VIII LA MARQUISE BEATRIX

"I promised you this tale of the past, and here it is," said Camille.

"The person from whom I received that letter yesterday, and who may be

here to-morrow, is the Marquise de Rochefide. The old marquis (whose

family is not as old as yours), after marrying his eldest daughter to

a Portuguese grandee, was anxious to find an alliance among the higher

nobility for his son, in order to obtain for him the peerage he had

never been able to get for himself. The Comtesse de Montcornet told

him of a young lady in the department of the Orne, a Mademoiselle

Beatrix-Maximilienne-Rose de Casteran, the youngest daughter of the

Marquis de Casteran, who wished to marry his two daughters without

dowries in order to reserve his whole fortune for the Comte de

Casteran, his son. The Casterans are, it seems, of the bluest blood.

Beatrix, born and brought up at the chateau de Casteran, was twenty

years old at the time of her marriage in 1828. She was remarkable for

what you provincials call originality, which is simply independence of

ideas, enthusiasm, a feeling for the beautiful, and a certain impulse

and ardor toward the things of Art. You may believe a poor woman who

has allowed herself to be drawn along the same lines, there is nothing

more dangerous for a woman. If she follows them, they lead her where

you see me, and where the marquise came,to the verge of abysses. Men

alone have the staff on which to lean as they skirt those precipices,

a force which is lacking to most women, but which, if we do possess

it, makes abnormal beings of us. Her old grandmother, the dowager de

Casteran, was well pleased to see her marry a man to whom she was

superior in every way. The Rochefides were equally satisfied with the

Casterans, who connected them with the Verneuils, the d'Esgrignons,

the Troisvilles, and gave them a peerage for their son in that last

big batch of peers made by Charles X., but revoked by the revolution

of July. The first days of marriage are perilous for little minds as

well as for great loves. Rochefide, being a fool, mistook his wife's

ignorance for coldness; he classed her among frigid, lymphatic women,

and made that an excuse to return to his bachelor life, relying on the

coldness of the marquise, her pride, and the thousand barriers that

the life of a great lady sets up about a woman in Paris. You'll know

what I mean when you go there. People said to Rochefide: 'You are very

lucky to possess a cold wife who will never have any but head

passions. She will always be content if she can shine; her fancies are

purely artistic, her desires will be satisfied if she can make a

salon, and collect about her distinguished minds; her debauches will

be in music and her orgies literary.' Rochefide, however, is not an

ordinary fool; he has as much conceit and vanity as a clever man,

which gives him a mean and squinting jealousy, brutal when it comes to

the surface, lurking and cowardly for six months, and murderous the

seventh. He thought he was deceiving his wife, and yet he feared her,

two causes for tyranny when the day came on which the marquise let

him see that she was charitably assuming indifference to his

unfaithfulness. I analyze all this in order to explain her conduct.

Beatrix had the keenest admiration for me; there is but one step,

however, from admiration to jealousy. I have one of the most

remarkable salons in Paris; she wished to make herself another; and in

order to do so she attempted to draw away my circle. I don't know how

to keep those who wish to leave me. She obtained the superficial

people who are friends with every one from mere want of occupation,

and whose object is to get out of a salon as soon as they have entered

it; but she did not have time to make herself a real society. In those

days I thought her consumed with a desire for celebrity of one kind or

another. Nevertheless, she has really much grandeur of soul, a regal

pride, distinct ideas, and a marvellous facility for apprehending and

understanding all things; she can talk metaphysics and music, theology

and painting. You will see her, as a mature woman, what the rest of us

saw her as a bride. And yet there is something of affectation about

her in all this. She has too much the air of knowing abstruse things,

Chinese, Hebrew, hieroglyphics perhaps, or the papyrus that they

wrapped round mummies. Personally, Beatrix is one of those blondes

beside whom Eve the fair would seem a Negress. She is slender and

straight and white as a church taper; her face is long and pointed;

the skin is capricious, to-day like cambric, to-morrow darkened with

little speckles beneath its surface, as if her blood had left a

deposit of dust there during the night. Her forehead is magnificent,

though rather daring. The pupils of her eyes are pale sea-green,

floating on their white balls under thin lashes and lazy eyelids. Her

eyes have dark rings around them often; her nose, which describes one-

quarter of a circle, is pinched about the nostrils; very shrewd and

clever, but supercilious. She has an Austrian mouth; the upper lip has

more character than the lower, which drops disdainfully. Her pale

cheeks have no color unless some very keen emotion moves her. Her chin

is rather fat; mine is not thin, and perhaps I do wrong to tell you

that women with fat chins are exacting in love. She has one of the

most exquisite waists I ever saw; the shoulders are beautiful, but the

bust has not developed as well, and the arms are thin. She has,

however, an easy carriage and manner, which redeems all such defects

and sets her beauties in full relief. Nature has given her that

princess air which can never be acquired; it becomes her, and reveals

at sudden moments the woman of high birth. Without being faultlessly

beautiful, or prettily pretty, she produces, when she chooses,

ineffaceable impressions. She has only to put on a gown of cherry

velvet with clouds of lace, and wreathe with roses that angelic hair

of hers, which resembles floods of light, and she becomes divine. If,

on some excuse or other, she could wear the costume of the time when

women had long, pointed bodices, rising, slim and slender, from

voluminous brocaded skirts with folds so heavy that they stood alone,

and could hide her arms in those wadded sleeves with ruffles, from

which the hand comes out like a pistil from a calyx, and could fling

back the curls of her head into the jewelled knot behind her head,

Beatrix would hold her own victoriously with ideal beauties like

/that/"

And Felicite showed Calyste a fine copy of a picture by Mieris, in

which was a woman robed in white satin, standing with a paper in her

hand, and singing with a Brabancon seigneur, while a Negro beside them

poured golden Spanish wine into a goblet, and the old housekeeper in

the background arranged some biscuits.

"Fair women, blonds," said Camille, "have the advantage over us poor

brown things of a precious diversity; there are a hundred ways for a

blonde to charm, and only one for a brunette. Besides, blondes are

more womanly; we are too like men, we French brunettesWell, well!"

she cried, "pray don't fall in love with Beatrix from the portrait I

am making of her, like that prince, I forget his name, in the Arabian

Nights. You would be too late, my dear boy."

These words were said pointedly. The admiration depicted on the young

man's face was more for the picture than for the painter whose /faire/

was failing of its purpose. As she spoke, Felicite was employing all

the resources of her eloquent physiognomy.

"Blond as she is, however," she went on, "Beatrix has not the grace of

her color; her lines are severe; she is elegant, but hard; her face

has a harsh contour, though at times it reveals a soul with Southern

passions; an angel flashes out and then expires. Her eyes are thirsty.

She looks best when seen full face; the profile has an air of being

squeezed between two doors. You will see if I am mistaken. I will tell

you now what made us intimate friends. For three years, from 1828 to

1831, Beatrix, while enjoying the last fetes of the Restoration,

making the round of the salons, going to court, taking part in the

fancy-balls of the Elysee-Bourbon, was all the while judging men, and

things, events, and life itself, from the height of her own thought.

Her mind was busy. These first years of the bewilderment the world

caused her prevented her heart from waking up. From 1830 to 1831 she

spent the time of the revolutionary disturbance at her husband's

country-place, where she was bored like a saint in paradise. On her

return to Paris she became convinced, perhaps justly, that the

revolution of July, in the minds of some persons purely political,

would prove to be a moral revolution. The social class to which she

belonged, not being able, during its unhoped-for triumph in the

fifteen years of the Restoration to reconstruct itself, was about to

go to pieces, bit by bit, under the battering-ram of the bourgeoisie.

She heard the famous words of Monsieur Laine: 'Kings are departing!'

This conviction, I believe was not without its influence on her

conduct. She took an intellectual part in the new doctrines, which

swarmed, during the three years succeeding July, 1830, like gnats in

the sunshine, and turned some female heads. But, like all nobles,

Beatrix, while thinking these novel ideals superb, wanted always to

protect the nobility. Finding before long that there was no place in

this new regime for individual superiority, seeing that the higher

nobility were beginning once more the mute opposition it had formerly

made to Napoleon,which was, in truth, its wisest course under an

empire of deeds and facts, but which in an epoch of moral causes was

equivalent to abdication,she chose personal happiness rather than

such eclipse. About the time we were all beginning to breathe again,

Beatrix met at my house a man with whom I had expected to end my days,

Gennaro Conti, the great composer, a man of Neapolitan origin,

though born in Marseilles. Conti has a brilliant mind; as a composer

he has talent, though he will never attain to the first rank. Without

Rossini, without Meyerbeer, he might perhaps have been taken for a man

of genius. He has one advantage over those men,he is in vocal music

what Paganini is on the violin, Liszt on the piano, Taglioni in the

ballet, and what the famous Garat was; at any rate he recalls that

great singer to those who knew him. His is not a voice, my friend, it

is a soul. When its song replies to certain ideas, certain states of

feeling difficult to describe in which a woman sometimes finds

herself, that woman is lost. The marquise conceived the maddest

passion for him, and took him from me. The act was provincial, I

allow, but it was all fair play. She won my esteem and friendship by

the way she behaved to me. She thought me a woman who was likely to

defend her own; she did not know that to me the most ridiculous thing

in the world is such a struggle. She came to see me. That woman, proud

as she is, was so in love that she told me her secret and made me the

arbiter of her destiny. She was really adorable, and she kept her

place as woman and as marquise in my eyes. I must tell you, dear

friend, that while women are sometimes bad, they have hidden grandeurs

in their souls that men can never appreciate. Well, as I seem to be

making my last will and testament like a woman on the verge of old

age, I shall tell you that I was ever faithful to Conti, and should

have been till death, and yet I /know him/. His nature is charming,

apparently, and detestable beneath its surface. He is a charlatan in

matters of the heart. There are some men, like Nathan, of whom I have

already spoken to you, who are charlatans externally, and yet honest.

Such men lie to themselves. Mounted on their stilts, they think they

are on their feet, and perform their jugglery with a sort of

innocence; their humbuggery is in their blood; they are born

comedians, braggarts; extravagant in form as a Chinese vase; perhaps

they even laugh at themselves. Their personality is generous; like

Murat's kingly garments, it attracts danger. But Conti's duplicity

will be known only to the women who love him. In his art he has that

deep Italian jealousy which led the Carlone to murder Piola, and stuck

a stiletto into Paesiello. That terrible envy lurks beneath the

warmest comradeship. Conti has not the courage of his vice; he smiles

at Meyerbeer and flatters him, when he fain would tear him to bits. He

knows his weakness, and cultivates an appearance of sincerity; his

vanity still further leads him to play at sentiments which are far

indeed from his real heart. He represents himself as an artist who

receives his inspirations from heaven; Art is something saintly and

sacred to him; he is fanatic; he is sublime in his contempt for

worldliness; his eloquence seems to come from the deepest convictions.

He is a seer, a demon, a god, an angel. Calyste, although I warn you

about him, you will be his dupe. That Southern nature, that

impassioned artist is cold as a well-rope. Listen to him: the artist

is a missionary. Art is a religion, which has its priests and ought to

have its martyrs. Once started on that theme, Gennaro reaches the most

dishevelled pathos that any German professor of philosophy ever

spluttered to his audience. You admire his convictions, but he hasn't

any. Bearing his hearers to heaven on a song which seems a mysterious

fluid shedding love, he casts an ecstatic glance upon them; he is

examining their enthusiasm; he is asking himself: 'Am I really a god

to them?' and he is also thinking: 'I ate too much macaroni to-day.'

He is insatiable of applause, and he wins it. He delights, he is

beloved; he is admired whensoever he will. He owes his success more to

his voice than to his talent as a composer, though he would rather be

a man of genius like Rossini than a performer like Rubini. I had

committed the folly of attaching myself to him, and I was determined

and resigned to deck this idol to the end. Conti, like a great many

artists, is dainty in all his ways; he likes his ease, his enjoyments;

he is always carefully, even elegantly dressed. I do respect his

courage; he is brave; bravery, they say, is the only virtue into which

hypocrisy cannot enter. While we were travelling I saw his courage

tested; he risked the life he loved; and yet, strange contradiction! I

have seen him, in Paris, commit what I call the cowardice of thought.

My friend, all this was known to me. I said to the poor marquise: 'You

don't know into what a gulf you are plunging. You are the Perseus of a

poor Andromeda; you release me from my rock. If he loves you, so much

the better! but I doubt it; he loves no one but himself.' Gennaro was

transported to the seventh heaven of pride. I was not a marquise, I

was not born a Casteran, and he forgot me in a day. I then gave myself

the savage pleasure of probing that nature to the bottom. Certain of

the result, I wanted to see the twistings and turnings Conti would

perform. My dear child, I saw in one week actual horrors of sham

sentiment, infamous buffooneries of feeling. I will not tell you about

them; you shall see the man here in a day or two. He now knows that I

know him, and he hates me accordingly. If he could stab me with safety

to himself I shouldn't be alive two seconds. I have never said one

word of all this to Beatrix. The last and constant insult Geranno

offers me is to suppose that I am capable of communicating my sad

knowledge of him to her; but he has no belief in the good feeling of

any human being. Even now he is playing a part with me; he is posing

as a man who is wretched at having left me. You will find what I may

call the most penetrating cordiality about him; he is winning; he is

chivalrous. To him, all women are madonnas. One must live with him

long before we get behind the veil of this false chivalry and learn

the invisible signs of his humbug. His tone of conviction about

himself might almost deceive the Deity. You will be entrapped, my dear

child, by his catlike manners, and you will never believe in the

profound and rapid arithmetic of his inmost thought. But enough; let

us leave him. I pushed indifference so far as to receive them together

in my house. This circumstance kept that most perspicacious of all

societies, the great world of Paris, ignorant of the affair. Though

intoxicated with pride, Gennaro was compelled to dissimulate; and he

did it admirably. But violent passions will have their freedom at any

cost. Before the end of the year, Beatrix whispered in my ear one

evening: 'My dear Felicite, I start to-morrow for Italy with Conti.' I

was not surprised; she regarded herself as united for life to Gennaro,

and she suffered from the restraints imposed upon her; she escaped one

evil by rushing into a greater. Conti was wild with happiness,the

happiness of vanity alone. 'That's what it is to love truly,' he said

to me. 'How many women are there who would sacrifice their lives,

their fortune, their reputation?''Yes, she loves you,' I replied,

'but you do not love her.' He was furious, and made me a scene; he

stormed, he declaimed, he depicted his love, declaring that he had

never supposed it possible to love as much. I remained impassible, and

lent him money for his journey, which, being unexpected, found him

unprepared. Beatrix left a letter for her husband and started the next

day for Italy. There she has remained two years; she has written to me

several times, and her letters are enchanting. The poor child attaches

herself to me as the only woman who will comprehend her. She says she

adores me. Want of money has compelled Gennaro to accept an offer to

write a French opera; he does not find in Italy the pecuniary gains

which composers obtain in Paris. Here's the letter I received

yesterday from Beatrix. Take it and read it; you can now understand

it,that is, if it is possible, at your age, to analyze the things of

the heart."

So saying, she held out the letter to him.

At this moment Claude Vignon entered the room. At his unexpected

apparition Calyste and Felicite were both silent for a moment,she

from surprise, he from a vague uneasiness. The vast forehead, broad

and high, of the new-comer, who was bald at the age of thirty-seven,

now seemed darkened by annoyance. His firm, judicial mouth expressed a

habit of chilling sarcasm. Claude Vignon is imposing, in spite of the

precocious deteriorations of a face once magnificent, and now grown

haggard. Between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five he strongly

resembled the divine Raffaelle. But his nose, that feature of the

human face that changes most, is growing to a point; the countenance

is sinking into mysterious depressions, the outlines are thickening;

leaden tones predominate in the complexion, giving tokens of

weariness, although the fatigues of this young man are not apparent;

perhaps some bitter solitude has aged him, or the abuse of his gift of

comprehension. He scrutinizes the thought of every one, yet without

definite aim or system. The pickaxe of his criticism demolishes, it

never constructs. Thus his lassitude is that of a mechanic, not of an

architect. The eyes, of a pale blue, once brilliant, are clouded now

by some hidden pain, or dulled by gloomy sadness. Excesses have laid

dark tints above the eyelids; the temples have lost their freshness.

The chin, of incomparable distinction, is getting doubled, but without

dignity. His voice, never sonorous, is weakening; without being either

hoarse or extinct, it touches the confines of hoarseness and

extinction. The impassibility of that fine head, the fixity of that

glance, cover irresolution and weakness, which the keenly intelligent

and sarcastic smile belies. The weakness lies wholly in action, not in

thought; there are traces of an encyclopedic comprehension on that

brow, and in the habitual movement of a face that is childlike and

splendid both. The man is tall, slightly bent already, like all those

who bear the weight of a world of thought. Such long, tall bodies are

never remarkable for continuous effort or creative activity.

Charlemagne, Belisarious, and Constantine are noted exceptions to this

rule.

Certainly Claude Vignon presents a variety of mysteries to be solved.

In the first place, he is very simple and very wily. Though he falls

into excesses with the readiness of a courtesan, his powers of thought

remain untouched. Yet his intellect, which is competent to criticise

art, science, literature, and politics, is incompetent to guide his

external life. Claude contemplates himself within the domain of his

intellectual kingdom, and abandons his outer man with Diogenic

indifference. Satisfied to penetrate all, to comprehend all by

thought, he despises materialities; and yet, if it becomes a question

of creating, doubt assails him; he sees obstacles, he is not inspired

by beauties, and while he is debating means, he sits with his arms

pendant, accomplishing nothing. He is the Turk of the intellect made

somnolent by meditation. Criticism is his opium; his harem of books to

read disgusts him with real work. Indifferent to small things as well

as great things, he is sometimes compelled, by the very weight of his

head, to fall into a debauch, and abdicate for a few hours the fatal

power of omnipotent analysis. He is far too preoccupied with the wrong

side of genius, and Camille Maupin's desire to put him back on the

right side is easily conceivable. The task was an attractive one.

Claude Vignon thinks himself a great politician as well as a great

writer; but this unpublished Machiavelli laughs within himself at all

ambitions; he knows what he can do; he has instinctively taken the

measure of his future on his faculties; he sees his greatness, but he

also sees obstacles, grows alarmed or disgusted, lets the time roll

by, and does not go to work. Like Etienne Lousteau the feuilletonist,

like Nathan the dramatic author, like Blondet, another journalist, he

came from the ranks of the bourgeoisie, to which we owe the greater

number of our writers.

"Which way did you come?" asked Mademoiselle des Touches, coloring

with either pleasure or surprise.'

"By the door," replied Claude Vignon, dryly.

"Oh," she cried, shrugging her shoulders, "I am aware that you are not

a man to climb in by a window."

"Scaling a window is a badge of honor for a beloved woman."

"Enough!" said Felicite.

"Am I in the way?" asked Claude.

"Monsieur," said Calyste, artlessly, "this letter"

"Pray keep it; I ask no questions; at our age we understand such

affairs," he answered, interrupting Calyste with a sardonic air.

"But, monsieur," began Calyste, much provoked.

"Calm yourself, young man; I have the utmost indulgence for

sentiments."

"My dear Calyste," said Camille, wishing to speak.

"'Dear'?" said Vignon, interrupting her.

"Claude is joking," said Camille, continuing her remarks to Calyste.

"He is wrong to do it with you, who know nothing of Parisian ways."

"I did not know that I was joking," said Claude Vignon, very gravely.

"Which way did you come?" asked Felicite again. "I have been watching

the road to Croisic for the last two hours."

"Not all the time," replied Vignon.

"You are too bad to jest in this way."

"Am I jesting?"

Calyste rose.

"Why should you go so soon? You are certainly at your ease here," said

Vignon.

"Quite the contrary," replied the angry young Breton, to whom Camille

Maupin stretched out a hand, which he took and kissed, dropping a tear

upon it, after which he took his leave.

"I should like to be that little young man," said the critic, sitting

down, and taking one end of the hookah. "How he will love!"

"Too much; for then he will not be loved in return," replied

Mademoiselle des Touches. "Madame de Rochefide is coming here," she

added.

"You don't say so!" exclaimed Claude. "With Conti?"

"She will stay here alone, but he accompanies her."

"Have they quarrelled?"

"No."

"Play me a sonata of Beethoven's; I know nothing of the music he wrote

for the piano."

Claude began to fill the tube of the hookah with Turkish tobacco, all

the while examining Camille much more attentively than she observed. A

dreadful thought oppressed him; he fancied he was being used for a

blind by this woman. The situation was a novel one.

Calyste went home thinking no longer of Beatrix de Rochefide and her

letter; he was furious against Claude Vignon for what he considered

the utmost indelicacy, and he pitied poor Felicite. How was it

possible to be beloved by that sublime creature and not adore her on

his knees, not believe her on the faith of a glance or a smile? He

felt a desire to turn and rend that cold, pale spectre of a man.

Ignorant he might be, as Felicite had told him, of the tricks of

thought of the jesters of the press, but one thing he knewLove was

the human religion.

When his mother saw him entering the court-yard she uttered an

exclamation of joy, and Zephirine whistled for Mariotte.

"Mariotte, the boy is coming! cook the fish!"

"I see him, mademoiselle," replied the woman.

Fanny, uneasy at the sadness she saw on her son's brow, picked up her

worsted-work; the old aunt took out her knitting. The baron gave his

arm-chair to his son and walked about the room, as if to stretch his

legs before going out to take a turn in the garden. No Flemish or

Dutch picture ever presented an interior in tones more mellow, peopled

with faces and forms so harmoniously blending. The handsome young man

in his black velvet coat, the mother, still so beautiful, and the aged

brother and sister framed by that ancient hall, were a moving domestic

harmony.

Fanny would fain have questioned Calyste, but he had already pulled a

letter from his pocket,that letter of the Marquise Beatrix, which

was, perhaps, destined to destroy the happiness of this noble family.

As he unfolded it, Calyste's awakened imagination showed him the

marquise dressed as Camille Maupin had fancifully depicted her.

From the Marquise de Rochefide to Mademoiselle des Touches.

Genoa, July 2.

I have not written to you since our stay in Florence, my dear

friend, for Venice and Rome have absorbed my time, and, as you

know, happiness occupies a large part of life; so far, we have

neither of us dropped from its first level. I am a little

fatigued; for when one has a soul not easy to /blaser/, the

constant succession of enjoyments naturally causes lassitude.

Our friend has had a magnificent triumph at the Scala and the

Fenice, and now at the San Carlo. Three Italian operas in two

years! You cannot say that love has made him idle. We have been

warmly received everywhere,though I myself would have preferred

solitude and silence. Surely that is the only suitable manner of

life for women who have placed themselves in direct opposition to

society? I expected such a life; but love, my dear friend, is a

more exacting master than marriage,however, it is sweet to obey

him; though I did not think I should have to see the world again,

even by snatches, and the attentions I receive are so many stabs.

I am no longer on a footing of equality with the highest rank of

women; and the more attentions are paid to me, the more my

inferiority is made apparent.

Gennaro could not comprehend this sensitiveness; but he has been

so happy that it would ill become me not to have sacrificed my

petty vanity to that great and noble thing,the life of an

artist. We women live by love, whereas men live by love and

action; otherwise they would not be men. Still, there are great

disadvantages for a woman in the position in which I have put

myself. You have escaped them; you continue to be a person in the

eyes of the world, which has no rights over you; you have your own

free will, and I have lost mine. I am speaking now of the things

of the heart, not those of social life, which I have utterly

renounced. You can be coquettish and self-willed, and have all the

graces of a woman who loves, a woman who can give or refuse her

love as she pleases; you have kept the right to have caprices, in

the interests even of your love. In short, to-day you still

possess your right of feeling, while I, I have no longer any

liberty of heart, which I think precious to exercise in love, even

though the love itself may be eternal. I have no right now to that

privilege of quarrelling in jest to which so many women cling, and

justly; for is it not the plummet line with which to sound the

hearts of men? I have no threat at my command. I must draw my

power henceforth from obedience, from unlimited gentleness; I must

make myself imposing by the greatness of my love. I would rather

die than leave Gennaro, and my pardon lies in the sanctity of my

love. Between social dignity and my petty personal dignity, I did

right not to hesitate. If at times I have a few melancholy

feelings, like clouds that pass through a clear blue sky, and to

which all women like to yield themselves, I keep silence about

them; they might seem like regrets. Ah me! I have so fully

understood the obligations of my position that I have armed myself

with the utmost indulgence; but so far, Gennaro has not alarmed my

susceptible jealousy. I don't as yet see where that dear great

genius may fail.

Dear angel, I am like those pious souls who argue with their God,

for are not you my Providence? do I not owe my happiness to you?

You must never doubt, therefore, that you are constantly in my

thoughts.

I have seen Italy at last; seen it as you saw it, and as it ought

to be seen,lighted to our souls by love, as it is by its own

bright sun and its masterpieces. I pity those who, being moved to

adoration at every step, have no hand to press, no heart in which

to shed the exuberance of emotions which calm themselves when

shared. These two years have been to me a lifetime, in which my

memory has stored rich harvests. Have you made plans, as I do, to

stay forever at Chiavari, to buy a palazzo in Venice, a summer-

house at Sorrento, a villa in Florence? All loving women dread

society; but I, who am cast forever outside of it, ought I not to

bury myself in some beautiful landscape, on flowery slopes, facing

the sea, or in a valley that equals a sea, like that of Fiesole?

But alas! we are only poor artists, and want of money is bringing

these two bohemians back to Paris. Gennaro does not want me to

feel that I have lost my luxury, and he wishes to put his new

work, a grand opera, into rehearsal at once. You will understand,

of course, my dearest, that I cannot set foot in Paris. I could

not, I would not, even if it costs me my love, meet one of those

glances of women, or of men, which would make me think of murder

or suicide. Yes, I could hack in pieces whoever insulted me with

pity; like Chateauneuf, who, in the time of Henri III., I think,

rode his horse at the Provost of Paris for a wrong of that kind,

and trampled him under hoof.

I write, therefore, to say that I shall soon pay you a visit at

Les Touches. I want to stay there, in that Chartreuse, while

awaiting the success of our Gennaro's opera. You will see that I

am bold with my benefactress, my sister; but I prove, at any rate,

that the greatness of obligations laid upon me has not led me, as

it does so many people, to ingratitude. You have told me so much

of the difficulties of the land journey that I shall go to Croisic

by water. This idea came to me on finding that there is a little

Danish vessel now here, laden with marble, which is to touch at

Croisic for a cargo of salt on its way back to the Baltic. I shall

thus escape the fatigue and the cost of the land journey. Dear

Felicite, you are the only person with whom I could be alone

without Conti. Will it not be some pleasure to have a woman with

you who understands your heart as fully as you do hers?

Adieu, /a bientot/. The wind is favorable, and I set sail, wafting

you a kiss.

Beatrix.

"Ah! she loves, too!" thought Calyste, folding the letter sadly.

That sadness flowed to the heart of the mother as if some gleam had

lighted up a gulf to her. The baron had gone out; Fanny went to the

door of the tower and pushed the bolt, then she returned, and leaned

upon the back of her boy's chair, like the sister of Dido in Guerin's

picture, and said,

"What is it, my Calyste? what makes you so sad? You promised to

explain to me these visits to Les Touches; I am to bless its mistress,

at least, you said so."

"Yes, indeed you will, dear mother," he replied. "She has shown me the

insufficiency of my education at an epoch when the nobles ought to

possess a personal value in order to give life to their rank. I was as

far from the age we live in as Guerande is from Paris. She has been,

as it were, the mother of my intellect."

"I cannot bless her for that," said the baroness, with tears in her

eyes.

"Mamma!" cried Calyste, on whose forehead those hot tears fell, two

pearls of sorrowful motherhood, "mamma, don't weep! Just now, when I

wanted to do her a service, and search the country round, she said,

'It will make your mother so uneasy.'"

"Did she say that? Then I can forgive her many things," replied Fanny.

"Felicite thinks only of my good," continued Calyste. "She often

checks the lively, venturesome language of artists so as not to shake

me in a faith which is, though she knows it not, unshakable. She has

told me of the life in Paris of several young men of the highest

nobility coming from their provinces, as I might do,leaving families

without fortune, but obtaining in Paris, by the power of their will

and their intellect, a great career. I can do what the Baron de

Rastignac, now a minister of State, has done. Felicite has taught me;

I read with her; she gives me lessons on the piano; she is teaching me

Italian; she has initiated me into a thousand social secrets, about

which no one in Guerande knows anything at all. She could not give me

the treasures of her love, but she has given me those of her vast

intellect, her mind, her genius. She does not want to be a pleasure,

but a light to me; she lessens not one of my faiths; she herself has

faith in the nobility, she loves Brittany, she"

"She has changed our Calyste," said his blind old aunt, interrupting

him. "I do not understand one word he has been saying. You have a

solid roof over your head, my good nephew; you have parents and

relations who adore you, and faithful servants; you can marry some

good little Breton girl, religious and accomplished, who will make you

happy. Reserve your ambitions for your eldest son, who may be four

times as rich as you, if you choose to live tranquilly, thriftily, in

obscurity,but in the peace of God,in order to release the burdens

on your estate. It is all as simple as a Breton heart. You will be,

not so rapidly perhaps, but more solidly, a rich nobleman."

"Your aunt is right, my darling; she plans for your happiness with as

much anxiety as I do myself. If I do not succeed in marrying you to my

niece, Margaret, the daughter of your uncle, Lord Fitzwilliam, it is

almost certain that Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel will leave her fortune to

whichever of her nieces you may choose."

"And besides, there's a little gold to be found here," added the old

aunt in a low voice, with a mysterious glance about her.

"Marry! at my age!" he said, casting on his mother one of those looks

which melt the arguments of mothers. "Am I to live without my

beautiful fond loves? Must I never tremble or throb or fear or gasp,

or lie beneath implacable looks and soften them? Am I never to know

beauty in its freedom, the fantasy of the soul, the clouds that course

through the azure of happiness, which the breath of pleasure

dissipates? Ah! shall I never wander in those sweet by-paths moist

with dew; never stand beneath the drenching of a gutter and not know

it rains, like those lovers seen by Diderot; never take, like the Duc

de Lorraine, a live coal in my hand? Are there no silken ladders for

me, no rotten trellises to cling to and not fall? Shall I know nothing

of woman but conjugal submission; nothing of love but the flame of its

lamp-wick? Are my longings to be satisfied before they are roused?

Must I live out my days deprived of that madness of the heart that

makes a man and his power? Would you make me a married monk? No! I

have eaten of the fruit of Parisian civilization. Do you not see that

you have, by the ignorant morals of this family, prepared the fire

that consumes me, that /will/ consume me utterly, unless I can adore

the divineness I see everywhere,in those sands gleaming in the sun,

in the green foliage, in all the women, beautiful, noble, elegant,

pictured in the books and in the poems I have read with Camille? Alas!

there is but one such woman in Guerande, and it is you, my mother! The

birds of my beautiful dream, they come from Paris, they fly from the

pages of Scott, of Byron,Parisina, Effie, Minna! yes, and that royal

duchess, whom I saw on the moors among the furze and the ferns, whose

very aspect sent the blood to my heart."

The baroness saw these thoughts flaming in the eyes of her son,

clearer, more beautiful, more living than art can tell to those who

read them. She grasped them rapidly, flung to her as they were in

glances like arrows from an upset quiver. Without having read

Beaumarchais, she felt, as other women would have felt, that it would

be a crime to marry Calyste.

"Oh! my child!" she said, taking him in her arms, and kissing the

beautiful hair that was still hers, "marry whom you will, and when you

will, but be happy! My part in life is not to hamper you."

Mariotte came to lay the table. Gasselin was out exercising Calyste's

horse, which the youth had not mounted for two months. The three

women, mother, aunt, and Mariotte, shared in the tender feminine

wiliness, which taught them to make much of Calyste when he dined at

home. Breton plainness fought against Parisian luxury, now brought to

the very doors of Guerande. Mariotte endeavored to wean her young

master from the accomplished service of Camille Maupin's kitchen, just

as his mother and aunt strove to hold him in the net of their

tenderness and render all comparison impossible.

"There's a salmon-trout for dinner, Monsieur Calyste, and snipe, and

pancakes such as I know you can't get anywhere but here," said

Mariotte, with a sly, triumphant look as she smoothed the cloth, a

cascade of snow.

After dinner, when the old aunt had taken up her knitting, and the

rector and Monsieur du Halga had arrived, allured by their precious

/mouche/, Calyste went back to Les Touches on the pretext of returning

the letter.

Claude Vignon and Felicite were still at table. The great critic was

something of a gourmand, and Felicite pampered the vice, knowing how

indispensable a woman makes herself by such compliance. The dinner-

table presented that rich and brilliant aspect which modern luxury,

aided by the perfecting of handicrafts, now gives to its service. The

poor and noble house of Guenic little knew with what an adversary it

was attempting to compete, or what amount of fortune was necessary to

enter the lists against the silverware, the delicate porcelain, the

beautiful linen, the silver-gilt service brought from Paris by

Mademoiselle des Touches, and the science of her cook. Calyste

declined the liqueurs contained in one of those superb cases of

precious woods, which are something like tabernacles.

"Here's the letter," he said, with innocent ostentation, looking at

Claude, who was slowly sipping a glass of /liqueur-des-iles/.

"Well, what did you think of it?" asked Mademoiselle des Touches,

throwing the letter across the table to Vignon, who began to read it,

taking up and putting down at intervals his little glass.

"I thoughtwell, that Parisian women were very fortunate to have men

of genius to adore who adore them."

"Ah! you are still in your village," said Felicite, laughing. "What!

did you not see that she loves him less, and"

"That is evident," said Claude Vignon, who had only read the first

page. "Do people reason on their situation when they really love; are

they as shrewd as the marquise, as observing, as discriminating? Your

dear Beatrix is held to Conti now by pride only; she is condemned to

love him /quand meme/."

"Poor woman!" said Camille.

Calyste's eyes were fixed on the table; he saw nothing about him. The

beautiful woman in the fanciful dress described that morning by

Felicite appeared to him crowned with light; she smiled to him, she

waved her fan; the other hand, issuing from its ruffle of lace, fell

white and pure on the heavy folds of her crimson velvet robe.

"She is just the thing for you," said Claude Vignon, smiling

sardonically at Calyste.

The young man was deeply wounded by the words, and by the manner in

which they were said.

"Don't put such ideas into Calyste's mind; you don't know how

dangerous such jokes may prove to be," said Mademoiselle des Touches,

hastily. "I know Beatrix, and there is something too grandiose in her

nature to allow her to change. Besides, Conti will be here."

"Ha!" said Claude Vignon, satirically, "a slight touch of jealousy,

eh?"

"Can you really think so?" said Camille, haughtily.

"You are more perspicacious than a mother," replied Claude Vignon,

still sarcastically.

"But it would be impossible," said Camille, looking at Calyste.

"They are very well matched," remarked Vignon. "She is ten years older

than he; and it is he who appears to be the girl"

"A girl, monsieur," said Calyste, waking from his reverie, "who has

been twice under fire in La Vendee! If the Cause had had twenty

thousand more such girls"

"I was giving you some well-deserved praise, and that is easier than

to give you a beard," remarked Vignon.

"I have a sword for those who wear their beards too long," cried

Calyste.

"And I am very good at an epigram," said the other, smiling. "We are

Frenchmen; the affair can easily be arranged."

Mademoiselle des Touches cast a supplicating look on Calyste, which

calmed him instantly.

"Why," said Felicite, as if to break up the discussion, "do young men

like my Calyste, begin by loving women of a certain age?"

"I don't know any sentiment more artless or more generous," replied

Vignon. "It is the natural consequence of the adorable qualities of

youth. Besides, how would old women end if it were not for such love?

You are young and beautiful, and will be for twenty years to come, so

I can speak of this matter before you," he added, with a keen look at

Mademoiselle des Touches. "In the first place the semi-dowagers, to

whom young men pay their first court, know much better how to make

love than younger women. An adolescent youth is too like a young woman

himself for a young woman to please him. Such a passion trenches on

the fable of Narcissus. Besides that feeling of repugnance, there is,

as I think, a mutual sense of inexperience which separates them. The

reason why the hearts of young women are only understood by mature

men, who conceal their cleverness under a passion real or feigned, is

precisely the same (allowing for the difference of minds) as that

which renders a woman of a certain age more adroit in attracting

youth. A young man feels that he is sure to succeed with her, and the

vanities of the woman are flattered by his suit. Besides, isn't it

natural for youth to fling itself on fruits? The autumn of a woman's

life offers many that are very toothsome,those looks, for instance,

bold, and yet reserved, bathed with the last rays of love, so warm, so

sweet; that all-wise elegance of speech, those magnificent shoulders,

so nobly developed, the full and undulating outline, the dimpled

hands, the hair so well arranged, so cared for, that charming nape of

the neck, where all the resources of art are displayed to exhibit the

contrast between the hair and the flesh-tones, and to set in full

relief the exuberance of life and love. Brunettes themselves are fair

at such times, with the amber colors of maturity. Besides, such women

reveal in their smiles and display in their words a knowledge of the

world; they know how to converse; they can call up the whole of social

life to make a lover laugh; their dignity and their pride are

stupendous; or, in other moods, they can utter despairing cries which

touch his soul, farewells of love which they take care to render

useless, and only make to intensify his passion. Their devotions are

absolute; they listen to us; they love us; they catch, they cling to

love as a man condemned to death clings to the veriest trifles of

existence,in short, love, absolute love, is known only through them.

I think such women can never be forgotten by a man, any more than he

can forget what is grand and sublime. A young woman has a thousand

distractions; these women have none. No longer have they self-love,

pettiness, or vanity; their loveit is the Loire at its mouth, it is

vast, it is swelled by all the illusions, all the affluents of life,

and this is whybut my muse is dumb," he added, observing the

ecstatic attitude of Mademoiselle des Touches, who was pressing

Calyste's hand with all her strength, perhaps to thank him for having

been the occasion of such a moment, of such an eulogy, so lofty that

she did not see the trap that it laid for her.

During the rest of the evening Claude Vignon and Felicite sparkled

with wit and happy sayings; they told anecdotes, and described

Parisian life to Calyste, who was charmed with Claude, for mind has

immense seductions for persons who are all heart.

"I shouldn't be surprised to see the Marquise de Rochefide and Conti,

who, of course, will accompany her, at the landing-place to-morrow,"

said Claude Vignon, as the evening ended. "When I was at Croisic this

afternoon, the fishermen were saying that they had seen a little

vessel, Danish, Swedish, or Norwegian, in the offing."

This speech brought a flush to the cheeks of the impassible Camille.

Again Madame du Guenic sat up till one o'clock that night, waiting for

her son, unable to imagine why he should stay so late if Mademoiselle

des Touches did not love him.

"He must be in their way," said this adorable mother. "What were you

talking about?" she asked, when at last he came in.

"Oh, mother, I have never before spent such a delightful evening.

Genius is a great, a sublime thing! Why didn't you give me genius?

With genius we can make our lives, we can choose among all women the

woman to love, and she must be ours."

"How handsome you are, my Calyste!"

"Claude Vignon is handsome. Men of genius have luminous foreheads and

eyes, through which the lightnings flashbut I, alas! I know nothing

only to love."

"They say that suffices, my angel," she said, kissing him on the

forehead.

"Do you believe it?"

"They say so, but I have never known it."

Calyste kissed his mother's hand as if it was a sacred thing.

"I will love you for all those that would have adored you," he said.

"Dear child! perhaps it is a little bit your duty to do so, for you

inherit my nature. But, Calyste, do not be unwise, imprudent; try to

love only noble women, if love you must."