While Mlle de Saint-Geneix was writing to her sister, the Marchioness de
Villemer was talking with the youngest of her sons in her little
drawing-room in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. The house was large and
respectable; yet the Marchioness, formerly rich and now in very narrow
circumstances,--we shall soon see why,--had of late occupied the second
floor in order to turn the first to account.
"Well, dear mother," said the Marquis, "are you satisfied with your new
companion? Your people have told me that she has arrived."
"My dear child," answered the Marchioness, "I have but one word to say
of her, and that is that she has bewitched me."
"Really? Tell me about it."
"Upon my word, I am not too sure that I dare. I am afraid of turning
your head in advance."
"Fear nothing," was the sorrowful reply of the Marquis, whom his mother
had tried to win into a smile; "even if I were so easy to inflame, I
know too well what I owe to the dignity of your house and to the repose
of your life."
"Yes, yes, my friend; I know too that I can be at ease upon a question
of honor and delicacy, when it is with you that I have to do; I can also
tell you that the little D'Arglade has found for me a pearl, a diamond,
and that, to commence with, this phoenix has led me into follies."
The Marchioness gave an account of her interview with Caroline, and
described her thus: "She is neither tall nor short, she is well formed,
has pretty little feet, the hands of a child, abundant light blond hair,
a complexion of lilies and roses, perfect features, pearly teeth, a
decided little nose, large sea-green eyes, which look straight at you
unflinchingly, without dreaminess, without false timidity, with a candor
and a confidence which please and engage; nothing of a provincial, she
has manners which are excellent because they do not seem to be manners
at all; much taste and gentility in the poverty of her attire; in a
word, all that I feared and yet nothing that I feared, that is, beauty
which inspired me with distrust and none of the affectations and
pretensions which would have justified that distrust; and more, a voice
and pronunciation which make real music of her reading, sterling talent
as a musician, and, above all that, every indication of mind, sense,
discretion, and good-nature: to such an extent that, interested and
carried away by her devotion to a poor family to which I see plainly she
is sacrificing herself, I forgot my projects of economy, and have
engaged to give her the eyes out of my head."
"Has she been bargaining with you?" demanded the Marquis.
"Quite the contrary, she was satisfied to take what I had determined to
give her."
"In that case you did well, mother, and I am glad that you have at last
a companion worthy of you. You have kept too long that hungry and sleepy
old maid who worried you, and when you have a chance to replace her by a
treasure, you would do very wrong to count the cost."
"Yes," replied the Marchioness, "that's what your brother also says;
neither he nor you care to count the cost, my dear children, and I fear
I have been too hasty in the satisfaction which I have just given
myself."
"That satisfaction was necessary to you," said the Marquis with spirit,
"and you ought the less to reproach yourself with it since you have
yielded to your need of performing a good action."
"I acknowledge it, but I was wrong perhaps," replied the Marchioness,
with a careworn expression; "one has not always the right to be
charitable."
"Ah! my mother," cried the son, with a mingling of indignation and
sadness, "when you are forced to deny yourself the joy of giving alms,
the injury that I have done will be very great!"
"The injury! you? what injury?" rejoined the mother, astonished and
troubled; "you have never done an injury, my dear son."
"Pardon me," said the Marquis, greatly moved. "I was to blame the day I
engaged, out of respect to you, to pay my brother's debts."
"Hush!" cried the Marchioness, turning pale. "Let us not speak of that,
we would not understand each other." She extended her hands to the
Marquis to lessen the involuntary bitterness of this answer. The Marquis
kissed his mother's hands and retired shortly afterward.
The next day, Caroline de Saint-Geneix went out to mail with her own
hands the registered letter which she sent to her sister, and to see
some people from the remotest part of her province with whom she kept up
her acquaintance. These were old friends of her family, whom she did not
succeed in meeting, and she left her name without giving her address, as
she no longer had a home which she could consider her own. She felt a
species of sadness to think of herself thus lost and dependent in a
strange house; but she did not indulge in long reflections upon her
destiny. In addition to the fact that she refused once for all to
nourish in herself the least unnerving melancholy, she was not at all a
timid character, and any test, howsoever unpleasant, did not set her at
variance with life. There was in her organization an astonishing
vitality, an ardent activity, which was all the more remarkable because
it arose from great tranquillity of mind and from a singular absence of
thought about herself. This character, which is exceptional enough, will
develop and explain itself as much as we can make it do so, by the
events of the following narrative; but the reader must necessarily
remember, what all the world knows, that no one can explain completely
and set in an exact light the character of another. Every individual has
in the depth of his being a mystery of power or of weakness which he
himself can as little reveal as he can understand. Analysis should seem
satisfactory when it comes near to truth, but it could not seize the
truth in the fact without leaving some phase of the eternal problem of
the soul incomplete or obscure.