XV CONTI

The inward and convulsive trembling of the marquise was more apparent

than she wished it to be; a tragic drama developed at that moment in

the souls of all present.

"You did not expect me so soon, I fancy," said Conti, offering his arm

to Beatrix.

The marquise could not avoid dropping Calyste's arm and taking that of

Conti. This ignoble transit, imperiously demanded, so dishonoring to

the new love, overwhelmed Calyste who threw himself on the bench

beside Camille, after exchanging the coldest of salutations with his

rival. He was torn by conflicting emotions. Strong in the thought that

Beatrix loved him, he wanted at first to fling himself upon Conti and

tell him that Beatrix was his; but the violent trembling of the woman

betraying how she sufferedfor she had really paid the penalty of her

faults in that one momentaffected him so deeply that he was dumb,

struck like her with a sense of some implacable necessity.

Madame de Rochefide and Conti passed in front of the seat where

Calyste had dropped beside Camille, and as she passed, the marquise

looked at Camille, giving her one of those terrible glances in which

women have the art of saying all things. She avoided the eyes of

Calyste and turned her attention to Conti, who appeared to be jesting

with her.

"What will they say to each other?" Calyste asked of Camille.

"Dear child, you don't know as yet the terrible rights which an

extinguished love still gives to a man over a woman. Beatrix could not

refuse to take his arm. He is, no doubt, joking her about her new

love; he must have guessed it from your attitudes and the manner in

which you approached us."

"Joking her!" cried the impetuous youth, starting up.

"Be calm," said Camille, "or you will lose the last chances that

remain to you. If he wounds her self-love, she will crush him like a

worm under her foot. But he is too astute for that; he will manage her

with greater cleverness. He will seem not even to suppose that the

proud Madame de Rochefide could betray him; /she/ could never be

guilty of such depravity as loving a man for the sake of his beauty.

He will represent you to her as a child ambitious to have a marquise

in love with him, and to make himself the arbiter of the fate of two

women. In short, he will fire a broadside of malicious insinuations.

Beatrix will then be forced to parry with false assertions and

denials, which he will simply make use of to become once more her

master."

"Ah!" cried Calyste, "he does not love her. I would leave her free.

True love means a choice made anew at every moment, confirmed from day

to day. The morrow justifies the past, and swells the treasury of our

pleasures. Ah! why did he not stay away a little longer? A few days

more and he would not have found her. What brought him back?"

"The jest of a journalist," replied Camille. "His opera, on the

success of which he counted, has fallen flat. Some journalist,

probably Claude Vignon, remarked in the foyer: 'It is hard to lose

fame and mistress at the same moment,' and the speech cut him in all

his vanities. Love based on petty sentiments is always pitiless. I

have questioned him; but who can fathom a nature so false and

deceiving? He appeared to be weary of his troubles and his love,in

short, disgusted with life. He regrets having allied himself so

publicly with the marquise, and made me, in speaking of his past

happiness, a melancholy poem, which was somewhat too clever to be

true. I think he hoped to worm out of me the secret of your love, in

the midst of the joy he expected his flatteries to cause me."

"What else?" said Calyste, watching Beatrix and Conti, who were now

coming towards them; but he listened no longer to Camille's words.

In talking with Conti, Camille had held herself prudently on the

defensive; she had betrayed neither Calyste's secret nor that of

Beatrix. The great artist was capable of treachery to every one, and

Mademoiselle des Touches warned Calyste to distrust him.

"My dear friend," she said, "this is by far the most critical moment

for you. You need caution and a sort of cleverness you do not possess;

I am afraid you will let yourself be tricked by the most wily man I

have ever known, and I can do nothing to help you."

The bell announced dinner. Conti offered his arm to Camille; Calyste

gave his to Beatrix. Camille drew back to let the marquise pass, but

the latter had found a moment in which to look at Calyste, and impress

upon him, by putting her finger on her lips, the absolute necessity of

discretion.

Conti was extremely gay during the dinner; perhaps this was only one

way of probing Madame de Rochefide, who played her part extremely ill.

If her conduct had been mere coquetry, she might have deceived even

Conti; but her new love was real, and it betrayed her. The wily

musician, far from adding to her embarrassment, pretended not to have

perceived it. At dessert, he brought the conversation round to women,

and lauded the nobility of their sentiments. Many a woman, he said,

who might have been willing to abandon a man in prosperity, would

sacrifice all to him in misfortune. Women had the advantage over men

in constancy; nothing ever detached them from their first lover, to

whom they clung as a matter of honor, unless he wounded them; they

felt that a second love was unworthy of them, and so forth. His ethics

were of the highest order; shedding incense on the altar where he knew

that one heart at least, pierced by many a blow, was bleeding. Camille

and Beatrix alone understood the bitterness of the sarcasms shot forth

in the guise of eulogy. At times they both flushed scarlet, but they

were forced to control themselves. When dinner was over, they took

each other by the arm to return to Camille's salon, and, as if by

mutual consent, they turned aside into the great salon, where they

could be alone for an instant in the darkness.

"It is dreadful to let Conti ride over me roughshod; and yet I can't

defend myself," said Beatrix, in a low voice. "The galley-slave is

always a slave to his chain-companion. I am lost; I must needs return

to my galleys! And it is you, Camille, who have cast me there! Ah! you

brought him back a day too soon, or a day too late. I recognize your

infernal talent as author. Well, your revenge is complete, the finale

perfect!"

"I may have told you that I would write to Conti, but to do it was

another matter," cried Camille. "I am incapable of such baseness. But

you are unhappy, and I will forgive the suspicion."

"What will become of Calyste?" said the marquise, with naive self-

conceit.

"Then Conti carries you off, does he?" asked Camille.

"Ah! you think you triumph!" cried Beatrix.

Anger distorted her handsome face as she said those bitter words to

Camille, who was trying to hide her satisfaction under a false

expression of sympathy. Unfortunately, the sparkle in her eyes belied

the sadness of her face, and Beatrix was learned in such deceptions.

When, a few moments later, the two women were seated under a strong

light on that divan where the first three weeks so many comedies had

been played, and where the secret tragedy of many thwarted passions

had begun, they examined each other for the last time, and felt they

were forever parted by an undying hatred.

"Calyste remains to you," said Beatrix, looking into Camille's eyes;

"but I am fixed in his heart, and no woman can ever drive me out of

it."

Camille replied, with an inimitable tone of irony that struck the

marquise to the heart, in the famous words of Mazarin's niece to Louis

XIV.,

"You reign, you love, and you depart!"

Neither Camille nor Beatrix was conscious during this sharp and bitter

scene of the absence of Conti and Calyste. The composer had remained

at table with his rival, begging him to keep him company in finishing

a bottle of champagne.

"We have something to say to each other," added Conti, to prevent all

refusal on the part of Calyste.

Placed as they both were, it was impossible for the young Breton to

refuse this challenge.

"My dear friend," said the composer, in his most caressing voice, as

soon as the poor lad had drunk a couple of glasses of champagne, "we

are both good fellows, and we can speak to each other frankly. I have

not come here suspiciously. Beatrix loves me,"this with a gesture of

the utmost self-conceit"but the truth is, I have ceased to love her.

I am not here to carry her away with me, but to break off our

relations, and to leave her the honors of the rupture. You are young;

you don't yet know how useful it is to appear to be the victim when

you are really the executioner. Young men spit fire and flame; they

leave a woman with noise and fury; they often despise her, and they

make her hate them. But wise men do as I am doing; they get themselves

dismissed, assuming a mortified air, which leaves regret in the

woman's heart and also a sense of her superiority. You don't yet know,

luckily for you, how hampered men often are in their careers by the

rash promises which women are silly enough to accept when gallantry

obliges us to make nooses to catch our happiness. We swear eternal

faithfulness, and declare that we desire to pass our lives with them,

and seem to await a husband's death impatiently. Let him die, and

there are some provincial women obtuse or silly or malicious enough to

say: 'Here am I, free at last.' The spent ball suddenly comes to life

again, and falls plumb in the midst of our finest triumphs or our most

carefully planned happiness. I have seen that you love Beatrix. I

leave her therefore in a position where she loses nothing of her

precious majesty; she will certainly coquet with you, if only to tease

and annoy that angel of a Camille Maupin. Well, my dear fellow, take

her, love her, you'll do me a great service; I want her to turn

against me. I have been afraid of her pride and her virtue. Perhaps,

in spite of my approval of the matter, it may take some time to effect

this /chassez-croissez/. On such occasions the wisest plan is to take

no step at all. I did, just now, as we walked about the lawn, attempt

to let her see that I knew all, and was ready to congratulate her on

her new happiness. Well, she was furious! At this moment I am

desperately in love with the youngest and handsomest of our prima-

donnas, Mademoiselle Falcon of the Grand Opera. I think of marrying

her; yes, I have got as far as that. When you come to Paris you will

see that I have changed a marquise for a queen."

Calyste, whose candid face revealed his satisfaction, admitted his

love for Beatrix, which was all that Conti wanted to discover. There

is no man in the world, however /blase/ or depraved he may be, whose

love will not flame up again the moment he sees it threatened by a

rival. He may wish to leave a woman, but he will never willingly let

her leave him. When a pair of lovers get to this extremity, both the

man and the woman strive for priority of action, so deep is the wound

to their vanity. Questioned by the composer, Calyste related all that

had happened during the last three weeks at Les Touches, delighted to

find that Conti, who concealed his fury under an appearance of

charming good-humor, took it all in good part.

"Come, let us go upstairs," said the latter. "Women are so

distrustful; those two will wonder how we can sit here together

without tearing each other's hair out; they are even capable of coming

down to listen. I'll serve you faithfully, my dear boy. You'll see me

rough and jealous with the marquise; I shall seem to suspect her;

there's no better way to drive a woman to betray you. You will be

happy, and I shall be free. Seem to pity that angel for belonging to a

man without delicacy; show her a tearfor you can weep, you are still

young. I, alas! can weep no more; and that's a great advantage lost."

Calyste and Conti went up to Camille's salon. The composer, begged by

his young rival to sing, gave them that greatest of musical

masterpieces viewed as execution, the famous "/Pria che spunti

l'aurora/," which Rubini himself never attempted without trembling,

and which had often been Conti's triumph. Never was his singing more

extraordinary than on this occasion, when so many feelings were

contending in his breast. Calyste was in ecstasy. As Conti sang the

first words of the cavatina, he looked intently at the marquise,

giving to those words a cruel signification which was fully

understood. Camille, who accompanied him, guessed the order thus

conveyed, which bowed the head of the luckless Beatrix. She looked at

Calyste, and felt sure that the youth had fallen into some trap in

spite of her advice. This conviction became certainty when the

evidently happy Breton came up to bid Beatrix good-night, kissing her

hand, and pressing it with a little air of happy confidence.

By the time Calyste had reached Guerande, the servants were packing

Conti's travelling-carriage, and "by dawn," as the song had said, the

composer was carrying Beatrix away with Camille's horses to the first

relay. The morning twilight enabled Madame de Rochefide to see

Guerande, its towers, whitened by the dawn, shining out upon the still

dark sky. Melancholy thoughts possessed her; she was leaving there one

of the sweetest flowers of all her life,a pure love, such as a young

girl dreams of; the only true love she had ever known or was ever to

conceive of. The woman of the world obeyed the laws of the world; she

sacrificed love to their demands just as many women sacrifice it to

religion or to duty. Sometimes mere pride can rise in acts as high as

virtue. Read thus, this history is that of many women.

The next morning Calyste went to Les Touches about mid-day. When he

reached the spot from which, the day before, he had seen Beatrix

watching for him at the window, he saw Camille, who instantly ran down

to him. She met him at the foot of the staircase and told the cruel

truth in one word,

"Gone!"

"Beatrix?" asked Calyste, thunderstruck.

"You have been duped by Conti; you told me nothing, and I could do

nothing for you."

She led the poor fellow to her little salon, where he flung himself on

the divan where he had so often seen the marquise, and burst into

tears. Felicite smoked her hookah and said nothing, knowing well that

no words or thoughts are capable of arresting the first anguish of

such pain, which is always deaf and dumb. Calyste, unable even to

think, much less to choose a course, sat there all day in a state of

complete torpidity. Just before dinner was served, Camille tried to

say a few words, after begging him, very earnestly, to listen to her.

"Friend," she said, "you caused me the bitterest suffering, and I had

not, like you, a beautiful young life before me in which to heal

myself. For me, life has no longer any spring, nor my soul a love. So,

to find consolation, I have had to look above. Here, in this room, the

day before Beatrix came here, I drew you her portrait; I did not do

her injustice, or you might have thought me jealous. I wanted you to

know her as she is, for that would have kept you safe. Listen now to

the full truth. Madame de Rochefide is wholly unworthy of you. The

scandal of her fall was not necessary; she did the thing deliberately

in order to play a part in the eyes of society. She is one of those

women who prefer the celebrity of a scandal to tranquil happiness;

they fly in the face of society to obtain the fatal alms of a rebuke;

they desire to be talked about at any cost. Beatrix was eaten up with

vanity. Her fortune and her wit had not given her the feminine royalty

that she craved; they had not enabled her to reign supreme over a

salon. She then bethought herself of seeking the celebrity of the

Duchesse de Langeais and the Vicomtesse de Beauseant. But the world,

after all, is just; it gives the homage of its interest to real

feelings only. Beatrix playing comedy was judged to be a second-rate

actress. There was no reason whatever for her flight; the sword of

Damocles was not suspended over her head; she is neither sincere, nor

loving, nor tender; if she were, would she have gone away with Conti

this morning?"

Camille talked long and eloquently; but this last effort to open

Calyste's eyes was useless, and she said no more when he expressed to

her by a gesture his absolute belief in Beatrix.

She forced him to come down into the dining-room and sit there while

she dined; though he himself was unable to swallow food. It is only

during extreme youth that these contractions of the bodily functions

occur. Later, the organs have acquired, as it were, fixed habits, and

are hardened. The reaction of the mental and moral system upon the

physical is not enough to produce a mortal illness unless the physical

system retains its primitive purity. A man resists the violent grief

that kills a youth, less by the greater weakness of his affection than

by the greater strength of his organs.

Therefore Mademoiselle des Touches was greatly alarmed by the calm,

resigned attitude which Calyste took after his burst of tears had

subsided. Before he left her, he asked permission to go into Beatrix's

bedroom, where he had seen her on the night of her illness, and there

he laid his head on the pillow where hers had lain.

"I am committing follies," he said, grasping Camille's hand, and

bidding her good-night in deep dejection.

He returned home, found the usual company at /mouche/, and passed the

remainder of the evening sitting beside his mother. The rector, the

Chevalier du Halga, and Mademoiselle de Pen-Hoel all knew of Madame de

Rochefide's departure, and were rejoicing in it. Calyste would now

return to them; and all three watched him cautiously. No one in that

old manor-house was capable of imagining the result of a first love,

the love of youth in a heart so simple and so true as that of Calyste.