LUCID ALBA
The doctor had diagnosed the case correctly. Dorsenne's ball had struck
Gorka below the wrist. Two centimetres more to the right or to the left,
and undoubtedly Boleslas would have been killed. He escaped with a
fracture of the forearm, which would confine him for a few days to his
room, and which would force him to submit for several weeks to the
annoyance of a sling. When he was taken home and his personal physician,
hastily summoned, made him a bandage and prescribed for the first few
days bed and rest, he experienced a new access of rage, which exceeded
the paroxysms of the day before and of that morning. All parts of his
soul, the noblest as well as the meanest, bled at once and caused him to
suffer with another agony than that occasioned by his wounded arm. Was
he satisfied in the desire, almost morbid, to figure in the eyes of those
who knew him as an extraordinary personage? He had hastened from Poland
through Europe as an avenger of his betrayed love, and he had begun by
missing his rival. Instead of provoking him immediately in the salon of
Villa Steno, he had waited, and another had had time to substitute
himself for the one he had wished to chastise. The other, whose death
would at least have given a tragical issue to the adventure, Boleslas had
scarcely touched. He had hoped in striking Dorsenne to execute at least
one traitor whom he considered as having trifled with the most sacred of
confidences. He had simply succeeded in giving that false friend
occasion to humiliate him bitterly, leaving out of the question that he
had rendered it impossible to fight again for many days. None of the
persons who had wronged him would be punished for some time, neither his
coarse and cowardly rival, nor his perfidious mistress, nor monstrous
Lydia Maitland, whose infamy he had just discovered. They were all happy
and triumphant, on that lovely, radiant May day, while he tossed on a bed
of pain, and it was proven too clearly to him that very afternoon by his
two seconds, the only visitors whom he had not denied admission, and who
came to see him about five o'clock. They came from the races of Tor di
Quinto, which had taken place that day.
All is well," began Cibo, "I will guarantee that no one has talked....
I have told you before, I am sure of my innkeeper, and we have paid the
witnesses and the coachman.
"Were Madame Steno and her daughter at the races?" interrupted Boleslas.
"Yes," replied the Roman, whom the abruptness of the question surprised
too much for him to evade it with his habitual diplomacy.
"With whom?" asked the wounded man.
"Alone, that time," replied Cibo, with an eagerness in which Boleslas
distinguished an intention to deceive him.
"And Madame Maitland?"
"She was there, too, with her husband," said Pietrapertosa, heedless of
Cibo's warning glances, "and all Rome besides," adding: "Do you know the
engagement of Ardea and little Hafner is public? They were all three
there, the betrothed and the father, and so happy! I vow, it was fine.
Cardinal Guerillot baptized pretty Fanny."
"And Dorsenne?" again questioned the invalid.
"He was there," said Cibo. "You will be vexed when I tell you of the
reply he dared to make us. We asked him how he had managed--nervous as
he is--to aim at you as he aimed, without trembling. For he did not
tremble. And guess what he replied? That he thought of a recipe of
Stendhal's--to recite from memory four Latin verses, before firing. 'And
might one know what you chose?' I asked of him. Thereupon he repeated:
'Tityre, tu patulae recubens.!"
"It is a case which recalls the word of Casal," interrupted
Pietrapertosa, "when that snob of a Figon recommended to us at the club
his varnish manufactured from a recipe of a valet of the Prince of Wales.
If the young man is not settled by us, I shall be sorry for him."
Although the two 'confreres' had repeated that mediocre pleasantry a
hundred times, they laughed at the top of their sonorous voices and
succeeded in entirely unnerving the injured man. He gave as a pretext
his need of rest to dismiss the fine fellows, of whose sympathy he was
assured, whom he had just found loyal and devoted, but who caused him
pain in conjuring up, in answer to his question, the images of all his
enemies. When one is suffering from a certain sort of pain, remarks like
those naively exchanged between the two Roman imitators of Casal are
intolerable to the hearer. One desires to be alone to feed upon, at
least in peace, the bitter food, the exasperating and inefficacious
rancor against people and against fate, with which Gorka at that moment
felt his heart to be so full. The presence of his former mistress at the
races, and on that afternoon, wounded him more cruelly than the rest. He
did not doubt that she knew through Maitland, himself, certainly informed
by Chapron, of the two duels and of his injury. It was on her account
that he had fought, and that very day she appeared in public, smiling,
coquetting, as if two years of passion had not united their lives, as if
he were to her merely a social acquaintance, a guest at her dinners and
her soirees. He knew her habits so well, and how eagerly, when she
loved, she drank in the presence of him she loved. No doubt she had an
appointment on the race-course with Maitland, as she had formerly had
with him, and the painter had gone thither when he should have cared for
his courageous, his noble brother-in-law, whom he had allowed to fight
for him! What a worthy lover the selfish and brutal American was of that
vile creature! The image of the happy couple tortured Boleslas with the
bitterest jealousy intermingled with disgust, and, by contrast, he
thought of his own wife, the proud and tender Maud whom he had lost.
He pictured to himself other illnesses when he had seen that beautiful
nurse by his bedside. He saw again the true glance with which that wife,
so shamefully betrayed, looked at him, the movements of her loyal hands,
which yielded to no one the care of waiting upon him. To-day she had
allowed him to go to a duel without seeing him. He had returned. She
had not even inquired as to his wound. The doctor had dressed it without
her presence, and all that he knew of her was what he learned from their
child. For he sent for Luc. He explained to him his broken arm, as had
been agreed upon with his friends, by a fall on the staircase, and little
Luc replied:
"When will you join us, then? Mamma says we leave for England this
evening or in the morning. All the trunks are almost ready."
That evening or to-morrow? So Maud was going to execute her threat. She
was going away forever, and without an explanation. He could not even
plead his cause once more to the woman who certainly would not respond to
another appeal, since she had found, in her outraged pride, the strength
to be severe, when he was in danger of death. In the face of that
evidence of the desertion of all connected with him, Boleslas suffered
one of those accesses of discouragement, deep, absolute, irremediable, in
which one longs to sleep forever. He asked himself: "Were I to try one
more step?" and he replied: "She will not!" when his valet entered with
word that the Countess desired to speak with him. His agitation was so
extreme that, for a second, he fancied it was with regard to Madame
Steno, and he was almost afraid to see his wife enter.
Without any doubt, the emotions undergone during the past few days had
been very great. He had, however, experienced none more violent, even
beneath the pistol raised by Dorsenne, than that of seeing advance to his
bed the embodiment of his remorse. Maud's face, in which ordinarily
glowed the beauty of a blood quickened by the English habits of fresh air
and daily exercise, showed undeniable traces of tears, of sadness, and of
insomnia. The pallor of the cheeks, the dark circles beneath the eyes,
the dryness of the lips and their bitter expression, the feverish
glitter, above all, in the eyes, related more eloquently than words the
terrible agony of which she was the victim. The past twenty-four hours
had acted upon her like certain long illnesses, in which it seems that
the very essence of the organism is altered. She was another person.
The rapid metamorphosis, so tragical and so striking, caused Boleslas to
forget his own anguish. He experienced nothing but one great regret when
the woman, so visibly bowed down by grief, was seated, and when he saw in
her eyes the look of implacable coldness, even through the fever, before
which he had recoiled the day before. But she was there, and her
unhoped-for presence was to the young man, even under the circumstances,
an infinite consolation. He, therefore, said, with an almost childish
grace, which he could assume when he desired to please:
"You recognized the fact that it would be too cruel of you to go away
without seeing me again. I should not have dared to ask it of you, and
yet it was the only pleasure I could have.... I thank you for having
given it to me."
"Do not thank me," replied Maud, shaking her head, "it is not on your
account that I am here. It is from duty.... Let me speak," she
continued, stopping by a gesture her husband's reply, "you can answer me
afterward.... Had it only been a question of you and of me, I repeat,
I should not have seen you again.... But, as I told you yesterday, we
have a son."
"Ah!" exclaimed Boleslas, sadly. "It is to make me still more wretched
that you have come.... You should remember, however, that I am in no
condition to discuss with you so cruel a question.... I thought I had
already said that I would not disregard your rights on condition that you
did not disregard mine."
"It is not of my rights that I wish to speak, nor of yours," interrupted
Maud, "but of his, the only ones of importance. When I left you
yesterday, I was suffering too severely to feel anything but my pain.
It was then that, in my mental agony, I recalled words repeated to me by
my father: 'When one suffers, he should look his grief in the face, and
it will always teach him something.' I was ashamed of my weakness, and I
looked my grief in the face. It taught me, first, to accept it as a just
punishment for having married against the advice and wishes of my
father."
"Ah, do not abjure our past!" cried the young man; "the past which has
remained so dear to me through all."
"No, I do not abjure it," replied Maud, "for it was on recurring to it--
it was on returning to my early impressions--that I could find not an
excuse, but an explanation of your conduct. I remembered what you
related to me of the misfortunes of your childhood and of your youth, and
how you had grown up between your father and your mother, passing six
months with one, six months with the other--not caring for, not being
able to judge either of them--forced to hide from one your feelings for
the other. I saw for the first time that your parents' separation had
the effect of saddening your heart at that epoch. It is that which
perverted your character.... And I read in advance Luc's history in
yours.... Listen, Boleslas! I speak to you as I would speak before God!
My first feeling when that thought presented itself to my mind was not to
resume life with you; such a life would be henceforth too bitter. No, it
was to say to myself, I will have my son to myself. He shall feel my
influence alone. I saw you set out this morning--set out to insult me
once more, to sacrifice me once more! If you had been truly repentant
would you have offered me that last affront? And when you returned--when
they informed me that you had a broken arm--I wished to tell the little
one myself that you were ill.... I saw how much he loved you,
I discovered what a place you already occupied in his heart, and I
comprehended that, even if the law gave him to me, as I know it would,
his childhood would be like yours, his youth like your youth."
"Then," she went on, with an accent in which emotion struggled through
her pride, "I did not feel justified in destroying the respect so deep,
the love so true, he bears you, and I have come to say to you: You have
wronged me greatly. You have killed within me something that will never
come to life again. I feel that for years I shall carry a weight on my
mind and on my heart at the thought that you could have betrayed me as
you have. But I feel that for our boy this separation on which I had
resolved is too perilous. I feel that I shall find in the certainty of
avoiding a moral danger for him the strength to continue a common
existence, and I will continue it. But human nature is human nature,
and that strength I can have only on one condition."
"And that is?" asked Boleslas. Maud's speech, for it was a speech
carefully reflected upon, every phrase of which had been weighed by that
scrupulous conscience, contrasted strongly in its lucid reasoning with
the state of nervous excitement in which he had lived for several days.
He had been more pained by it than he would have been by passionate
reproaches. At the same time he had been moved by the reference to his
son's love for him, and he felt that if he did not become reconciled with
Maud at that moment his future domestic life would be ended. There was a
little of each sentiment in the few words he added to the anxiety of his
question. "Although you have spoken to me very severely, and although
you might have said the same thing in other terms, although, above all,
it is very painful to me to have you condemn my entire character on one
single error, I love you, I love my son, and I agree in advance to your
conditions. I esteem your character too much to doubt that they will be
reconcilable with my dignity. As for the duel of this morning," he
added, "you know very well that it was too late to withdraw without
dishonor."
"I should like your promise, first of all," replied Madame Gorka, who did
not answer his last remark, "that during the time in which you are
obliged to keep your room no one shall be admitted.... I could not bear
that creature in my house, nor any one who would speak to me or to you of
her."
"I promise," said the young man, who felt a flood of warmth enter his
soul at the first proof that the jealousy of the loving woman still
existed beneath the indignation of the wife. And he added, with a smile,
"That will not be a great sacrifice. And then?"
"Then?.... That the doctor will permit us to go to England. We will
leave orders for the management of things during our absence. We will go
this winter wherever you like, but not to this house; never again to this
city."
"That is a promise, too," said Boleslas, "and that will be no great
sacrifice either; and then?"
"And then," said she in a low voice, as if ashamed of herself. "You must
never write to her, you must never try to find out what has become of
her."
"I give you my word," replied Boleslas, taking her hand, and adding: "And
then?"
"There is no then," said she, withdrawing her hand, but gently. And she
began to realize herself her promise of pardon, for she rearranged the
pillows under the wounded man's head, while he resumed:
"Yes, my noble Maud, there is a then. It is that I shall prove to you
how much truth there was in my words of yesterday, in my assurance that
I love you in spite of my faults. It is the mother who returns to me
today. But I want my wife, my dear wife, and I shall win her back."
She made no reply. She experienced, on hearing him pronounce those last
words with a transfigured face, an emotion which did not vanish. She had
acquired, beneath the shock of her great sorrow, an intuition too deep of
her husband's nature, and that facility, which formerly charmed her by
rendering her anxious, now inspired her with horror. That man with the
mobile and complaisant conscience had already forgiven himself. It
sufficed him to conceive the plan of a reparation of years, and to
respect himself for it--as if that was really sufficient--for the
difficult task. At least during the eight days which lapsed between that
conversation and their departure he strictly observed the promise he had
given his wife. In vain did Cibo, Pietrapertosa, Hafner, Ardea try to
see him. When the train which bore them away steamed out he asked his
wife, with a pride that time justified by deeds:
"Are you satisfied with me?"
"I am satisfied that we have left Rome," said she, evasively, and it was
true in two senses of the word:
First of all, because she did not delude herself with regard to the
return of the moral energy of which Boleslas was so proud. She knew that
his variable will was at the mercy of the first sensation. Then, what
she had not confessed to her husband, the sorrow of a broken friendship
was joined in her to the sorrows of a betrayed wife. The sudden
discovery of the infamy of Alba's mother had not destroyed her strong
affection for the young girl, and during the entire week, busy with her
preparations for a final departure, she had not ceased to wonder
anxiously: "What will she think of my silence?.... What has her mother
told her?.... What has she divined?"
She had loved the "poor little soul," as she called the Contessina in her
pretty English term. She had devoted to her the friendship peculiar to
young women for young girls--a sentiment--very strong and yet very
delicate, which resembles, in its tenderness, the devotion of an elder
sister for a younger. There is in it a little naive protection and also
a little romantic and gracious melancholy. The elder friend is severe
and critical. She tries to assuage, while envying them, the excessive
enthusiasms of the younger. She receives, she provokes her confidence
with the touching gravity of a counsellor. The younger friend is curious
and admiring. She shows herself in all the truth of that graceful
awakening of thoughts and emotions which precede her own period before
marriage. And when there is, as was the case with Alba Steno, a certain
discord of soul between that younger friend and her mother, the affection
for the sister chosen becomes so deep that it can not be broken without
wounds on both sides. It was for that reason that, on leaving Rome,
faithful and noble Maud experienced at once a sense of relief and of
pain--of relief, because she was no longer exposed to the danger of an
explanation with Alba; of pain, because it was so bitter a thought for
her that she could never justify her heart to her friend, could never aid
her in emerging from the difficulties of her life, could, finally, never
love her openly as she had loved her secretly. She said to herself as
she saw the city disappear in the night with its curves and its lights:
"If she thinks badly of me, may she divine nothing! Who will now prevent
her from yielding herself up to her sentiment for that dangerous and
perfidious Dorsenne? Who will console her when she is sad? Who will
defend her against her mother? I was perhaps wrong in writing to the
woman, as I did, the letter, which might have been delivered to her in
her daughter's presence.... Ah, poor little soul!.... May God watch
over her!"
She turned, then, toward her son, whose hair she stroked, as if to
exorcise, by the evidence of present duty, the nostalgia which possessed
her at the thought of an affection sacrificed forever. Hers was a nature
too active, too habituated to the British virtue of self-control to
submit to the languor of vain emotions.
The two persons of whom her friendship, now impotent, had thought, were,
for various reasons, the two fatal instruments of the fate of the "poor
little soul," and the vague remorse which Maud herself felt with regard
to the terrible note sent to Madame Steno in the presence of the young
girl, was only too true. When the servant had given that letter to the
Countess, saying that Madame Gorka excused herself on account of
indisposition, Alba Steno's first impulse had been to enter her friend's
room.
"I will go to embrace her and to see if she has need of anything," she
said.
"Madame has forbidden any one to enter her room," replied the footman,
with embarrassment, and, at the same moment, Madame Steno, who had just
opened the note, said, in a voice which struck the young girl by its
change:
"Let us go; I do not feel well, either."
The woman, so haughty, so accustomed to bend all to her will, was indeed
trembling in a very pitiful manner beneath the insult of those phrases
which drove her, Caterina Steno, away with such ignominy. She paled to
the roots of her fair hair, her face was distorted, and for the first and
last time Alba saw her form tremble. It was only for a few moments.
At the foot of the staircase energy gained the mastery in that courageous
character, created for the shock of strong emotions and for instantaneous
action. But rapid as had been that passage, it had sufficed to
disconcert the young girl. For not a moment did she doubt that the note
was the cause of that extraordinary metamorphosis in the Countess's
aspect and attitude. The fact that Maud would not receive her, her
friend, in her room was not less strange. What was happening? What did
the letter contain? What were they hiding from her? If she had, the day
before, felt the "needle in the heart" only on divining a scene of
violent explanation between her mother and Boleslas Gorka, how would she
have been agonized to ascertain the state into which the few lines of
Boleslas's wife had cast that mother! The anonymous denunciation
recurred to her, and with it all the suspicion she had in vain rejected.
The mother was unaware that for months there was taking place in her
daughter a moral drama of which that scene formed a decisive episode,
she was too shrewd not to understand that her emotion had been very
imprudent, and that she must explain it. Moreover, the rupture with Maud
was irreparable, and it was necessary that Alba should be included in it.
The mother, at once so guilty and so loving, so blind and so considerate,
had no sooner foreseen the necessity than her decision was made, and a
false explanation invented:
"Guess what Maud has just written me?" said she, brusquely, to her
daughter, when they were seated side by side in their carriage. God,
what balm the simple phrase introduced into Alba's heart! Her mother was
about to show her the note! Her joy was short-lived! The note remained
where the Countess had slipped it, after having nervously folded it, in
the opening in her glove. And she continued: "She accuses me of being
the cause of a duel between her husband and Florent Chapron, and she
quarrels with me by letter, without seeing me, without speaking to me!"
"Boleslas Gorka has fought a duel with Florent Chapron?" repeated the
young girl.
"Yes," replied her mother. "I knew that through Hafner. I did not speak
of it to you in order not to worry you with regard to Maud, and I have
only awaited her so long to cheer her up in case I should have found her
uneasy, and this is how she rewards me for my friendship! It seems that
Gorka took offence at some remark of Chapron's about Poles, one of those
innocent remarks made daily on any nation--the Italians, the French, the
English, the Germans, the Jews--and which mean nothing.... I repeated
the remark in jest to Gorka!.... I leave you to judge.... Is it my
fault if, instead of laughing at it, he insulted poor Florent, and if the
absurd encounter resulted from it? And Maud, who writes me that she will
never pardon me, that I am a false friend, that I did it expressly to
exasperate her husband.... Ah, let her watch her husband, let her lock
him up, if he is mad! And I, who have received them as I have, I, who
have made their position for them in Rome, I, who had no other thought
than for her just now!.... You hear," she added, pressing her daughter's
hand with a fervor which was at least sincere, if her words were
untruthful, "I forbid you seeing her again or writing to her. If she
does not offer me an apology for her insulting note, I no longer wish to
know her. One is foolish to be so kind!"
For the first time, while listening to that speech, Alba was convinced
that her mother was deceiving her. Since suspicion had entered her heart
with regard to her mother, the object until then of such admiration and
affection, she had passed through many stages of mistrust. To talk with
the Countess was always to dissipate them. That was because Madame
Steno, apart from her amorous immorality, was of a frank and truthful
nature.
It was indeed a customary and known weakness of Florent's to repeat those
witticisms which abound in national epigrams, as mediocre as they are
iniquitous. Alba could recall at least twenty circumstances when the
excellent man had uttered such jests at which a sensitive person might
take offence. She would not have thought it utterly impossible that a
duel between Gorka and Chapron might have been provoked by an incident of
that order. But Chapron was the brother-in-law of Maitland, of the new
friend with whom Madame Steno had become infatuated during the absence of
the Polish Count, and what a brother-in-law! He of whom Dorsenne said:
"He would set Rome on fire to cook an egg for his sister's husband."
When Madame Steno announced that duel to her daughter, an invincible and
immediate deduction possessed the poor child--Florent was fighting for
his brother-in-law. And on account of whom, if not of Madame Steno? The
thought would not, however, have possessed her a second in the face of
the very plausible explanation made by the Countess, if Alba had not had
in her heart a certain proof that her mother was not telling the truth.
The young girl loved Maud as much as she was loved by her. She knew the
sensibility of her faithful and, delicate friend, as that friend knew
hers. For Maud to write her mother a letter which produced an immediate
rupture, there must have been some grave reason.
Another material proof was soon joined to that moral proof. Granted the
character and the habits of the Countess, since she had not shown Maud's
letter to her daughter there and then, it was because the letter was not
fit to be shown. But she heard on the following day only the description
of the duel, related by Maitland to Madame Steno, the savage aggression
of Gorka against Dorsenne, the composure of the latter and the issue,
relatively harmless, of the two duels.
"You see," said her mother to her, "I was right in saying that Gorka is
mad!.... It seems he has had a fit of insanity since the duel, and that
they prevent him from seeing any one.... Can you now comprehend how Maud
could blame me for what is hereditary in the Gorka family?"
Such was indeed the story which the Venetian and her friends, Hafner,
Ardea, and others, circulated throughout Rome in order to diminish the
scandal. The accusation of madness is very common to women who have
goaded to excess man's passion, and who then wish to avoid all blame for
the deeds or words of that man. In this case, Boleslas's fury and his
two incomprehensible duels, fifteen minutes apart, justified the story.
When it became known in the city that the Palazzetto Doria was strictly
closed, that Maud Gorka received no one, and finally that she was taking
away her husband in the manner which resembled a flight, no doubt
remained of the young man's wrecked reason.
Two persons profited very handsomely by the gossiping, the origin of
which was a mystery. One was the innkeeper of the 'Tempo Perso', whose
simple 'bettola' became, during those few days, a veritable place of
pilgrimage, and who sold a quantity of wine and numbers of fresh eggs.
The other was Dorsenne's publisher, of whom the Roman booksellers ordered
several hundred volumes.
"If I had had that duel in Paris," said the novelist to Mademoiselle
Steno, relating to her the unforeseen result, "I should perhaps have at
length known the intoxication of the thirtieth edition."
It was a few days after the departure of the Gorkas that he jested thus,
at a large dinner of twenty-four covers, given at Villa Steno in honor of
Peppino Ardea and Fanny Hafner. Reestablished in the Countess's favor
since his duel, he had again become a frequenter of her house, so much
the more assiduous as the increasing melancholy of Alba interested him
greatly. The enigma of the young girl's character redoubled that
interest at each visit in such a degree that, notwithstanding the heat,
already beginning, of the dangerous Roman summer, he constantly deferred
his return to Paris until the morrow. What had she guessed in
consequence of the encounter, the details of which she had asked of him
with an emotion scarcely hidden in her eyes of a blue as clear, as
transparent, as impenetrable at the same time, as the water of certain
Alpine lakes at the foot of the glaciers. He thought he was doing right
in corroborating the story of Boleslas Gorka's madness, which he knew
better than any one else to be false. But was it not the surest means of
exempting Madame Steno from connection with the affair? Why had he seen
Alba's beautiful eyes veiled with a sadness inexplicable, as if he had
just given her another blow? He did not know that since the day on which
the word insanity had been uttered before her relative to Maud's husband,
the Contessina was the victim of a reasoning as simple as irrefutable.
"If Boleslas be mad, as they say," said Alba, "why does Maud, whom I know
to be so just and who loves me so dearly, attribute to my mother the
responsibility of this duel, to the point of breaking with me thus, and
of leaving without a line of explanation?.... No.... There is something
else.".... The nature of the "something else" the young girl
comprehended, on recalling her mother's face during the perusal of Maud's
letter. During the ten days following that scene, she saw constantly
before her that face, and the fear imprinted upon those features
ordinarily so calm, so haughty! Ah, poor little soul, indeed, who could
not succeed in banishing this fixed idea "My mother is not a good woman."
Idea! So much the more terrible, as Alba had no longer the ignorance of
a young girl, if she had the innocence. Accustomed to the conversations,
at times very bold, of the Countess's salon, enlightened by the reading
of novels chanced upon, the words lover and mistress had for her a
signification of physical intimacy such that it was an almost intolerable
torture for her to associate them with the relations of her mother, first
toward Gorka, then toward Maitland. That torture she had undergone
during the entire dinner, at the conclusion of which Dorsenne essayed to
chat gayly with her. She sat beside the painter, and the man's very
breath, his gestures, the sound of his voice, his manner of eating and of
drinking, the knowledge of his very proximity, had caused her such keen
suffering that it was impossible for her to take anything but large
glasses of iced water. Several times during that dinner, prolonged amid
the sparkle of magnificent silver and Venetian crystal, amid the perfume
of flowers and the gleam of jewels, she had seen Maitland's eyes fixed
upon the Countess with an expression which almost caused her to cry out,
so clearly did her instinct divine its impassioned sensuality, and once
she thought she saw her mother respond to it.
She felt with appalling clearness that which before she had uncertainly
experienced, the immodest character of that mother's beauty. With the
pearls in her fair hair, with neck and arms bare in a corsage the
delicate green tint of which showed to advantage the incomparable
splendor of her skin, with her dewy lips, with her voluptuous eyes shaded
by their long lashes, the dogaresse looked in the centre of that table
like an empress and like a courtesan. She resembled the Caterina
Cornaro, the gallant queen of the island of Cypress, painted by Titian,
and whose name she worthily bore. For years Alba had been so proud of
the ray of seduction cast forth by the Countess, so proud of those
statuesque arms, of the superb carriage, of the face which defied the
passage of time, of the bloom of opulent life the glorious creature
displayed. During that dinner she was almost ashamed of it.
She had been pained to see Madame Maitland seated a few paces farther on,
with brow and lips contracted as if by thoughts of bitterness. She
wondered: Does Lydia suspect them, too? But was it possible that her
mother, whom she knew to be so generous, so magnanimous, so kind, could
have that smile of sovereign tranquillity with such secrets in her heart?
Was it possible that she could have betrayed Maud for months and months
with the same light of joy in her eyes?
"Come," said Julien, stopping himself suddenly in the midst of a speech,
in which he had related two or three literary anecdotes. "Instead of
listening to your friend Dorsenne, little Countess, you are following
several blue devils flying through the room."
"They would fly, in any case," replied Alba, who, pointing to Fanny
Hafner and Prince d'Ardea seated on a couch, continued: "Has what I told
you a few weeks since been realized? You do not know all the irony of
it. You have not assisted, as I did the day before yesterday, at the
poor girl's baptism."
"It is true," replied Julien, "you were godmother. I dreamed of Leo
Thirteenth as godfather, with a princess of the house of Bourbon as
godmother. Hafner's triumph would have been complete!"
"He had to content himself with his ambassador and your servant," replied
Alba with a faint smile, which was speedily converted into an expression
of bitterness. "Are you satisfied with your pupil?" she added. "I am
progressing.... I laugh--when I wish to weep.... But you yourself would
not have laughed had you seen the fervor of charming Fanny. She was the
picture of blissful faith. Do not scoff at her."
"And where did the ceremony take place?" asked Dorsenne, obeying the
almost suppliant injunction.
"In the chapel of the Dames du Cenacle."
"I know the place," replied the novelist, "one of the most beautiful
corners of Rome! It is in the old Palais Piancini, a large mansion
almost opposite the 'Calcographie Royale', where they sell those
fantastic etchings of the great Piranese, those dungeons and those ruins
of so intense a poesy! It is the Gaya of stone. There is a garden on
the terrace. And to ascend to the chapel one follows a winding
staircase, an incline without steps, and one meets nuns in violet gowns,
with faces so delicate in the white framework of their bonnets. In
short, an ideal retreat for one of my heroines. My old friend Montfanon
took me there. As we ascended to that tower, six weeks ago, we heard the
shrill voices of ten little girls, singing: 'Questo cuor tu la vedrai'.
It was a procession of catechists, going in the opposite direction, with
tapers which flickered dimly in the remnant of daylight.... It was
exquisite.... But, now permit me to laugh at the thought of Montfanon's
choler when I relate to him this baptism. If I knew where to find the
old leaguer! But he has been hiding since our duel. He is in some
retreat doing penance. As I have already told you, the world for him has
not stirred since Francois de Guise. He only admits the alms of the
Protestants and the Jews. When Monseigneur Guerillot tells him of
Fanny's religious aspirations, he raves immoderately. Were she to cast
herself to the lions, like Saint Blandine, he would still cry out
'sacrilege.'"
"He did not see her the day before yesterday," said Alba, "nor the
expression upon her face when she recited the Credo. I do not believe in
mysticism, you know, and I have moments of doubt. There are times when
I can no longer believe in anything, life seems to me so wretched and
sad.... But I shall never forget that expression. She saw God!....
Several women were present with very touching faces, and there were many
devotees.... The Cardinal is very venerable.... All were by Fanny's
side, like saints around the Madonna in the early paintings which you
have taught me to like, and when the baptism had been gone through, guess
what she said to me: 'Come, let us pray for my dear father, and for his
conversion.' Is not such blindness melancholy."
"The fact is," said Dorsenne again, jocosely, "that in the father's
dictionary the word has another meaning: Conversion, feminine
substantive, means to him income.... But let us reason a little,
Countess. Why do you think it sad that the daughter should see her
father's character in her own light?.... You should, on the contrary,
rejoice at it.... And why do you find it melancholy that this adorable
saint should be the daughter of a thief?.... How I wish that you were
really my pupil, and that it would not be too absurd to give you here,
in this corner of the hall, a lesson in intellectuality!.... I would say
to you, when you see one of those anomalies which renders you indignant,
think of the causes. It is so easy. Although Protestant, Fanny is of
Jewish origin--that is to say, the descendant of a persecuted race--which
in consequence has developed by the side of the inherent defects of a
proscribed people the corresponding virtues, the devotion, the abnegation
of the woman who feels that she is the grace of a threatened hearth, the
sweet flower which perfumes the sombre prison."
"It is all beautiful and true," replied Alba, very seriously. She had
hung upon Dorsenne's lips while he spoke, with the instinctive taste for
ideas of that order which proved her veritable origin. "But you do not
mention the sorrow. This is what one can not do--look upon as a
tapestry, as a picture, as an object; the creature who has not asked to
live and who suffers. You, who have feeling, what is your theory when
you weep?"
"I can very clearly foresee the day on which Fanny will feel her
misfortune," continued the young girl. "I do not know when she will
begin to judge her father, but that she already begins to judge Ardea,
alas, I am only too sure.... Watch her at this moment, I pray you."
Dorsenne indeed looked at the couple. Fanny was listening to the Prince,
but with a trace of suffering upon her beautiful face, so pure in outline
that the nobleness in it was ideal.
He was laughing at some anecdote which he thought excellent, and which
clashed with the sense of delicacy of the person to whom he was
addressing himself. They were no longer the couple who, in the early
days of their betrothal, had given to Julien the sentiment of a complete
illusion on the part of the young girl for her future husband.
"You are right, Contessina," said he, "the decrystallization has
commenced. It is a little too soon."
"Yes, it is too soon," replied Alba. "And yet it is too late. Would you
believe that there are times when I ask myself if it would not be my duty
to tell her the truth about her marriage, such as I know it, with the
story of the weak man, the forced sale, and of the bargaining of Ardea?"
"You will not do it," said Dorsenne. "Moreover, why? This one or
another, the man who marries her will only want her money, rest assured.
It is necessary that the millions be paid for here below, it is one of
their ransoms.... But I shall cause you to be scolded by your mother,
for I am monopolizing you, and I have still two calls to pay this
evening."
"Well, postpone them," said Alba. "I beseech you, do not go."
"I must," replied Julien. "It is the last Wednesday of old Duchess
Pietrapertosa, and after her grandson's recent kindness--"
"She is so ugly," said Alba, "will you sacrifice me to her?"
"Then there is my compatriot, who goes away tomorrow and of whom I must
take leave this evening, Madame de Sauve, with whom you met me at the
museum .... You will not say she is ugly, will you?"
"No," responded Alba, dreamily, "she is very pretty.".... She had another
prayer upon her lips, which she did not formulate. Then, with a
beseeching glance: "Return, at least. Promise me that you will return
after your two visits. They will be over in an hour and a half. It will
not be midnight. You know some do not ever come before one and sometimes
two o'clock. You will return?"
"If possible, yes. But at any rate, we shall meet to-morrow, at the
studio, to see the portrait."
"Then, adieu," said the young girl, in a low voice.