It was now the end of August, and the sky was magnificently clear. Near
the horizon the sea had taken, as it is wont to do in southern climes, a
tint of molten silver; on the shore it rippled in tiny waves. A sort of
glowing vapor, an effect of the rays of the sun falling plumb upon the
sands, produced an atmosphere like that of the tropics. The salt shone
up like bunches of white violets on the surface of the marsh. The
patient _paludiers_, dressed in white to resist the action of the sun,
had been from early morning at their posts, armed with long rakes. Some
were leaning on the low mud-walls that divided the different holdings,
whence they watched the process of this natural chemistry, known to them
from childhood. Others were playing with their wives and children. Those
green dragons, otherwise called custom-house officers, were tranquilly
smoking their pipes.
There was something foreign, perhaps oriental, about the scene; at any
rate a Parisian suddenly transported thither would never have supposed
himself in France. The baron and baroness, who had made a pretext of
coming to see how the salt harvest throve, were on the jetty, admiring
the silent landscape, where the sea alone sounded the moan of her waves
at regular intervals, where boats and vessels tracked a vast expanse,
and the girdle of green earth richly cultivated, produced an effect
that was all the more charming because so rare on the desolate shores of
ocean.
“Well, my friends, I wanted to see the marshes of Guerande once more
before I die,” said the baron to the _paludiers_, who had gathered about
the entrance of the marshes to salute him.
“Can a Guenic die?” said one of them.
Just then the party from Les Touches arrived through the narrow
pathway. The marquise walked first alone; Calyste and Camille followed
arm-in-arm. Gasselin brought up the rear.
“There are my father and mother,” said the young man to Camille.
The marquise stopped short. Madame du Guenic felt the most violent
repulsion at the appearance of Beatrix, although the latter was dressed
to much advantage. A Leghorn hat with wide brims and a wreath of
blue-bells, her crimped hair fluffy beneath it, a gown of some gray
woollen stuff, and a blue sash with floating ends gave her the air of a
princess disguised as a milkmaid.
“She has no heart,” thought the baroness.
“Mademoiselle,” said Calyste to Camille, “this is Madame du Guenic,
and this is my father.” Then he said turning to the baron and baroness,
“Mademoiselle des Touches, and Madame la Marquise de Rochefide, _nee_ de
Casteran, father.”
The baron bowed to Mademoiselle des Touches, who made a respectful bow,
full of gratitude, to the baroness.
“That one,” thought Fanny, “really loves my boy; she seems to thank me
for bringing him into the world.”
“I suppose you have come to see, as I have, whether the harvest is a
good one. But I believe you have better reasons for doing so than
I,” said the baron to Camille. “You have property here, I think,
mademoiselle.”
“Mademoiselle is the largest of all the owners,” said one of the
_paludiers_ who were grouped about them, “and may God preserve her to
us, for she’s a _good_ lady.”
The two parties bowed and separated.
“No one would suppose Mademoiselle des Touches to be more than thirty,”
said the baron to his wife. “She is very handsome. And Calyste prefers
that haggard Parisian marquise to a sound Breton girl!”
“I fear he does,” replied the baroness.
A boat was waiting at the steps of the jetty, where the party embarked
without a smile. The marquise was cold and dignified. Camille had
lectured Calyste on his disobedience, explaining to him clearly how
matters stood. Calyste, a prey to black despair, was casting glances at
Beatrix in which anger and love struggled for the mastery. Not a word
was said by any of them during the short passage from the jetty of
Guerande to the extreme end of the port of Croisic, the point where
the boats discharge the salt, which the peasant-women then bear away on
their heads in huge earthen jars after the fashion of caryatides. These
women go barefooted with very short petticoats. Many of them let the
kerchiefs which cover their bosoms fly carelessly open. Some wear only
shifts, and are the more dignified; for the less clothing a woman wears,
the more nobly modest is her bearing.
The little Danish vessel had just finished lading, therefore the landing
of the two handsome ladies excited much curiosity among the female
salt-carriers; and as much to avoid their remarks as to serve Calyste,
Camille sprang forward toward the rocks, leaving him to follow with
Beatrix, while Gasselin put a distance of some two hundred steps between
himself and his master.
The peninsula of Croisic is flanked on the sea side by granite rocks
the shapes of which are so strangely fantastic that they can only be
appreciated by travellers who are in a position to compare them with
other great spectacles of primeval Nature. Perhaps the rocks of Croisic
have the same advantage over sights of that kind as that accorded to the
road to the Grande Chartreuse over all other narrow valleys. Neither
the coasts of Croisic, where the granite bulwark is split into strange
reefs, nor those of Sardinia, where Nature is dedicated to grandiose and
terrible effects, nor even the basaltic rocks of the northern seas can
show a character so unique and so complete. Fancy has here amused itself
by composing interminable arabesques where the most fantastic figures
wind and twine. All forms are here. The imagination is at last fatigued
by this vast gallery of abnormal shapes, where in stormy weather the sea
makes rough assaults which have ended in polishing all ruggedness.
You will find under a naturally vaulted roof, of a boldness imitated
from afar by Brunelleschi (for the greatest efforts of art are always
the timid copying of effects of nature), a rocky hollow polished like a
marble bath-tub and floored with fine white sand, in which is four feet
of tepid water where you can bathe without danger. You walk on, admiring
the cool little covers sheltered by great portals; roughly carved, it is
true, but majestic, like the Pitti palace, that other imitation of the
whims of Nature. Curious features are innumerable; nothing is lacking
that the wildest imagination could invent or desire.
There even exists a thing so rare on the rocky shores of ocean that this
may be the solitary instance of it,--a large bush of box. This bush, the
greatest curiosity of Croisic, where trees have never grown, is three
miles distant from the harbor, on the point of rocks that runs farthest
into the sea. On this granite promontory, which rises to a height that
neither the waves nor the spray can touch, even in the wildest weather,
and faces southerly, diluvian caprice has constructed a hollow basin,
which projects about four feet. Into this basin, or cleft, chance,
possibly man, has conveyed enough vegetable earth for the growth of a
box-plant, compact, well-nourished, and sown, no doubt, by birds. The
shape of the roots would indicate to a botanist an existence of at least
three hundred years. Above it the rock has been broken off abruptly. The
natural convulsion which did this, the traces of which are ineffaceably
written here, must have carried away the broken fragments of the granite
I know not where.
The sea rushes in, meeting no reefs, to the foot of this cliff, which
rises to a height of some four or five hundred feet; at its base lie
several scattered rocks, just reaching the surface at high water, and
describing a semi-circle. It requires some nerve and resolution to climb
to the summit of this little Gibraltar, the shape of which is nearly
round, and from which a sudden gust of wind might precipitate the rash
gazer into the sea, or, still more to be feared, upon the rocks.
This gigantic sentinel resembles the look-out towers of old castles,
from which the inhabitants could look the country over and foresee
attacks. Thence we see the clock towers and the arid fields of Croisic,
with the sandy dunes, which injure cultivation, and stretch as far as
Batz. A few old men declare that in days long past a fortress occupied
the spot. The sardine-fishers have given the rock, which can be seen
far out at sea, a name; but it is useless to write it here, its Breton
consonants being as difficult to pronounce as to remember.
Calyste led Beatrix to this point, whence the view is magnificent, and
where the natural sculpture of the granite is even more imposing to the
spectator than the mass of the huge breastwork when seen from the sandy
road which skirts the shore.
Is it necessary to explain why Camille had rushed away alone? Like
some wounded wild animal, she longed for solitude, and went on and
on, threading her way among the fissures and caves and little peaks of
nature’s fortress. Not to be hampered in climbing by women’s clothing,
she wore trousers with frilled edges, a short blouse, a peaked cap, and,
by way of staff, she carried a riding-whip, for Camille has always had a
certain vanity in her strength and her agility. Thus arrayed, she looked
far handsomer than Beatrix. She wore also a little shawl of crimson
China crape, crossed on her bosom and tied behind, as they dress a
child. For some time Beatrix and Calyste saw her flitting before them
over the peaks and chasms like a ghost or vision; she was trying to
still her inward sufferings by confronting some imaginary peril.
She was the first to reach the rock in which the box-bush grew. There
she sat down in the shade of a granite projection, and was lost in
thought. What could a woman like herself do with old age, having already
drunk the cup of fame which all great talents, too eager to sip slowly
the stupid pleasures of vanity, quaff at a single draught? She has since
admitted that it was here--at this moment, and on this spot--that one of
those singular reflections suggested by a mere nothing, by one of those
chance accidents that seem nonsense to common minds, but which, to noble
souls, do sometimes open vast depths of thought, decided her to take the
extraordinary step by which she was to part forever from social life.
She drew from her pocket a little box, in which she had put, in case of
thirst, some strawberry lozenges; she now ate several; and as she did
so, the thought crossed her mind that the strawberries, which existed
no longer, lived nevertheless in their qualities. Was it not so with
ourselves? The ocean before her was an image of the infinite. No great
spirit can face the infinite, admitting the immortality of the soul,
without the conviction of a future of holiness. The thought filled her
mind. How petty then seemed the part that she was playing! there was no
real greatness in giving Beatrix to Calyste! So thinking, she felt the
earthly woman die within her, and the true woman, the noble and angelic
being, veiled until now by flesh, arose in her place. Her great mind,
her knowledge, her attainments, her false loves had brought her face
to face with what? Ah! who would have thought it?--with the bounteous
mother, the comforter of troubled spirits, with the Roman Church, ever
kind to repentance, poetic to poets, childlike with children, and yet
so profound, so full of mystery to anxious, restless minds that they can
burrow there and satisfy all longings, all questionings, all hopes.
She cast her eyes, as it were, upon the strangely devious way--like the
tortuous rocky path before her--over which her love for Calyste had
led her. Ah! Calyste was indeed a messenger from heaven, her divine
conductor! She had stifled earthly love, and a divine love had come from
it.
After walking for some distance in silence, Calyste could not refrain,
on a remark of Beatrix about the grandeur of the ocean, so unlike the
smiling beauty of the Mediterranean, from comparing in depth, purity,
extent, unchanging and eternal duration, that ocean with his love.
“It is met by a rock!” said Beatrix, laughing.
“When you speak thus,” he answered, with a sublime look, “I hear you, I
see you, and I can summon to my aid the patience of the angels; but when
I am alone, you would pity me if you could see me then. My mother weeps
for my suffering.”
“Listen to me, Calyste; we must put an end to all this,” said the
marquise, gazing down upon the sandy road. “Perhaps we have now reached
the only propitious place to say these things, for never in my life did
I see nature more in keeping with my thoughts. I have seen Italy, where
all things tell of love; I have seen Switzerland, where all is cool
and fresh, and tells of happiness,--the happiness of labor; where the
verdure, the tranquil waters, the smiling slopes, are oppressed by the
snow-topped Alps; but I have never seen anything that so depicts the
burning barrenness of my life as that little arid plain down there,
dried by the salt sea winds, corroded by the spray, where a fruitless
agriculture tries to struggle against the will of that great ocean.
There, Calyste, you have an image of this Beatrix. Don’t cling to it. I
love you, but I will never be yours in any way whatever, for I have the
sense of my inward desolation. Ah! you do not know how cruel I am
to myself in speaking thus to you. No, you shall never see your idol
diminished; she shall never fall from the height at which you have
placed her. I now have a horror of any love which disregards the world
and religion. I shall remain in my present bonds; I shall be that sandy
plain we see before us, without fruit or flowers or verdure.”
“But if you are abandoned?” said Calyste.
“Then I should beg my pardon of the man I have offended. I will never
run the risk of taking a happiness I know would quickly end.”
“End!” cried Calyste.
The marquise stopped the passionate speech into which her lover was
about to launch, by repeating the word “End!” in a tone that silenced
him.
This opposition roused in the young man one of those mute inward furies
known only to those who love without hope. They walked on several
hundred steps in total silence, looking neither at the sea, nor the
rocks, nor the plain of Croisic.
“I would make you happy,” said Calyste.
“All men begin by promising that,” she answered, “and they end by
abandonment and disgust. I have no reproach to cast on him to whom I
shall be faithful. He made me no promises; I went to him; but my only
means of lessening my fault is to make it eternal.”
“Say rather, madame, that you feel no love for me. I, who love you, I
know that love cannot argue; it is itself; it sees nothing else. There
is no sacrifice I will not make to you; command it, and I will do the
impossible. He who despised his mistress for flinging her glove among
the lions, and ordering him to bring it back to her, did not _love!_ He
denied your right to test our hearts, and to yield yourselves only to
our utmost devotion. I will sacrifice to you my family, my name, my
future.”
“But what an insult in that word ‘sacrifice’!” she said, in reproachful
tones, which made poor Calyste feel the folly of his speech.
None but women who truly love, or inborn coquettes, know how to use a
word as a point from which to make a spring.
“You are right,” said Calyste, letting fall a tear; “that word can only
be said of the cruel struggles which you ask of me.”
“Hush!” said Beatrix, struck by an answer in which, for the first time,
Calyste had really made her feel his love. “I have done wrong enough;
tempt me no more.”
At this moment they had reached the base of the rock on which grew the
plant of box. Calyste felt a thrill of delight as he helped the marquise
to climb the steep ascent to the summit, which she wished to reach. To
the poor lad it was a precious privilege to hold her up, to make
her lean upon him, to feel her tremble; she had need of him. This
unlooked-for pleasure turned his head; he saw nought else but Beatrix,
and he clasped her round the waist.
“What!” she said, with an imposing air.
“Will you never be mine?” he demanded, in a voice that was choked by the
tumult of his blood.
“Never, my friend,” she replied. “I can only be to you a Beatrix,--a
dream. But is not that a sweet and tender thing? We shall have no
bitterness, no grief, no repentance.”
“Will you return to Conti?”
“I must.”
“You shall never belong to any man!” cried Calyste, pushing her from him
with frenzied violence.
He listened for her fall, intending to spring after her, but he heard
only a muffled sound, the tearing of some stuff, and then the thud of
a body falling on the ground. Instead of being flung head foremost down
the precipice, Beatrix had only slipped some eight or ten feet into the
cavity where the box-bush grew; but she might from there have rolled
down into the sea if her gown had not caught upon a point of rock, and
by tearing slowly lowered the weight of her body upon the bush.
Mademoiselle des Touches, who saw the scene, was unable in her horror to
cry out, but she signed to Gasselin to come. Calyste was leaning forward
with an expression of savage curiosity; he saw the position in which
Beatrix lay, and he shuddered. Her lips moved,--she seemed to be
praying; in fact, she thought she was about to die, for she felt the
bush beginning to give way. With the agility which danger gives to
youth, Calyste slid down to the ledge below the bush, where he was able
to grasp the marquise and hold her, although at the risk of their both
sliding down into the sea. As he held her, he saw that she had fainted;
but in that aerial spot he could fancy her all his, and his first
emotion was that of pleasure.
“Open your eyes,” he said, “and forgive me; we will die together.”
“Die?” she said, opening her eyes and unclosing her pallid lips.
Calyste welcomed that word with a kiss, and felt the marquise tremble
under it convulsively, with passionate joy. At that instant Gasselin’s
hob-nailed shoes sounded on the rock above them. The old Breton was
followed by Camille, and together they sought for some means of saving
the lovers.
“There’s but one way, mademoiselle,” said Gasselin. “I must slide down
there, and they can climb on my shoulders, and you must pull them up.”
“And you?” said Camille.
The man seemed surprised that he should be considered in presence of the
danger to his young master.
“You must go to Croisic and fetch a ladder,” said Camille.
Beatrix asked in a feeble voice to be laid down, and Calyste placed her
on the narrow space between the bush and its background of rock.
“I saw you, Calyste,” said Camille from above. “Whether Beatrix lives or
dies, remember that this must be an accident.”
“She will hate me,” he said, with moistened eyes.
“She will adore you,” replied Camille. “But this puts an end to our
excursion. We must get her back to Les Touches. Had she been killed,
Calyste, what would have become of you?”
“I should have followed her.”
“And your mother?” Then, after a pause, she added, feebly, “and me?”
Calyste was deadly pale; he stood with his back against the granite
motionless and silent. Gasselin soon returned from one of the little
farms scattered through the neighborhood, bearing a ladder which he
had borrowed. By this time Beatrix had recovered a little strength. The
ladder being placed, she was able, by the help of Gasselin, who lowered
Camille’s red shawl till she could grasp it, to reach the round top of
the rock, where the Breton took her in his arms and carried her to the
shore as though she were an infant.
“I should not have said no to death--but suffering!” she murmured to
Felicite, in a feeble voice.
The weakness, in fact the complete prostration, of the marquise obliged
Camille to have her taken to the farmhouse from which the ladder had
been borrowed. Calyste, Gasselin, and Camille took off what clothes
they could spare and laid them on the ladder, making a sort of litter
on which they carried Beatrix. The farmers gave her a bed. Gasselin then
went to the place where the carriage was awaiting them, and, taking one
of the horses, rode to Croisic to obtain a doctor, telling the boatman
to row to the landing-place that was nearest to the farmhouse.
Calyste, sitting on a stool, answered only by motions of the head, and
rare monosyllables when spoken to; Camille’s uneasiness, roused for
Beatrix, was still further excited by Calyste’s unnatural condition.
When the physician arrived, and Beatrix was bled, she felt better, began
to talk, and consented to embark; so that by five o’clock they reached
the jetty at Guerande, whence she was carried to Les Touches. The
news of the accident had already spread through that lonely and almost
uninhabited region with incredible rapidity.
Calyste passed the night at Les Touches, sitting at the foot of
Beatrix’s bed, in company with Camille. The doctor from Guerande had
assured them that on the following day a little stiffness would be all
that remained of the accident. Across the despair of Calyste’s heart
there came a gleam of joy. He was there, at her feet; he could watch
her sleeping or waking; he might study her pallid face and all its
expressions. Camille smiled bitterly as her keen mind recognized in
Calyste the symptoms of a passion such as man can feel but once,--a
passion which dyes his soul and his faculties by mingling with the
fountain of his life at a period when neither thoughts nor cares
distract or oppose the inward working of this emotion. She saw that
Calyste would never, could never see the real woman that was in Beatrix.
And with what guileless innocence the young Breton allowed his thoughts
to be read! When he saw the beautiful green eyes of the sick woman
turned to him, expressing a mixture of love, confusion, and even
mischief, he colored, and turned away his head.
“Did I not say truly, Calyste, that you men promised happiness, and
ended by flinging us down a precipice?”
When he heard this little jest, said in sweet, caressing tones which
betrayed a change of heart in Beatrix, Calyste knelt down, took her
moist hand which she yielded to him, and kissed it humbly.
“You have the right to reject my love forever,” he said, “and I, I have
no right to say one word to you.”
“Ah!” cried Camille, seeing the expression on Beatrix’s face and
comparing it with that obtained by her diplomacy, “love has a wit of its
own, wiser than that of all the world! Take your composing-draught, my
dear friend, and go to sleep.”
That night, spent by Calyste beside Mademoiselle des Touches, who read
a book of theological mysticism while Calyste read “Indiana,”--the first
work of Camille’s celebrated rival, in which is the captivating image
of a young man loving with idolatry and devotion, with mysterious
tranquillity and for all his life, a woman placed in the same false
position as Beatrix (a book which had a fatal influence upon him),--that
night left ineffaceable marks upon the heart of the poor young fellow,
whom Felicite soothed with the assurance that unless a woman were a
monster she must be flattered in all her vanities by being the object of
such a crime.
“You would never have flung _me_ into the water,” said Camille, brushing
away a tear.
Toward morning, Calyste, worn-out with emotion, fell asleep in his
arm-chair; and the marquise in her turn, watched his charming face,
paled by his feelings and his vigil of love. She heard him murmur her
name as he slept.
“He loves while sleeping,” she said to Camille.
“We must send him home,” said Felicite, waking him.
No one was anxious at the hotel du Guenic, for Mademoiselle des Touches
had written a line to the baroness telling her of the accident.
Calyste returned to dinner at Les Touches and found Beatrix up and
dressed, but pale, feeble, and languid. No longer was there any
harshness in her words or any coldness in her looks. After this evening,
filled with music by Camille, who went to her piano to leave Calyste
free to take and press the hands of Beatrix (though both were unable to
speak), no storms occurred at Les Touches. Felicite completely effaced
herself.
Cold, fragile, thin, hard women like Madame de Rochefide, women whose
necks turn in a manner to give them a vague resemblance to the feline
race, have souls of the same pale tint as their light eyes, green
or gray; and to melt them, to fuse those blocks of stone it needs a
thunderbolt. To Beatrix, Calyste’s fury of love and his mad action came
as the thunderbolt that nought resists, which changes all natures, even
the most stubborn. She felt herself inwardly humbled; a true, pure love
bathed her heart with its soft and limpid warmth. She breathed a sweet
and genial atmosphere of feelings hitherto unknown to her, by which she
felt herself magnified, elevated; in fact, she rose into that heaven
where Bretons throughout all time have placed the Woman. She relished
with delight the respectful adoration of the youth, whose happiness cost
her little, for a gesture, a look, a word was enough to satisfy him.
The value which Calyste’s heart gave to these trifles touched her
exceedingly; to hold her gloved hand was more to that young angel than
the possession of her whole person to the man who ought to have been
faithful to her. What a contrast between them!
Few women could resist such constant deification. Beatrix felt herself
sure of being obeyed and understood. She might have asked Calyste to
risk his life for the slightest of her caprices, and he would never have
reflected for a moment. This consciousness gave her a certain noble and
imposing air. She saw love on the side of its grandeur; and her heart
sought for some foothold on which she might remain forever the loftiest
of women in the eyes of her young lover, over whom she now wished her
power to be eternal.
Her coquetries became the more persistent because she felt within
herself a certain weakness. She played the invalid for a whole week with
charming hypocrisy. Again and again she walked about the velvet turf
which lay between the house and garden leaning on Calyste’s arm in
languid dependence.
“Ah! my dear, you are taking him a long journey in a small space,” said
Mademoiselle des Touches one day.
Before the excursion to Croisic, the two women were discoursing one
evening about love, and laughing at the different ways that men adopted
to declare it; admitting to themselves that the cleverest men, and
naturally the least loving, did not like to wander in the labyrinths of
sentimentality and went straight to the point,--in which perhaps they
were right; for the result was that those who loved most deeply and
reservedly were, for a time at least, ill-treated.
“They go to work like La Fontaine, when he wanted to enter the Academy,”
said Camille.
Madame de Rochefide had unbounded power to restrain Calyste within the
limits where she meant to keep him; it sufficed her to remind him by a
look or gesture of his horrible violence on the rocks. The eyes of her
poor victim would fill with tears, he was silent, swallowing down
his prayers, his arguments, his sufferings with a heroism that would
certainly have touched any other woman. She finally brought him by
her infernal coquetry to such a pass that he went one day to Camille
imploring her advice.
Beatrix, armed with Calyste’s own letter, quoted the passage in which
he said that to love was the first happiness, that of being loved came
later; and she used that axiom to restrain his passion to the limits of
respectful idolatry, which pleased her well. She liked to feel her
soul caressed by those sweet hymns of praise and adoration which
nature suggests to youth; in them is so much artless art; such innocent
seduction is in their cries, their prayers, their exclamations, their
pledges of themselves in the promissory notes which they offer on the
future; to all of which Beatrix was very careful to give no definite
answer. Yes, she heard him; but she doubted! Love was not yet the
question; what he asked of her was permission to love. In fact, that was
all the poor lad really asked for; his mind still clung to the strongest
side of love, the spiritual side. But the woman who is firmest in words
is often the feeblest in action. It is strange that Calyste, having seen
the progress his suit had made by pushing Beatrix into the sea, did not
continue to urge it violently. But love in young men is so ecstatic and
religious that their inmost desire is to win its fruition through moral
conviction. In that is the sublimity of their love.
Nevertheless the day came when the Breton, driven to desperation,
complained to Camille of Beatrix’s conduct.
“I meant to cure you by making you quickly understand her,” replied
Mademoiselle des Touches; “but you have spoiled all. Ten days ago you
were her master; to-day, my poor boy, you are her slave. You will never
have the strength now to do as I advise.”
“What ought I to do?”
“Quarrel with her on the ground of her hardness. A woman is always
over-excited when she discusses; let her be angry and ill-treat you, and
then stay away; do not return to Les Touches till she herself recalls
you.”
In all extreme illness there is a moment when the patient is willing to
accept the cruellest remedy and submits to the most horrible operation.
Calyste had reached that point. He listened to Camille’s advice and
stayed at home two whole days; but on the third he was scratching
at Beatrix’s door to let her know that he and Camille were waiting
breakfast for her.
“Another chance lost!” Camille said to him when she saw him re-appear so
weakly.
During his two days’ absence, Beatrix had frequently looked through the
window which opens on the road to Guerande. When Camille found her doing
so, she talked of the effect produced by the gorse along the roadway,
the golden blooms of which were dazzling in the September sunshine.
The marquise kept Camille and Calyste waiting long for breakfast; and
the delay would have been significant to any eyes but those of Calyste,
for when she did appear, her dress showed an evident intention to
fascinate him and prevent another absence. After breakfast she went
to walk with him in the garden and filled his simple heart with joy
by expressing a wish to go again to that rock where she had so nearly
perished.
“Will you go with me alone?” asked Calyste, in a troubled voice.
“If I refused to do so,” she replied, “I should give you reason to
suppose I thought you dangerous. Alas! as I have told you again and
again I belong to another, and I must be his only; I chose him knowing
nothing of love. The fault was great, and bitter is my punishment.”
When she talked thus, her eyes moist with the scanty tears shed by that
class of woman, Calyste was filled with a compassion that reduced his
fiery ardor; he adored her then as he did a Madonna. We have no more
right to require different characters to be alike in the expression of
feelings than we have to expect the same fruits from different trees.
Beatrix was at this moment undergoing an inward struggle; she hesitated
between herself and Calyste,--between the world she still hoped to
re-enter, and the young happiness offered to her; between a second and
an unpardonable love, and social rehabilitation. She began, therefore,
to listen, without even acted displeasure, to the talk of the youth’s
blind passion; she allowed his soft pity to soothe her. Several times
she had been moved to tears as she listened to Calyste’s promises; and
she suffered him to commiserate her for being bound to an evil genius, a
man as false as Conti. More than once she related to him the misery and
anguish she had gone through in Italy, when she first became aware that
she was not alone in Conti’s heart. On this subject Camille had fully
informed Calyste and given him several lectures on it, by which he
profited.
“I,” he said, “will love you only, you absolutely. I have no triumphs
of art, no applause of crowds stirred by my genius to offer you; my only
talent is to love you; my honor, my pride are in your perfections. No
other woman can have merit in my eyes; you have no odious rivalry to
fear. You are misconceived and wronged, but I know you, and for every
misconception, for every wrong, I will make you feel my comprehension
day by day.”
She listened to such speeches with bowed head, allowing him to kiss
her hands, and admitting silently but gracefully that she was indeed an
angel misunderstood.
“I am too humiliated,” she would say; “my past has robbed the future of
all security.”
It was a glorious day for Calyste when, arriving at Les Touches at seven
in the morning, he saw from afar Beatrix at a window watching for him,
and wearing the same straw hat she had worn on the memorable day of
their first excursion. For a moment he was dazzled and giddy. These
little things of passion magnify the world itself. It may be that only
Frenchwomen possess the art of such scenic effects; they owe it to the
grace of their minds; they know how to put into sentiment as much of the
picturesque as the particular sentiment can bear without a loss of vigor
or of force.
Ah! how lightly she rested on Calyste’s arm! Together they left Les
Touches by the garden-gate which opens on the dunes. Beatrix thought the
sands delightful; she spied the hardy little plants with rose-colored
flowers that grew there, and she gathered a quantity to mix with the
Chartreux pansies which also grow in that arid desert, dividing them
significantly with Calyste, to whom those flowers and their foliage were
to be henceforth an eternal and dreadful relic.
“We’ll add a bit of box,” she said smiling.
They sat some time together on the jetty, and Calyste, while waiting for
the boat to come over, told her of his juvenile act on the day of her
arrival.
“I knew of your little escapade,” she said, “and it was the cause of my
sternness to you that first night.”
During their walk Madame de Rochefide had the lightly jesting tone of a
woman who loves, together with a certain tenderness and abandonment of
manner. Calyste had reason to think himself beloved. But when, wandering
along the shore beneath the rocks, they came upon one of those charming
creeks where the waves deposit the most extraordinary mosaic of
brilliant pebbles, and they played there like children gathering the
prettiest, when Calyste at the summit of happiness asked her plainly
to fly with him to Ireland, she resumed her dignified and distant air,
asked for his arm, and continued their walk in silence to what she
called her Tarpeian rock.
“My friend,” she said, mounting with slow steps the magnificent block of
granite of which she was making for herself a pedestal, “I have not
the courage to conceal what you are to me. For ten years I have had
no happiness comparable to that which we have just enjoyed together,
searching for shells among those rocks, exchanging pebbles of which I
shall make a necklace more precious far to me than if it were made of
the finest diamonds. I have been once more a little girl, a child, such
as I was at fourteen or sixteen--when I was worthy of you. The love I
have had the happiness to inspire in your heart has raised me in my own
eyes. Understand these words to their magical extent. You have made
me the proudest and happiest of my sex, and you will live longer in my
remembrance, perhaps, than I in yours.”
At this moment they reached the summit of the rock, whence they saw the
vast ocean on one side and Brittany on the other, with its golden isles,
its feudal towers, and its gorse. Never did any woman stand on a finer
scene to make a great avowal.
“But,” she continued, “I do not belong to myself; I am more bound by my
own will than I was by the law. You must be punished for my misdeed,
but be satisfied to know that we suffer together. Dante never saw his
Beatrice again; Petrarch never possessed his Laura. Such disasters fall
on none but noble souls. But, if I should be abandoned, if I fall lower
yet into shame and ignominy, if your Beatrix is cruelly misjudged by
the world she loathes, if indeed she is the lowest of women,--then, my
child, my adored child,” she said, taking his hand, “to you she will
still be first of all; you will know that she rises to heaven as
she leans on you; but then, my friend,” she added, giving him an
intoxicating look, “then if you wish to cast her down do not fail of
your blow; after your love, death!”
Calyste clasped her round the waist and pressed her to his heart. As if
to confirm her words Madame de Rochefide laid a tender, timid kiss upon
his brow. When they turned and walked slowly back; talking together like
those who have a perfect comprehension of each other,--she, thinking she
had gained a truce, he not doubting of his happiness; and both deceived.
Calyste, from what Camille had told him, was confident that Conti would
be enchanted to find an opportunity to part from Beatrix; Beatrix,
yielding herself up to the vagueness of her position, looked to chance
to arrange the future.
They reached Les Touches in the most delightful of all states of mind,
entering by the garden gate, the key of which Calyste had taken with
him. It was nearly six o’clock. The luscious odors, the warm atmosphere,
the burnished rays of the evening sun were all in harmony with their
feelings and their tender talk. Their steps were taken in unison,--the
gait of all lovers,--their movements told of the union of their
thoughts. The silence that reigned about Les Touches was so profound
that the noise which Calyste made in opening and shutting the gate must
have echoed through the garden. As the two had said all to each other
that could be said, and as their day’s excursion, so filled with
emotion, had physically tired them, they walked slowly, saying nothing.
Suddenly, at the turn of a path, Beatrix was seized with a horrible
trembling, with that contagious horror which is caused by the sight of a
snake, and which Calyste felt before he saw the cause of it. On a bench,
beneath the branches of a weeping ash, sat Conti, talking with Camille
Maupin.