José de Rosas thought himself much more the master of himself than he
actually was.
This energetic man, firm as a very fine steel blade, had hoped to find
that in living at a distance from Marianne, he might forget her or at
least strengthen himself against her influence. He found on his return
that he was, however, more seduced by her than before, his heart was
wholly filled and gnawed by the distracting image of the pretty girl. He
had borne away with him to London, as everywhere in fact, the puzzling
smile, the sparkling glance of this woman's gray eyes that ceaselessly
appeared to him at his bedside, and beside him, like some phantom.
The phantom of a living creature whose kiss still burned his lips like a
live coal. A phantom that he could clasp in his arms, carry away and
possess. All the virgin sentiments of this man whose life had been the
half-savage one of a trapper, a savant or a wanderer, turned toward
Marianne as to an incarnated hope, a living, palpitating chimera.
José felt certain that if he returned to Paris it was all over with him,
and that he was giving his life to that woman. But he returned. His
fight against himself over, the first visit he made, once again, was to
the den where he knew well that he could discover Marianne's
whereabouts. He went to her as he might walk to a gulf. Under his cold
demeanor of a Castilian of former days, he was intensely passionate and
would neither reflect nor resist. He had experienced that delightful
sensation of impulse when, upon the rapids at the other end of the
globe, the river carried into a whirlpool his almost engulfed boat. He
would doubtless have been stupefied had he found Marianne installed in a
fashionable little mansion. She promised herself to explain that to him
when she next saw him while informing him, there and then, that she had
taken up her abode there. A mere whim: Mademoiselle Vanda having gone
away, the idea had attracted her of sleeping within a courtesan's
curtains. "I will tell him that this transient luxury recalls my former
follies when I made him believe that I was spending an inheritance from
my grandmother."
She had, indeed, already lied to him, for the money she had formerly
squandered had been provided by De Lissac, but even then it was
necessary--for the duke was in expectancy--to conceal its source from
Rosas, hence the story of the inheritance that never existed. But she at
once thoroughly realized that the surroundings which were favorable to
the progress of the duke's love were not the bedroom and the
dressing-room of Mademoiselle Vanda. What difference would Rosas have
found between her and the fashionable courtesans whom he had loved, or
rather, enriched, in passing? He would not believe this new lie this
time.
All that luxury might seduce Sulpice Vaudrey; it would have disgusted
José. What satisfied the appetite of the little, successful bourgeois
would nauseate the gentleman.
As soon as Rosas returned to her, happy and stupefied at the same time,
extravagantly happy in his joy, her plan of campaign was at once
arranged. She did not wish to receive him in the vulgar hôtel, where the
clubmen had wiped their feet upon the carpets. She entreated him, since
he wished to see her again, to see her at her "own house," yes, really,
at her own house, in that little, unknown room, in Rue Cuvier, far from
the noise of Paris and near the Botanical Garden, a kind of hidden cell
into which no one entered.
"No one but me," she said.
The order had been given to Uncle Kayser in advance: in case Rosas
should reappear, Simon was to at once inform his niece and prevent the
duke from discovering Marianne's new address. And this had been done.
The duke was then going to see Mademoiselle Kayser only at Rue Cuvier,
after having rediscovered her at Uncle Simon's.
He felt in advance a kind of gratitude to this woman who thus abandoned
the secret of her soul to him; giving him to understand that it was
there that she passed her days, buried in her recollections, dreaming of
her departed years, of that which had been, of that which might be, a
living death.
Marianne had shrewdly divined the case. For this great soul, mystery
added a new sentiment to the feelings that Rosas experienced. The first
time that he found himself in that little abode where Simon Kayser's
niece awaited him, he was deeply moved, as if he had penetrated into the
pure chamber of a young girl. There, yonder, in that distant quarter, he
found a peaceful retreat for one wounded by life, thirsting for solitude
and passing there secret hours in the midst of loved books; in fact, the
discreet dwelling of a poor teacher who had collected some choice
_bibelots_ that she had found by chance. Rosas there felt himself
surrounded by perfect virtue, amid the salvage of a happier past.
Marianne thus became what he imagined her to be, superior to her lot,
living an intellectual life, consoling herself for the mortification of
existence and the hideous experiences of life by poet's dreams, in
building for herself in Paris itself a sort of Thebais, where she was
finally free and mistress of herself and where, when she was sad, she
was not compelled to wear a mask or a false smile, and was free from all
pretended gaiety. And she was so often sad!
She had occasionally mentioned to Rosas the assumed name under which she
lived at that place.
"Mademoiselle Robert!"
He had manifested surprise thereat.
"Yes, I do not wish them to know anything of me, not even my name. You
should understand the necessity that certain minds have for repose and
forgetfulness. Did not one of your sovereigns take his repose lying in
his coffin? Well! I envy him and when I have pushed the bolt of my
little room in Rue Cuvier, I tremble with delight, just as if I felt my
heart beating in a coffin. Do not tell any one. They would desire to
know and see. People are so curious and so stupid!"
Marianne now seemed to be still more strange and seductive to Rosas. All
this romantic conduct, commonplace as it was, with which she surrounded
herself, exalted her in the estimation of the duke. She became in that
little chamber where she was simply Mademoiselle Robert, a hundred times
more charming and attractive to him than any problem: a veritable
Parisian sphinx.
She was not his mistress. He loved her too deeply, with a holy,
respectful passion, to take her hastily, as by chance, and Marianne was
too skilful to risk any imprudent act, well-knowing that if she yielded
too quickly, it would not be a woman who would fall into the duke's
arms, but an idol that descended from its pedestal.
In the silence of the old house in the deserted quarter, they held
conversations in the course of which Rosas freely abandoned himself, and
through which she gained every day a more intimate knowledge of the
character of that man who was so different from those who hitherto had
sought her for pleasure.
Thus, the very respect that he instinctively felt for her, impelled her
to love him.
She had not been accustomed to such treatment. Every masculine look that
since her puberty she had felt riveted upon her, clearly expressed even
before the lips spoke: "You are beautiful. You please me. Will you?"
Rosas, at least, said: "I love you," before: "I desire you."
Tainted in the body which she had given, offered, abandoned, sold, she
felt that she was respected by him even in that body, and although she
considered him silly, she thought him superior to all others, or at
least different, and that was a sufficient motive for loving him.
One day she said to him in a peculiar tone and with her distracting
smile:
"Do you know, my dear José, there is one thing I should not have
believed? You are bashful!"
He turned slightly pale.
"Sincere love is always bashful and clumsy. By that it may be known."
"Perhaps!" said Marianne.
Their conversations, however, only concerned love, so that Rosas might
speak of his passion or of his reminiscences.
She once asked him if he would despise a woman if she became his
mistress.
"No!" he said, with a smile, "it is only a Frenchman who would despise
the woman who surrendered herself. Other nations treat love more
seriously. They do not consider the gift of one's self in the light of a
fall."
Marianne looked at him full in the face with a strange expression.
"What, then, if I love you well enough to become your mistress?"
"I should still esteem you enough to become your husband!"
She felt her color change.
Was it a sport on the part of Monsieur de Rosas? Why had he spoken to
her thus? Had he reflected upon what he had just said?
José added in a very gentle tone:
"Will you permit me to ask you a question, Marianne?"
"You may ask me anything. I will frankly answer all your questions."
"What was Monsieur Sulpice Vaudrey doing at your uncle's the other day?
Was he there to see you?"
Marianne smiled.
"Why, the minister simply came to talk of business matters. I hardly see
him except for Uncle Kayser, who is soliciting an official
commission,--you heard him--"
"Does Monsieur Vaudrey pay his addresses to you?"
"Necessarily. Oh! but only out of pure French gallantry. Mere
politeness. He loves his wife and he knows very well that I don't love
any one."
"No one?" asked Rosas.
"I do not love any one yet," repeated Marianne, opening her gray eyes
with a wide stare under the Spaniard's anxious glance.
From that day, her mind was possessed of a new idea that imperiously
directed it. When Rosas had returned to her, she had only regarded him
as a possible lover, rich and agreeable. The mistress of a minister, she
would become the mistress of a duke. A millionaire duke. The change
would be profitable, assuming that she could not retain both. Her
calculations were speedily made. She would only make Rosas pay more
dearly for the resistance he had offered before surrendering himself.
But now, abruptly and without her having thought of it, he had, with the
incautiousness of a soldier who discloses his attack and lays himself
open to a bully who tries to provoke him, the duke showed her the
extent of his violent passion by a single phrase that feverishly
agitated her.