“The Baroness de Bergenheim!” exclaimed Marillac. “Ah! I understand it
all now, and you may dispense with the remainder of your story. So this
was the reason why, instead of visiting the banks of the Rhine as we
agreed, you made me leave the route at Strasbourg under the pretext of
walking through the picturesque sites of the Vosges. It was unworthy of
you to abuse my confidence as a friend. And I allowed myself to be led
by the nose to within a mile of Bergenheim!”
“Peace,” interrupted Gerfaut; “I have not finished. Smoke and listen.
“I followed Madame de Bergenheim as far as Geneva. She had gone there
from here with her aunt, and had availed herself of this journey to
visit Mont Blanc. She left for her home the next day without my meeting
her again; but I preserved her name, and it was not unknown to me. I had
heard it spoken in several houses in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and I
knew that I should certainly have an opportunity of meeting her during
the winter.
“So I remained at Geneva, yielding to a sensation as new as it was
strange. It first acted upon my brain whose ice I felt melting away,
and its sources ready to gush forth. I seized my pen with a passion not
unlike an access of rage. I finished in four days two acts of a drama
that I was then writing. I never had written anything more vigorous or
more highly colored. My unconstrained genius throbbed in my arteries,
ran through my blood, and bubbled over as if it wished to burst forth.
My hand could not keep even with the course of my imagination; I was
obliged to write in hieroglyphics.
“Adieu to the empty reveries brought about by spleen, and to the
meditations ‘a la Werther’! The sky was blue, the air pure, life
delightful--my talent was not dead.
“After this first effort, I slackened a little! Madame de Bergenheim’s
face, which I had seen but dimly during this short time, returned to me
in a less vaporous form; I took extreme delight in calling to mind the
slightest circumstances of our meeting, the smallest details of her
features, her toilette, her manner of walking and carrying her head.
What had impressed me most was the extreme softness of her dark eyes,
the almost childish tone of her voice, a vague odor of heliotrope with
which her hair was perfumed; also the touch of her hand upon my arm.
I sometimes caught myself embracing myself in order to feel this last
sensation again, and then I could not help laughing at my thoughts,
which were worthy of a fifteen-year-old lover.
“I had felt so convinced of my powerlessness to love, that the thought
of a serious passion did not at first enter my mind. However, a
remembrance of my beautiful traveller pervaded my thoughts more and
more, and threatened to usurp the place of everything else. I then
subjected myself to a rigid analysis; I sought for the exact location
of this sentiment whose involuntary yoke I already felt; I persuaded
myself, for some time yet, that it was only the transient excitement of
my brain, one of those fevers of imagination whose fleeting titillations
I had felt more than once.
“But I realized that the evil, or the good--for why call love an
evil?--had penetrated into the most remote regions of my being, and I
realized the energy of my struggle like a person entombed who tries to
extricate himself. From the ashes of this volcano which I had believed
to be extinct, a flower had suddenly blossomed, perfumed with the most
fragrant of odors and decked with the most charming colors. Artless
enthusiasm, faith in love, all the brilliant array of the fresh
illusions of my youth returned, as if by enchantment, to greet this
new bloom of my life; it seemed to me as if I had been created a second
time, since I was aided by intelligence and understood its mysteries
while tasting of its delights. My past, in the presence of this
regeneration, was nothing more than a shadow at the bottom of an abyss.
I turned toward the future with the faith of a Mussulman who kneels with
his face toward the East--I loved!
“I returned to Paris, and applied to my friend Casorans, who knows the
Faubourg Saint-Germain from Dan to Beersheba.
“‘Madame de Bergenheim,’ he said to me, ‘is a very popular society
woman, not very pretty, perhaps, rather clever, though, and very
amiable. She is one of our coquettes of the old nobility, and with her
twenty-four carats’ virtue she always has two sufferers attached to her
chariot, and a third on the waiting-list, and yet it is impossible for
one to find a word to say against her behavior. Just at this moment,
Mauleon and d’Arzenac compose the team; I do not know who is on the
waiting-list. She will probably spend the winter here with her aunt,
Mademoiselle de Corandeuil, one of the hatefullest old women on the
Rue de Varennes. The husband is a good fellow who, since the July
revolution, has lived upon his estates, caring for his forests and
killing wild boars without troubling himself much about his wife.’
“He then told me which houses these ladies frequented, and left me,
saying with a knowing air:
“‘Take care, if you intend to try the power of your seductions upon the
little Baroness; whoever meddles with her smarts for it!’
“This information from a viper like Casorans satisfied me in every way.
Evidently the place was not taken; impregnable, that was another thing.
“Before Madame de Bergenheim’s return, I began to show myself
assiduously at the houses of which my friend had spoken. My position
in the Faubourg Saint-Germain is peculiar, but good, according to my
opinion. I have enough family ties to be sustained by several should I
be attacked by many, and this is the essential point. It is true that,
thanks to my works, I am regarded as an atheist and a Jacobin; aside
from these two little defects, they think well enough of me. Besides, it
is a notorious fact that I have rejected several offers from the present
government, and refused last year the ‘croix d’honneur’; this makes
amends and washes away half my sins. Finally, I have the reputation
of having a certain-knowledge of heraldry, which I owe to my uncle,
a confirmed hunter after genealogical claims. This gains me a respect
which makes me laugh sometimes, when I see people who detest me greet me
as cordially as the Cure of Saint-Eustache greeted Bayle, for fear that
I might destroy their favorite saint. However, in this society, I am
no longer Gerfaut of the Porte-Saint-Martin, but I am the Vicomte de
Gerfaut. Perhaps, with your bourgeois ideas, you do not understand--”
“Bourgeois!” exclaimed Marillac, bounding from his seat, “what are
you talking about? Do you wish that we should cut each other’s
throats before breakfast to-morrow? Bourgeois! why not grocer? I am an
artist--don’t you know that by this time?”
“Don’t get angry, my dear fellow; I meant to say that in certain places
the title of a Vicomte has still a more powerful attraction than you,
with your artistic but plebeian ideas, would suppose in this year of our
Lord 1832.”
“Well and good. I accept your apology.”
“A vicomte’s title is a recommendation in the eyes of people who still
cling to the baubles of nobility, and all women are of this class. There
is something, I know not what, delicate and knightly in this title,
which suits a youngish bachelor. Duke above all titles is the one that
sounds the best. Moliere and Regnard have done great harm to the title
of marquis. Count is terribly bourgeois, thanks to the senators of the
empire. As to a Baron, unless he is called Montmorency or Beaufremont,
it is the lowest grade of nobility; vicomte, on the contrary, is above
reproach; it exhales a mixed odor of the old regime and young France;
then, don’t you know, our Chateaubriand was a vicomte.
“I departed from my subject in speaking of nobility. I accidentally
turned over one day to the article upon my family in the Dictionnaire de
Saint-Allais; I found that one of my ancestors, Christophe de Gerfaut,
married, in 1569, a Mademoiselle Yolande de Corandeuil.
“‘O my ancestor! O my ancestress!’ I exclaimed, ‘you had strange
baptismal names; but no matter, I thank you. You are going to serve
me as a grappling iron; I shall be very unskilful if at the very first
meeting the old aunt escapes Christophe.’
“A few days later I went to the Marquise de Chameillan’s, one of
the most exclusive houses in the noble Faubourg. When I enter her
drawing-room, I usually cause the same sensation that Beelzebub would
doubtless produce should he put his foot into one of the drawing-rooms
in Paradise. That evening, when I was announced, I saw a certain
undulation of heads in a group of young women who were whispering to
one another; many curious eyes were fastened upon me, and among these
beautiful eyes were two more beautiful than all the others: they were
those of my bewitching traveller.
“I exchanged a rapid glance with her, one only; after paying my respects
to the mistress of the house, I mingled with a crowd of men, and
entered into conversation with an old peer upon some political question,
avoiding to look again toward Madame de Bergenheim.
“A moment later, Madame de Chameillan came to ask the peer to play
whist; he excused himself, he could not remain late.
“‘I dare not ask you to play with Mademoiselle de Corandeuil,’ said
she, turning toward me; ‘besides, I understand too well that it is to my
interest and the pleasure of these ladies, not to exile you to a whist
table.’
“I took the card which she half offered me with an eagerness which might
have made her suppose that I had become a confirmed whist expert during
my voyage.
“Mademoiselle de Corandeuil certainly was the ugly, crabbed creature
that Casorans had described; but had she been as frightful as the
witches in Macbeth I was determined to make her conquest. So I began
playing with unusual attention. I was her partner, and I knew from
experience the profound horror which the loss of money inspires in old
women. Thank heaven, we won! Mademoiselle de Corandeuil, who has an
income of one hundred thousand francs, was not at all indifferent to the
gain of two or three louis. She, therefore, with an almost gracious air,
congratulated me, as we left the table, upon my manner of playing.
“‘I would willingly contract an alliance, offensive and defensive with
you,’ said she to me.
“‘The alliance is already contracted, Mademoiselle,’ said I, seizing the
opportunity.
“‘How is that, Monsieur?’ she replied, raising her head with a dignified
air, as if she were getting ready to rebuke some impertinent speech.
“I also gravely straightened up and gave a feudal look to my face.
“‘Mademoiselle, I have the honor of belonging to your family, a little
distantly, to be sure; that is what makes me speak of an alliance
between us as a thing already concluded. One of my ancestors, Christophe
de Gerfaut, married Mademoiselle Yolande de Corandeuil, one of your
great-grand-aunts, in 1569.’
“‘Yolande is really a family name,’ replied the old lady, with the
most affable smile that her face would admit; ‘I bear it myself. The
Corandeuils, Monsieur, never have denied their alliances, and it is a
pleasure for me to recognize my relationship with such a man as you. We
address by the title of cousin relatives as far back as 1300.’
“‘I am nearer related to you by three centuries,’ I replied, in my most
insinuating voice; ‘may I hope that this good fortune will authorize me
to pay my respects to you?’
“Mademoiselle de Corandeuil replied to my ‘tartuferie’ by granting me
permission to call upon her. My attention was not so much absorbed in
our conversation that I did not see in a mirror, during this time, the
interest with which Madame de Bergenheim watched my conversation with
her aunt; but I was careful not to turn around, and I let her take her
departure without giving her a second glance.
“Three days later, I made my first call. Madame de Bergenheim received
my greeting like a woman who had been warned and was, therefore,
prepared. We exchanged only one rapid, earnest glance, that was all.
Availing myself of the presence of other callers, numerous enough to
assure each one his liberty, I began to observe, with a practised eye,
the field whereon I had just taken my position.
“Before the end of the evening, I recognized the correctness of
Casorans’s information. Among all the gentlemen present I found only
two professed admirers: Monsieur de Mauleon, whose insignificance was
notorious, and Monsieur d’Arzenac, who appeared at first glance as if
he might be more to be feared. D’Arzenac, thanks to an income of ten
thousand livres, beside being a man of rank, occupies also one of the
finest positions that one could desire; he is not unworthy of his name
and his fortune. Irreproachable in morals as in manners; sufficiently
well informed; of an exquisite but reserved politeness; understanding
perfectly the ground that he is walking upon; making also more advances
than is customary among the pachas of modern France, he was, without
doubt, the flower of the flock in Mademoiselle de Corandeuil’s
drawing-room. In spite of all these advantages, an attentive examination
showed me that his passion was hopeless. Madame de Bergenheim received
his attentions very kindly--too kindly. She usually listened to him with
a smile in which one could read gratitude for the devotion he lavished
upon her. She willingly accepted him as her favorite partner in the
galop, which he danced to perfection. His success stopped there.
“At the end of several days, the ground having been carefully explored
and the admirers, dangerous and otherwise, having been passed in review,
one after another, I felt convinced that Clemence loved nobody.
“‘She shall love me,’ said I, on the day I reached this conclusion. In
order to formulate in a decisive manner the accomplishment of my desire,
I relied upon the following propositions, which are to me articles of
faith.
“No woman is unattainable, except when she loves another. Thus, a woman
who does not love, and who has resisted nine admirers, will yield to
the tenth. The only question for me was to be the tenth. Here began the
problem to be solved.
“Madame de Bergenheim had been married only three years; her husband,
who was good-looking and young, passed for a model husband; if these
latter considerations were of little importance, the first was of great
weight. According to all probability, it was too soon for any serious
attack. Without being beautiful, she pleased much and many; a second
obstacle, since sensibility in women is almost always developed in
inverse ratio to their success. She had brains; she was wonderfully
aristocratic in all her tastes.
“Last, being very much the fashion, sought after and envied, she was
under the special surveillance of pious persons, old maids, retired
beauties in one word, all that feminine mounted police, whose eyes,
ears, and mouths seem to have assumed the express mission of annoying
sensitive hearts while watching over the preservation of good morals.
“This mass of difficulties, none of which escaped me, traced as many
lines upon my forehead as if I had been commanded to solve at once
all the propositions in Euclid. She shall love me! these words flashed
unceasingly before my eyes; but the means to attain this end? No
satisfactory plan came to me. Women are so capricious, deep, and
unfathomable! It is, with them, the thing soonest done which is soonest
ended! A false step, the least awkwardness, a want of intelligence, a
quarter of an hour too soon or too late! One thing only was evident:
it needed a grand display of attractions, a complete plan of gallant
strategy; but, then, what more?
“That earthly paradise of the Montanvert was far from us, where I had
been able in less time than it would take to walk over a quadrille, to
expose her to death, to save her afterward, and finally to say to her ‘I
love you!’ Passion in drawing-rooms is not allowed those free, dramatic
ways; flowers fade in the candle-light; the oppressive atmosphere of
balls and fetes stifles the heart, so ready to dilate in pure mountain
air. The unexpected and irresistible influence of the glacier would have
been improper and foolish in Paris. There, an artless sympathy,
stronger than social conventions, had drawn us to each other--Octave and
Clemence. Here, she was the Baroness de Bergenheim, and I the Vicomte
de Gerfaut. I must from necessity enter the ordinary route, begin the
romance at the first page, without knowing how to connect the prologue
with it.
“What should be my plan of campaign?
“Should I pose as an agreeable man, and try to captivate her attention
and good graces by the minute attentions and delicate flattery which
constitute what is classically called paying court? But D’Arzenac
had seized this role, and filled it in such a superior way that all
competition would be unsuccessful. I saw where this had led him. It
needed, in order to inflame this heart, a more active spark than foppish
gallantry; the latter flatters the vanity without reaching the heart.
“There was the passionate method--ardent, burning, fierce love. There
are some women upon whom convulsive sighs drawn from the depths of the
stomach, eyebrows frowning in a fantastic manner, and eyes in which only
the whites are to be seen and which seem to say: ‘Love me, or I will
kill you!’ produce a prodigious effect. I had myself felt the power
of this fascination while using it one day upon a softhearted blond
creature who thought it delightful to have a Blue-Beard for a lover.
But the drooping corners of Clemence’s mouth showed at times an ironical
expression which would have cooled down even an Othello’s outbursts.
“‘She has brains, and she knows it,’ said I to myself; ‘shall I attack
her in that direction?’ Women rather like such a little war of words; it
gives them an opportunity for displaying a mine of pretty expressions,
piquant pouts, fresh bursts of laughter, graceful peculiarities of which
they well know the effect. Should I be the Benedict to this Beatrice?
But this by-play would hardly fill the prologue, and I very much wished
to reach the epilogue.
“I passed in review the different routes that a lover might take to
reach his end; I recapitulated every one of the more or less infallible
methods of conquering female hearts; in a word, I went over my tactics
like a lieutenant about to drill a battalion of recruits. When I had
ended I had made no farther advance than before.
“‘To the devil with systems!’ exclaimed I; ‘I will not be so foolish as
wilfully to adopt the role of roue when I feel called upon to play the
plain role of true lover. Let those who like play the part of Lovelace!
As for myself, I will love; upon the whole, that is what pleases best.’
And I jumped headlong into the torrent without troubling myself as to
the place of landing.
“While I was thus scheming my attack, Madame de Bergenheim was upon
her guard and had prepared her means of defence. Puzzled by my reserve,
which was in singular contrast with my almost extravagant conduct at our
first meeting, her woman’s intelligence had surmised, on my part, a plan
which she proposed to baffle. I was partly found out, but I knew it and
thus kept the advantage.
“I could not help smiling at the Baroness’s clever coquetry, when I
decided to follow the inspirations of my heart, instead of choosing
selfish motives as my guide. Every time I took her hand when dancing
with her, I expected to feel a little claw ready to pierce the cold
glove. But, while waiting for the scratch, it was a very soft, velvety
little hand that was given me; and I, who willingly lent myself to her
deception, did not feel very much duped. It was evident that the sort
of halo which my merited or unmerited reputation had thrown over me had
made me appear to her as a conquest of some value, a victim upon whom
one could lavish just enough flowers in order to bring him to the
sacrificial altar. In order to wind the first chain around my neck,
Mauleon and D’Arzenac, ‘a tutti quanti’, were sacrificed for me without
my soliciting, even by a glance, this general disbandment. I could
interpret this discharge. I saw that the fair one wished to concentrate
all her seductions against me, so as to leave me no means of escape;
people neglect the hares to hunt for the deer. You must excuse my
conceit.
“This conduct wounded me at first, but I afterward forgave her, when
a more careful examination taught me to know this adorable woman’s
character. Coquetry was with her not a vice of the heart or of an
unscrupulous mind; having nothing better to do, she enjoyed it as a
legitimate pastime, without giving it any importance or feeling any
scruples. Like all women, she liked to please; her success was sweet to
her vanity; perhaps flattery turned her head at times, but in the midst
of this tumult her heart remained in perfect peace. She found so little
danger for herself in the game she played that it did not seem to her
that it could be very serious for others. Genuine love is not common
enough in Parisian parlors for a pretty woman to conceive any great
remorse at pleasing without loving.
“Madame de Bergenheim was thus, ingenuously, unsuspectingly, a matchless
coquette. Never having loved, not even her husband, she looked upon
her little intriguing as one of the rights earned on the day of her
marriage, the same as her diamonds and cashmeres. There was something
touching in the sound of her voice and in her large, innocent eyes which
she sometimes allowed to rest upon mine, without thinking to turn them
away, and which said, ‘I have never loved.’ As for myself, I believed it
all; one is so happy to believe!
“Far from being annoyed at the trap she laid for me, I, on the contrary,
ran my head into it and presented my neck to the yoke with a docility
which must have amused her, I think; but I hoped not to bear it alone.
A coquette who coolly flaunts her triumphs to the world resembles those
master-swimmers who, while spectators are admiring the grace of their
poses, are struck by an unexpected current; the performer is sometimes
swept away and drowned without his elegant strokes being of much service
to him. Throw Celimene into the current of genuine passion--I do not
mean the brutality of Alceste--I will wager that coquetry will be swept
away by love. I had such faith in mine that I thought to be able to
fix the moment when I should call myself victorious and sure of being
obeyed.
“You know that sadness and ennui were considered etiquette last winter,
in a certain society, which was thrown into mourning by the July
revolution. Reunions were very few; there were no balls or soirees;
dancing in drawing-rooms to the piano was hardly permissible, even
with intimate friends. When once I was installed in Mademoiselle de
Corandeuil’s drawing-room upon a friendly footing, this cessation of
worldly festivities gave me an opportunity to see Clemence in a rather
intimate way.
“It would take too long to tell you now all the thousand and one little
incidents which compose the history of all passions. Profiting by her
coquetry, which made her receive me kindly in order to make me expiate
my success afterward, my love for her was soon an understood thing
between us; she listened to me in a mocking way, but did not dispute
my right to speak. She ended by receiving my letters, after being
constrained to do so through a course of strategies in which, truly, I
showed incredible invention. I was listened to and she read my letters;
I asked for nothing more.
“My love, from the first, had been her secret as well as mine; but every
day I made to sparkle some unexpected facet of this prism of a thousand
colors. Even after telling her a hundred times how much I adored her,
my love still had for her the attraction of the unknown. I really had
something inexhaustible in my heart, and I was sure, in the end, to
intoxicate her with this philtre, which I constantly poured out and
which she drank, while making sport of it like a child.
“One day I found her thoughtful and silent. She did not reply to me with
her usual sprightliness during the few moments that I was able to talk
with her; the expression of her eyes had changed; there was something
deeper and less glowing in their depths; instead of dazzling me by their
excessive splendor, as had often happened to me before, they seemed to
soften as they rested on mine; she kept her eyelids a trifle lowered, as
if she were tired of being gazed at by me. Her voice, as she spoke, had
a low, soft sound, a sort of inexplicable something which came from the
very depths of her soul. She never had looked at me with that glance or
spoken to me in that tone before. Upon that day I knew that she loved
me.
“I returned to my home unutterably happy, for I loved this woman with a
love of which I believed myself incapable.
“When I met Madame de Bergenheim again, I found her completely
changed toward me; an icy gravity, an impassible calm, an ironical and
disdainful haughtiness had taken the place of the delicious abandon of
her former bearing. In spite of my strong determination to allow myself
to love with the utmost candor, it was impossible for me to return to
that happy age when the frowning brows of the beautiful idol to whom we
paid court inspired us with the resolve to drown ourselves. I could not
isolate myself from my past experiences. My heart was rejuvenated, but
my head remained old. I was, therefore, not in the least discouraged by
this change of humor, and the fit of anger which it portended.
“‘Now,’ said I to myself, ‘there is an end to coquetry, it is beaten on
all sides; it is gone, never to return. She has seen that the affair is
a little too deep for that, and the field not tenable. She will erect
barriers in order to defend herself and will no longer attack.’ Thus we
pass from the period of amiable smiles, sweet glances, and half-avowals
to that of severity and prudery, while waiting for the remorse and
despair of the denouement. I am sure that at this time she called to
her help all her powers of resistance. From that day she would retreat
behind the line of duty, conjugal fidelity, honor, and all the other
fine sentiments which would need numbering after the fashion of Homer.
At the first attack, all this household battalion would make a furious
sortie; should I succeed in overthrowing them and take up my quarters in
the trenches, there would then be a gathering of the reserve force,
and boiling oil or tar would rain upon my head, representing virtue,
religion, heaven, and hell.”
“A sort of conjugal earthquake,” interrupted Marillac.
“I calculated the strength and approximate duration of these means of
defence. The whole thing appeared to me only a question of time, a few
days or weeks at most--so long on the husband’s account, so long on the
father confessor’s account. I deserved to be boxed on the ears for my
presumption; I was.
“A combat is necessary in order to secure a victory. In spite of all my
efforts and ruses, it was not possible for me to fight this combat;
I did not succeed, in spite of all my challenges, in shattering, as I
expected, this virtuous conjugal fortress. Madame de Bergenheim still
persisted in her systematic reserve, with incredible prudence and
skill. During the remainder of the winter, I did not find more than one
opportunity of speaking to her alone. As I was a permanent fixture every
evening in her aunt’s parlors, she entered them only when other guests
were there. She never went out alone, and in every place where I was
likely to meet her I was sure to find a triple rampart of women erected
between us, through which it was impossible to address one word to her.
In short, I was encountering a desperate resistance; and, yet, she loved
me! I could see her cheeks gradually grow pale; her brilliant eyes often
had dark rings beneath them, as if sleep had deserted her. Sometimes,
when she thought she was not observed, I surprised them fastened upon
me; but she immediately turned them away.
“She had been coquettish and indifferent; she was now loving but
virtuous.
“Spring came. One afternoon I went to call upon Mademoiselle de
Corandeuil, who had been ill for several days. I was received, however,
probably through some mistake of the servants. As I entered the room I
saw Madame de Bergenheim; she was alone at her embroidery, seated upon
a divan. There were several vases of flowers in the windows, whose
curtains only permitted a soft, mysterious light to penetrate the room.
The perfume from the flowers, the sort of obscurity, the solitude in
which I found her, overcame me for a moment; I was obliged to pause in
order to quiet the beating of my heart.
“She arose as she heard my name announced; without speaking or laying
down her work, she pointed to a chair and seated herself; but instead of
obeying her, I fell upon my knees before her and seized her hands, which
she did not withdraw. It had been impossible for me to say another word
to her before, save ‘I love you!’ I now told her of all my love. Oh! I
am sure of it, my words penetrated to the very depth of her heart, for
I felt her hands tremble as they left mine. She listened without
interrupting me or making any reply, with her face bent toward me as if
she were breathing the perfume of a flower. When I begged her to answer
me, when I implored her for one single word from her heart, she
withdrew one of her hands, imprisoned within mine, and placed it upon
my forehead, pushing back my head with a gesture familiar to women. She
gazed at me thus for a long time; her eyes were so languishing under
their long lashes, and their languor was so penetrating, that I closed
mine, not being able to endure the fascination of this glance any
longer.
“A shiver which ran over her and which went through me also, like an
electric shock, aroused me. When I opened my eyes I saw her face bathed
in tears. She drew back and repelled me. I arose impetuously, seated
myself by her side and took her in my arms.
“‘Am I not a wretched, unhappy woman?’ said she, and fell upon my
breast, sobbing.
“‘Madame la Comtesse de Pontiviers,’ announced the servant, whom I would
willingly have assassinated, as well as the visiting bore who followed
in his footsteps.
“I never saw Madame de Bergenheim in Paris again. I was obliged to go to
Bordeaux the next day, on account of a lawsuit which you know all about.
Upon my return, at the end of three weeks, I found she had left. I
finally learned that she had come to this place, and I followed her.
That is the extent of my drama.
“Now you know very well that I have not related this long story to you
for the sole pleasure of keeping you awake until one o’clock in the
morning. I wanted to explain to you that it was really a serious thing
for me, so that you might not refuse to do what I wish to ask of you.”
“I think I understand what you are aiming at,” said Marillac, rather
pensively.
“You know Bergenheim; you will go to see him to-morrow. He will invite
you to pass a few days with him; you will stay to dinner. You will see
Mademoiselle de Corandeuil, in whose presence you will speak my name as
you refer to our journey; and before night, my venerable cousin of 1569
shall send me an invitation to come to see her.”
“I would rather render you any other service than this,” replied the
artist, walking up and down the room in long strides. “I know very well
that in all circumstances bachelors should triumph over husbands, but
that does not prevent my conscience from smiting me. You know that I
saved Bergenheim’s life?”
“Rest assured that he runs no very great danger at present. Nothing will
result from this step save the little enjoyment I shall take in annoying
the cruel creature who defied me today. Is it agreed?”
“Since you insist upon it. But then, when our visit is ended, shall we
go to work at our drama or upon ‘The Chaste Suzannah’ opera in three
acts? For, really, you neglected art terribly for the sake of your love
affairs.”
“The Chaste Suzannah or the whole Sacred History we shall put into
vaudeville, if you exact it. Until to-morrow, then.”
“Until to-morrow.”