AN ANONYMOUS LETTER
Nearly six weeks had passed after this last episode. It was five o'clock
in the afternoon and the Marquise awaited Camors, who was to come after
the session of the Corps Legislatif. There was a sudden knock at one of
the doors of her room, which communicated with her husband's apartment.
It was the General. She remarked with surprise, and even with fear, that
his countenance was agitated.
"What is the matter with you, my dear?" she said. "Are you ill?"
"No," replied the General, "not at all."
He placed himself before her, and looked at her some moments before
speaking, his eyes rolling wildly.
"Charlotte!" he said at last, with a painful smile, "I must own to you
my folly. I am almost mad since morning--I have received such a singular
letter. Would you like to see it?"
"If you wish," she replied.
He took a letter from his pocket, and gave it to her. The writing was
evidently carefully disguised, and it was not signed.
"An anonymous letter?" said the Marquise, whose eyebrows were slightly
raised, with an expression of disdain; then she read the letter, which
was as follows:
"A true friend, General, feels indignant at seeing your confidence
and your loyalty abused. You are deceived by those whom you love
most.
"A man who is covered with your favors and a woman who owes
everything to you are united by a secret intimacy which outrages
you. They are impatient for the hour when they can divide your
spoils.
"He who regards it as a pious duty to warn you does not desire to
calumniate any one. He is sure that your honor is respected by her
to whom you have confided it, and that she is still worthy of your
confidence and esteem. She wrongs you in allowing herself to count
upon the future, which your best friend dates from your death. He
seeks your widow and your estate.
"The poor woman submits against her will to the fascinations of a
man too celebrated for his successful affairs of the heart. But
this man, your friend--almost your son--how can he excuse his
conduct? Every honest person must be shocked by such behavior, and
particularly he whom a chance conversation informed of the fact, and
who obeys his conscience in giving you this information."
The Marquise, after reading it, returned the letter coldly to the
General.
"Sign it Eleanore-Jeanne de la Roche-Jugan!" she said.
"Do you think so?" asked the General.
"It is as clear as day," replied the Marquise. "These expressions betray
her--'a pious duty to warn you--'celebrated for his successful affairs of
the heart'--'every honest person.' She can disguise her writing, but not
her style. But what is still more conclusive is that which she
attributes to Monsieur de Camors--for I suppose it alludes to him--and to
his private prospects and calculations. This can not have failed to
strike you, as it has me, I suppose?"
"If I thought this vile letter was her work," cried the General, "I never
would see her again during my life."
"Why not? It is better to laugh at it!"
The General began one of his solemn promenades across the room. The
Marquise looked uneasily at the clock. Her husband, intercepting one of
these glances, suddenly stopped.
"Do you expect Camors to-day?" he inquired.
"Yes; I think he will call after the session."
"I think he will," responded the General, with a convulsive smile. "And
do you know, my dear," he added, "the absurd idea which has haunted me
since I received this infamous letter?--for I believe that infamy is
contagious."
"You have conceived the idea of observing our interview?" said the
Marquise, in a tone of indolent raillery.
"Yes," said the General, "there--behind that curtain--as in a theatre;
but, thank God! I have been able to resist this base intention. If ever
I allow myself to play so mean a part, I should wish at least to do it
with your knowledge and consent."
"And do you ask me to consent to it?" asked the Marquise.
"My poor Charlotte!" said the General, in a sad and almost supplicating
tone, "I am an old fool--an overgrown child--but I feel that this
miserable letter will poison my life. I shall have no more an hour of
peace and confidence. What can you expect? I was so cruelly deceived
before. I am an honorable man, but I have been taught that all men are
not like myself. There are some things which to me seem as impossible as
walking on my head, yet I see others doing these things every day. What
can I say to you? After reading this perfidious letter, I could not help
recollecting that your intimacy with Camors has greatly increased of
late!"
"Without doubt," said the Marquise, "I am very fond of him!"
"I remembered also your tete-a-tete with him, the other night, in the
boudoir, during the ball. When I awoke you had both an air of mystery.
What mysteries could there be between you two?"
"Ah, what indeed!" said the Marquise, smiling.
"And will you not tell me?"
"You shall know it at the proper time."
"Finally, I swear to you that I suspect neither of you--I neither suspect
you of wronging me--of disgracing me--nor of soiling my name . . . God
help me!
"But if you two should love each other, even while respecting my honor:
if you love each other and confess it--if you two, even at my side, in my
heart--if you, my two children, should be calculating with impatient eyes
the progress of my old age--planning your projects for the future, and
smiling at my approaching death--postponing your happiness only for my
tomb you may think yourselves guiltless, but no, I tell you it would be
shameful!"
Under the empire of the passion which controlled him, the voice of the
General became louder. His common features assumed an air of sombre
dignity and imposing grandeur. A slight shade of paleness passed over
the lovely face of the young woman and a slight frown contracted her
forehead.
By an effort, which in a better cause would have been sublime, she
quickly mastered her weakness, and, coldly pointing out to her husband
the draped door by which he had entered, said:
"Very well, conceal yourself there!"
"You will never forgive me?"
"You know little of women, my friend, if you do not know that jealousy is
one of the crimes they not only pardon but love."
"My God, I am not jealous!"
"Call it yourself what you will, but station yourself there!"
"And you are sincere in wishing me to do so?"
"I pray you to do so! Retire in the interval, leave the door open, and
when you hear Monsieur de Camors enter the court of the hotel, return."
"No!" said the General, after a moment's hesitation; "since I have gone
so far"--and he sighed deeply "I do not wish to leave myself the least
pretext for distrust. If I leave you before he comes, I am capable of
fancying--"
"That I might secretly warn him? Nothing more natural. Remain here,
then. Only take a book; for our conversation, under such circumstances,
can not be lively."
He sat down.
"But," he said, "what mystery can there be between you two?"
"You shall hear!" she said, with her sphinx-like smile.
The General mechanically took up a book. She stirred the fire, and
reflected. As she liked terror, danger, and dramatic incidents to blend
with her intrigues, she should have been content; for at that moment
shame, ruin, and death were at her door. But, to tell the truth, it was
too much for her; and when she looked, in the midst of the silence which
surrounded her, at the true character and scope of the perils which
surrounded her, she thought her brain would fail and her heart break.
She was not mistaken as to the origin of the letter. This shameful work
had indeed been planned by Madame de la Roche-Jugan. To do her justice,
she had not suspected the force of the blow she was dealing. She still
believed in the virtue of the Marquise; but during the perpetual
surveillance she had never relaxed, she could not fail to see the changed
nature of the intercourse between Camors and the Marquise. It must not
be forgotten that she dreamed of securing for her son Sigismund the
succession to her old friend; and she foresaw a dangerous rivalry--the
germ of which she sought to destroy. To awaken the distrust of the
General toward Camors, so as to cause his doors to be closed against him,
was all she meditated. But her anonymous letter, like most villainies of
this kind, was a more fatal and murderous weapon than its base author
imagined.
The young Marquise, then, mused while stirring the fire, casting, from
time to time, a furtive glance at the clock.
M. de Camors would soon arrive--how could she warn him? In the present
state of their relations it was not impossible that the very first words
of. Camors might immediately divulge their secret: and once betrayed,
there was not only for her personal dishonor, a scandalous fall, poverty,
a convent--but for her husband or her lover--perhaps for both--death!
When the bell in the lower court sounded, announcing the Count's
approach, these thoughts crowded into the brain of the Marquise like a
legion of phantoms. But she rallied her courage by a desperate effort
and strained all her faculties to the execution of the plan she had
hastily conceived, which was her last hope. And one word, one gesture,
one mistake, or one carelessness of her lover, might overthrow it in a
second. A moment later the door was opened by a servant, announcing M.
de Camors. Without speaking, she signed to her husband to gain his
hiding-place. The General, who had risen at the sound of the bell,
seemed still to hesitate, but shrugging his shoulders, as if in disdain
of himself, retired behind the curtain which faced the door.
M. de Camors entered the room carelessly, and advanced toward the
fireplace where sat the Marquise; his smiling lips half opened to speak,
when he was struck by the peculiar expression on the face of the
Marquise, and the words were frozen on his lips. This look, fixed upon
him from his entrance, had a strange, weird intensity, which, without
expressing anything, made him fear everything. But he was accustomed to
trying situations, and as wary and prudent as he was intrepid. He ceased
to smile and did not speak, but waited.
She gave him her hand without ceasing to look at him with the same
alarming intensity.
"Either she is mad," he said to himself, "or there is some great peril!"
With the rapid perception of her genius and of her love, she felt he
understood her; and not leaving him time to speak and compromise her,
instantly said:
"It is very kind of you to keep your promise."
"Not at all," said Camors, seating himself.
"Yes! For you know you come here to be tormented." There was a pause.
"Have you at last become a convert to my fixed idea?" she added after a
second.
"What fixed idea? It seems to me you have a great many!"
"Yes! But I speak of a good one--my best one, at least--of your
marriage!"
"What! again, cousin?" said Camors, who, now assured of his danger and
its nature, marched with a firmer foot over the burning soil.
"Yes, again, cousin; and I will tell you another thing--I have found the
person."
"Ah! Then I shall run away!"
She met his smile with an imperious glance.
"Then you still adhere to that plan?" said Camors, laughing.
"Most firmly! I need not repeat to you my reasons--having preached about
it all winter--in fact so much so as to disturb the General, who suspects
some mystery between us."
"The General? Indeed!"
"Oh, nothing serious, you must understand. Well, let us resume the
subject. Miss Campbell will not do--she is too blonde--an odd objection
for me to make by the way; not Mademoiselle de Silas--too thin; not
Mademoiselle Rolet, in spite of her millions; not Mademoiselle
d'Esgrigny--too much like the Bacquieres and Van-Cuyps. All this is a
little discouraging, you will admit; but finally everything clears up.
I tell you I have discovered the right one--a marvel!"
"Her name?" said Camors.
"Marie de Tecle!"
There was silence.
"Well, you say nothing," resumed the Marquise, "because you can have
nothing to say! Because she unites everything--personal beauty, family,
fortune, everything--almost like a dream. Then, too, your properties
join. You see how I have thought of everything, my friend! I can not
imagine how we never came to think of this before!"
M. de Camors did not reply, and the Marquise began to be surprised at his
silence.
"Oh!" she exclaimed; "you may look a long time--there can not be a
single objection--you are caught this time. Come, my friend, say yes, I
implore you!" And while her lips said "I implore you," in a tone of
gracious entreaty, her look said, with terrible emphasis, "You must!"
"Will you allow me to reflect upon it, Madame?" he said at last.
"No, my friend!"
"But really," said Camors, who was very pale, "it seems to me you dispose
of the hand of Mademoiselle de Tecle very readily. Mademoiselle de Tecle
is rich and courted on all sides--also, her great-uncle has ideas of the
province, and her mother, ideas of religion, which might well--"
"I charge myself with all that," interrupted the Marquise.
"What a mania you have for marrying people!"
"Women who do not make love, cousin, always have a mania for
matchmaking."
"But seriously, you will give me a few days for reflection?"
"To reflect about what? Have you not always told me you intended
marrying and have been only waiting the chance? Well, you never can find
a better one than this; and if you let it slip, you will repent the rest
of your life."
"But give me time to consult my family!"
"Your family--what a joke! It seems to me you have reached full age; and
then--what family? Your aunt, Madame de la Roche-Jugan?"
"Doubtless! I do not wish to offend her:"
"Ah, my dear cousin, don't be uneasy; suppress this uneasiness; I assure
you she will be delighted!"
"Why should she?"
"I have my reasons for thinking so;" and the young woman in uttering
these words was seized with a fit of sardonic laughter which came near
convulsion, so shaken were her nerves by the terrible tension.
Camors, to whom little by little the light fell stronger on the more
obscure points of the terrible enigma proposed to him, saw the necessity
of shortening a scene which had overtasked her faculties to an almost
insupportable degree. He rose:
"I am compelled to leave you," he said; "for I am not dining at home.
But I will come to-morrow, if you will permit me."
"Certainly. You authorize me to speak to the General?"
"Well, yes, for I really can see no reasonable objection."
"Very good. I adore you!" said the Marquise. She gave him her hand,
which he kissed and immediately departed.
It would have required a much keener vision than that of M. de Campvallon
to detect any break, or any discordance, in the audacious comedy which
had just been played before him by these two great artists.
The mute play of their eyes alone could have betrayed them; and that he
could not see.
As to their tranquil, easy, natural dialogue there was not in it a word
which he could seize upon, and which did not remove all his disquietude,
and confound all his suspicions. From this moment, and ever afterward,
every shadow was effaced from his mind; for the ability to imagine such
a plot as that in which his wife in her despair had sought refuge, or to
comprehend such depth of perversity, was not in the General's pure and
simple spirit.
When he reappeared before his wife, on leaving his concealment, he was
constrained and awkward. With a gesture of confusion and humility he
took her hand, and smiled upon her with all the goodness and tenderness
of his soul beaming from his face.
At this moment the Marquise, by a new reaction of her nervous system,
broke into weeping and sobbing; and this completed the General's despair.
Out of respect to this worthy man, we shall pass over a scene the
interest of which otherwise is not sufficient to warrant the unpleasant
effect it would produce on all honest people. We shall equally pass over
without record the conversation which took place the next day between the
Marquise and M. de Camors.
Camors had experienced, as we have observed, a sentiment of repulsion at
hearing the name of Mademoiselle de Tecle appear in the midst of this
intrigue. It amounted almost to horror, and he could not control the
manifestation of it. How could he conquer this supreme revolt of his
conscience to the point of submitting to the expedient which would make
his intrigue safe? By what detestable sophistries he dared persuade
himself that he owed everything to his accomplice--even this, we shall
not attempt to explain. To explain would be to extenuate, and that we
wish not to do. We shall only say that he resigned himself to this
marriage. On the path which he had entered a man can check himself as
little as he can check a flash of lightning.
As to the Marquise, one must have formed no conception of this depraved
though haughty spirit, if astonished at her persistence, in cold blood,
and after reflection, in the perfidious plot which the imminence of her
danger had suggested to her. She saw that the suspicions of the General
might be reawakened another day in a more dangerous manner, if this
marriage proved only a farce. She loved Camors passionately; and she
loved scarcely less the dramatic mystery of their liaison. She had also
felt a frantic terror at the thought of losing the great fortune which
she regarded as her own; for the disinterestedness of her early youth had
long vanished, and the idea of sinking miserably in the Parisian world,
where she had long reigned by her luxury as well as her beauty, was
insupportable to her.
Love, mystery, fortune-she wished to preserve them all at any price; and
the more she reflected, the more the marriage of Camors appeared to her
the surest safeguard.
It was true, it would give her a sort of rival. But she had too high an
opinion of herself to fear anything; and she preferred Mademoiselle de
Tecle to any other, because she knew her, and regarded her as an inferior
in everything.
About fifteen days after, the General called on Madame de Tecle one
morning, and demanded for M. de Camors her daughter's hand. It would be
painful to dwell on the joy which Madame de Tecle felt; and her only
surprise was that Camors had not come in person to press his suit. But
Camors had not the heart to do so. He had been at Reuilly since that
morning, and called on Madame de Tecle, where he learned his overture was
accepted. Once having resolved on this monstrous action, he was
determined to carry it through in the most correct manner, and we know he
was master of all social arts.
In the evening Madame de Tecle and her daughter, left alone, walked
together a long time on their dear terrace, by the soft light of the
stars--the daughter blessing her mother, and the mother thanking God--
both mingling their hearts, their dreams, their kisses, and their tears
--happier, poor women, than is permitted long to human beings. The
marriage took place the ensuing month.
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