The inward and convulsive trembling of the marquise was more apparent
than she wished it to be; a tragic drama developed at that moment in the
souls of all present.
“You did not expect me so soon, I fancy,” said Conti, offering his arm
to Beatrix.
The marquise could not avoid dropping Calyste’s arm and taking that of
Conti. This ignoble transit, imperiously demanded, so dishonoring to
the new love, overwhelmed Calyste who threw himself on the bench beside
Camille, after exchanging the coldest of salutations with his rival.
He was torn by conflicting emotions. Strong in the thought that Beatrix
loved him, he wanted at first to fling himself upon Conti and tell him
that Beatrix was his; but the violent trembling of the woman betraying
how she suffered--for she had really paid the penalty of her faults in
that one moment--affected him so deeply that he was dumb, struck like
her with a sense of some implacable necessity.
Madame de Rochefide and Conti passed in front of the seat where Calyste
had dropped beside Camille, and as she passed, the marquise looked at
Camille, giving her one of those terrible glances in which women have
the art of saying all things. She avoided the eyes of Calyste and turned
her attention to Conti, who appeared to be jesting with her.
“What will they say to each other?” Calyste asked of Camille.
“Dear child, you don’t know as yet the terrible rights which an
extinguished love still gives to a man over a woman. Beatrix could not
refuse to take his arm. He is, no doubt, joking her about her new love;
he must have guessed it from your attitudes and the manner in which you
approached us.”
“Joking her!” cried the impetuous youth, starting up.
“Be calm,” said Camille, “or you will lose the last chances that remain
to you. If he wounds her self-love, she will crush him like a worm under
her foot. But he is too astute for that; he will manage her with greater
cleverness. He will seem not even to suppose that the proud Madame
de Rochefide could betray him; _she_ could never be guilty of such
depravity as loving a man for the sake of his beauty. He will represent
you to her as a child ambitious to have a marquise in love with him, and
to make himself the arbiter of the fate of two women. In short, he will
fire a broadside of malicious insinuations. Beatrix will then be forced
to parry with false assertions and denials, which he will simply make
use of to become once more her master.”
“Ah!” cried Calyste, “he does not love her. I would leave her free. True
love means a choice made anew at every moment, confirmed from day to
day. The morrow justifies the past, and swells the treasury of our
pleasures. Ah! why did he not stay away a little longer? A few days more
and he would not have found her. What brought him back?”
“The jest of a journalist,” replied Camille. “His opera, on the success
of which he counted, has fallen flat. Some journalist, probably Claude
Vignon, remarked in the foyer: ‘It is hard to lose fame and mistress at
the same moment,’ and the speech cut him in all his vanities. Love based
on petty sentiments is always pitiless. I have questioned him; but who
can fathom a nature so false and deceiving? He appeared to be weary of
his troubles and his love,--in short, disgusted with life. He regrets
having allied himself so publicly with the marquise, and made me, in
speaking of his past happiness, a melancholy poem, which was somewhat
too clever to be true. I think he hoped to worm out of me the secret of
your love, in the midst of the joy he expected his flatteries to cause
me.”
“What else?” said Calyste, watching Beatrix and Conti, who were now
coming towards them; but he listened no longer to Camille’s words.
In talking with Conti, Camille had held herself prudently on the
defensive; she had betrayed neither Calyste’s secret nor that of
Beatrix. The great artist was capable of treachery to every one, and
Mademoiselle des Touches warned Calyste to distrust him.
“My dear friend,” she said, “this is by far the most critical moment for
you. You need caution and a sort of cleverness you do not possess; I am
afraid you will let yourself be tricked by the most wily man I have ever
known, and I can do nothing to help you.”
The bell announced dinner. Conti offered his arm to Camille; Calyste
gave his to Beatrix. Camille drew back to let the marquise pass, but the
latter had found a moment in which to look at Calyste, and impress
upon him, by putting her finger on her lips, the absolute necessity of
discretion.
Conti was extremely gay during the dinner; perhaps this was only one way
of probing Madame de Rochefide, who played her part extremely ill. If
her conduct had been mere coquetry, she might have deceived even Conti;
but her new love was real, and it betrayed her. The wily musician, far
from adding to her embarrassment, pretended not to have perceived it.
At dessert, he brought the conversation round to women, and lauded the
nobility of their sentiments. Many a woman, he said, who might have been
willing to abandon a man in prosperity, would sacrifice all to him in
misfortune. Women had the advantage over men in constancy; nothing ever
detached them from their first lover, to whom they clung as a matter of
honor, unless he wounded them; they felt that a second love was unworthy
of them, and so forth. His ethics were of the highest order; shedding
incense on the altar where he knew that one heart at least, pierced
by many a blow, was bleeding. Camille and Beatrix alone understood the
bitterness of the sarcasms shot forth in the guise of eulogy. At times
they both flushed scarlet, but they were forced to control themselves.
When dinner was over, they took each other by the arm to return to
Camille’s salon, and, as if by mutual consent, they turned aside
into the great salon, where they could be alone for an instant in the
darkness.
“It is dreadful to let Conti ride over me roughshod; and yet I can’t
defend myself,” said Beatrix, in a low voice. “The galley-slave is
always a slave to his chain-companion. I am lost; I must needs return
to my galleys! And it is you, Camille, who have cast me there! Ah! you
brought him back a day too soon, or a day too late. I recognize your
infernal talent as author. Well, your revenge is complete, the finale
perfect!”
“I may have told you that I would write to Conti, but to do it was
another matter,” cried Camille. “I am incapable of such baseness. But
you are unhappy, and I will forgive the suspicion.”
“What will become of Calyste?” said the marquise, with naive
self-conceit.
“Then Conti carries you off, does he?” asked Camille.
“Ah! you think you triumph!” cried Beatrix.
Anger distorted her handsome face as she said those bitter words
to Camille, who was trying to hide her satisfaction under a false
expression of sympathy. Unfortunately, the sparkle in her eyes belied
the sadness of her face, and Beatrix was learned in such deceptions.
When, a few moments later, the two women were seated under a strong
light on that divan where the first three weeks so many comedies had
been played, and where the secret tragedy of many thwarted passions had
begun, they examined each other for the last time, and felt they were
forever parted by an undying hatred.
“Calyste remains to you,” said Beatrix, looking into Camille’s eyes;
“but I am fixed in his heart, and no woman can ever drive me out of it.”
Camille replied, with an inimitable tone of irony that struck the
marquise to the heart, in the famous words of Mazarin’s niece to Louis
XIV.,--
“You reign, you love, and you depart!”
Neither Camille nor Beatrix was conscious during this sharp and bitter
scene of the absence of Conti and Calyste. The composer had remained
at table with his rival, begging him to keep him company in finishing a
bottle of champagne.
“We have something to say to each other,” added Conti, to prevent all
refusal on the part of Calyste.
Placed as they both were, it was impossible for the young Breton to
refuse this challenge.
“My dear friend,” said the composer, in his most caressing voice, as
soon as the poor lad had drunk a couple of glasses of champagne, “we are
both good fellows, and we can speak to each other frankly. I have not
come here suspiciously. Beatrix loves me,”--this with a gesture of the
utmost self-conceit--“but the truth is, I have ceased to love her. I am
not here to carry her away with me, but to break off our relations, and
to leave her the honors of the rupture. You are young; you don’t yet
know how useful it is to appear to be the victim when you are really
the executioner. Young men spit fire and flame; they leave a woman with
noise and fury; they often despise her, and they make her hate them.
But wise men do as I am doing; they get themselves dismissed, assuming a
mortified air, which leaves regret in the woman’s heart and also a sense
of her superiority. You don’t yet know, luckily for you, how hampered
men often are in their careers by the rash promises which women are
silly enough to accept when gallantry obliges us to make nooses to catch
our happiness. We swear eternal faithfulness, and declare that we
desire to pass our lives with them, and seem to await a husband’s death
impatiently. Let him die, and there are some provincial women obtuse or
silly or malicious enough to say: ‘Here am I, free at last.’ The spent
ball suddenly comes to life again, and falls plumb in the midst of our
finest triumphs or our most carefully planned happiness. I have seen
that you love Beatrix. I leave her therefore in a position where she
loses nothing of her precious majesty; she will certainly coquet with
you, if only to tease and annoy that angel of a Camille Maupin. Well,
my dear fellow, take her, love her, you’ll do me a great service; I want
her to turn against me. I have been afraid of her pride and her virtue.
Perhaps, in spite of my approval of the matter, it may take some time to
effect this _chassez-croissez_. On such occasions the wisest plan is
to take no step at all. I did, just now, as we walked about the lawn,
attempt to let her see that I knew all, and was ready to congratulate
her on her new happiness. Well, she was furious! At this moment I
am desperately in love with the youngest and handsomest of our
prima-donnas, Mademoiselle Falcon of the Grand Opera. I think of
marrying her; yes, I have got as far as that. When you come to Paris you
will see that I have changed a marquise for a queen.”
Calyste, whose candid face revealed his satisfaction, admitted his love
for Beatrix, which was all that Conti wanted to discover. There is no
man in the world, however _blase_ or depraved he may be, whose love will
not flame up again the moment he sees it threatened by a rival. He may
wish to leave a woman, but he will never willingly let her leave him.
When a pair of lovers get to this extremity, both the man and the woman
strive for priority of action, so deep is the wound to their vanity.
Questioned by the composer, Calyste related all that had happened during
the last three weeks at Les Touches, delighted to find that Conti, who
concealed his fury under an appearance of charming good-humor, took it
all in good part.
“Come, let us go upstairs,” said the latter. “Women are so distrustful;
those two will wonder how we can sit here together without tearing each
other’s hair out; they are even capable of coming down to listen. I’ll
serve you faithfully, my dear boy. You’ll see me rough and jealous with
the marquise; I shall seem to suspect her; there’s no better way to
drive a woman to betray you. You will be happy, and I shall be free.
Seem to pity that angel for belonging to a man without delicacy; show
her a tear--for you can weep, you are still young. I, alas! can weep no
more; and that’s a great advantage lost.”
Calyste and Conti went up to Camille’s salon. The composer, begged by
his young rival to sing, gave them that greatest of musical masterpieces
viewed as execution, the famous “_Pria che spunti l’aurora_,” which
Rubini himself never attempted without trembling, and which had often
been Conti’s triumph. Never was his singing more extraordinary than
on this occasion, when so many feelings were contending in his breast.
Calyste was in ecstasy. As Conti sang the first words of the cavatina,
he looked intently at the marquise, giving to those words a cruel
signification which was fully understood. Camille, who accompanied him,
guessed the order thus conveyed, which bowed the head of the luckless
Beatrix. She looked at Calyste, and felt sure that the youth had fallen
into some trap in spite of her advice. This conviction became certainty
when the evidently happy Breton came up to bid Beatrix good-night,
kissing her hand, and pressing it with a little air of happy confidence.
By the time Calyste had reached Guerande, the servants were packing
Conti’s travelling-carriage, and “by dawn,” as the song had said, the
composer was carrying Beatrix away with Camille’s horses to the first
relay. The morning twilight enabled Madame de Rochefide to see Guerande,
its towers, whitened by the dawn, shining out upon the still dark sky.
Melancholy thoughts possessed her; she was leaving there one of the
sweetest flowers of all her life,--a pure love, such as a young girl
dreams of; the only true love she had ever known or was ever to conceive
of. The woman of the world obeyed the laws of the world; she sacrificed
love to their demands just as many women sacrifice it to religion or
to duty. Sometimes mere pride can rise in acts as high as virtue. Read
thus, this history is that of many women.
The next morning Calyste went to Les Touches about mid-day. When
he reached the spot from which, the day before, he had seen Beatrix
watching for him at the window, he saw Camille, who instantly ran down
to him. She met him at the foot of the staircase and told the cruel
truth in one word,--
“Gone!”
“Beatrix?” asked Calyste, thunderstruck.
“You have been duped by Conti; you told me nothing, and I could do
nothing for you.”
She led the poor fellow to her little salon, where he flung himself on
the divan where he had so often seen the marquise, and burst into tears.
Felicite smoked her hookah and said nothing, knowing well that no words
or thoughts are capable of arresting the first anguish of such pain,
which is always deaf and dumb. Calyste, unable even to think, much less
to choose a course, sat there all day in a state of complete torpidity.
Just before dinner was served, Camille tried to say a few words, after
begging him, very earnestly, to listen to her.
“Friend,” she said, “you caused me the bitterest suffering, and I had
not, like you, a beautiful young life before me in which to heal myself.
For me, life has no longer any spring, nor my soul a love. So, to find
consolation, I have had to look above. Here, in this room, the day
before Beatrix came here, I drew you her portrait; I did not do her
injustice, or you might have thought me jealous. I wanted you to know
her as she is, for that would have kept you safe. Listen now to the full
truth. Madame de Rochefide is wholly unworthy of you. The scandal of her
fall was not necessary; she did the thing deliberately in order to play
a part in the eyes of society. She is one of those women who prefer the
celebrity of a scandal to tranquil happiness; they fly in the face of
society to obtain the fatal alms of a rebuke; they desire to be talked
about at any cost. Beatrix was eaten up with vanity. Her fortune and her
wit had not given her the feminine royalty that she craved; they had not
enabled her to reign supreme over a salon. She then bethought herself of
seeking the celebrity of the Duchesse de Langeais and the Vicomtesse de
Beauseant. But the world, after all, is just; it gives the homage of its
interest to real feelings only. Beatrix playing comedy was judged to be
a second-rate actress. There was no reason whatever for her flight;
the sword of Damocles was not suspended over her head; she is neither
sincere, nor loving, nor tender; if she were, would she have gone away
with Conti this morning?”
Camille talked long and eloquently; but this last effort to open
Calyste’s eyes was useless, and she said no more when he expressed to
her by a gesture his absolute belief in Beatrix.
She forced him to come down into the dining-room and sit there while she
dined; though he himself was unable to swallow food. It is only during
extreme youth that these contractions of the bodily functions occur.
Later, the organs have acquired, as it were, fixed habits, and are
hardened. The reaction of the mental and moral system upon the physical
is not enough to produce a mortal illness unless the physical system
retains its primitive purity. A man resists the violent grief that
kills a youth, less by the greater weakness of his affection than by the
greater strength of his organs.
Therefore Mademoiselle des Touches was greatly alarmed by the calm,
resigned attitude which Calyste took after his burst of tears had
subsided. Before he left her, he asked permission to go into Beatrix’s
bedroom, where he had seen her on the night of her illness, and there he
laid his head on the pillow where hers had lain.
“I am committing follies,” he said, grasping Camille’s hand, and bidding
her good-night in deep dejection.
He returned home, found the usual company at _mouche_, and passed the
remainder of the evening sitting beside his mother. The rector, the
Chevalier du Halga, and Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel all knew of Madame
de Rochefide’s departure, and were rejoicing in it. Calyste would now
return to them; and all three watched him cautiously. No one in that
old manor-house was capable of imagining the result of a first love, the
love of youth in a heart so simple and so true as that of Calyste.