society had so long robbed her, he lived for her, 
 hoping by the aid of fame and fortune to see her one day 
 happy, rich, respected, and surrounded by men of mark. 
 Schinner had therefore chosen his friends among the most 
 honorable and distinguished men. Fastidious in the selection 
 of his intimates, he desired to raise still further a position 
 which his talent had placed high. The work to which he had 
 devoted himself from boyhood, by compelling him to dwell 
 in solitude the mother of great thoughts had left him the 
 beautiful beliefs which grace the early days of life. His 
 adolescent soul was not closed to any of the thousand bashful 
 emotions by which a young man is a being apart, whose heart 
 abounds in joys, in poetry, in virginal hopes, puerile in the 
 eyes of men of the world, but deep because they are single- 
 hearted. 
 
 He was endowed with the gentle and polite manners which 
 speak to the soul, and fascinate even those who do not under- 
 stand them. He was well-made. His voice, coming from 
 his heart, stirred that of others to noble sentiments, and bore 
 witness to his true modesty by a certain ingenuousness of 
 tone. Those who saw him felt drawn to him by that attrac- 
 tion of the moral nature which men of science are happily
 
 THE PURSE. 363 
 
 unable to analyze ; they would detect in it some phenomenon 
 of galvanism, or the current of I know not what fluid, and 
 express our sentiments in a formula of ratios of oxygen and 
 electricity. 
 
 These details will perhaps explain to strong-minded persons 
 and to men of fashion why, in the absence of the porter whom 
 he had sent to the end of the Rue de la Madeleine to call him 
 a coach, Hippolyte Schinner did not ask the man's wife any 
 questions concerning the two women whose kindness of heart 
 had shown itself in his behalf. But though he replied Yes or 
 No to the inquiries, natural under the circumstances, which 
 the good woman made as to his accident, and the friendly 
 intervention of the tenants occupying the fourth floor, he 
 could not hinder her from following the instinct of her 
 kind ; she mentioned the two strangers, speaking of them as 
 prompted by the interests of her policy and the subterranean 
 opinions of the porter's lodge. 
 
 "Ah," said she, "they were, no doubt, Mademoiselle 
 Leseigneur and her mother, who have lived here these four 
 years. We do not yet know exactly what these ladies do ; 
 in the morning, only till the hour of noon, an old woman who 
 is half deaf, and who never speaks any more than a wall, comes 
 in to help them ; in the evening, two or three old gentlemen, 
 with loops of ribbon, like you, monsieur, come to see them, 
 and often stay very late. One of them comes in a carriage 
 with servants, and is said to have sixty thousand francs a year. 
 However, they are very quiet tenants, as you are, monsieur ; 
 and economical! they live on nothing, and as soon as a letter 
 is brought they pay for it. It is a queer thing, monsieur, the 
 mother's name is not the same as the daughter's. Ah, but 
 when they go for a walk in the Tuileries, mademoiselle is very 
 smart, and she never goes out but she is followed by a lot of 
 young men ; but she shuts the door in their faces, and she is 
 quite right. The proprietor would never allow " 
 
 The coach having come, Hippolyte heard no more, and
 
 364 THE PURSE. 
 
 went home. His mother, to whom he related his adventure, 
 dressed his wound afresh, and would not allow him to go to 
 the studio next day. After taking advice, various treatments 
 were prescribed, and Hippolyte remained at home three days. 
 During this retirement his idle fancy recalled vividly, bit by 
 bit, the details of the scene that had ensued on his fainting fit. 
 The young girl's profile was clearly projected against the dark- 
 ness of his inward vision ; he saw once more the mother's 
 faded features, or he felt the touch of Adelaide's hands. He 
 remembered some gesture which at first had not greatly struck 
 him, but whose exquisite grace was thrown into relief by 
 memory ; then an attitude, or the tones of a melodious voice, 
 enhanced by the distance of remembrance, suddenly rose be- 
 fore him, as objects plunging to the bottom of deep waters 
 come back to the surface. 
 
 So, on the day when he could resume work, he went early 
 to his studio ; but the visit he undoubtedly had a right to pay 
 to his neighbors was the true cause of his haste ; he had already 
 forgotten the pictures he had begun. At the moment when a 
 passion throws off its swaddling clothes, inexplicable pleasures 
 are felt, known to those who have loved. So some readers 
 will understand why the painter mounted the stairs to the 
 fourth floor but slowly, and will be in the secret of the throbs 
 that followed each other so rapidly in his heart at the moment 
 when he saw the humble brown door of the rooms inhabited by 
 Mademoiselle Leseigneur. This girl, whose name was not the 
 same as her mother's, had aroused the young painter's deepest 
 sympathies ; he chose to fancy some similarity between him- 
 self and her as to their position, and attributed to her misfor- 
 tunes of birth akin to his own. All the time he worked Hip- 
 polyte gave himself very willingly to thoughts of love, and 
 made a great deal of noise to compel the two ladies to think 
 of him as he was thinking of them. He stayed late at the 
 studio and dined there; then, at about seven o'clock, he went 
 down to call on his neighbors.
 
 THE PURSE. 305 
 
 No painter of manners has ventured to initiate us perhaps 
 out of modesty into the really curious privacy of certain 
 Parisian existences, into the secret of the dwellings whence 
 emerge such fresh and elegant toilets, such brilliant women, 
 who, rich on the surface, allow the signs of very doubtful 
 comfort to peep out in every part of their home. If, here, the 
 picture is too boldly drawn, if you find it tedious in places, do 
 not blame the description, which is, indeed, part and parcel 
 of my story; for the appearance of the rooms inhabited by his 
 two neighbors had a great influence on the feelings and hopes 
 of Hippolyte Schinner. 
 
 The house belonged to one of those proprietors in whom 
 there is a foregone and profound horror of repairs and decora- 
 tion, one of the men who regard their position as Paris house- 
 owners as a business. In the vast chain of moral species, 
 these people hold a middle place between the miser and the 
 usurer. Optimists in their own interests, they are all faithful 
 to the Austrian status quo. If you speak of moving a cup- 
 board or a door, of opening the most indispensable air-hole, 
 their eyes flash, their bile rises, they rear like a frightened 
 horse. When the wind blows down a few chimney-pots they 
 are quite ill, and deprive themselves of an evening at the 
 Gymnase or the Porte-Saint-Martin Theatre, "on account of 
 repairs." Hippolyte, who had seen the performance gratis 
 of a comical scene with Monsieur Molineux, as concerning 
 certain decorative repairs in his studio, was not surprised to 
 see the dark, greasy paint, the oily stains, spots, and other 
 disagreeable accessories that varied the woodwork. And 
 these stigmata of poverty are not altogether devoid of poetry 
 in an artist's eyes. 
 
 Mademoiselle Leseigneur herself opened the door. On 
 recognizing the young artist she bowed, and at the same time, 
 with Parisian adroitness and with the presence of mind that 
 pride can lend, turned round to shut a door in a glass par- 
 tition through which Hippolyte might have caught sight of
 
 366 THE PURSE. 
 
 some linen hung by lines over patent ironing stoves, an old 
 camp-bed, some wood-embers, charcoal, irons, a filter, the 
 household crockery, and all the utensils familiar to a small 
 household. India-muslin curtains, fairly white, carefully 
 screened this lumber-room a capharnaum, as the French 
 call such a domestic laboratory which was lighted by win- 
 dows looking out on a neighboring yard. 
 
 Hippolyte, with the quick eye of an artist, saw the uses, 
 the furniture, the general effect and condition of this first 
 room, thus cut in half. The more honorable half, which 
 served both as anteroom and dining-room, was hung with an 
 old salmon-rose-colored paper, with a flock border, the manu- 
 facture of Reveillon, no doubt ; the holes and spots had been 
 carefully touched over with wafers. Prints representing the 
 battles of Alexander, by Lebrun, in frames with the gilding 
 rubbed off, were symmetrically arranged on the walls. In 
 the middle stood a massive mahogany table, old-fashioned in 
 shape, and worn at the edges. A small stove, whose thin 
 straight pipe was scarcely visible, stood in front of the 
 chimney-place, but the hearth was occupied by a cupboard. 
 By a strange contrast the chairs showed some remains of 
 former splendor ; they were of carved mahogany, but the red 
 morocco seats, the gilt nails and reeded backs, showed as 
 many scars as an old sergeant of the Imperial Guard. 
 
 This room did duty as a museum of certain objects, such 
 as are never seen but in this kind of amphibious household ; 
 nameless objects with the stamp at once of luxury and penury. 
 Among other curiosities Hippolyte noticed a splendidly 
 finished telescope, hanging over the small discolored glass 
 that decorated the chimney. To harmonize with this strange 
 collection of furniture there was, between the chimney and 
 the partition, a wretched sideboard of painted wood, pre- 
 tending to be mahogany, of all woods the most impossible to 
 imitate. But the slippery red quarries, the shabby little rugs 
 in front of the chairs, and all the furniture shone with the
 
 THE PURSE. 367 
 
 hard-rubbing cleanliness which lends a treacherous lustre to 
 old things by making their defects, their age, and their long 
 service still more conspicuous. An indescribable odor per- 
 vaded the room, a mingled smell of the exhalations from the 
 lumber-room and the vapors of the dining-room, with those 
 from the stairs, though the window was partly open. The air 
 from the street fluttered the dusty curtains, which were care- 
 fully drawn so as to hide the window-bay, where former 
 tenants had testified to their presence by various ornamental 
 additions a sort of domestic fresco. 
 
 Adelaide hastened to open the door of the inner room, 
 where she announced the painter with evident pleasure. Hip- 
 polyte, who, of yore, had seen the same signs of poverty in his 
 mother's home, noted them with the singular vividness of im- 
 pression which characterizes the earliest acquisitions of memory, 
 and entered into the details of this existence better than any 
 one else would have done. As he recognized the facts of his 
 life as a child, the kind young fellow felt neither scorn for 
 disguised misfortune nor pride in the luxury he had lately 
 conquered for his mother. 
 
 " Well, monsieur, I hope you no longer feel the effects of 
 your fall," said the old lady, rising from an antique armchair 
 that stood by the chimney, and offering him a seat. 
 
 "No, madame. I have come to thank you for the kind 
 care you gave me, and above all mademoiselle, who heard me 
 fall." 
 
 As he uttered this speech, stamped with the exquisite stu- 
 pidity given to the mind by the first disturbing symptoms of 
 true love, Hippolyte looked at the young girl. Adelaide was 
 lighting the argand lamp, no doubt, that she might get rid of 
 a tallow candle fixed in a large, flat, copper candlestick, and 
 graced with a heavy fluting of grease from its guttering. She 
 answered with a slight bow, carried the flat candlestick into 
 the anteroom, came back, and, after placing the lamp on the 
 mantel, seated herself by her mother, a little behind the
 
 368 THE PURSE. 
 
 painter, so as to be able to look at him at her ease, while 
 apparently much interested in the burning of the lamp ; the 
 flame, checked by the damp in a dingy chimney, sputtered as 
 it struggled with a charred and badly trimmed wick. Hip- 
 polyte, seeing the large mirror that decorated the mantel, 
 immediately fixed his eyes on it to admire Adelaide. Thus 
 the girl's little stratagem only served to embarrass them both. 
 
 While talking with Madame Leseigneur, for Hippolyte, 
 called her so, on the chance of being right, he examined the 
 room, but unobtrusively and by stealth. 
 
 The Egyptian figures on the iron fire-dogs were scarcely 
 visible, the hearth was so heaped with cinders; two brands 
 tried to meet in front of a sham log of firebrick, as care- 
 fully buried as a miser's treasure could ever be. An old 
 Aubusson carpet, very much faded, very much mended, and 
 as worn as a pensioner's coat, did not cover the whole of 
 the tiled floor, and the cold struck to his feet. The walls 
 were hung with a reddish paper, imitating figured silk with a 
 yellow pattern. In the middle of the wall opposite the 
 windows the painter saw a crack, and the outline marked on 
 the paper of double-doors, shutting off a recess where Madame 
 Leseigneur slept no doubt, a fact ill disguised by a sofa in front 
 of the door. Facing the chimney, above a mahogany chest 
 of drawers of handsome and tasteful design, was the portrait 
 of an officer of rank, which the dim light did not allow him 
 to see well ; but from what he could make out he thought 
 that the fearful daub must have been painted in China. The 
 window-curtains of red silk were as much faded as the furni- 
 ture, in red and yellow worsted work, if this room "con- 
 trived a double debt to pay." On the marble top of the 
 chest of drawers was a costly malachite tray, with a dozen 
 coffee cups magnificently painted, and made, no doubt, at 
 Sevres. On the chimney-shelf stood the omnipresent Empire 
 clock : a warrior driving the four horses of a chariot, whose 
 wheel bore the numbers of the hours on its spokes. The
 
 THE PURSE. 369 
 
 tapers in the tall candlesticks were yellow with smoke, and 
 at each corner of the shelf stood a porcelain vase crowned 
 with artificial flowers full of dust and stuck into moss. 
 
 In the middle of the room Hippolyte remarked a card-table 
 ready for play, with new packs of cards. For an observer 
 there was something heartrending in the sight of this misery 
 painted up like an old woman who wants to falsify her face. 
 At such a sight every man of sense must at once have stated 
 to himself this obvious dilemma either these two women are 
 honesty itself, or they live by intrigue and gambling. But 
 on looking at Adelaide, a man so pure-minded as Schinner 
 could not but believe in her perfect innocence, and ascribe 
 the incoherence of the furniture to honorable causes. 
 
 " My dear," said the old lady to the young one, " I am 
 cold ; make a little fire, and give me my shawl." 
 
 Adelaide went into a room next the drawing-room, where 
 she no doubt slept, and returned bringing her mother a cash- 
 mere shawl, which when new must have been very costly; 
 the pattern was Indian ; but it was old, faded, and full of 
 darns, and matched the furniture. Madame Leseigneur 
 wrapped herself in it very artistically, and with the readiness 
 of an old woman who wishes to make her words seem truth. 
 The young girl ran lightly off to the lumber-room and reap- 
 peared with a bundle of small wood, which she gallantly threw 
 on the fire to revive it. 
 
 It would be rather difficult to reproduce the conversation 
 which followed among these three persons. Hippolyte, guided 
 by the tact which is almost always the outcome of misfortune 
 suffered in early youth, dared not allow himself to make the 
 least remark as to his neighbors' situation, as he saw all about 
 him the signs of ill-disguised poverty. The simplest question 
 would have been an indiscretion, and could only be ventured 
 on by old friendship. The painter was nevertheless absorbed 
 in the thought of this concealed penury, it pained his generous 
 soul ; but knowing how offensive every kind of pity may be, 
 24
 
 370 THE PURSE. 
 
 even the friendliest, the disparity between his thoughts and 
 his words made him feel uncomfortable. 
 
 The two ladies at first talked of painting, for women easily 
 guess the secret embarrassment of a first call ; they themselves 
 feel it, perhaps, and the nature of their minds supplies them 
 with a thousand devices to put an end to it. By questioning 
 the young man as to the material exercise of his art, and as 
 to his studies, Adelaide and her mother emboldened him to 
 talk. The indefinable nothings of their chat, animated by 
 kindly feeling, naturally led Hippolyte to flash forth remarks 
 or reflections which showed the character of his habits and of 
 his mind. Trouble had prematurely faded the old lady's face, 
 formerly handsome, no doubt ; nothing was left but the more 
 prominent features, the outline ; in a word, the skeleton of a 
 countenance of which the whole effect indicated great shrewd- 
 ness with much grace in the play of the eyes, in which could 
 be discerned the expression peculiar to women of the old 
 Court ; an expression that cannot be defined in words. Those 
 fine and mobile features might quite as well indicate bad feel- 
 ings, and suggest astuteness and womanly artifice carried to a 
 high pitch of wickedness, as reveal the refined delicacy of 
 a beautiful soul. 
 
 Indeed, the face of a woman has this element of mystery 
 to puzzle the ordinary observer, that the difference between 
 frankness and duplicity, the genius for intrigue and the genius 
 of the heart, is there inscrutable. A man gifted with a pene- 
 trating eye can read the intangible shade of difference pro- 
 duced by a more or less curved line, a more or less deep 
 dimple, a more or less prominent feature. The appreciation 
 of these indications lies entirely in the domain of intuition ; 
 this alone can lead to the discovery of what every one is 
 interested in concealing. This old lady's face was like the 
 room she inhabited ; it seemed as difficult to detect whether 
 this squalor covered vice or the highest virtue, as to decide 
 whether Adelaide's mother was an old coquette accustomed
 
 THE PURSE. 371 
 
 to weigh, to calculate, to sell everything, or a loving woman, 
 full of noble feeling and amiable qualities. But at Schinner's 
 age the first impulse of the heart is to believe in goodness. 
 And, indeed, as he studied Adelaide's noble and almost 
 haughty brow, as he looked into her eyes full of soul and 
 thought, he breathed, so to speak, the sweet and modest fra- 
 grance of virtue. In the course of the conversation he seized 
 an opportunity of discussing portraits in general, to give him- 
 self a pretext for examining the frightful pastel, of which the 
 color had flown, and the chalk in many places fallen away. 
 
 " You are attached to that picture for the sake of the like- 
 ness, no doubt, mesdames, for the drawing is dreadful?" he 
 said, looking at Adelaide. 
 
 "It was done at Calcutta, in great haste," replied the 
 mother, in an agitated voice. 
 
 She gazed at the formless sketch with the deep absorption 
 which memories of happiness produce when they are roused 
 and fall on the heart like a beneficent dew to whose refreshing 
 touch we love to yield ourselves; but in the expression of 
 the old lady's face there were traces, too, of perennial regret. 
 At least, it was thus that the painter chose to interpret her 
 attitude and countenance, and he presently sat down again by 
 her side. 
 
 "Madame," he said, "in a very short time the colors of 
 that pastel will have disappeared. The portrait will only sur- 
 vive in your memory. Where you will still see the face that 
 is dear to you, others will see nothing at all. Will you allow 
 me to reproduce the likeness on canvas ? It will be more per- 
 manently recorded then than on that sheet of paper. Grant 
 me, I beg, as a neighborly favor, the pleasure of doing you 
 this service. There are times when an artist is glad of a 
 respite from his greater undertakings by doing work of less 
 lofty pretensions, so it will be a recreation for me to paint 
 that head." 
 
 The old lady flushed as she heard the painter's words, and
 
 372 THE PURSE. 
 
 Adelaide shot one of those glances of deep feeling which seem 
 to flash from the soul. Hippolyte wanted to feel some tie 
 linking him with his two neighbors, to conquer a right to 
 mingle in their life. His offer, appealing as it did to the live- 
 liest affections of the heart, was the only one he could possibly 
 make ; it gratified his pride as an artist and could not hurt the 
 feelings of the ladies. Madame Leseigneur accepted, without 
 eagerness or reluctance, but with the self-possession of a noble 
 soul, fully aware of the character of bonds formed by such an 
 obligation, while, at the same time, they are its highest glory 
 as a proof of esteem. 
 
 " I fancy," said the painter, " that the uniform is that of a 
 naval officer ? ' ' 
 
 "Yes," she said, ''that of a captain in command of a 
 vessel. Monsieur de Rouville my husband died at Batavia 
 in consequence of a wound received in a fight with an English 
 ship they fell in with off the Asiatic coast. He commanded a 
 frigate of fifty-six guns, and the Revenge carried ninety-six. 
 The struggle was very unequal, but he defended his ship so 
 bravely that he held out till nightfall and got away. When I 
 came back to France Bonaparte was not yet in power, and I 
 was refused a pension. When I applied again for it, quite 
 lately, I was sternly informed that if the Baron de Rouville 
 had emigrated I should not have lost him ; that by this time 
 he would have been rear-admiral ; finally, his excellency 
 quoted I know not what decree of forfeiture. I took this step, 
 to which I was urged by my friends, only for the sake of my 
 poor Adelaide. I have always hated the idea of holding out 
 my hand as a beggar in the name of a grief which deprives a 
 woman of voice and strength. I do not like this money valu- 
 ation for blood irreparably spilt " 
 
 " Dear mother, this subject always does you harm," said 
 her daughter. 
 
 In response to this remark from Adelaide, the Baronne 
 Leseigneur bowed, and was silent.
 
 THE PURSE. 373 
 
 "Monsieur," said the young girl to Hippolyte, "I had 
 supposed that a painter's work was generally fairly quiet? " 
 
 At this question Schinner colored, remembering the noise 
 he had made. Adelaide said no more, and spared him a 
 falsehood by rising at the sound of a carriage stopping at the 
 door. She went into her own room, and returned carrying a 
 pair of tall, gilt candlesticks with partly burnt wax-candles, 
 which she quickly lighted, and, without waiting for the bell to 
 ring, she opened the door of the outer room, where she set 
 the lamp down. The sound of a kiss given and received 
 found an echo in Hippolyte's heart. The young man's im- 
 patience to see the man who treated Adelaide with so much 
 familiarity was not immediately gratified ; the new-comers 
 had a conversation, which he thought very long, in an under- 
 tone, with the young girl. 
 
 At last Mademoiselle de Rouville returned, followed by 
 two men, whose costume, countenance, and appearance are a 
 long story. 
 
 The first, a man of about sixty, wore one of the coats in- 
 vented, I believe, for Louis XVIII., then on the throne, in 
 which the most difficult problem of the sartorial art had been 
 solved by a tailor who ought to be immortal. That artist 
 certainly understood the art of compromise, which was the 
 moving genius of that period of shifting politics. Is it not a 
 rare merit to be able to take the measure of the time ? This 
 coat, which the young men of the present day may conceive 
 to be fabulous, was neither civil nor military, and might pass 
 for civil or military by turns. Fleurs-de-lis (lily flowers) were 
 embroidered on the lapels of the back skirts. The gilt but- 
 tons also bore fleurs-de-lis ; on the shoulders a pair of straps 
 cried out for useless epaulettes; these military appendages 
 were there like a petition without a recommendation. This 
 old gentleman's coat was of dark blue cloth, and the button- 
 hole had blossomed into many colored ribbons. He, no 
 doubt, always carried his hat in his hand a three-cornered
 
 374 THE PURSE. 
 
 cocked hat, with a gold cord for the snowy wings of his 
 powdered hair showed not a trace of its pressure. He might 
 have been taken for not more than fifty years of age, and 
 seemed to enjoy robust health. While wearing the frank and 
 loyal expression of the old emigres, his countenance also 
 hinted at the easy habits of a libertine, at the light and reck- 
 less passions of the Musketeers formerly so famous in the 
 annals of gallantry. His gestures, his attitude, and his manner 
 proclaimed that he had no intention of correcting himself of 
 his royalism, of his religion, or of his love affairs. 
 
 A really fantastic figure came in behind this specimen of 
 "Louis XIV. 's light infantry" a nickname given by the 
 Bonapartists to these venerable survivors of the Monarchy. 
 To do it justice it ought to be made the principal object in 
 the picture, and it is but an accessory. Imagine a lean, dry 
 man, dressed like the former, but seeming to be only his 
 reflection, or his shadow, if you will. The coat, new on the 
 first, on the second was old ; the powder in his hair looked 
 less white, the gold of the fleurs-de-lis less bright, the shoulder- 
 straps more hopeless and dog's-eared; his intellect seemed 
 more feeble, his life nearer the fatal term than in the former. 
 In short, he realized Rivarol's witticism on Champcenetz, 
 " He is the moonlight of me." He was simply his double, a 
 paler and poorer double, for there was between them all the 
 difference that lies between the first and last impressions of a 
 lithograph. 
 
 This speechless old man was a mystery to the painter, and 
 always remained a mystery. The chevalier, for he was a 
 chevalier, did not speak, nobody spoke to him. Was he a 
 friend, a poor relation, a man who followed at the old gallant's 
 heels as a lady companion does at an old lady's? Did he fill 
 a place midway between a dog, a parrot, and a friend ? Had 
 he saved his patron's fortune, or only his life? Was he the 
 Trim to another Captain Toby? Elsewhere, as at the Baronne 
 de Rouville's, he always piqued curiosity without satisfying it.
 
 THE PURSE. 375 
 
 Who, after the Restoration, could remember the attachment 
 which, before the Revolution, had bound this man to his 
 friend's wife, dead now these twenty years? 
 
 The leader, who appeared the least dilapidated of these 
 wrecks, came gallantly up to Madame de Rouville, kissed 
 her hand, and sat down by her. The other bowed and 
 placed himself not far from his model, at a distance rep- 
 resented by two chairs. Adelaide came behind the old 
 gentleman's armchair and leaned her elbows on the back, 
 unconsciously imitating the attitude given to Dido's sister by 
 Guerin in his famous picture. 
 
 Though the gentleman's familiarity was that of a father, 
 his freedom seemed at the moment to annoy the young girl. 
 
 " What, are you sulky with me ? " he said. 
 
 Then he shot at Schinner one of those side-looks full of 
 shrewdness and cunning, diplomatic looks, whose expression 
 betrays the discreet uneasiness, the polite curiosity of well- 
 bred people, and seems to ask, when they see a stranger, " Is 
 he one of us? " 
 
 ''This is our neighbor," said the old lady, pointing to 
 Hippolyte. "Monsieur is a celebrated painter, whose name 
 must be known to you in spite of your indifference to the 
 arts." 
 
 The old man saw his friend's mischievous intent in sup- 
 pressing the name, and bowed to the young man. 
 
 "Certainly," said he. "I heard a great deal about his 
 pictures at the last Salon. Talent has immense privileges," 
 he added, observing the artist's red ribbon. "That distinc- 
 tion, which we must earn at the cost of our blood and long 
 service, you win in your youth ; but all glory is of the same 
 kindred," he said, laying his hand on his cross of Saint- 
 Louis. 
 
 Hippolyte murmured a few words of acknowledgment, 
 and was silent again, satisfied to admire with growing 
 enthusiasm the beautiful girl's head that charmed him so
 
 376 THE PURSE. 
 
 much. He was soon lost in contemplation, completely 
 forgetting the extreme misery of the dwelling. To him 
 Adelaide's face stood out against a luminous atmosphere. 
 He replied briefly to the questions addressed to him, 
 which, by very good luck, he heard, thanks to a singular 
 faculty of the soul which sometimes seems to have a 
 double consciousness. Who has not known what it is to sit 
 lost in sad or delicious meditation, listening to its voice 
 within, while attending to a conversation or to reading? An 
 admirable duality which often helps us to tolerate a bore! 
 Hope, prolific and smiling, poured out before him a thousand 
 visions of happiness ; and he refused to consider what was 
 going on around him. As confiding as a child, it seemed to 
 him base to analyze a pleasure. After a short lapse of time 
 he perceived that the old lady and her daughter were playing 
 cards with the old gentleman. As to the satellite, faithful to 
 his function as a shadow, he stood behind his friend's chair 
 watching his game, and answering the player's mute inquiries 
 by little approving nods, repeating the questioning gestures 
 of the other countenance. 
 
 "Du Halga, I always lose," said the gentleman. 
 
 "You discard badly," replied the Baronne de Rouville. 
 
 " For three months now I have never won a single 
 game," said he. 
 
 " Have you the aces? " asked the old lady. 
 
 "Yes, one more to mark," said he. 
 
 " Shall I come and advise you ? " inquired Adelaide of the 
 irascible player. 
 
 "No, no. Stay where I can see you. By Gad, it would 
 be losing too much not to have you to look at ! " 
 
 At last the game was over. The gentleman pulled out his 
 purse, and throwing two louis d'or on the table, not without 
 temper 
 
 "Forty francs," he exclaimed, "the exact sum. Deuce 
 take it ! It is eleven o'clock."
 
 THE PURSE. 377 
 
 "It is eleven o'clock," repeated the silent figure, looking 
 at the painter. 
 
 The young man, hearing these words rather more distinctly 
 than all the others, thought it time to retire. Coming back 
 to the world of ordinary ideas, he found a few commonplace 
 remarks to make, took leave of the Baroness, her daughter, 
 and the two strangers, and went away, wholly possessed by 
 the first raptures of true love, without attempting to analyze 
 the little incidents of the evening. 
 
 On the morrow the young painter felt the most ardent 
 desire to see Adelaide once more. If he had followed the 
 call of his passion, he would have gone to his neighbors' 
 door at six in the morning, when he went to his studio. 
 However, he still was reasonable enough to wait till the after- 
 noon. But as soon as he thought he could present himself to 
 Madame de Rouville, he went downstairs, rang, blushing like 
 a girl, shyly asked Mademoiselle Leseigneur, who came to let 
 him in, to let him have the portrait of the Baron. 
 
 "But come in," said Adelaide, who had no doubt heard 
 him come down from the studio. 
 
 The painter followed, bashful and out of countenance, not 
 knowing what to say, happiness had so dulled his wit. To 
 see Adelaide, to hear the rustle of her skirt, after longing for 
 a whole morning to be near her, after starting up a hundred 
 times " I will go down now" and not to have gone; this 
 was to him life so rich that such sensations, too greatly pro- 
 longed, would have worn out his spirit. The heart has the 
 singular power of giving extraordinary value to mere noth- 
 ings. What joy it is to a traveler to treasure a blade of 
 grass, an unfamiliar leaf, if he has risked his life to pluck it ! 
 It is the same with the trifles of love. 
 
 The old lady was not in the drawing-room. When the 
 young girl found herself there, alone with the painter, she 
 brought a chair to stand on, to take down the picture; but 
 perceiving that she could not unhook it without setting her
 
 378 THE PURSE. 
 
 foot on the chest of drawers, she turned to Hippolyte, and 
 said with a blush 
 
 " I am not tall enough. Will you get it down ? " 
 
 A feeling of modesty, betrayed in the expression of her face 
 and the tones of her voice, was the real motive of her re- 
 quest ; and the young man, understanding this, gave her one 
 of those glances of intelligence which are the sweetest lan- 
 guage of love. Seeing that the painter had read her soul, 
 Adelaide cast down her eyes with the instinct of reserve 
 which is the secret of a maiden's heart. Hippolyte, finding 
 nothing to say, and feeling almost timid, took down the pic- 
 ture, examined it gravely, carrying it to the light at the win- 
 dow, and then went away, without saying a word to Mademoi- 
 selle Leseigneur but, " I will return it soon." 
 
 During this brief moment they both went through one of 
 those storms of agitation of which the effects in the soul may 
 be compared to those of a stone flung into a deep lake. The 
 most delightful waves of thought rise and follow each other, 
 indescribable, repeated, and aimless, tossing the heart like 
 the circular ripples, which for a long time fret the waters, 
 starting from the point where the stone fell. 
 
 Hippolyte returned to the studio bearing the portrait. His 
 easel was ready with a fresh canvas, and his palette set, his 
 brushes cleaned, the spot and the light carefully chosen. 
 And till the dinner hour he worked at the painting with the 
 ardor artists throw into their whims. He went again that 
 evening to the Baronne de Rouville's, and remained from 
 nine till eleven. Excepting the different subjects of conver- 
 sation, this evening was exactly like the last. The two old 
 men arrived at the same hour, the same game of piquet was 
 played, the same speeches made by the players, the sum lost 
 by Adelaide's friend was not less considerable than on the 
 previous evening; only Hippolyte, a little bolder, ventured 
 to chat with the young girl. 
 
 A week passed thus, and in the course of it the painter's
 
 THE PURSE. :{;y 
 
 feelings and Adelaide's underwent the slow and delightful 
 transformations which bring two souls to a perfect under- 
 standing. Every day the look with which the girl welcomed 
 her friend grew more intimate, more confiding, gayer, and 
 more open ; her voice and manner became more eager and 
 more familiar. They laughed and talked together, telling 
 each other their thoughts, speaking of themselves with the 
 simplicity of two children who have made friends in a day, as 
 much as if they had met constantly for three years. Schinner 
 wished to be taught piquet. Being ignorant and a novice, he, 
 of course, made blunder after blunder, and, like the old man, 
 he lost almost every game. Without having spoken a word 
 of love the lovers knew that they were all in all to one an- 
 other. Hippolyte enjoyed exerting his power over his gentle 
 little friend, and many concessions were made to him by 
 Adelaide, who, timid and devoted to him, was quite deceived 
 by the assumed fits of temper, such as the least skilled lover 
 and the most guileless girl can affect ; and which they con- 
 stantly play off, as spoiled children abuse the power they owe 
 to their mother's affection. Thus all familiarity between the 
 girl and the old Count was soon put a stop to. She under- 
 stood the painter's melancholy, and the thoughts hidden in 
 the furrows on his brow, from the abrupt tone of the few 
 words he spoke when the old man unceremoniously kissed 
 Adelaide's hands or throat. 
 
 Mademoiselle Leseigneur, on her part, soon expected her 
 lover to give her a short account of all his actions ; she was 
 so unhappy, so restless when Hippolyte did not come; she 
 scolded him so effectually for his absence that the painter 
 had to give up seeing his other friends and now went no- 
 where. Adelaide allowed the natural jealousy of women to 
 be perceived when she heard that sometimes at eleven o'clock, 
 on quitting the house, the painter still had visits to pay, and 
 was to be seen in the most brilliant drawing-rooms of Paris. 
 This mode of life, she assured him, was bad for his health ;
 
 380 THE PURSE, 
 
 then, with the intense conviction to which the accent, the 
 emphasis, and the look of one we love lend so much weight, 
 she asserted that a man who was obliged to expend his time 
 and the charms of his wit on several women at once could 
 not be the object of any very warm affection. Thus the 
 painter was led, as much by the tyranny of his passion as 
 by the exactions of a girl in love, to live exclusively in the 
 little apartment where everything attracted him. 
 
 And never was there a purer or more ardent love. On 
 both sides the same trustfulness, the same delicacy, gave their 
 passion increase without the aid of those sacrifices by which 
 many persons try to prove their affection. Between these two 
 there was such a constant interchange of sweet emotion that 
 they knew not which gave or received the most. 
 
 A spontaneous affinity made the union of their souls a close 
 one. The progress of this true feeling was so rapid that two 
 months after the accident to which the painter owed the hap- 
 piness of knowing Adelaide, their lives were one life. From 
 early morning the young girl, hearing footsteps overhead, 
 could say to herself, " He is there." When Hippolyte went 
 home to his mother at the dinner hour he never failed to look 
 in on his neighbors, and in the evening he flew there at the 
 accustomed hour with a lover's punctuality. Thus the most 
 tyrannical woman or the most ambitious in the matter of love 
 could not have found the smallest fault with the young painter. 
 And Adelaide tasted of unmixed and unbounded happiness as 
 she saw the fullest realization of the ideal of which, at her 
 age, it is so natural to dream. 
 
 The old gentleman now came more rarely ; Hippolyte, who 
 had been jealous, had taken his place at the green table, and 
 shared his constant ill-luck at cards. And sometimes, in the 
 midst of his happiness, as he considered Madame de Rouville's 
 disastrous position for he had had more than one proof of 
 her extreme poverty an importunate thought would haunt 
 him. Several times he had said to himself as he went home,
 
 THE PURSE. 381 
 
 " Strange ! twenty francs every evening? " and he dared not 
 confess to himsef his odious suspicions. 
 
 He spent two months over the portrait, and when it was 
 finished, varnished, and framed, he looked upon it as one of 
 his best works. Madame la Baronne de Rouville had never 
 spoken of it again. Was this from indifference or pride ? The 
 painter would not allow himself to account for this silence. 
 He joyfully plotted with Adelaide to hang the picture in its 
 place when Madame de Rouville should be out. So one day, 
 during the walk her mother usually took in the Tuileries, 
 Adelaide for the first time went up to Hippolyte's studio, on 
 the pretext of seeing the portrait in the good light in which it 
 had been painted. She stood speechless and motionless, but 
 in ecstatic contemplation, in which all a woman's feelings 
 were merged. For are they not all comprehended in bound- 
 less admiration for the man she loves ? When the painter, 
 uneasy at her silence, leaned forward to look at her, she held 
 out her hand, unable to speak a word, but two tears fell from 
 her eyes. Hippolyte took her hand and covered it with 
 kisses; for a minute they looked at each other in silence, both 
 longing to confess their love, and not daring. The painter 
 kept her hand in his, and the same glow, the same throb, told 
 them that their hearts were both beating wildly. The young 
 girl, too greatly agitated, gently drew away from Hippolyte, 
 and said, with a look of the utmost simplicity 
 
 "You will make my mother very happy." 
 
 " What ! only your mother?" he asked. 
 
 " Oh, I am too happy." 
 
 The painter bent his head and remained silent, frightened 
 at the vehemence of the feelings which her tones stirred in his 
 heart. Then, both understanding the perils of the situation, 
 they went downstairs and hung up the picture in its place. 
 Hippolyte dined for the first time with the Baroness, who, 
 greatly overcome and drowned in tears, must needs embrace 
 him.
 
 382 THE PURSE. 
 
 In the evening the old emigre, the Baron de Rouville's old 
 comrade, paid the ladies a visit to announce that he had just 
 been promoted to the rank of vice-admiral. His voyages by 
 land over Germany and Russia had been counted as naval 
 campaigns. On seeing the portrait he cordially shook the 
 painter's hand, and exclaimed, " By Gad ! though my old 
 hulk does not deserve to be perpetuated, I would gladly give 
 five hundred pistoles to see myself as like as that is to my dear 
 old Rouville." 
 
 At this hint the Baroness looked at her young friend and 
 smiled, while her face lighted up with an expression of sudden 
 gratitude. Hippolyte suspected that the old admiral wished 
 to offer him the price of both portraits while paying for his 
 own. His pride as an artist, no less than his jealousy perhaps, 
 took offense at the thought, and he replied 
 
 " Monsieur, if I were a portrait painter, I should not have 
 done this one." 
 
 The admiral bit his lip and sat down to cards. 
 
 The painter remained near Adelaide, who proposed a dozen 
 hands of piquet, to which he agreed. As he played he ob- 
 served in Madame de Rouville an excitement over the game 
 which surprised him. Never before had the old Baroness 
 manifested so ardent a desire to win or so keen a joy in fin- 
 gering the old gentleman's gold-pieces. During the evening 
 evil suspicions troubled Hippolyte's happiness and filled him 
 with distrust. Could it be that Madame de Rouville lived by 
 gambling ? Was she playing at this moment to pay off some 
 debt or under the pressure of necessity ? Perhaps she had 
 not paid her rent. That old man seemed shrewd enough not 
 to allow his money to be taken with impunity. What interest 
 attracted him to this poverty-stricken house, he who was rich? 
 Why, when he had formerly been so familiar with Adelaide, 
 had he given up the rights he had acquired and which were 
 perhaps his due ? 
 
 These involuntary reflections prompted him to watch the
 
 THE PURSE. 383 
 
 old man and the Baroness, whose meaning looks and certain 
 sidelong glances cast at Adelaide displeased him. "Am I 
 being duped? " was Hippolyte's last idea horrible, scathing, 
 for he believed it just enough to be tortured by it. He de- 
 termined to stay after the departure of the two old men, to 
 confirm or to dissipate his suspicions. He drew out his purse 
 to pay Adelaide ; but, carried away by his poignant thoughts, 
 he laid it on the table, falling into a reverie of brief duration ; 
 then, ashamed of his silence, he arose, answered some com- 
 monplace question from Madame de Rouville, and went close 
 up to her to examine the withered features while he was talk- 
 ing to her. 
 
 He went away, racked by a thousand doubts. He had 
 gone down but a few steps when he turned back to fetch the 
 forgotten purse. 
 
 " I left my purse here ! " he said to the young girl. 
 
 "No," she said, reddening. 
 
 " I thought it was there," and he pointed to the card-table. 
 Not finding it, in his shame for Adelaide and the Baroness, 
 he looked at them with a blank amazement that made them 
 laugh, turned pale, felt his waistcoat, and said, " I must have 
 made a mistake. I have it somewhere, no doubt." 
 
 In one end of the purse there were fifteen louis d'or, and 
 in the other some small change. The theft was so flagrant, 
 and denied with such effrontery, that Hippolyte no longer 
 felt a doubt as to his neighbors' morals. He stood still on 
 the stairs and got down with some difficulty ; his knees shook, 
 he felt dizzy, he was in a cold sweat, he shivered, and found 
 himself unable to walk, struggling, as he was, with the ago- 
 nizing shock caused by the destruction of all his hopes. And 
 at this moment he found lurking in his memory a number of 
 observations, trifling in themselves, but which corroborated 
 his frightful suspicions, and which, by proving the certainty 
 of this last incident, opened his eyes as to the character and 
 life of these two women.
 
 384 THE PURSE. 
 
 Had they really waited until the portrait was given them 
 before robbing him of his purse ? In such a combination the 
 theft was even more odious. The painter recollected that for 
 the last two or three evenings Adelaide, while seeming to 
 examine with a girl's curiosity the particular stitch of the 
 worn silk netting, was probably counting the coins in the 
 purse, while making some light jests, quite innocent in ap- 
 pearance, but no doubt with the object of watching for a 
 moment when the sum was worth stealing. 
 
 " The old admiral has perhaps good reasons for not marry- 
 ing Adelaide, and so the Baroness has tried " 
 
 But at this hypothesis he checked himself, not finishing his 
 thought, which was contradicted by a very just reflection, 
 " If the Baroness hopes to get me to marry her daughter," 
 thought he, "they would not have robbed me." 
 
 Then, clinging to his illusion, to the love that already had 
 taken such deep root, he tried to find a justification in some 
 accident. "The purse must have fallen on the floor," said 
 he to himself, " or I left it lying on my chair. Or perhaps I 
 have it about me lam so absent-minded!" He searched 
 himself with hurried movements, but did not find the ill- 
 starred purse. His memory cruelly retraced the fatal truth, 
 minute by minute. He distinctly saw the purse lying on the 
 green cloth; but then, doubtful no longer, he excused Ade- 
 laide, telling himself that persons in misfortune should not be 
 so hastily condemned. There was, of course, some secret 
 behind this apparently degrading action. He would not 
 admit that that proud and noble face was a lie. 
 
 At the same time the wretched rooms rose before him, 
 denuded of the poetry of love which beautifies everything; 
 he saw them dirty and faded, regarding them as emblematic 
 of an inner life devoid of honor, idle and vicious. Are not 
 our feelings written, as it were, on things about us? 
 
 Next morning he arose, not having slept. The heartache, 
 that terrible malady of the soul, had made rapid inroads.
 
 THE PURSE. 385 
 
 To lose the bliss we dreamed of, to renounce our whole future, 
 is a keener pang than that caused by the loss of known 
 happiness, however complete it may have been ; for is not 
 Hope better than Memory? The thoughts into which our 
 spirit is suddenly plunged are like a shoreless sea in which 
 we may swim for a moment, but where our love is doomed to 
 drown and die. And it is a frightful death. Are not our 
 feelings the most glorious part of our life ? It is this partial 
 death which, in certain delicate or powerful natures, leads to the 
 terrible ruin produced by disenchantment, by hopes and pas- 
 sions betrayed. Thus it was with the young painter. He went 
 out at a very early hour to walk under the fresh shade of the 
 Tuileries, absorbed in his thoughts, forgetting everything in 
 the world. 
 
 There by chance he met one of his most intimate friends, 
 a schoolfellow and studio-mate, with whom he had lived on 
 better terms than with a brother. 
 
 "Why, Hippolyte, what ails you?" asked Francois 
 Souchet, the young sculptor who had just won the first prize 
 and was soon to set out for Italy. 
 
 "I am most unhappy," replied Hippolyte gravely. 
 
 " Nothing but a love affair can cause you grief. Money, 
 glory, respect you lack nothing." 
 
 Insensibly the painter was led into confidences, and con- 
 fessed his love. The moment he mentioned the Rue de 
 Suresne, and a young girl living on the fourth floor, " Stop, 
 stop," cried Souchet lightly. "A little girl I see every 
 morning at the church of the Assumption, and with whom I 
 have a flirtation. But, my dear fellow, we all know her. 
 The mother is a Baroness. Do you really believe in a 
 Baroness living up four flights of stairs ? Brrr ! Why, you 
 are a relic of the golden age ! We see the old mother here, 
 in this avenue, every day ; why, her face, her appearance, tell 
 everything. What, have you not known her for what she is 
 by the way she holds her bag? " 
 25
 
 386 THE PURSE. 
 
 The two friends walked up and down for some time, and 
 several young men who knew Souchet or Schinner joined 
 them. The painter's adventure, which the sculptor regarded 
 as unimportant, was repeated by him. 
 
 "So he, too, has seen that young lady ! " said Souchet. 
 
 And then there were comments, laughter, innocent mockery, 
 full of the liveliness familiar to artists, but which pained 
 Hippolyte frightfully. A certain native reticence made him 
 uncomfortable as he saw his heart's secret so carelessly handled, 
 his passion rent, torn to tatters, a young and unknown girl, 
 whose life seemed to be so modest, the victim of condem- 
 nation, right or wrong, but pronounced with such reckless 
 indifference. He pretended to be moved by a spirit of con- 
 tradiction, asking each for proofs of his assertions, and their 
 jests began again. 
 
 "But, my dear boy, have you seen the Baroness' shawl?" 
 asked Souchet. 
 
 " Have you ever followed the girl when she patters off to 
 church in the morning?" said Joseph Bridau, a young 
 dauber in Gros' studio. 
 
 "Oh, the mother has among other virtues a certain gray 
 gown, which I regard as typical," said Bixiou, the caricaturist. 
 
 "Listen, Hippolyte," the sculptor went on. "Come here 
 at about four o'clock and just study the walk of both mother 
 and daughter. If after that you still have doubts ! well, no 
 one can ever make anything of you ; you would be capable 
 of marrying your porter's daughter." 
 
 Torn by the most conflicting feelings, the painter parted 
 from his friends. It seemed to him that Adelaide and her 
 mother must be superior to these accusations, and at the bottom 
 of his heart he was filled with remorse for having suspected the 
 purity of this beautiful and simple girl. He went to his studio, 
 passing the door of the rooms where Adelaide was, and con- 
 scious of a pain at his heart which no man can misapprehend. 
 He loved Mademoiselle de Rouville so passionately that, in spite
 
 THE PURSE. 387 
 
 of the theft of the purse, he still worshiped her. His love was 
 that of the Chevalier des Grieux admiring his mistress, and 
 holding her as pure, even on the cart which carries such lost 
 creatures to prison. " Why should my love not keep her the 
 purest of women ? Why abandon her to evil and to vice with- 
 out holding out a rescuing hand to her? " 
 
 The idea of this mission pleased him. Love makes a gain 
 of everything. Nothing tempts a young man more than to 
 play the part of a good genius to a woman. There is some- 
 thing inexplicably romantic in such an enterprise which ap- 
 peals to a highly strung soul. Is it not the utmost stretch of 
 devotion under the loftiest and most engaging aspect? Is 
 there not something grand in the thought that we love 
 enough still to love on when the love of others dwindles and 
 dies? 
 
 Hippolyte sat down in his studio, gazed at his picture with- 
 out doing anything to it, seeing the figures through tears that 
 swelled in his eyes, holding his brush in his hand, going up to 
 the canvas as if to soften down an effect, but not touching it. 
 Night fell, and he was still in this attitude. Roused from his 
 moodiness by the darkness, he went downstairs, met the old 
 admiral on the way, looked darkly at him as he bowed, and 
 fled. 
 
 He had intended going in to see the ladies, but the sight 
 of Adelaide's protector froze his heart and dispelled his pur- 
 pose. For the hundredth time he wondered what interest 
 could bring this old prodigal, with his eighty thousand francs 
 a year, to this fourth story, where he lost about forty francs 
 every evening ; and he thought he could guess what it was. 
 
 The next and following days Hippolyte threw himself into 
 his work, to try to conquer his passion by the swift rush of 
 ideas and the ardor of composition. He half succeeded. 
 Study consoled him, though it could not smother the memo- 
 ries of so many tender hours spent with Adelaide. 
 
 One evening, as he left his studio, he saw the door of the
 
 388 THE PURSE. 
 
 ladies' rooms half open. Somebody was standing in the recess 
 of the window, and the position of the door and the staircase 
 made it impossible that the painter should pass without seeing 
 Adelaide. He bowed coldly, with a glance of supreme indif- 
 ference ; but, judging of the girl's suffering by his own, he felt 
 an inward shudder as he reflected on the bitterness which that 
 look and that coldness must produce in a loving heart. To 
 crown the most delightful feast which ever brought joy to two 
 pure souls, by eight days of disdain, of the deepest and most 
 utter contempt ! A frightful conclusion ! And perhaps the 
 purse had been found, perhaps Adelaide had looked for her 
 friend every evening. 
 
 This simple and natural idea filled the lover with fresh re- 
 morse; he asked himself whether the proofs of attachment 
 given him by the young girl, the delightful talks, full of the 
 love that had so charmed him, did not deserve at least an 
 inquiry ; were not worthy of some justification. Ashamed of 
 having resisted the promptings of his heart for a whole week, 
 and feeling himself almost a criminal in this mental struggle, 
 he called the same evening on Madame de Rouville. 
 
 All his suspicions, all his evil thoughts vanished at the sight 
 of the young girl, who had grown pale and thin. 
 
 " Good heavens ! what is the matter ? " he asked her, after 
 greeting the Baroness. 
 
 Adelaide made no reply, but she gave him a look of deep 
 melancholy, a sad, dejected look, which pained and humili- 
 ated him. 
 
 "You have, no doubt, been working hard," said the old 
 lady. "You are altered. We are the cause of your seclu- 
 sion. That portrait had delayed some pictures essential to 
 your reputation." 
 
 Hippolyte was glad to find so good an excuse for his rude- 
 ness. 
 
 " "/Yes," he said, "I have been very busy, but I have been 
 suffering "
 
 THE PURSE. 389 
 
 At these words Adelaide raised her head, looked at her 
 lover, and her anxious eyes had now no hint of reproach. 
 
 " You must have thought us quite indifferent to any good 
 or ill that may befall you ? " said the old lady. 
 
 "I was wrong," he replied. "Still, there are forms of 
 pain which we know not how to confide to any one, even to a 
 friendship of older date than that with which you honor me." 
 
 " The sincerity and strength of friendship are not to be 
 measured by time. I have seen old friends who had not a 
 tear to bestow on misfortune," said the Baroness, nodding 
 sadly. 
 
 " But you what ails you ? " the young man asked Adelaide. 
 
 "Oh, nothing," replied the Baroness; "Adelaide has sat 
 up late for some nights to finish some little piece of woman's 
 work, and would not listen to me when I told her that a day 
 more or less did not matter " 
 
 Hippolyte was not listening. As he looked at these two 
 noble, calm faces, he blushed for his suspicions and ascribed 
 the loss of his purse to some unknown accident. 
 
 This was a delicious evening to him, and perhaps to her 
 too. There are some secrets which young souls understand 
 so well. Adelaide could read Hippolyte's thoughts. Though 
 he could not confess his misdeeds, the painter knew them, 
 and he had come back to his mistress more in love and more 
 affectionate, trying thus to purchase her tacit forgiveness. 
 Adelaide was enjoying such perfect, such sweet happiness, 
 that she did not think she had paid too dear for it with all the 
 grief that had so cruelly crushed her soul. And yet, this true 
 concord of hearts, this understanding so full of magic charm, 
 was disturbed by a little speech of Madame de Rouville's. 
 
 "Let us have our little game," she said, "for my old 
 friend Kergarouet will not let me off." 
 
 These words revived all the young painter's fears ; he col- 
 o'red as he looked at Adelaide's mother, but he saw nothing 
 in her countenance but the expression of the frankest good-
 
 390 THE PURSE. 
 
 nature ; no double meaning marred its charm ; its keenness 
 was not perfidious, its humor seemed kindly, and no trace of 
 remorse disturbed its equanimity. 
 
 He sat down to the card-table. Adelaide took side with 
 the painter, saying that he did not know piquet, and needed 
 a partner. 
 
 All through the game Madame de Rouville and her daugh- 
 ter exchanged looks of intelligence, which alarmed Hippolyte 
 all the more because he was winning ; but at last a final hand 
 left the lovers in the old lady's debt. 
 
 To feel for some money in his pocket the painter took his 
 hands off the table, and he then saw before him a purse 
 which Adelaide had slipped in front of him without his 
 noticing it ; the poor child had the old one in her hand, and, 
 to keep her countenance, was looking into it for the money 
 to pay her mother. The blood rushed to Hippolyte's heart 
 with such force that he was near fainting. 
 
 The new purse, substituted for his own, and which con- 
 tained his fifteen gold louis, was worked with gilt beads. 
 The rings and tassels bore witness to Adelaide's good taste, 
 and she had no doubt spent all her little hoard in ornament- 
 ing this pretty piece of work. It was impossible to say with 
 greater delicacy that the painter's gift could only be repaid 
 by some proof of affection. Hippolyte, overcome with hap- 
 piness, turned to look at Adelaide and her mother, and saw 
 that they were tremulous with pleasure and delight at their 
 little trick. He felt himself mean, sordid, a fool ; he longed 
 to punish himself, to rend his heart. A few tears rose to his 
 eyes, by an irresistible impulse he sprang up, clasped Adelaide 
 in his arms, pressed her to his heart, and stole a kiss ; then 
 with the simple heartiness of an artist: "I ask her for my 
 wife ! " he exclaimed, looking at the Baroness. 
 
 Adelaide looked at him with half-wrathful eyes, and Mad- 
 ame de Rouville, somewhat astonished, was considering her 
 reply, when the scene was interrupted by a ring at the bell.
 
 THE PURSE. 391 
 
 The old vice-admiral came in, followed by his shadow and 
 Madame Schinner. Having guessed the cause of the grief 
 her son vainly endeavored to conceal, Hippolyte's mother 
 had made inquiries among her friends concerning Adelaide. 
 Very justly alarmed by the calumnies which weighed on the 
 young girl, unknown to the Comte de Kergarouet, whose 
 name she learned from the porter's wife, she went to report 
 them to the vice-admiral; and he, in his rage, declared "he 
 would crop all the scoundrels' ears for them." 
 
 Then, prompted by his wrath, he went on to explain to 
 Madame Schinner the secret of his losing intentionally at 
 cards, because the Baronne's pride left him none but these 
 ingenious means of assisting her. 
 
 When Madame Schinner had paid her respects to Madame 
 de Rouville, the Baroness looked at the Comte de Kergarouet, 
 at the Chevalier du Halga the friend of the departed Com- 
 tesse de Kergarouet at Hippolyte and Adelaide, and then 
 said, with the grace that comes from the heart, " So we are a 
 family party this evening." 
 
 PARIS, May, 1832.
 
 Liu i
 
 000 525 458 
 
 I