“Mme la Duchesse, I am in despair that God should have invented no way

for a woman to confirm the gift of her heart save by adding the gift of

her person. The high value which you yourself put upon the gift teaches

me that I cannot attach less importance to it. If you have given me

your inmost self and your whole heart, as you tell me, what can the rest

matter? And besides, if my happiness means so painful a sacrifice, let

us say no more about it. But you must pardon a man of spirit if he feels

humiliated at being taken for a spaniel.”

The tone in which the last remark was uttered might perhaps have

frightened another woman; but when the wearer of a petticoat has allowed

herself to be addressed as a Divinity, and thereby set herself above all

other mortals, no power on earth can be so haughty.

“M. le Marquis, I am in despair that God should not have invented

some nobler way for a man to confirm the gift of his heart than by the

manifestation of prodigiously vulgar desires. We become bond-slaves

when we give ourselves body and soul, but a man is bound to nothing by

accepting the gift. Who will assure me that love will last? The very

love that I might show for you at every moment, the better to keep your

love, might serve you as a reason for deserting me. I have no wish to be

a second edition of Mme de Beauseant. Who can ever know what it is that

keeps you beside us? Our persistent coldness of heart is the cause of

an unfailing passion in some of you; other men ask for an untiring

devotion, to be idolized at every moment; some for gentleness, others

for tyranny. No woman in this world as yet has really read the riddle of

man’s heart.”

There was a pause. When she spoke again it was in a different tone.

“After all, my friend, you cannot prevent a woman from trembling at the

question, ‘Will this love last always?’ Hard though my words may be,

the dread of losing you puts them into my mouth. Oh, me! it is not I

who speaks, dear, it is reason; and how should anyone so mad as I be

reasonable? In truth, I am nothing of the sort.”

The poignant irony of her answer had changed before the end into the

most musical accents in which a woman could find utterance for ingenuous

love. To listen to her words was to pass in a moment from martyrdom to

heaven. Montriveau grew pale; and for the first time in his life, he

fell on his knees before a woman. He kissed the Duchess’s skirt hem, her

knees, her feet; but for the credit of the Faubourg Saint-Germain it is

necessary to respect the mysteries of its boudoirs, where many are fain

to take the utmost that Love can give without giving proof of love in

return.

The Duchess thought herself generous when she suffered herself to be

adored. But Montriveau was in a wild frenzy of joy over her complete

surrender of the position.

“Dear Antoinette,” he cried. “Yes, you are right; I will not have you

doubt any longer. I too am trembling at this moment--lest the angel of

my life should leave me; I wish I could invent some tie that might bind

us to each other irrevocably.”

“Ah!” she said, under her breath, “so I was right, you see.”

“Let me say all that I have to say; I will scatter all your fears with

a word. Listen! if I deserted you, I should deserve to die a thousand

deaths. Be wholly mine, and I will give you the right to kill me if I

am false. I myself will write a letter explaining certain reasons for

taking my own life; I will make my final arrangements, in short. You

shall have the letter in your keeping; in the eye of the law it will be

a sufficient explanation of my death. You can avenge yourself, and fear

nothing from God or men.”

“What good would the letter be to me? What would life be if I had lost

your love? If I wished to kill you, should I not be ready to follow? No;

thank you for the thought, but I do not want the letter. Should I not

begin to dread that you were faithful to me through fear? And if a man

knows that he must risk his life for a stolen pleasure, might it not

seem more tempting? Armand, the thing I ask of you is the one hard thing

to do.”

“Then what is it that you wish?”

“Your obedience and my liberty.”

“Ah, God!” cried he, “I am a child.”

“A wayward, much spoilt child,” she said, stroking the thick hair,

for his head still lay on her knee. “Ah! and loved far more than he

believes, and yet he is very disobedient. Why not stay as we are? Why

not sacrifice to me the desires that hurt me? Why not take what I can

give, when it is all that I can honestly grant? Are you not happy?”

“Oh yes, I am happy when I have not a doubt left. Antoinette, doubt in

love is a kind of death, is it not?”

In a moment he showed himself as he was, as all men are under the

influence of that hot fever; he grew eloquent, insinuating. And the

Duchess tasted the pleasures which she reconciled with her conscience

by some private, Jesuitical ukase of her own; Armand’s love gave her a

thrill of cerebral excitement which custom made as necessary to her as

society, or the Opera. To feel that she was adored by this man, who rose

above other men, whose character frightened her; to treat him like a

child; to play with him as Poppaea played with Nero--many women, like

the wives of King Henry VIII, have paid for such a perilous delight with

all the blood in their veins. Grim presentiment! Even as she surrendered

the delicate, pale, gold curls to his touch, and felt the close pressure

of his hand, the little hand of a man whose greatness she could not

mistake; even as she herself played with his dark, thick locks, in that

boudoir where she reigned a queen, the Duchess would say to herself:

“This man is capable of killing me if he once finds out that I am

playing with him.”

Armand de Montriveau stayed with her till two o’clock in the morning.

From that moment this woman, whom he loved, was neither a duchess nor a

Navarreins; Antoinette, in her disguises, had gone so far as to appear

to be a woman. On that most blissful evening, the sweetest prelude ever

played by a Parisienne to what the world calls “a slip”; in spite of all

her affectations of a coyness which she did not feel, the General saw

all maidenly beauty in her. He had some excuse for believing that so

many storms of caprice had been but clouds covering a heavenly soul;

that these must be lifted one by one like the veils that hid her divine

loveliness. The Duchess became, for him, the most simple and girlish

mistress; she was the one woman in the world for him; and he went away

quite happy in that at last he had brought her to give him such pledges

of love, that it seemed to him impossible but that he should be but her

husband henceforth in secret, her choice sanctioned by Heaven.

Armand went slowly home, turning this thought in his mind with the

impartiality of a man who is conscious of all the responsibilities that

love lays on him while he tastes the sweetness of its joys. He went

along the Quais to see the widest possible space of sky; his heart had

grown in him; he would fain have had the bounds of the firmament and of

earth enlarged. It seemed to him that his lungs drew an ampler breath.

In the course of his self-examination, as he walked, he vowed to love

this woman so devoutly, that every day of her life she should find

absolution for her sins against society in unfailing happiness. Sweet

stirrings of life when life is at the full! The man that is strong

enough to steep his soul in the colour of one emotion, feels infinite

joy as glimpses open out for him of an ardent lifetime that knows no

diminution of passion to the end; even so it is permitted to certain

mystics, in ecstasy, to behold the Light of God. Love would be naught

without the belief that it would last forever; love grows great

through constancy. It was thus that, wholly absorbed by his happiness,

Montriveau understood passion.

“We belong to each other forever!”

The thought was like a talisman fulfilling the wishes of his life. He

did not ask whether the Duchess might not change, whether her love might

not last. No, for he had faith. Without that virtue there is no future

for Christianity, and perhaps it is even more necessary to society.

A conception of life as feeling occurred to him for the first time;

hitherto he had lived by action, the most strenuous exertion of human

energies, the physical devotion, as it may be called, of the soldier.

Next day M. de Montriveau went early in the direction of the Faubourg

Saint-Germain. He had made an appointment at a house not far from the

Hotel de Langeais; and the business over, he went thither as if to his

own home. The General’s companion chanced to be a man for whom he felt

a kind of repulsion whenever he met him in other houses. This was the

Marquis de Ronquerolles, whose reputation had grown so great in Paris

boudoirs. He was witty, clever, and what was more--courageous; he set

the fashion to all the young men in Paris. As a man of gallantry, his

success and experience were equally matters of envy; and neither fortune

nor birth was wanting in his case, qualifications which add such lustre

in Paris to a reputation as a leader of fashion.

“Where are you going?” asked M. de Ronquerolles.

“To Mme de Langeais’.”

“Ah, true. I forgot that you had allowed her to lime you. You are

wasting your affections on her when they might be much better employed

elsewhere. I could have told you of half a score of women in the

financial world, any one of them a thousand times better worth your

while than that titled courtesan, who does with her brains what less

artificial women do with----”

“What is this, my dear fellow?” Armand broke in. “The Duchess is an

angel of innocence.”

Ronquerolles began to laugh.

“Things being thus, dear boy,” said he, “it is my duty to enlighten you.

Just a word; there is no harm in it between ourselves. Has the Duchess

surrendered? If so, I have nothing more to say. Come, give me your

confidence. There is no occasion to waste your time in grafting

your great nature on that unthankful stock, when all your hopes and

cultivation will come to nothing.”

Armand ingenuously made a kind of general report of his position,

enumerating with much minuteness the slender rights so hardly won.

Ronquerolles burst into a peal of laughter so heartless, that it would

have cost any other man his life. But from their manner of speaking and

looking at each other during that colloquy beneath the wall, in a corner

almost as remote from intrusion as the desert itself, it was easy to

imagine the friendship between the two men knew no bounds, and that no

power on earth could estrange them.

“My dear Armand, why did you not tell me that the Duchess was a puzzle

to you? I would have given you a little advice which might have brought

your flirtation properly through. You must know, to begin with, that the

women of our Faubourg, like any other women, love to steep themselves in

love; but they have a mind to possess and not to be possessed. They have

made a sort of compromise with human nature. The code of their parish

gives them a pretty wide latitude short of the last transgression. The

sweets enjoyed by this fair Duchess of yours are so many venial sins

to be washed away in the waters of penitence. But if you had the

impertinence to ask in earnest for the moral sin to which naturally

you are sure to attach the highest importance, you would see the deep

disdain with which the door of the boudoir and the house would be

incontinently shut upon you. The tender Antoinette would dismiss

everything from her memory; you would be less than a cipher for her.

She would wipe away your kisses, my dear friend, as indifferently as she

would perform her ablutions. She would sponge love from her cheeks as

she washes off rouge. We know women of that sort--the thorough-bred

Parisienne. Have you ever noticed a grisette tripping along the street?

Her face is as good as a picture. A pretty cap, fresh cheeks, trim hair,

a guileful smile, and the rest of her almost neglected. Is not this true

to the life? Well, that is the Parisienne. She knows that her face is

all that will be seen, so she devotes all her care, finery, and vanity

to her head. The Duchess is the same; the head is everything with her.

She can only feel through her intellect, her heart lies in her brain,

she is a sort of intellectual epicure, she has a head-voice. We call

that kind of poor creature a Lais of the intellect. You have been taken

in like a boy. If you doubt it, you can have proof of it tonight, this

morning, this instant. Go up to her, try the demand as an experiment,

insist peremptorily if it is refused. You might set about it like the

late Marechal de Richelieu, and get nothing for your pains.”

Armand was dumb with amazement.

“Has your desire reached the point of infatuation?”

“I want her at any cost!” Montriveau cried out despairingly.

“Very well. Now, look here. Be as inexorable as she is herself. Try to

humiliate her, to sting her vanity. Do _not_ try to move her heart,

nor her soul, but the woman’s nerves and temperament, for she is both

nervous and lymphatic. If you can once awaken desire in her, you are

safe. But you must drop these romantic boyish notions of yours. If when

once you have her in your eagle’s talons you yield a point or draw back,

if you so much as stir an eyelid, if she thinks that she can regain her

ascendancy over you, she will slip out of your clutches like a fish, and

you will never catch her again. Be as inflexible as law. Show no more

charity than the headsman. Hit hard, and then hit again. Strike and keep

on striking as if you were giving her the knout. Duchesses are made of

hard stuff, my dear Armand; there is a sort of feminine nature that is

only softened by repeated blows; and as suffering develops a heart in

women of that sort, so it is a work of charity not to spare the rod.

Do you persevere. Ah! when pain has thoroughly relaxed those nerves and

softened the fibres that you take to be so pliant and yielding; when

a shriveled heart has learned to expand and contract and to beat under

this discipline; when the brain has capitulated--then, perhaps, passion

may enter among the steel springs of this machinery that turns out tears

and affectations and languors and melting phrases; then you shall see a

most magnificent conflagration (always supposing that the chimney takes

fire). The steel feminine system will glow red-hot like iron in the

forge; that kind of heat lasts longer than any other, and the glow of it

may possibly turn to love.

“Still,” he continued, “I have my doubts. And, after all, is it worth

while to take so much trouble with the Duchess? Between ourselves a man

of my stamp ought first to take her in hand and break her in; I would

make a charming woman of her; she is a thoroughbred; whereas, you two

left to yourselves will never get beyond the A B C. But you are in love

with her, and just now you might not perhaps share my views on this

subject----. A pleasant time to you, my children,” added Ronquerolles,

after a pause. Then with a laugh: “I have decided myself for facile

beauties; they are tender, at any rate, the natural woman appears in

their love without any of your social seasonings. A woman that haggles

over herself, my poor boy, and only means to inspire love! Well, have

her like an extra horse--for show. The match between the sofa and

confessional, black and white, queen and knight, conscientious scruples

and pleasure, is an uncommonly amusing game of chess. And if a man knows

the game, let him be never so little of a rake, he wins in three moves.

Now, if I undertook a woman of that sort, I should start with the

deliberate purpose of----” His voice sank to a whisper over the last

words in Armand’s ear, and he went before there was time to reply.

As for Montriveau, he sprang at a bound across the courtyard of the

Hotel de Langeais, went unannounced up the stairs straight to the

Duchess’s bedroom.

“This is an unheard-of thing,” she said, hastily wrapping her

dressing-gown about her. “Armand! this is abominable of you! Come, leave

the room, I beg. Just go out of the room, and go at once. Wait for me in

the drawing-room.--Come now!”

“Dear angel, has a plighted lover no privilege whatsoever?”

“But, monsieur, it is in the worst possible taste of a plighted lover or

a wedded husband to break in like this upon his wife.”

He came up to the Duchess, took her in his arms, and held her tightly to

him.

“Forgive, dear Antoinette; but a host of horrid doubts are fermenting in

my heart.”

“_Doubts_? Fie!--Oh, fie on you!”

“Doubts all but justified. If you loved me, would you make this quarrel?

Would you not be glad to see me? Would you not have felt a something

stir in your heart? For I, that am not a woman, feel a thrill in my

inmost self at the mere sound of your voice. Often in a ballroom a

longing has come upon me to spring to your side and put my arms about

your neck.”

“Oh! if you have doubts of me so long as I am not ready to spring to

your arms before all the world, I shall be doubted all my life long, I

suppose. Why, Othello was a mere child compared with you!”

“Ah!” he cried despairingly, “you have no love for me----”

“Admit, at any rate, that at this moment you are not lovable.”

“Then I have still to find favour in your sight?”

“Oh, I should think so. Come,” added she, “with a little imperious air,

go out of the room, leave me. I am not like you; I wish always to find

favour in your eyes.”

Never woman better understood the art of putting charm into insolence,

and does not the charm double the effect? is it not enough to infuriate

the coolest of men? There was a sort of untrammeled freedom about Mme

de Langeais; a something in her eyes, her voice, her attitude, which is

never seen in a woman who loves when she stands face to face with him at

the mere sight of whom her heart must needs begin to beat. The Marquis

de Ronquerolles’ counsels had cured Armand of sheepishness; and further,

there came to his aid that rapid power of intuition which passion will

develop at moments in the least wise among mortals, while a great man

at such a time possesses it to the full. He guessed the terrible truth

revealed by the Duchess’s nonchalance, and his heart swelled with the

storm like a lake rising in flood.

“If you told me the truth yesterday, be mine, dear Antoinette,” he

cried; “you shall----”

“In the first place,” said she composedly, thrusting him back as he

came nearer--“in the first place, you are not to compromise me. My woman

might overhear you. Respect me, I beg of you. Your familiarity is all

very well in my boudoir in an evening; here it is quite different.

Besides, what may your ‘you shall’ mean? ‘You shall.’ No one as yet

has ever used that word to me. It is quite ridiculous, it seems to me,

absolutely ridiculous.

“Will you surrender nothing to me on this point?”

“Oh! do you call a woman’s right to dispose of herself a ‘point?’ A

capital point indeed; you will permit me to be entirely my own mistress

on that ‘point.’”

“And how if, believing in your promises to me, I should absolutely

require it?”

“Oh! then you would prove that I made the greatest possible mistake when

I made you a promise of any kind; and I should beg you to leave me in

peace.”

The General’s face grew white; he was about to spring to her side, when

Mme de Langeais rang the bell, the maid appeared, and, smiling with a

mocking grace, the Duchess added, “Be so good as to return when I am

visible.”

Then Montriveau felt the hardness of a woman as cold and keen as a steel

blade; she was crushing in her scorn. In one moment she had snapped

the bonds which held firm only for her lover. She had read Armand’s

intention in his face, and held that the moment had come for teaching

the Imperial soldier his lesson. He was to be made to feel that though

duchesses may lend themselves to love, they do not give themselves, and

that the conquest of one of them would prove a harder matter than the

conquest of Europe.

“Madame,” returned Armand, “I have not time to wait. I am a spoilt

child, as you told me yourself. When I seriously resolve to have that of

which we have been speaking, I shall have it.”

“You will have it?” queried she, and there was a trace of surprise in

her loftiness.

“I shall have it.”

“Oh! you would do me a great pleasure by ‘resolving’ to have it. For

curiosity’s sake, I should be delighted to know how you would set about

it----”

“I am delighted to put a new interest into your life,” interrupted

Montriveau, breaking into a laugh which dismayed the Duchess. “Will you

permit me to take you to the ball tonight?”

“A thousand thanks. M. de Marsay has been beforehand with you. I gave

him my promise.”

Montriveau bowed gravely and went.

“So Ronquerolles was right,” thought he, “and now for a game of chess.”

Thenceforward he hid his agitation by complete composure. No man is

strong enough to bear such sudden alternations from the height of

happiness to the depths of wretchedness. So he had caught a glimpse of

happy life the better to feel the emptiness of his previous existence?

There was a terrible storm within him; but he had learned to endure,

and bore the shock of tumultuous thoughts as a granite cliff stands out

against the surge of an angry sea.

“I could say nothing. When I am with her my wits desert me. She does not

know how vile and contemptible she is. Nobody has ventured to bring her

face to face with herself. She has played with many a man, no doubt; I

will avenge them all.”

For the first time, it may be, in a man’s heart, revenge and love were

blended so equally that Montriveau himself could not know whether love

or revenge would carry all before it. That very evening he went to the

ball at which he was sure of seeing the Duchesse de Langeais, and almost

despaired of reaching her heart. He inclined to think that there was

something diabolical about this woman, who was gracious to him and

radiant with charming smiles; probably because she had no wish to

allow the world to think that she had compromised herself with M. de

Montriveau. Coolness on both sides is a sign of love; but so long as

the Duchess was the same as ever, while the Marquis looked sullen and

morose, was it not plain that she had conceded nothing? Onlookers know

the rejected lover by various signs and tokens; they never mistake the

genuine symptoms for a coolness such as some women command their adorers

to feign, in the hope of concealing their love. Everyone laughed at

Montriveau; and he, having omitted to consult his cornac, was abstracted

and ill at ease. M. de Ronquerolles would very likely have bidden him

compromise the Duchess by responding to her show of friendliness by

passionate demonstrations; but as it was, Armand de Montriveau came away

from the ball, loathing human nature, and even then scarcely ready to

believe in such complete depravity.

“If there is no executioner for such crimes,” he said, as he looked up

at the lighted windows of the ballroom where the most enchanting women

in Paris were dancing, laughing, and chatting, “I will take you by the

nape of the neck, Mme la Duchesse, and make you feel something that

bites more deeply than the knife in the Place de la Greve. Steel against

steel; we shall see which heart will leave the deeper mark.”

For a week or so Mme de Langeais hoped to see the Marquis de Montriveau

again; but he contented himself with sending his card every morning to

the Hotel de Langeais. The Duchess could not help shuddering each time

that the card was brought in, and a dim foreboding crossed her mind, but

the thought was vague as a presentiment of disaster. When her eyes fell

on the name, it seemed to her that she felt the touch of the implacable

man’s strong hand in her hair; sometimes the words seemed like a

prognostication of a vengeance which her lively intellect invented in

the most shocking forms. She had studied him too well not to dread him.

Would he murder her, she wondered? Would that bull-necked man dash out

her vitals by flinging her over his head? Would he trample her body

under his feet? When, where, and how would he get her into his power?

Would he make her suffer very much, and what kind of pain would he

inflict? She repented of her conduct. There were hours when, if he had

come, she would have gone to his arms in complete self-surrender.

Every night before she slept she saw Montriveau’s face; every night it

wore a different aspect. Sometimes she saw his bitter smile, sometimes

the Jovelike knitting of the brows; or his leonine look, or some

disdainful movement of the shoulders made him terrible for her. Next day

the card seemed stained with blood. The name of Montriveau stirred her

now as the presence of the fiery, stubborn, exacting lover had never

done. Her apprehensions gathered strength in the silence. She was

forced, without aid from without, to face the thought of a hideous duel

of which she could not speak. Her proud hard nature was more responsive

to thrills of hate than it had ever been to the caresses of love. Ah! if

the General could but have seen her, as she sat with her forehead

drawn into folds between her brows; immersed in bitter thoughts in that

boudoir where he had enjoyed such happy moments, he might perhaps

have conceived high hopes. Of all human passions, is not pride alone

incapable of engendering anything base? Mme de Langeais kept her

thoughts to herself, but is it not permissible to suppose that M. de

Montriveau was no longer indifferent to her? And has not a man gained

ground immensely when a woman thinks about him? He is bound to make

progress with her either one way or the other afterwards.

Put any feminine creature under the feet of a furious horse or other

fearsome beast; she will certainly drop on her knees and look for death;

but if the brute shows a milder mood and does not utterly slay her,

she will love the horse, lion, bull, or what not, and will speak of him

quite at her ease. The Duchess felt that she was under the lion’s paws;

she quaked, but she did not hate him.

The man and woman thus singularly placed with regard to each other met

three times in society during the course of that week. Each time,

in reply to coquettish questioning glances, the Duchess received a

respectful bow, and smiles tinged with such savage irony, that all her

apprehensions over the card in the morning were revived at night.

Our lives are simply such as our feelings shape them for us; and the

feelings of these two had hollowed out a great gulf between them.

The Comtesse de Serizy, the Marquis de Ronquerolles’ sister, gave a

great ball at the beginning of the following week, and Mme de Langeais

was sure to go to it. Armand was the first person whom the Duchess saw

when she came into the room, and this time Armand was looking out for

her, or so she thought at least. The two exchanged a look, and suddenly

the woman felt a cold perspiration break from every pore. She had

thought all along that Montriveau was capable of taking reprisals in

some unheard-of way proportioned to their condition, and now the revenge

had been discovered, it was ready, heated, and boiling. Lightnings

flashed from the foiled lover’s eyes, his face was radiant with exultant

vengeance. And the Duchess? Her eyes were haggard in spite of her

resolution to be cool and insolent. She went to take her place beside

the Comtesse de Serizy, who could not help exclaiming, “Dear Antoinette!

what is the matter with you? You are enough to frighten one.”

“I shall be all right after a quadrille,” she answered, giving a hand to

a young man who came up at that moment.

Mme de Langeais waltzed that evening with a sort of excitement and

transport which redoubled Montriveau’s lowering looks. He stood in front

of the line of spectators, who were amusing themselves by looking on.

Every time that _she_ came past him, his eyes darted down upon her

eddying face; he might have been a tiger with the prey in his grasp. The

waltz came to an end, Mme de Langeais went back to her place beside the

Countess, and Montriveau never took his eyes off her, talking all the

while with a stranger.

“One of the things that struck me most on the journey,” he was saying

(and the Duchess listened with all her ears), “was the remark which the

man makes at Westminster when you are shown the axe with which a man in

a mask cut off Charles the First’s head, so they tell you. The King made

it first of all to some inquisitive person, and they repeat it still in

memory of him.”

“What does the man say?” asked Mme de Serizy.

“‘Do not touch the axe!’” replied Montriveau, and there was menace in

the sound of his voice.

“Really, my Lord Marquis,” said Mme de Langeais, “you tell this old

story that everybody knows if they have been to London, and look at my

neck in such a melodramatic way that you seem to me to have an axe in

your hand.”

The Duchess was in a cold sweat, but nevertheless she laughed as she

spoke the last words.

“But circumstances give the story a quite new application,” returned he.

“How so; pray tell me, for pity’s sake?”

“In this way, madame--you have touched the axe,” said Montriveau,

lowering his voice.

“What an enchanting prophecy!” returned she, smiling with assumed grace.

“And when is my head to fall?”

“I have no wish to see that pretty head of yours cut off. I only fear

some great misfortune for you. If your head were clipped close, would

you feel no regrets for the dainty golden hair that you turn to such

good account?”

“There are those for whom a woman would love to make such a sacrifice;

even if, as often happens, it is for the sake of a man who cannot make

allowances for an outbreak of temper.”

“Quite so. Well, and if some wag were to spoil your beauty on a sudden

by some chemical process, and you, who are but eighteen for us, were to

be a hundred years old?”

“Why, the smallpox is our Battle of Waterloo, monsieur,” she

interrupted. “After it is over we find out those who love us sincerely.”

“Would you not regret the lovely face that?”

“Oh! indeed I should, but less for my own sake than for the sake of

someone else whose delight it might have been. And, after all, if I were

loved, always loved, and truly loved, what would my beauty matter to

me?--What do you say, Clara?”

“It is a dangerous speculation,” replied Mme de Serizy.

“Is it permissible to ask His Majesty the King of Sorcerers when I made

the mistake of touching the axe, since I have not been to London as

yet?----”

“_Not so_,” he answered in English, with a burst of ironical laughter.

“And when will the punishment begin?”

At this Montriveau coolly took out his watch, and ascertained the hour

with a truly appalling air of conviction.

“A dreadful misfortune will befall you before this day is out.”

“I am not a child to be easily frightened, or rather, I am a child

ignorant of danger,” said the Duchess. “I shall dance now without fear

on the edge of the precipice.”

“I am delighted to know that you have so much strength of character,” he

answered, as he watched her go to take her place in a square dance.

But the Duchess, in spite of her apparent contempt for Armand’s dark

prophecies, was really frightened. Her late lover’s presence weighed

upon her morally and physically with a sense of oppression that scarcely

ceased when he left the ballroom. And yet when she had drawn freer

breath, and enjoyed the relief for a moment, she found herself

regretting the sensation of dread, so greedy of extreme sensations is

the feminine nature. The regret was not love, but it was certainly akin

to other feelings which prepare the way for love. And then--as if the

impression which Montriveau had made upon her were suddenly revived--she

recollected his air of conviction as he took out his watch, and in a

sudden spasm of dread she went out.

By this time it was about midnight. One of her servants, waiting with

her pelisse, went down to order her carriage. On her way home she fell

naturally enough to musing over M. de Montriveau’s prediction. Arrived

in her own courtyard, as she supposed, she entered a vestibule almost

like that of her own hotel, and suddenly saw that the staircase was

different. She was in a strange house. Turning to call her servants, she

was attacked by several men, who rapidly flung a handkerchief over her

mouth, bound her hand and foot, and carried her off. She shrieked aloud.

“Madame, our orders are to kill you if you scream,” a voice said in her

ear.

So great was the Duchess’s terror, that she could never recollect how

nor by whom she was transported. When she came to herself, she was lying

on a couch in a bachelor’s lodging, her hands and feet tied with silken

cords. In spite of herself, she shrieked aloud as she looked round and

met Armand de Montriveau’s eyes. He was sitting in his dressing-gown,

quietly smoking a cigar in his armchair.

“Do not cry out, Mme la Duchesse,” he said, coolly taking the cigar out

of his mouth; “I have a headache. Besides, I will untie you. But listen

attentively to what I have the honour to say to you.”

Very carefully he untied the knots that bound her feet.

“What would be the use of calling out? Nobody can hear your cries.

You are too well bred to make any unnecessary fuss. If you do not stay

quietly, if you insist upon a struggle with me, I shall tie your

hands and feet again. All things considered, I think that you have

self-respect enough to stay on this sofa as if you were lying on your

own at home; cold as ever, if you will. You have made me shed many tears

on this couch, tears that I hid from all other eyes.”

While Montriveau was speaking, the Duchess glanced about her; it was

a woman’s glance, a stolen look that saw all things and seemed to see

nothing. She was much pleased with the room. It was rather like a

monk’s cell. The man’s character and thoughts seemed to pervade it. No

decoration of any kind broke the grey painted surface of the walls.

A green carpet covered the floor. A black sofa, a table littered with

papers, two big easy-chairs, a chest of drawers with an alarum clock by

way of ornament, a very low bedstead with a coverlet flung over it--a

red cloth with a black key border--all these things made part of a

whole that told of a life reduced to its simplest terms. A triple

candle-sconce of Egyptian design on the chimney-piece recalled the

vast spaces of the desert and Montriveau’s long wanderings; a huge

sphinx-claw stood out beneath the folds of stuff at the bed-foot;

and just beyond, a green curtain with a black and scarlet border was

suspended by large rings from a spear handle above a door near one

corner of the room. The other door by which the band had entered was

likewise curtained, but the drapery hung from an ordinary curtain-rod.

As the Duchess finally noted that the pattern was the same on both, she

saw that the door at the bed-foot stood open; gleams of ruddy light

from the room beyond flickered below the fringed border. Naturally, the

ominous light roused her curiosity; she fancied she could distinguish

strange shapes in the shadows; but as it did not occur to her at the

time that danger could come from that quarter, she tried to gratify a

more ardent curiosity.

“Monsieur, if it is not indiscreet, may I ask what you mean to do with

me?” The insolence and irony of the tone stung through the words. The

Duchess quite believed that she read extravagant love in Montriveau’s

speech. He had carried her off; was not that in itself an acknowledgment

of her power?

“Nothing whatever, madame,” he returned, gracefully puffing the last

whiff of cigar smoke. “You will remain here for a short time. First

of all, I should like to explain to you what you are, and what I am. I

cannot put my thoughts into words whilst you are twisting on the sofa

in your boudoir; and besides, in your own house you take offence at the

slightest hint, you ring the bell, make an outcry, and turn your lover

out at the door as if he were the basest of wretches. Here my mind is

unfettered. Here nobody can turn me out. Here you shall be my victim for

a few seconds, and you are going to be so exceedingly kind as to listen

to me. You need fear nothing. I did not carry you off to insult you, nor

yet to take by force what you refused to grant of your own will to my

unworthiness. I could not stoop so low. You possibly think of outrage;

for myself, I have no such thoughts.”

He flung his cigar coolly into the fire.

“The smoke is unpleasant to you, no doubt, madame?” he said, and rising

at once, he took a chafing-dish from the hearth, burnt perfumes, and

purified the air. The Duchess’s astonishment was only equaled by her

humiliation. She was in this man’s power; and he would not abuse his

power. The eyes in which love had once blazed like flame were now quiet

and steady as stars. She trembled. Her dread of Armand was increased by

a nightmare sensation of restlessness and utter inability to move; she

felt as if she were turned to stone. She lay passive in the grip of

fear. She thought she saw the light behind the curtains grow to a blaze,

as if blown up by a pair of bellows; in another moment the gleams of

flame grew brighter, and she fancied that three masked figures suddenly

flashed out; but the terrible vision disappeared so swiftly that she

took it for an optical delusion.

“Madame,” Armand continued with cold contempt, “one minute, just one

minute is enough for me, and you shall feel it afterwards at every

moment throughout your lifetime, the one eternity over which I have

power. I am not God. Listen carefully to me,” he continued, pausing to

add solemnity to his words. “Love will always come at your call. You

have boundless power over men: but remember that once you called love,

and love came to you; love as pure and true-hearted as may be on earth,

and as reverent as it was passionate; fond as a devoted woman’s, as a

mother’s love; a love so great indeed, that it was past the bounds of

reason. You played with it, and you committed a crime. Every woman has a

right to refuse herself to love which she feels she cannot share; and

if a man loves and cannot win love in return, he is not to be pitied,

he has no right to complain. But with a semblance of love to attract

an unfortunate creature cut off from all affection; to teach him to

understand happiness to the full, only to snatch it from him; to rob him

of his future of felicity; to slay his happiness not merely today,

but as long as his life lasts, by poisoning every hour of it and every

thought--this I call a fearful crime!”

“Monsieur----”

“I cannot allow you to answer me yet. So listen to me still. In any case

I have rights over you; but I only choose to exercise one--the right of

the judge over the criminal, so that I may arouse your conscience. If

you had no conscience left, I should not reproach you at all; but you

are so young! You must feel some life still in your heart; or so I like

to believe. While I think of you as depraved enough to do a wrong which

the law does not punish, I do not think you so degraded that you cannot

comprehend the full meaning of my words. I resume.”

As he spoke the Duchess heard the smothered sound of a pair of bellows.

Those mysterious figures which she had just seen were blowing up the

fire, no doubt; the glow shone through the curtain. But Montriveau’s

lurid face was turned upon her; she could not choose but wait with a

fast-beating heart and eyes fixed in a stare. However curious she felt,

the heat in Armand’s words interested her even more than the crackling

of the mysterious flames.

“Madame,” he went on after a pause, “if some poor wretch commits a

murder in Paris, it is the executioner’s duty, you know, to lay hands on

him and stretch him on the plank, where murderers pay for their crimes

with their heads. Then the newspapers inform everyone, rich and poor, so

that the former are assured that they may sleep in peace, and the latter

are warned that they must be on the watch if they would live. Well, you

that are religious, and even a little of a bigot, may have masses said

for such a man’s soul. You both belong to the same family, but yours is

the elder branch; and the elder branch may occupy high places in peace

and live happily and without cares. Want or anger may drive your brother

the convict to take a man’s life; you have taken more, you have taken

the joy out of a man’s life, you have killed all that was best in his

life--his dearest beliefs. The murderer simply lay in wait for his

victim, and killed him reluctantly, and in fear of the scaffold; but

_you_ ...! You heaped up every sin that weakness can commit against

strength that suspected no evil; you tamed a passive victim, the better

to gnaw his heart out; you lured him with caresses; you left nothing

undone that could set him dreaming, imagining, longing for the bliss of

love. You asked innumerable sacrifices of him, only to refuse to make

any in return. He should see the light indeed before you put out his

eyes! It is wonderful how you found the heart to do it! Such villainies

demand a display of resource quite above the comprehension of those

bourgeoises whom you laugh at and despise. They can give and forgive;

they know how to love and suffer. The grandeur of their devotion dwarfs

us. Rising higher in the social scale, one finds just as much mud as at

the lower end; but with this difference, at the upper end it is hard and

gilded over.

“Yes, to find baseness in perfection, you must look for a noble bringing

up, a great name, a fair woman, a duchess. You cannot fall lower than

the lowest unless you are set high above the rest of the world.--I

express my thoughts badly; the wounds you dealt me are too painful as

yet, but do not think that I complain. My words are not the expression

of any hope for myself; there is no trace of bitterness in them. Know

this, madame, for a certainty--I forgive you. My forgiveness is so

complete that you need not feel in the least sorry that you came hither

to find it against your will.... But you might take advantage of other

hearts as child-like as my own, and it is my duty to spare them anguish.

So you have inspired the thought of justice. Expiate your sin here

on earth; God may perhaps forgive you; I wish that He may, but He is

inexorable, and will strike.”

The broken-spirited, broken-hearted woman looked up, her eyes filled

with tears.

“Why do you cry? Be true to your nature. You could look on indifferently

at the torture of a heart as you broke it. That will do, madame, do not

cry. I cannot bear it any longer. Other men will tell you that you have

given them life; as for myself, I tell you, with rapture, that you have

given me blank extinction. Perhaps you guess that I am not my own, that

I am bound to live for my friends, that from this time forth I must

endure the cold chill of death, as well as the burden of life? Is it

possible that there can be so much kindness in you? Are you like the

desert tigress that licks the wounds she has inflicted?”

The Duchess burst out sobbing.

“Pray spare your tears, madame. If I believed in them at all, it would

merely set me on my guard. Is this another of your artifices? or is it

not? You have used so many with me; how can one think that there is any

truth in you? Nothing that you do or say has any power now to move me.

That is all I have to say.”

Mme de Langeais rose to her feet, with a great dignity and humility in

her bearing.

“You are right to treat me very hardly,” she said, holding out a hand to

the man who did not take it; “you have not spoken hardly enough; and I

deserve this punishment.”

“_I_ punish you, madame! A man must love still, to punish, must he not?

From me you must expect no feeling, nothing resembling it. If I chose, I

might be accuser and judge in my cause, and pronounce and carry out the

sentence. But I am about to fulfil a duty, not a desire of vengeance of

any kind. The cruelest revenge of all, I think, is scorn of revenge when

it is in our power to take it. Perhaps I shall be the minister of your

pleasures; who knows? Perhaps from this time forth, as you gracefully

wear the tokens of disgrace by which society marks out the criminal, you

may perforce learn something of the convict’s sense of honour. And then,

you will love!”

The Duchess sat listening; her meekness was unfeigned; it was no

coquettish device. When she spoke at last, it was after a silence.

“Armand,” she began, “it seems to me that when I resisted love, I was

obeying all the instincts of woman’s modesty; I should not have looked

for such reproaches from _you_. I was weak; you have turned all my

weaknesses against me, and made so many crimes of them. How could you

fail to understand that the curiosity of love might have carried me

further than I ought to go; and that next morning I might be angry

with myself, and wretched because I had gone too far? Alas! I sinned in

ignorance. I was as sincere in my wrongdoing, I swear to you, as in

my remorse. There was far more love for you in my severity than in my

concessions. And besides, of what do you complain? I gave you my heart;

that was not enough; you demanded, brutally, that I should give my

person----”

“Brutally?” repeated Montriveau. But to himself he said, “If I once

allow her to dispute over words, I am lost.”

“Yes. You came to me as if I were one of those women. You showed none

of the respect, none of the attentions of love. Had I not reason to

reflect? Very well, I reflected. The unseemliness of your conduct is not

inexcusable; love lay at the source of it; let me think so, and

justify you to myself.--Well, Armand, this evening, even while you were

prophesying evil, I felt convinced that there was happiness in store for

us both. Yes, I put my faith in the noble, proud nature so often tested

and proved.” She bent lower. “And I was yours wholly,” she murmured in

his ear. “I felt a longing that I cannot express to give happiness to a

man so violently tried by adversity. If I must have a master, my master

should be a great man. As I felt conscious of my height, the less I

cared to descend. I felt I could trust you, I saw a whole lifetime of

love, while you were pointing to death.... Strength and kindness always

go together. My friend, you are so strong, you will not be unkind to

a helpless woman who loves you. If I was wrong, is there no way of

obtaining forgiveness? No way of making reparation? Repentance is the

charm of love; I should like to be very charming for you. How could I,

alone among women, fail to know a woman’s doubts and fears, the timidity

that it is so natural to feel when you bind yourself for life, and

know how easily a man snaps such ties? The bourgeoises, with whom you

compared me just now, give themselves, but they struggle first. Very

well--I struggled; but here I am!--Ah! God, he does not hear me!” she

broke off, and wringing her hands, she cried out “But I love you! I am

yours!” and fell at Armand’s feet.

“Yours! yours! my one and only master!”

Armand tried to raise her.

“Madame, it is too late! Antoinette cannot save the Duchesse de

Langeais. I cannot believe in either. Today you may give yourself;

tomorrow, you may refuse. No power in earth or heaven can insure me the

sweet constancy of love. All love’s pledges lay in the past; and now

nothing of that past exists.”

The light behind the curtain blazed up so brightly, that the Duchess

could not help turning her head; this time she distinctly saw the three

masked figures.

“Armand,” she said, “I would not wish to think ill of you. Why are those

men there? What are you going to do to me?”

“Those men will be as silent as I myself with regard to the thing which

is about to be done. Think of them simply as my hands and my heart. One

of them is a surgeon----”

“A surgeon! Armand, my friend, of all things, suspense is the hardest

to bear. Just speak; tell me if you wish for my life; I will give it to

you, you shall not take it----”

“Then you did not understand me? Did I not speak just now of justice?

To put an end to your misapprehensions,” continued he, taking up a small

steel object from the table, “I will now explain what I have decided

with regard to you.”

He held out a Lorraine cross, fastened to the tip of a steel rod.

“Two of my friends at this very moment are heating another cross, made

on this pattern, red-hot. We are going to stamp it upon your forehead,

here between the eyes, so that there will be no possibility of hiding

the mark with diamonds, and so avoiding people’s questions. In short,

you shall bear on your forehead the brand of infamy which your brothers

the convicts wear on their shoulders. The pain is a mere trifle, but I

feared a nervous crisis of some kind, of resistance----”

“Resistance?” she cried, clapping her hands for joy. “Oh no, no! I would

have the whole world here to see. Ah, my Armand, brand her quickly,

this creature of yours; brand her with your mark as a poor little trifle

belonging to you. You asked for pledges of my love; here they are all in

one. Ah! for me there is nothing but mercy and forgiveness and eternal

happiness in this revenge of yours. When you have marked this woman with

your mark, when you set your crimson brand on her, your slave in soul,

you can never afterwards abandon her, you will be mine for evermore?

When you cut me off from my kind, you make yourself responsible for my

happiness, or you prove yourself base; and I know that you are noble and

great! Why, when a woman loves, the brand of love is burnt into her

soul by her own will.--Come in, gentlemen! come in and brand her,

this Duchesse de Langeais. She is M. de Montriveau’s forever! Ah! come

quickly, all of you, my forehead burns hotter than your fire!”

Armand turned his head sharply away lest he should see the Duchess

kneeling, quivering with the throbbings of her heart. He said some word,

and his three friends vanished.

The women of Paris salons know how one mirror reflects another. The

Duchess, with every motive for reading the depths of Armand’s heart, was

all eyes; and Armand, all unsuspicious of the mirror, brushed away two

tears as they fell. Her whole future lay in those two tears. When he

turned round again to help her to rise, she was standing before him,

sure of love. Her pulses must have throbbed fast when he spoke with the

firmness she had known so well how to use of old while she played with

him.

“I spare you, madame. All that has taken place shall be as if it had

never been, you may believe me. But now, let us bid each other goodbye.

I like to think that you were sincere in your coquetries on your sofa,

sincere again in this outpouring of your heart. Good-bye. I feel that

there is no faith in you left in me. You would torment me again; you

would always be the Duchess, and----But there, good-bye, we shall never

understand each other.

“Now, what do you wish?” he continued, taking the tone of a master of

the ceremonies--“to return home, or to go back to Mme de Serizy’s

ball? I have done all in my power to prevent any scandal. Neither your

servants nor anyone else can possibly know what has passed between us

in the last quarter of an hour. Your servants have no idea that you have

left the ballroom; your carriage never left Mme de Serizy’s courtyard;

your brougham may likewise be found in the court of your own hotel.

Where do you wish to be?”

“What do you counsel, Armand?”

“There is no Armand now, Mme la Duchesse. We are strangers to each

other.”

“Then take me to the ball,” she said, still curious to put Armand’s

power to the test. “Thrust a soul that suffered in the world, and must

always suffer there, if there is no happiness for her now, down into

hell again. And yet, oh my friend, I love you as your bourgeoises love;

I love you so that I could come to you and fling my arms about your neck

before all the world if you asked it off me. The hateful world has not

corrupted me. I am young at least, and I have grown younger still. I am

a child, yes, your child, your new creature. Ah! do not drive me forth

out of my Eden!”

Armand shook his head.

“Ah! let me take something with me, if I go, some little thing to wear

tonight on my heart,” she said, taking possession of Armand’s glove,

which she twisted into her handkerchief.

“No, I am _not_ like all those depraved women. You do not know the

world, and so you cannot know my worth. You shall know it now! There are

women who sell themselves for money; there are others to be gained by

gifts, it is a vile world! Oh, I wish I were a simple bourgeoise, a

working girl, if you would rather have a woman beneath you than a woman

whose devotion is accompanied by high rank, as men count it. Oh, my

Armand, there are noble, high, and chaste and pure natures among us;

and then they are lovely indeed. I would have all nobleness that I might

offer it all up to you. Misfortune willed that I should be a duchess;

I would I were a royal princess, that my offering might be complete. I

would be a grisette for you, and a queen for everyone besides.”

He listened, damping his cigars with his lips.

“You will let me know when you wish to go,” he said.

“But I should like to stay----”

“That is another matter!”

“Stay, that was badly rolled,” she cried, seizing on a cigar and

devouring all that Armand’s lips had touched.

“Do you smoke?”

“Oh, what would I not do to please you?”

“Very well. Go, madame.”

“I will obey you,” she answered, with tears in her eyes.

“You must be blindfolded; you must not see a glimpse of the way.”

“I am ready, Armand,” she said, bandaging her eyes.

“Can you see?”

“No.”

Noiselessly he knelt before her.

“Ah! I can hear you!” she cried, with a little fond gesture, thinking

that the pretence of harshness was over.

He made as if he would kiss her lips; she held up her face.

“You can see, madame.”

“I am just a little bit curious.”

“So you always deceive me?”

“Ah! take off this handkerchief, sir,” she cried out, with the passion

of a great generosity repelled with scorn, “lead me; I will not open my

eyes.”

Armand felt sure of her after that cry. He led the way; the Duchess

nobly true to her word, was blind. But while Montriveau held her hand

as a father might, and led her up and down flights of stairs, he was

studying the throbbing pulses of this woman’s heart so suddenly invaded

by Love. Mme de Langeais, rejoicing in this power of speech, was glad to

let him know all; but he was inflexible; his hand was passive in reply

to the questionings of her hand.

At length, after some journey made together, Armand bade her go forward;

the opening was doubtless narrow, for as she went she felt that his hand

protected her dress. His care touched her; it was a revelation surely

that there was a little love still left; yet it was in some sort a

farewell, for Montriveau left her without a word. The air was warm; the

Duchess, feeling the heat, opened her eyes, and found herself standing

by the fire in the Comtesse de Serizy’s boudoir.

She was alone. Her first thought was for her disordered toilette; in a

moment she had adjusted her dress and restored her picturesque coiffure.

“Well, dear Antoinette, we have been looking for you everywhere.” It was

the Comtesse de Serizy who spoke as she opened the door.

“I came here to breathe,” said the Duchess; “it is unbearably hot in the

rooms.”

“People thought that you had gone; but my brother Ronquerolles told me

that your servants were waiting for you.”

“I am tired out, dear, let me stay and rest here for a minute,” and the

Duchess sat down on the sofa.

“Why, what is the matter with you? You are shaking from head to foot!”

The Marquis de Ronquerolles came in.

“Mme la Duchesse, I was afraid that something might have happened. I

have just come across your coachman, the man is as tipsy as all the

Swiss in Switzerland.”

The Duchess made no answer; she was looking round the room, at the

chimney-piece and the tall mirrors, seeking the trace of an opening.

Then with an extraordinary sensation she recollected that she was again

in the midst of the gaiety of the ballroom after that terrific scene

which had changed the whole course of her life. She began to shiver

violently.

“M. de Montriveau’s prophecy has shaken my nerves,” she said. “It was

a joke, but still I will see whether his axe from London will haunt me

even in my sleep. So good-bye, dear.--Good-bye, M. le Marquis.”

As she went through the rooms she was beset with inquiries and regrets.

Her world seemed to have dwindled now that she, its queen, had fallen so

low, was so diminished. And what, moreover, were these men compared with

him whom she loved with all her heart; with the man grown great by all

that she had lost in stature? The giant had regained the height that he

had lost for a while, and she exaggerated it perhaps beyond measure. She

looked, in spite of herself, at the servant who had attended her to the

ball. He was fast asleep.

“Have you been here all the time?” she asked.

“Yes, madame.”

As she took her seat in her carriage she saw, in fact, that her coachman

was drunk--so drunk, that at any other time she would have been afraid;

but after a great crisis in life, fear loses its appetite for common

food. She reached home, at any rate, without accident; but even there

she felt a change in herself, a new feeling that she could not shake

off. For her, there was now but one man in the world; which is to say

that henceforth she cared to shine for his sake alone.

While the physiologist can define love promptly by following out natural

laws, the moralist finds a far more perplexing problem before him if

he attempts to consider love in all its developments due to social

conditions. Still, in spite of the heresies of the endless sects that

divide the church of Love, there is one broad and trenchant line of

difference in doctrine, a line that all the discussion in the world can

never deflect. A rigid application of this line explains the nature

of the crisis through which the Duchess, like most women, was to pass.

Passion she knew, but she did not love as yet.

Love and passion are two different conditions which poets and men of the

world, philosophers and fools, alike continually confound. Love implies

a give and take, a certainty of bliss that nothing can change; it

means so close a clinging of the heart, and an exchange of happiness so

constant, that there is no room left for jealousy. Then possession is a

means and not an end; unfaithfulness may give pain, but the bond is not

less close; the soul is neither more nor less ardent or troubled, but

happy at every moment; in short, the divine breath of desire spreading

from end to end of the immensity of Time steeps it all for us in the

selfsame hue; life takes the tint of the unclouded heaven. But Passion

is the foreshadowing of Love, and of that Infinite to which all

suffering souls aspire. Passion is a hope that may be cheated. Passion

means both suffering and transition. Passion dies out when hope is

dead. Men and women may pass through this experience many times without

dishonor, for it is so natural to spring towards happiness; but there is

only one love in a lifetime. All discussions of sentiment ever

conducted on paper or by word of mouth may therefore be resumed by

two questions--“Is it passion? Is it love?” So, since love comes into

existence only through the intimate experience of the bliss which gives

it lasting life, the Duchess was beneath the yoke of passion as yet; and

as she knew the fierce tumult, the unconscious calculations, the fevered

cravings, and all that is meant by that word _passion_--she suffered.

Through all the trouble of her soul there rose eddying gusts of tempest,

raised by vanity or self-love, or pride or a high spirit; for all these

forms of egoism make common cause together.

She had said to this man, “I love you; I am yours!” Was it possible that

the Duchesse de Langeais should have uttered those words--in vain? She

must either be loved now or play her part of queen no longer. And then

she felt the loneliness of the luxurious couch where pleasure had never

yet set his glowing feet; and over and over again, while she tossed and

writhed there, she said, “I want to be loved.”

But the belief that she still had in herself gave her hope of success.

The Duchess might be piqued, the vain Parisienne might be humiliated;

but the woman saw glimpses of wedded happiness, and imagination,

avenging the time lost for nature, took a delight in kindling the

inextinguishable fire in her veins. She all but attained to the

sensations of love; for amid her poignant doubt whether she was loved in

return, she felt glad at heart to say to herself, “I love him!” As for

her scruples, religion, and the world she could trample them under foot!

Montriveau was her religion now. She spent the next day in a state

of moral torpor, troubled by a physical unrest, which no words could

express. She wrote letters and tore them all up, and invented a thousand

impossible fancies.

When M. de Montriveau’s usual hour arrived, she tried to think that he

would come, and enjoyed the feeling of expectation. Her whole life was

concentrated in the single sense of hearing. Sometimes she shut her

eyes, straining her ears to listen through space, wishing that she

could annihilate everything that lay between her and her lover, and so

establish that perfect silence which sounds may traverse from afar. In

her tense self-concentration, the ticking of the clock grew hateful

to her; she stopped its ill-omened garrulity. The twelve strokes of

midnight sounded from the drawing-room.

“Ah, God!” she cried, “to see him here would be happiness. And yet, it

is not so very long since he came here, brought by desire, and the tones

of his voice filled this boudoir. And now there is nothing.”

She remembered the times that she had played the coquette with him, and

how that her coquetry had cost her her lover, and the despairing tears

flowed for long.

Her woman came at length with, “Mme la Duchesse does not know, perhaps,

that it is two o’clock in the morning; I thought that madame was not

feeling well.”

“Yes, I am going to bed,” said the Duchess, drying her eyes. “But

remember, Suzanne, never to come in again without orders; I tell you

this for the last time.”

For a week, Mme de Langeais went to every house where there was a hope

of meeting M. de Montriveau. Contrary to her usual habits, she came

early and went late; gave up dancing, and went to the card-tables. Her

experiments were fruitless. She did not succeed in getting a glimpse of

Armand. She did not dare to utter his name now. One evening, however, in

a fit of despair, she spoke to Mme de Serizy, and asked as carelessly as

she could, “You must have quarreled with M. de Montriveau? He is not to

be seen at your house now.”

The Countess laughed. “So he does not come here either?” she returned.

“He is not to be seen anywhere, for that matter. He is interested in

some woman, no doubt.”

“I used to think that the Marquis de Ronquerolles was one of his

friends----” the Duchess began sweetly.

“I have never heard my brother say that he was acquainted with him.”

Mme de Langeais did not reply. Mme de Serizy concluded from the

Duchess’s silence that she might apply the scourge with impunity to a

discreet friendship which she had seen, with bitterness of soul, for a

long time past.

“So you miss that melancholy personage, do you? I have heard most

extraordinary things of him. Wound his feelings, he never comes back,

he forgives nothing; and, if you love him, he keeps you in chains. To

everything that I said of him, one of those that praise him sky-high

would always answer, ‘He knows how to love!’ People are always telling

me that Montriveau would give up all for his friend; that his is a great

nature. Pooh! society does not want such tremendous natures. Men of that

stamp are all very well at home; let them stay there and leave us to our

pleasant littlenesses. What do you say, Antoinette?”

Woman of the world though she was, the Duchess seemed agitated, yet she

replied in a natural voice that deceived her fair friend:

“I am sorry to miss him. I took a great interest in him, and promised

to myself to be his sincere friend. I like great natures, dear friend,

ridiculous though you may think it. To give oneself to a fool is a clear

confession, is it not, that one is governed wholly by one’s senses?”

Mme de Serizy’s “preferences” had always been for commonplace men; her

lover at the moment, the Marquis d’Aiglemont, was a fine, tall man.

After this, the Countess soon took her departure, you may be sure Mme

de Langeais saw hope in Armand’s withdrawal from the world; she wrote to

him at once; it was a humble, gentle letter, surely it would bring him

if he loved her still. She sent her footman with it next day. On the

servant’s return, she asked whether he had given the letter to M. de

Montriveau himself, and could not restrain the movement of joy at the

affirmative answer. Armand was in Paris! He stayed alone in his house;

he did not go out into society! So she was loved! All day long she

waited for an answer that never came. Again and again, when impatience

grew unbearable, Antoinette found reasons for his delay. Armand felt

embarrassed; the reply would come by post; but night came, and she could

not deceive herself any longer. It was a dreadful day, a day of pain

grown sweet, of intolerable heart-throbs, a day when the heart squanders

the very forces of life in riot.

Next day she sent for an answer.

“M. le Marquis sent word that he would call on Mme la Duchesse,”

reported Julien.

She fled lest her happiness should be seen in her face, and flung

herself on her couch to devour her first sensations.

“He is coming!”

The thought rent her soul. And, in truth, woe unto those for whom

suspense is not the most horrible time of tempest, while it increases

and multiplies the sweetest joys; for they have nothing in them of

that flame which quickens the images of things, giving to them a second

existence, so that we cling as closely to the pure essence as to its

outward and visible manifestation. What is suspense in love but a

constant drawing upon an unfailing hope?--a submission to the terrible

scourging of passion, while passion is yet happy, and the disenchantment

of reality has not set in. The constant putting forth of strength and

longing, called suspense, is surely, to the human soul, as fragrance

to the flower that breathes it forth. We soon leave the brilliant,

unsatisfying colours of tulips and coreopsis, but we turn again and

again to drink in the sweetness of orange-blossoms or volkameria-flowers

compared separately, each in its own land, to a betrothed bride, full of

love, made fair by the past and future.

The Duchess learned the joys of this new life of hers through the

rapture with which she received the scourgings of love. As this change

wrought in her, she saw other destinies before her, and a better

meaning in the things of life. As she hurried to her dressing-room, she

understood what studied adornment and the most minute attention to

her toilet mean when these are undertaken for love’s sake and not for

vanity. Even now this making ready helped her to bear the long time of

waiting. A relapse of intense agitation set in when she was dressed; she

passed through nervous paroxysms brought on by the dreadful power which

sets the whole mind in ferment. Perhaps that power is only a disease,

though the pain of it is sweet. The Duchess was dressed and waiting

at two o clock in the afternoon. At half-past eleven that night M.

de Montriveau had not arrived. To try to give an idea of the anguish

endured by a woman who might be said to be the spoilt child of

civilization, would be to attempt to say how many imaginings the heart

can condense into one thought. As well endeavour to measure the forces

expended by the soul in a sigh whenever the bell rang; to estimate the

drain of life when a carriage rolled past without stopping, and left her

prostrate.

“Can he be playing with me?” she said, as the clocks struck midnight.

She grew white; her teeth chattered; she struck her hands together and

leapt up and crossed the boudoir, recollecting as she did so how often

he had come thither without a summons. But she resigned herself. Had she

not seen him grow pale, and start up under the stinging barbs of irony?

Then Mme de Langeais felt the horror of the woman’s appointed lot; a

man’s is the active part, a woman must wait passively when she loves. If

a woman goes beyond her beloved, she makes a mistake which few men can

forgive; almost every man would feel that a woman lowers herself by this

piece of angelic flattery. But Armand’s was a great nature; he surely

must be one of the very few who can repay such exceeding love by love

that lasts forever.

“Well, I will make the advance,” she told herself, as she tossed on her

bed and found no sleep there; “I will go to him. I will not weary myself

with holding out a hand to him, but I will hold it out. A man of a

thousand will see a promise of love and constancy in every step that a

woman takes towards him. Yes, the angels must come down from heaven to

reach men; and I wish to be an angel for him.”

Next day she wrote. It was a billet of the kind in which the intellects

of the ten thousand Sevignes that Paris now can number particularly

excel. And yet only a Duchesse de Langeais, brought up by Mme la

Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, could have written that delicious note; no

other woman could complain without lowering herself; could spread wings

in such a flight without draggling her pinions in humiliation; rise

gracefully in revolt; scold without giving offence; and pardon without

compromising her personal dignity.

Julien went with the note. Julien, like his kind, was the victim of

love’s marches and countermarches.

“What did M. de Montriveau reply?” she asked, as indifferently as she

could, when the man came back to report himself.

“M. le Marquis requested me to tell Mme la Duchesse that it was all

right.”

Oh the dreadful reaction of the soul upon herself! To have her heart

stretched on the rack before curious witnesses; yet not to utter a

sound, to be forced to keep silence! One of the countless miseries of

the rich!

More than three weeks went by. Mme de Langeais wrote again and again,

and no answer came from Montriveau. At last she gave out that she was

ill, to gain a dispensation from attendance on the Princess and from

social duties. She was only at home to her father the Duc de Navarreins,

her aunt the Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, the old Vidame de Pamiers

(her maternal great-uncle), and to her husband’s uncle, the Duc de

Grandlieu. These persons found no difficulty in believing that the

Duchess was ill, seeing that she grew thinner and paler and more

dejected every day. The vague ardour of love, the smart of wounded

pride, the continual prick of the only scorn that could touch her,

the yearnings towards joys that she craved with a vain continual

longing--all these things told upon her, mind and body; all the forces

of her nature were stimulated to no purpose. She was paying the arrears

of her life of make-believe.

She went out at last to a review. M. de Montriveau was to be there. For

the Duchess, on the balcony of the Tuileries with the Royal Family,

it was one of those festival days that are long remembered. She looked

supremely beautiful in her languor; she was greeted with admiration in

all eyes. It was Montriveau’s presence that made her so fair.

Once or twice they exchanged glances. The General came almost to her

feet in all the glory of that soldier’s uniform, which produces an

effect upon the feminine imagination to which the most prudish will

confess. When a woman is very much in love, and has not seen her lover

for two months, such a swift moment must be something like the phase of

a dream when the eyes embrace a world that stretches away forever.

Only women or young men can imagine the dull, frenzied hunger in the

Duchess’s eyes. As for older men, if during the paroxysms of early

passion in youth they had experience of such phenomena of nervous power;

at a later day it is so completely forgotten that they deny the very

existence of the luxuriant ecstasy--the only name that can be given to

these wonderful intuitions. Religious ecstasy is the aberration of a

soul that has shaken off its bonds of flesh; whereas in amorous ecstasy

all the forces of soul and body are embraced and blended in one. If

a woman falls a victim to the tyrannous frenzy before which Mme de

Langeais was forced to bend, she will take one decisive resolution

after another so swiftly that it is impossible to give account of them.

Thought after thought rises and flits across her brain, as clouds are

whirled by the wind across the grey veil of mist that shuts out the sun.

Thenceforth the facts reveal all. And the facts are these.

The day after the review, Mme de Langeais sent her carriage and liveried

servants to wait at the Marquis de Montriveau’s door from eight o’clock

in the morning till three in the afternoon. Armand lived in the Rue de

Tournon, a few steps away from the Chamber of Peers, and that very

day the House was sitting; but long before the peers returned to their

palaces, several people had recognised the Duchess’s carriage and

liveries. The first of these was the Baron de Maulincour. That young

officer had met with disdain from Mme de Langeais and a better reception

from Mme de Serizy; he betook himself at once therefore to his mistress,

and under seal of secrecy told her of this strange freak.

In a moment the news was spread with telegraphic speed through all the

coteries in the Faubourg Saint-Germain; it reached the Tuileries and the

Elysee-Bourbon; it was the sensation of the day, the matter of all the

talk from noon till night. Almost everywhere the women denied the facts,

but in such a manner that the report was confirmed; the men one and

all believed it, and manifested a most indulgent interest in Mme de

Langeais. Some among them threw the blame on Armand.

“That savage of a Montriveau is a man of bronze,” said they; “he

insisted on making this scandal, no doubt.”

“Very well, then,” others replied, “Mme de Langeais has been guilty of

a most generous piece of imprudence. To renounce the world and rank, and

fortune, and consideration for her lover’s sake, and that in the face

of all Paris, is as fine a _coup d’etat_ for a woman as that barber’s

knife-thrust, which so affected Canning in a court of assize. Not one

of the women who blame the Duchess would make a declaration worthy of

ancient times. It is heroic of Mme de Langeais to proclaim herself so

frankly. Now there is nothing left to her but to love Montriveau. There

must be something great about a woman if she says, ‘I will have but one

passion.’”

“But what is to become of society, monsieur, if you honour vice in this

way without respect for virtue?” asked the Comtesse de Granville, the

attorney-general’s wife.

While the Chateau, the Faubourg, and the Chaussee d’Antin were

discussing the shipwreck of aristocratic virtue; while excited young men

rushed about on horseback to make sure that the carriage was standing in

the Rue de Tournon, and the Duchess in consequence was beyond a doubt in

M. de Montriveau’s rooms, Mme de Langeais, with heavy throbbing pulses,

was lying hidden away in her boudoir. And Armand?--he had been out all

night, and at that moment was walking with M. de Marsay in the Gardens

of the Tuileries. The elder members, of Mme de Langeais’ family were

engaged in calling upon one another, arranging to read her a homily

and to hold a consultation as to the best way of putting a stop to the

scandal.

At three o’clock, therefore, M. le Duc de Navarreins, the Vidame de

Pamiers, the old Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, and the Duc de Grandlieu

were assembled in Mme la Duchesse de Langeais’ drawing-room. To them, as

to all curious inquirers, the servants said that their mistress was not

at home; the Duchess had made no exceptions to her orders. But these

four personages shone conspicuous in that lofty sphere, of which the

revolutions and hereditary pretensions are solemnly recorded year by

year in the _Almanach de Gotha_, wherefore without some slight sketch of

each of them this picture of society were incomplete.

The Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry, in the feminine world, was a most

poetic wreck of the reign of Louis Quinze. In her beautiful prime, so it

was said, she had done her part to win for that monarch his appellation

of _le Bien-aime_. Of her past charms of feature, little remained save

a remarkably prominent slender nose, curved like a Turkish scimitar, now

the principal ornament of a countenance that put you in mind of an old

white glove. Add a few powdered curls, high-heeled pantoufles, a cap

with upstanding loops of lace, black mittens, and a decided taste for

_ombre_. But to do full justice to the lady, it must be said that she

appeared in low-necked gowns of an evening (so high an opinion of her

ruins had she), wore long gloves, and raddled her cheeks with Martin’s

classic rouge. An appalling amiability in her wrinkles, a prodigious

brightness in the old lady’s eyes, a profound dignity in her whole

person, together with the triple barbed wit of her tongue, and an

infallible memory in her head, made of her a real power in the land. The

whole Cabinet des Chartes was entered in duplicate on the parchment

of her brain. She knew all the genealogies of every noble house in

Europe--princes, dukes, and counts--and could put her hand on the last

descendants of Charlemagne in the direct line. No usurpation of title

could escape the Princesse de Blamont-Chauvry.

Young men who wished to stand well at Court, ambitious men, and young

married women paid her assiduous homage. Her salon set the tone of the

Faubourg Saint-Germain. The words of this Talleyrand in petticoats

were taken as final decrees. People came to consult her on questions of

etiquette or usages, or to take lessons in good taste. And, in truth,

no other old woman could put back her snuff-box in her pocket as the

Princess could; while there was a precision and a grace about the

movements of her skirts, when she sat down or crossed her feet, which

drove the finest ladies of the young generation to despair. Her voice

had remained in her head during one-third of her lifetime; but she could

not prevent a descent into the membranes of the nose, which lent to it a

peculiar expressiveness. She still retained a hundred and fifty thousand

livres of her great fortune, for Napoleon had generously returned her

woods to her; so that personally and in the matter of possessions she

was a woman of no little consequence.

This curious antique, seated in a low chair by the fireside, was

chatting with the Vidame de Pamiers, a contemporary ruin. The Vidame was

a big, tall, and spare man, a seigneur of the old school, and had been

a Commander of the Order of Malta. His neck had always been so tightly

compressed by a strangulation stock, that his cheeks pouched over it a

little, and he held his head high; to many people this would have given

an air of self-sufficiency, but in the Vidame it was justified by a

Voltairean wit. His wide prominent eyes seemed to see everything, and as

a matter of fact there was not much that they had not seen. Altogether,

his person was a perfect model of aristocratic outline, slim and

slender, supple and agreeable. He seemed as if he could be pliant or

rigid at will, and twist and bend, or rear his head like a snake.

The Duc de Navarreins was pacing up and down the room with the Duc de

Grandlieu. Both were men of fifty-six or thereabouts, and still hale;

both were short, corpulent, flourishing, somewhat florid-complexioned

men with jaded eyes, and lower lips that had begun to hang already. But

for an exquisite refinement of accent, an urbane courtesy, and an ease

of manner that could change in a moment to insolence, a superficial

observer might have taken them for a couple of bankers. Any such mistake

would have been impossible, however, if the listener could have heard

them converse, and seen them on their guard with men whom they feared,

vapid and commonplace with their equals, slippery with the inferiors

whom courtiers and statesmen know how to tame by a tactful word, or to

humiliate with an unexpected phrase.

Such were the representatives of the great noblesse that determined to

perish rather than submit to any change. It was a noblesse that deserved

praise and blame in equal measure; a noblesse that will never be judged

impartially until some poet shall arise to tell how joyfully the nobles

obeyed the King though their heads fell under a Richelieu’s axe, and how

deeply they scorned the guillotine of ‘89 as a foul revenge.

Another noticeable trait in all the four was a thin voice that agreed

peculiarly well with their ideas and bearing. Among themselves, at any

rate, they were on terms of perfect equality. None of them betrayed

any sign of annoyance over the Duchess’s escapade, but all of them had

learned at Court to hide their feelings.

And here, lest critics should condemn the puerility of the opening of

the forthcoming scene, it is perhaps as well to remind the reader that

Locke, once happening to be in the company of several great lords,

renowned no less for their wit than for their breeding and political

consistency, wickedly amused himself by taking down their conversation

by some shorthand process of his own; and afterwards, when he read

it over to them to see what they could make of it, they all burst out

laughing. And, in truth, the tinsel jargon which circulates among the

upper ranks in every country yields mighty little gold to the crucible

when washed in the ashes of literature or philosophy. In every rank of

society (some few Parisian salons excepted) the curious observer finds

folly a constant quantity beneath a more or less transparent varnish.

Conversation with any substance in it is a rare exception, and

boeotianism is current coin in every zone. In the higher regions they

must perforce talk more, but to make up for it they think the less.

Thinking is a tiring exercise, and the rich like their lives to flow by

easily and without effort. It is by comparing the fundamental matter of

jests, as you rise in the social scale from the street-boy to the peer

of France, that the observer arrives at a true comprehension of M. de

Talleyrand’s maxim, “The manner is everything”; an elegant rendering of

the legal axiom, “The form is of more consequence than the matter.” In

the eyes of the poet the advantage rests with the lower classes, for

they seldom fail to give a certain character of rude poetry to their

thoughts. Perhaps also this same observation may explain the sterility

of the salons, their emptiness, their shallowness, and the repugnance

felt by men of ability for bartering their ideas for such pitiful small

change.

The Duke suddenly stopped as if some bright idea occurred to him, and

remarked to his neighbour:

“So you have sold Tornthon?”

“No, he is ill. I am very much afraid I shall lose him, and I should be

uncommonly sorry. He is a very good hunter. Do you know how the Duchesse

de Marigny is?”

“No. I did not go this morning. I was just going out to call when

you came in to speak about Antoinette. But yesterday she was very ill

indeed; they had given her up, she took the sacrament.”

“Her death will make a change in your cousin’s position.”

“Not at all. She gave away her property in her lifetime, only keeping

an annuity. She made over the Guebriant estate to her niece, Mme de

Soulanges, subject to a yearly charge.”

“It will be a great loss for society. She was a kind woman. Her family

will miss her; her experience and advice carried weight. Her son Marigny

is an amiable man; he has a sharp wit, he can talk. He is pleasant, very

pleasant. Pleasant? oh, that no one can deny, but--ill regulated to

the last degree. Well, and yet it is an extraordinary thing, he is

very acute. He was dining at the club the other day with that moneyed

Chaussee-d’Antin set. Your uncle (he always goes there for his game

of cards) found him there to his astonishment, and asked if he was a

member. ‘Yes,’ said he, ‘I don’t go into society now; I am living among

the bankers.’--You know why?” added the Marquis, with a meaning smile.

“No,” said the Duke.

“He is smitten with that little Mme Keller, Gondreville’s daughter; she

is only lately married, and has a great vogue, they say, in that set.”

“Well, Antoinette does not find time heavy on her hands, it seems,”

remarked the Vidame.

“My affection for that little woman has driven me to find a singular

pastime,” replied the Princess, as she returned her snuff-box to her

pocket.

“Dear aunt, I am extremely vexed,” said the Duke, stopping short in his

walk. “Nobody but one of Bonaparte’s men could ask such an indecorous

thing of a woman of fashion. Between ourselves, Antoinette might have

made a better choice.”

“The Montriveaus are a very old family and very well connected, my

dear,” replied the Princess; “they are related to all the noblest houses

of Burgundy. If the Dulmen branch of the Arschoot Rivaudoults should

come to an end in Galicia, the Montriveaus would succeed to the Arschoot

title and estates. They inherit through their great-grandfather.

“Are you sure?”

“I know it better than this Montriveau’s father did. I told him about

it, I used to see a good deal of him; and, Chevalier of several orders

though he was, he only laughed; he was an encyclopaedist. But his

brother turned the relationship to good account during the emigration.

I have heard it said that his northern kinsfolk were most kind in every

way----”

“Yes, to be sure. The Comte de Montriveau died at St. Petersburg,”

said the Vidame. “I met him there. He was a big man with an incredible

passion for oysters.”

“However many did he eat?” asked the Duc de Grandlieu.

“Ten dozen every day.”

“And did they not disagree with him?”

“Not the least bit in the world.”

“Why, that is extraordinary! Had he neither the stone nor gout, nor any

other complaint, in consequence?”

“No; his health was perfectly good, and he died through an accident.”

“By accident! Nature prompted him to eat oysters, so probably he

required them; for up to a certain point our predominant tastes are

conditions of our existence.”

“I am of your opinion,” said the Princess, with a smile.

“Madame, you always put a malicious construction on things,” returned

the Marquis.

“I only want you to understand that these remarks might leave a wrong

impression on a young woman’s mind,” said she, and interrupted herself

to exclaim, “But this niece, this niece of mine!”

“Dear aunt, I still refuse to believe that she can have gone to M. de

Montriveau,” said the Duc de Navarreins.

“Bah!” returned the Princess.

“What do you think, Vidame?” asked the Marquis.

“If the Duchess were an artless simpleton, I should think that----”

“But when a woman is in love she becomes an artless simpleton,” retorted

the Princess. “Really, my poor Vidame, you must be getting older.”

“After all, what is to be done?” asked the Duke.

“If my dear niece is wise,” said the Princess, “she will go to Court

this evening--fortunately, today is Monday, and reception day--and you

must see that we all rally round her and give the lie to this absurd

rumour. There are hundreds of ways of explaining things; and if the

Marquis de Montriveau is a gentleman, he will come to our assistance. We

will bring these children to listen to reason----”

“But, dear aunt, it is not easy to tell M. de Montriveau the truth to

his face. He is one of Bonaparte’s pupils, and he has a position. Why,

he is one of the great men of the day; he is high up in the Guards, and

very useful there. He has not a spark of ambition. He is just the man to

say, ‘Here is my commission, leave me in peace,’ if the King should say

a word that he did not like.”

“Then, pray, what are his opinions?”

“Very unsound.”

“Really,” sighed the Princess, “the King is, as he always has been, a

Jacobin under the Lilies of France.”

“Oh! not quite so bad,” said the Vidame.

“Yes; I have known him for a long while. The man that pointed out the

Court to his wife on the occasion of her first state dinner in public

with, ‘These are our people,’ could only be a black-hearted scoundrel.

I can see Monsieur exactly the same as ever in the King. The bad brother

who voted so wrongly in his department of the Constituent Assembly was

sure to compound with the Liberals and allow them to argue and talk.

This philosophical cant will be just as dangerous now for the younger

brother as it used to be for the elder; this fat man with the little

mind is amusing himself by creating difficulties, and how his successor

is to get out of them I do not know; he holds his younger brother in

abhorrence; he would be glad to think as he lay dying, ‘He will not

reign very long----’”

“Aunt, he is the King, and I have the honour to be in his service----”

“But does your post take away your right of free speech, my dear? You

come of quite as good a house as the Bourbons. If the Guises had shown a

little more resolution, His Majesty would be a nobody at this day. It is

time I went out of this world, the noblesse is dead. Yes, it is all

over with you, my children,” she continued, looking as she spoke at the

Vidame. “What has my niece done that the whole town should be talking

about her? She is in the wrong; I disapprove of her conduct, a useless

scandal is a blunder; that is why I still have my doubts about this want

of regard for appearances; I brought her up, and I know that----”

Just at that moment the Duchess came out of her boudoir. She had

recognised her aunt’s voice and heard the name of Montriveau. She

was still in her loose morning-gown; and even as she came in, M.

de Grandlieu, looking carelessly out of the window, saw his niece’s

carriage driving back along the street. The Duke took his daughter’s

face in both hands and kissed her on the forehead.

“So, dear girl,” he said, “you do not know what is going on?”

“Has anything extraordinary happened, father dear?”

“Why, all Paris believes that you are with M. de Montriveau.”

“My dear Antoinette, you were at home all the time, were you not?”

said the Princess, holding out a hand, which the Duchess kissed with

affectionate respect.

“Yes, dear mother; I was at home all the time. And,” she added, as she

turned to greet the Vidame and the Marquis, “I wished that all Paris

should think that I was with M. de Montriveau.”

The Duke flung up his hands, struck them together in despair, and folded

his arms.

“Then, cannot you see what will come of this mad freak?” he asked at

last.

But the aged Princess had suddenly risen, and stood looking steadily

at the Duchess, the younger woman flushed, and her eyes fell. Mme de

Chauvry gently drew her closer, and said, “My little angel, let me kiss

you!”

She kissed her niece very affectionately on the forehead, and continued

smiling, while she held her hand in a tight clasp.

“We are not under the Valois now, dear child. You have compromised your

husband and your position. Still, we will arrange to make everything

right.”

“But, dear aunt, I do not wish to make it right at all. It is my wish

that all Paris should say that I was with M. de Montriveau this morning.

If you destroy that belief, however ill grounded it may be, you will do

me a singular disservice.”

“Do you really wish to ruin yourself, child, and to grieve your family?”

“My family, father, unintentionally condemned me to irreparable

misfortune when they sacrificed me to family considerations. You may,

perhaps, blame me for seeking alleviations, but you will certainly feel

for me.”

“After all the endless pains you take to settle your daughters

suitably!” muttered M. de Navarreins, addressing the Vidame.

The Princess shook a stray grain of snuff from her skirts. “My dear

little girl,” she said, “be happy, if you can. We are not talking of

troubling your felicity, but of reconciling it with social usages. We

all of us here assembled know that marriage is a defective institution

tempered by love. But when you take a lover, is there any need to make

your bed in the Place du Carrousel? See now, just be a bit reasonable,

and hear what we have to say.”

“I am listening.”

“Mme la Duchesse,” began the Duc de Grandlieu, “if it were any part of

an uncle’s duty to look after his nieces, he ought to have a position;

society would owe him honours and rewards and a salary, exactly as if

he were in the King’s service. So I am not here to talk about my nephew,

but of your own interests. Let us look ahead a little. If you persist in

making a scandal--I have seen the animal before, and I own that I have

no great liking for him--Langeais is stingy enough, and he does not care

a rap for anyone but himself; he will have a separation; he will stick

to your money, and leave you poor, and consequently you will be a

nobody. The income of a hundred thousand livres that you have just

inherited from your maternal great-aunt will go to pay for his

mistresses’ amusements. You will be bound and gagged by the law;

you will have to say _Amen_ to all these arrangements. Suppose M. de

Montriveau leaves you----dear me! do not let us put ourselves in a

passion, my dear niece; a man does not leave a woman while she is young

and pretty; still, we have seen so many pretty women left disconsolate,

even among princesses, that you will permit the supposition, an all but

impossible supposition I quite wish to believe.----Well, suppose that

he goes, what will become of you without a husband? Keep well with your

husband as you take care of your beauty; for beauty, after all, is a

woman’s parachute, and a husband also stands between you and worse. I

am supposing that you are happy and loved to the end, and I am leaving

unpleasant or unfortunate events altogether out of the reckoning. This

being so, fortunately or unfortunately, you may have children. What are

they to be? Montriveaus? Very well; they certainly will not succeed to

their father’s whole fortune. You will want to give them all that you

have; he will wish to do the same. Nothing more natural, dear me!

And you will find the law against you. How many times have we

seen heirs-at-law bringing a law-suit to recover the property from

illegitimate children? Every court of law rings with such actions all

over the world. You will create a _fidei commissum_ perhaps; and if the

trustee betrays your confidence, your children have no remedy against

him; and they are ruined. So choose carefully. You see the perplexities

of the position. In every possible way your children will be sacrificed

of necessity to the fancies of your heart; they will have no recognised

status. While they are little they will be charming; but, Lord! some day

they will reproach you for thinking of no one but your two selves. We

old gentlemen know all about it. Little boys grow up into men, and men

are ungrateful beings. When I was in Germany, did I not hear young de

Horn say, after supper, ‘If my mother had been an honest woman, I should

be prince-regnant!’ _If_?’ We have spent our lives in hearing plebeians

say _if_. _If_ brought about the Revolution. When a man cannot lay the

blame on his father or mother, he holds God responsible for his hard

lot. In short, dear child, we are here to open your eyes. I will say all

I have to say in a few words, on which you had better meditate: A woman

ought never to put her husband in the right.”

“Uncle, so long as I cared for nobody, I could calculate; I looked at

interests then, as you do; now, I can only feel.”

“But, my dear little girl,” remonstrated the Vidame, “life is simply a

complication of interests and feelings; to be happy, more particularly

in your position, one must try to reconcile one’s feelings with

one’s interests. A grisette may love according to her fancy, that is

intelligible enough, but you have a pretty fortune, a family, a name and

a place at Court, and you ought not to fling them out of the window.

And what have we been asking you to do to keep them all?--To manoeuvre

carefully instead of falling foul of social conventions. Lord! I shall

very soon be eighty years old, and I cannot recollect, under any regime,

a love worth the price that you are willing to pay for the love of this

lucky young man.”

The Duchess silenced the Vidame with a look; if Montriveau could have

seen that glance, he would have forgiven all.

“It would be very effective on the stage,” remarked the Duc de

Grandlieu, “but it all amounts to nothing when your jointure and

position and independence is concerned. You are not grateful, my dear

niece. You will not find many families where the relatives have courage

enough to teach the wisdom gained by experience, and to make rash young

heads listen to reason. Renounce your salvation in two minutes, if it

pleases you to damn yourself; well and good; but reflect well beforehand

when it comes to renouncing your income. I know of no confessor who

remits the pains of poverty. I have a right, I think, to speak in this

way to you; for if you are ruined, I am the one person who can offer you

a refuge. I am almost an uncle to Langeais, and I alone have a right to

put him in the wrong.”

The Duc de Navarreins roused himself from painful reflections.

“Since you speak of feeling, my child,” he said, “let me remind you that

a woman who bears your name ought to be moved by sentiments which do

not touch ordinary people. Can you wish to give an advantage to the

Liberals, to those Jesuits of Robespierre’s that are doing all they

can to vilify the noblesse? Some things a Navarreins cannot do

without failing in duty to his house. You would not be alone in your

dishonor----”