VI

There was no sort of swagger about his fearlessness in action;

nothing escaped his eyes; he could give sensible advice to his

chums with unshaken coolness; he could go under fire, and duck

upon occasion to avoid bullets.  He was kindly; but his

expression was haughty and stern, and his face gained him this

character.  In everything he was rigorous as arithmetic; he never

permitted the slightest deviation from duty on any plausible

pretext, nor blinked the consequences of a fact.  He would lend

himself to nothing of which he was ashamed; he never asked

anything for himself; in short, Armand de Montriveau was one of

many great men unknown to fame, and philosophical enough to

despise it; living without attaching themselves to life, because

they have not found their opportunity of developing to the full

their power to do and feel.

People were afraid of Montriveau; they respected him, but he was

not very popular.  Men may indeed allow you to rise above them,

but to decline to descend as low as they can do is the one

unpardonable sin.  In their feeling towards loftier natures,

there is a trace of hate and fear.  Too much honour with them

implies censure of themselves, a thing forgiven neither to the

living nor to the dead.

After the Emperor's farewells at Fontainebleau, Montriveau, noble

though he was, was put on half-pay.  Perhaps the heads of the War

Office took fright at uncompromising uprightness worthy of

antiquity, or perhaps it was known that he felt bound by his oath

to the Imperial Eagle.  During the Hundred Days he was made a

Colonel of the Guard, and left on the field of Waterloo.  His

wounds kept him in Belgium he was not present at the disbanding

of the Army of the Loire, but the King's government declined to

recognise promotion made during the Hundred Days, and Armand de

Montriveau left France.

An adventurous spirit, a loftiness of thought hitherto satisfied

by the hazards of war, drove him on an exploring expedition

through Upper Egypt; his sanity or impulse directed his

enthusiasm to a project of great importance, he turned his

attention to that unexplored Central Africa which occupies the

learned of today.  The scientific expedition was long and

unfortunate.  He had made a valuable collection of notes bearing

on various geographical and commercial problems, of which

solutions are still eagerly sought; and succeeded, after

surmounting many obstacles, in reaching the heart of the

continent, when he was betrayed into the hands of a hostile

native tribe.  Then, stripped of all that he had, for two years

he led a wandering life in the desert, the slave of savages,

threatened with death at every moment, and more cruelly treated

than a dumb animal in the power of pitiless children.  Physical

strength, and a mind braced to endurance, enabled him to survive

the horrors of that captivity; but his miraculous escape

well-nigh exhausted his energies.  When he reached the French

colony at Senegal, a half-dead fugitive covered with rags, his

memories of his former life were dim and shapeless.  The great

sacrifices made in his travels were all forgotten like his

studies of African dialects, his discoveries, and observations.

One story will give an idea of all that he passed through.  Once

for several days the children of the sheikh of the tribe amused

themselves by putting him up for a mark and flinging horses'

knuckle-bones at his head.

Montriveau came back to Paris in 1818 a ruined man.  He had no

interest, and wished for none.  He would have died twenty times

over sooner than ask a favour of anyone; he would not even press

the recognition of his claims.  Adversity and hardship had

developed his energy even in trifles, while the habit of

preserving his self-respect before that spiritual self which we

call conscience led him to attach consequence to the most

apparently trivial actions.  His merits and adventures became

known, however, through his acquaintances, among the principal

men of science in Paris, and some few well-read military men.

The incidents of his slavery and subsequent escape bore witness

to a courage, intelligence, and coolness which won him celebrity

without his knowledge, and that transient fame of which Paris

salons are lavish, though the artist that fain would keep it must

make untold efforts.

Montriveau's position suddenly changed towards the end of that

year.  He had been a poor man, he was now rich; or, externally at

any rate, he had all the advantages of wealth.  The King's

government, trying to attach capable men to itself and to

strengthen the army, made concessions about that time to

Napoleon's old officers if their known loyalty and character

offered guarantees of fidelity.  M. de Montriveau's name once

more appeared in the army list with the rank of colonel; he

received his arrears of pay and passed into the Guards.  All

these favours, one after another, came to seek the Marquis de

Montriveau; he had asked for nothing however small.  Friends had

taken the steps for him which he would have refused to take for

himself.

After this, his habits were modified all at once; contrary to his

custom, he went into society.  He was well received, everywhere

he met with great deference and respect.  He seemed to have found

some end in life; but everything passed within the man, there

were no external signs; in society he was silent and cold, and

wore a grave, reserved face.  His social success was great,

precisely because he stood out in such strong contrast to the

conventional faces which line the walls of Paris salons.  He was,

indeed, something quite new there.  Terse of speech, like a

hermit or a savage, his shyness was thought to be haughtiness,

and people were greatly taken with it.  He was something strange

and great.  Women generally were so much the more smitten with

this original person because he was not to be caught by their

flatteries, however adroit, nor by the wiles with which they

circumvent the strongest men and corrode the steel temper.  Their

Parisian's grimaces were lost upon M. de Montriveau; his nature

only responded to the sonorous vibration of lofty thought and

feeling.  And he would very promptly have been dropped but for

the romance that hung about his adventures and his life; but for

the men who cried him up behind his back; but for a woman who

looked for a triumph for her vanity, the woman who was to fill

his thoughts.

For these reasons the Duchesse de Langeais's curiosity was no

less lively than natural.  Chance had so ordered it that her

interest in the man before her had been aroused only the day

before, when she heard the story of one of M. de Montriveau's

adventures, a story calculated to make the strongest impression

upon a woman's ever-changing fancy.

During M. de Montriveau's voyage of discovery to the sources of

the Nile, he had had an argument with one of his guides, surely

the most extraordinary debate in the annals of travel.  The

district that he wished to explore could only be reached on foot

across a tract of desert.  Only one of his guides knew the way;

no traveller had penetrated before into that part of the country,

where the undaunted officer hoped to find a solution of several

scientific problems.  In spite of the representations made to him

by the guide and the older men of the place, he started upon the

formidable journey.  Summoning up courage, already highly strung

by the prospect of dreadful difficulties, he set out in the

morning.

The loose sand shifted under his feet at every step; and when, at

the end of a long day's march, he lay down to sleep on the

ground, he had never been so tired in his life.  He knew,

however, that he must be up and on his way before dawn next day,

and his guide assured him that they should reach the end of their

journey towards noon.  That promise kept up his courage and gave

him new strength.  In spite of his sufferings, he continued his

march, with some blasphemings against science; he was ashamed to

complain to his guide, and kept his pain to himself.  After

marching for a third of the day, he felt his strength failing,

his feet were bleeding, he asked if they should reach the place

soon.

"In an hour's time," said the guide.  Armand braced himself for

another hour's march, and they went on.

The hour slipped by; he could not so much as see against the sky

the palm-trees and crests of hill that should tell of the end of

the journey near at hand; the horizon line of sand was vast as

the circle of the open sea.

He came to a stand, refused to go farther, and threatened the

guide--he had deceived him, murdered him; tears of rage and

weariness flowed over his fevered cheeks; he was bowed down with

fatigue upon fatigue, his throat seemed to be glued by the desert

thirst.  The guide meanwhile stood motionless, listening to these

complaints with an ironical expression, studying the while, with

the apparent indifference of an Oriental, the scarcely

perceptible indications in the lie of the sands, which looked

almost black, like burnished gold.

"I have made a mistake," he remarked coolly.  "I could not

make out the track, it is so long since I came this way; we are

surely on it now, but we must push on for two hours."

"The man is right," thought M. de Montriveau.

So he went on again, struggling to follow the pitiless native.

It seemed as if he were bound to his guide by some thread like

the invisible tie between the condemned man and the headsman.

But the two hours went by, Montriveau had spent his last drops of

energy, and the skyline was a blank, there were no palm-trees, no

hills.  He could neither cry out nor groan, he lay down on the

sand to die, but his eyes would have frightened the boldest;

something in his face seemed to say that he would not die alone.

His guide, like a very fiend, gave him back a cool glance like a

man that knows his power, left him to lie there, and kept at a

safe distance out of reach of his desperate victim.  At last M.

Montriveau recovered strength enough for a last curse.

The guide came nearer, silenced him with a steady look, and said,

"Was it not your own will to go where I am taking you, in spite

of us all?  You say that I have lied to you.  If I had not, you

would not be even here.  Do you want the truth?  Here it is.  WE

HAVE STILL ANOTHER FIVE HOURS' MARCH BEFORE US, AND WE CANNOT GO

BACK.  Sound yourself; if you have not courage enough, here is my

dagger."

Startled by this dreadful knowledge of pain and human strength,

M. de Montriveau would not be behind a savage; he drew a fresh

stock of courage from his pride as a European, rose to his feet,

and followed his guide.  The five hours were at an end, and still

M. de Montriveau saw nothing, he turned his failing eyes upon his

guide; but the Nubian hoisted him on his shoulders, and showed

him a wide pool of water with greenness all about it, and a noble

forest lighted up by the sunset.  It lay only a hundred paces

away; a vast ledge of granite hid the glorious landscape.  It

seemed to Armand that he had taken a new lease of life.  His

guide, that giant in courage and intelligence, finished his work

of devotion by carrying him across the hot, slippery, scarcely

discernible track on the granite.  Behind him lay the hell of

burning sand, before him the earthly paradise of the most

beautiful oasis in the desert.

The Duchess, struck from the first by the appearance of this

romantic figure, was even more impressed when she learned that

this was that Marquis de Montriveau of whom she had dreamed

during the night.  She had been with him among the hot desert

sands, he had been the companion of her nightmare wanderings; for

such a woman was not this a delightful presage of a new interest

in her life?  And never was a man's exterior a better exponent of

his character; never were curious glances so well justified.  The

principal characteristic of his great, square-hewn head was the

thick, luxuriant black hair which framed his face, and gave him a

strikingly close resemblance to General Kleber; and the likeness

still held good in the vigorous forehead, in the outlines of his

face, the quiet fearlessness of his eyes, and a kind of fiery

vehemence expressed by strongly marked features.  He was short,

deep-chested, and muscular as a lion.  There was something of the

despot about him, and an indescribable suggestion of the security

of strength in his gait, bearing, and slightest movements.  He

seemed to know that his will was irresistible, perhaps because he

wished for nothing unjust.  And yet, like all really strong men,

he was mild of speech, simple in his manners, and kindly natured;

although it seemed as if, in the stress of a great crisis, all

these finer qualities must disappear, and the man would show

himself implacable, unshaken in his resolve, terrific in action.

There was a certain drawing in of the inner line of the lips

which, to a close observer, indicated an ironical bent.

The Duchesse de Langeais, realising that a fleeting glory was to

be won by such a conquest, made up her mind to gain a lover in

Armand de Montriveau during the brief interval before the

Duchesse de Maufrigneuse brought him to be introduced.  She would

prefer him above the others; she would attach him to herself,

display all her powers of coquetry for him.  It was a fancy, such

a merest Duchess's whim as furnished a Lope or a Calderon with

the plot of the Dog in the Manger.  She would not suffer another

woman to engross him; but she had not the remotest intention of

being his.

Nature had given the Duchess every qualification for the part of

coquette, and education had perfected her.  Women envied her, and

men fell in love with her, not without reason.  Nothing that can

inspire love, justify it, and give it lasting empire was wanting

in her.  Her style of beauty, her manner, her voice, her bearing,

all combined to give her that instinctive coquetry which seems to

be the consciousness of power.  Her shape was graceful; perhaps

there was a trace of self-consciousness in her changes of

movement, the one affectation that could be laid to her charge;

but everything about her was a part of her personality, from her

least little gesture to the peculiar turn of her phrases, the

demure glance of her eyes.  Her great lady's grace, her most

striking characteristic, had not destroyed the very French quick

mobility of her person.  There was an extraordinary fascination

in her swift, incessant changes of attitude.  She seemed as if

she surely would be a most delicious mistress when her corset and

the encumbering costume of her part were laid aside.  All the

rapture of love surely was latent in the freedom of her

expressive glances, in her caressing tones, in the charm of her

words.  She gave glimpses of the high-born courtesan within her,

vainly protesting against the creeds of the duchess.

You might sit near her through an evening, she would be gay and

melancholy in turn, and her gaiety, like her sadness, seemed

spontaneous.  She could be gracious, disdainful, insolent, or

confiding at will.  Her apparent good nature was real; she had no

temptation to descend to malignity.  But at each moment her mood

changed; she was full of confidence or craft; her moving

tenderness would give place to a heart-breaking hardness and

insensibility.  Yet how paint her as she was, without bringing

together all the extremes of feminine nature?  In a word, the

Duchess was anything that she wished to be or to seem.  Her face

was slightly too long. There was a grace in it, and a certain

thinness and fineness that recalled the portraits of the Middle

Ages.  Her skin was white, with a faint rose tint.  Everything

about her erred, as it were, by an excess of delicacy.

M. de Montriveau willingly consented to be introduced to the

Duchesse de Langeais; and she, after the manner of persons whose

sensitive taste leads them to avoid banalities, refrained from

overwhelming him with questions and compliments.  She received

him with a gracious deference which could not fail to flatter a

man of more than ordinary powers, for the fact that a man rises

above the ordinary level implies that he possesses something of

that tact which makes women quick to read feeling.  If the

Duchess showed any curiosity, it was by her glances; her

compliments were conveyed in her manner; there was a winning

grace displayed in her words, a subtle suggestion of a desire to

please which she of all women knew the art of manifesting.  Yet

her whole conversation was but, in a manner, the body of the

letter; the postscript with the principal thought in it was still

to come.  After half an hour spent in ordinary talk, in which the

words gained all their value from her tone and smiles, M. de

Montriveau was about to retire discreetly, when the Duchess

stopped him with an expressive gesture.

"I do not know, monsieur, whether these few minutes during which

I have had the pleasure of talking to you proved so sufficiently

attractive, that I may venture to ask you to call upon me; I am

afraid that it may be very selfish of me to wish to have you all

to myself.  If I should be so fortunate as to find that my house

is agreeable to you, you will always find me at home in the

evening until ten o'clock."

The invitation was given with such irresistible grace, that M. de

Montriveau could not refuse to accept it.  When he fell back

again among the groups of men gathered at a distance from the

women, his friends congratulated him, half laughingly, half in

earnest, on the extraordinary reception vouchsafed him by the

Duchesse de Langeais.  The difficult and brilliant conquest had

been made beyond a doubt, and the glory of it was reserved for

the Artillery of the Guard.  It is easy to imagine the jests,

good and bad, when this topic had once been started; the world of

Paris salons is so eager for amusement, and a joke lasts for such

a short time, that everyone is eager to make the most of it while

it is fresh.

All unconsciously, the General felt flattered by this nonsense.

From his place where he had taken his stand, his eyes were drawn

again and again to the Duchess by countless wavering reflections.

He could not help admitting to himself that of all the women

whose beauty had captivated his eyes, not one had seemed to be a

more exquisite embodiment of faults and fair qualities blended in

a completeness that might realise the dreams of earliest manhood.

Is there a man in any rank of life that has not felt indefinable

rapture in his secret soul over the woman singled out (if only in

his dreams) to be his own; when she, in body, soul, and social

aspects, satisfies his every requirement, a thrice perfect woman?

And if this threefold perfection that flatters his pride is no

argument for loving her, it is beyond cavil one of the great

inducements to the sentiment.  Love would soon be convalescent,

as the eighteenth century moralist remarked, were it not for

vanity.  And it is certainly true that for everyone, man or

woman, there is a wealth of pleasure in the superiority of the

beloved.  Is she set so high by birth that a contemptuous glance

can never wound her? is she wealthy enough to surround herself

with state which falls nothing short of royalty, of kings, of

finance during their short reign of splendour? is she so

ready-witted that a keen-edged jest never brings her into

confusion? beautiful enough to rival any woman?--Is it such a

small thing to know that your self-love will never suffer through

her?  A man makes these reflections in the twinkling of an eye.

And how if, in the future opened out by early ripened passion, he

catches glimpses of the changeful delight of her charm, the frank

innocence of a maiden soul, the perils of love's voyage, the

thousand folds of the veil of coquetry?  Is not this enough to

move the coldest man's heart?

This, therefore, was M. de Montriveau's position with regard to

woman; his past life in some measure explaining the extraordinary

fact.  He had been thrown, when little more than a boy, into the

hurricane of Napoleon's wars; his life had been spent on fields

of battle.  Of women he knew just so much as a traveller knows of

a country when he travels across it in haste from one inn to

another.  The verdict which Voltaire passed upon his eighty years

of life might, perhaps, have been applied by Montriveau to his

own thirty-seven years of existence; had he not thirty-seven

follies with which to reproach himself?  At his age he was as

much a novice in love as the lad that has just been furtively

reading Faublas.  Of women he had nothing to learn; of love he

knew nothing; and thus, desires, quite unknown before, sprang

from this virginity of feeling.

There are men here and there as much engrossed in the work

demanded of them by poverty or ambition, art or science, as M. de

Montriveau by war and a life of adventure--these know what it is

to be in this unusual position if they very seldom confess to it.

Every man in Paris is supposed to have been in love.  No woman in

Paris cares to take what other women have passed over.  The dread

of being taken for a fool is the source of the coxcomb's bragging

so common in France; for in France to have the reputation of a

fool is to be a foreigner in one's own country.  Vehement desire

seized on M. de Montriveau, desire that had gathered strength

from the heat of the desert and the first stirrings of a heart

unknown as yet in its suppressed turbulence.

A strong man, and violent as he was strong, he could keep mastery

over himself; but as he talked of indifferent things, he retired

within himself, and swore to possess this woman, for through that

thought lay the only way to love for him.  Desire became a solemn

compact made with himself, an oath after the manner of the Arabs

among whom he had lived; for among them a vow is a kind of

contract made with Destiny a man's whole future is solemnly

pledged to fulfil it, and everything even his own death, is

regarded simply as a means to the one end.

A younger man would have said to himself, "I should very much

like to have the Duchess for my mistress!" or, "If the Duchesse

de Langeais cared for a man, he would be a very lucky rascal!"

But the General said, "I will have Mme de Langeais for my

mistress."  And if a man takes such an idea into his head when

his heart has never been touched before, and love begins to be a

kind of religion with him, he little knows in what a hell he has

set his foot.

Armand de Montriveau suddenly took flight and went home in the

first hot fever-fit of the first love that he had known.  When a

man has kept all his boyish beliefs, illusions, frankness, and

impetuosity into middle age, his first impulse is, as it were, to

stretch out a hand to take the thing that he desires; a little

later he realises that there is a gulf set between them, and that

it is all but impossible to cross it.  A sort of childish

impatience seizes him, he wants the thing the more, and trembles

or cries.  Wherefore, the next day, after the stormiest

reflections that had yet perturbed his mind, Armand de Montriveau

discovered that he was under the yoke of the senses, and his

bondage made the heavier by his love.

The woman so cavalierly treated in his thoughts of yesterday had

become a most sacred and dreadful power.  She was to be his

world, his life, from this time forth.  The greatest joy, the

keenest anguish, that he had yet known grew colourless before the

bare recollection of the least sensation stirred in him by her.

The swiftest revolutions in a man's outward life only touch his

interests, while passion brings a complete revulsion of feeling.

And so in those who live by feeling, rather than by

self-interest, the doers rather than the reasoners, the sanguine

rather than the lymphatic temperaments, love works a complete

revolution.  In a flash, with one single reflection, Armand de

Montriveau wiped out his whole past life.

A score of times he asked himself, like a boy, "Shall I go, or

shall I not?" and then at last he dressed, came to the Hotel de

Langeais towards eight o'clock that evening, and was admitted.

He was to see the woman--ah! not the woman--the idol that he had

seen yesterday, among lights, a fresh innocent girl in gauze and

silken lace and veiling.  He burst in upon her to declare his

love, as if it were a question of firing the first shot on a

field of battle.

Poor novice!  He found his ethereal sylphide shrouded in a brown

cashmere dressing-gown ingeniously befrilled, lying languidly

stretched out upon a sofa in a dimly lighted boudoir.  Mme de

Langeais did not so much as rise, nothing was visible of her but

her face, her hair was loose but confined by a scarf.  A hand

indicated a seat, a hand that seemed white as marble to

Montriveau by the flickering light of a single candle at the

further side of the room, and a voice as soft as the light said--

"If it had been anyone else, M. le Marquis, a friend with whom I

could dispense with ceremony, or a mere acquaintance in whom I

felt but slight interest, I should have closed my door.  I am

exceedingly unwell."

"I will go," Armand said to himself.

"But I do not know how it is," she continued (and the simple

warrior attributed the shining of her eyes to fever), "perhaps

it was a presentiment of your kind visit (and no one can be more

sensible of the prompt attention than I), but the vapours have

left my head."

"Then may I stay?"

"Oh, I should be very sorry to allow you to go.  I told myself

this morning that it was impossible that I should have made the

slightest impression on your mind, and that in all probability

you took my request for one of the commonplaces of which

Parisians are lavish on every occasion.  And I forgave your

ingratitude in advance.  An explorer from the deserts is not

supposed to know how exclusive we are in our friendships in the

Faubourg."

The gracious, half-murmured words dropped one by one, as if they

had been weighted with the gladness that apparently brought them

to her lips.  The Duchess meant to have the full benefit of her

headache, and her speculation was fully successful.  The General,

poor man, was really distressed by the lady's simulated distress.

Like Crillon listening to the story of the Crucifixion, he was

ready to draw his sword against the vapours.  How could a man

dare to speak just then to this suffering woman of the love that

she inspired?  Armand had already felt that it would be absurd to

fire off a declaration of love point-blank at one so far above

other women.  With a single thought came understanding of the

delicacies of feeling, of the soul's requirements.  To love: what

was that but to know how to plead, to beg for alms, to wait?  And

as for the love that he felt, must he not prove it?  His tongue

was mute, it was frozen by the conventions of the noble Faubourg,

the majesty of a sick headache, the bashfulness of love.  But no

power on earth could veil his glances; the heat and the Infinite

of the desert blazed in eyes calm as a panther's, beneath the

lids that fell so seldom.  The Duchess enjoyed the steady gaze

that enveloped her in light and warmth.

"Mme la Duchesse," he answered, "I am afraid I express my

gratitude for your goodness very badly.  At this moment I have

but one desire--I wish it were in my power to cure the pain."

"Permit me to throw this off, I feel too warm now," she said,

gracefully tossing aside a cushion that covered her feet.

"Madame, in Asia your feet would be worth some ten thousand

sequins.

"A traveller's compliment!" smiled she.

It pleased the sprightly lady to involve a rough soldier in a

labyrinth of nonsense, commonplaces, and meaningless talk, in

which he manoeuvred, in military language, as Prince Charles

might have done at close quarters with Napoleon.  She took a

mischievous amusement in reconnoitring the extent of his

infatuation by the number of foolish speeches extracted from a

novice whom she led step by step into a hopeless maze, meaning to

leave him there in confusion.  She began by laughing at him, but

nevertheless it pleased her to make him forget how time went.

The length of a first visit is frequently a compliment, but

Armand was innocent of any such intent.  The famous explorer

spent an hour in chat on all sorts of subjects, said nothing that

he meant to say, and was feeling that he was only an instrument

on whom this woman played, when she rose, sat upright, drew the

scarf from her hair, and wrapped it about her throat, leant her

elbow on the cushions, did him the honour of a complete cure, and

rang for lights.  The most graceful movement succeeded to

complete repose.  She turned to M. de Montriveau, from whom she

had just extracted a confidence which seemed to interest her

deeply, and said--

"You wish to make game of me by trying to make me believe that

you have never loved.  It is a man's great pretension with us.

And we always believe it!  Out of pure politeness.  Do we not

know what to expect from it for ourselves?  Where is the man that

has found but a single opportunity of losing his heart?  But you

love to deceive us, and we submit to be deceived, poor foolish

creatures that we are; for your hypocrisy is, after all, a homage

paid to the superiority of our sentiments, which are all

purity."

The last words were spoken with a disdainful pride that made the

novice in love feel like a worthless bale flung into the deep,

while the Duchess was an angel soaring back to her particular

heaven.

"Confound it!" thought Armand de Montriveau, "how am I to tell

this wild thing that I love her?"

He had told her already a score of times; or rather, the Duchess

had a score of times read his secret in his eyes; and the passion

in this unmistakably great man promised her amusement, and an

interest in her empty life.  So she prepared with no little

dexterity to raise a certain number of redoubts for him to carry

by storm before he should gain an entrance into her heart.

Montriveau should overleap one difficulty after another; he

should be a plaything for her caprice, just as an insect teased

by children is made to jump from one finger to another, and in

spite of all its pains is kept in the same place by its

mischievous tormentor.  And yet it gave the Duchess inexpressible

happiness to see that this strong man had told her the truth.

Armand had never loved, as he had said.  He was about to go, in a

bad humour with himself, and still more out of humour with her;

but it delighted her to see a sullenness that she could conjure

away with a word, a glance, or a gesture.

"Will you come tomorrow evening?" she asked.  "I am going to a

ball, but I shall stay at home for you until ten o'clock."

Montriveau spent most of the next day in smoking an indeterminate

quantity of cigars in his study window, and so got through the

hours till he could dress and go to the Hotel de Langeais.  To

anyone who had known the magnificent worth of the man, it would

have been grievous to see him grown so small, so distrustful of

himself; the mind that might have shed light over undiscovered

worlds shrunk to the proportions of a she-coxcomb's boudoir.

Even he himself felt that he had fallen so low already in his

happiness that to save his life he could not have told his love

to one of his closest friends.  Is there not always a trace of

shame in the lover's bashfulness, and perhaps in woman a certain

exultation over diminished masculine stature?  Indeed, but for a

host of motives of this kind, how explain why women are nearly

always the first to betray the secret?--a secret of which,

perhaps, they soon weary.

"Mme la Duchesse cannot see visitors, monsieur," said the man;

"she is dressing, she begs you to wait for her here."

Armand walked up and down the drawing-room, studying her taste in

the least details.  He admired Mme de Langeais herself in the

objects of her choosing; they revealed her life before he could

grasp her personality and ideas.  About an hour later the Duchess

came noiselessly out of her chamber.  Montriveau turned, saw her

flit like a shadow across the room, and trembled.  She came up to

him, not with a bourgeoise's enquiry, "How do I look?"  She was

sure of herself; her steady eyes said plainly, "I am adorned to

please you."

No one surely, save the old fairy godmother of some princess in

disguise, could have wound a cloud of gauze about the dainty

throat, so that the dazzling satin skin beneath should gleam

through the gleaming folds.  The Duchess was dazzling.  The pale

blue colour of her gown, repeated in the flowers in her hair,

appeared by the richness of its hue to lend substance to a

fragile form grown too wholly ethereal; for as she glided towards

Armand, the loose ends of her scarf floated about her, putting

that valiant warrior in mind of the bright damosel flies that

hover now over water, now over the flowers with which they seem

to mingle and blend.

"I have kept you waiting," she said, with the tone that a woman

can always bring into her voice for the man whom she wishes to

please.

"I would wait patiently through an eternity," said he, "if I

were sure of finding a divinity so fair; but it is no compliment

to speak of your beauty to you; nothing save worship could touch

you.  Suffer me only to kiss your scarf."

"Oh, fie!" she said, with a commanding gesture, "I esteem you

enough to give you my hand."

She held it out for his kiss.  A woman's hand, still moist from

the scented bath, has a soft freshness, a velvet smoothness that

sends a tingling thrill from the lips to the soul.  And if a man

is attracted to a woman, and his senses are as quick to feel

pleasure as his heart is full of love, such a kiss, though chaste

in appearance, may conjure up a terrific storm.

"Will you always give it me like this?" the General asked

humbly when he had pressed that dangerous hand respectfully to

his lips.

"Yes, but there we must stop," she said, smiling.  She sat

down, and seemed very slow over putting on her gloves, trying to

slip the unstretched kid over all her fingers at once, while she

watched M. de Montriveau; and he was lost in admiration of the

Duchess and those repeated graceful movements of hers.

"Ah! you were punctual," she said; "that is right.  I like

punctuality.  It is the courtesy of kings, His Majesty says; but

to my thinking, from you men it is the most respectful flattery

of all.  Now, is it not?  Just tell me."

Again she gave him a side glance to express her insidious

friendship, for he was dumb with happiness sheer happiness

through such nothings as these!  Oh, the Duchess understood son

metier de femme--the art and mystery of being a woman--most

marvellously well; she knew, to admiration, how to raise a man in

his own esteem as he humbled himself to her; how to reward every

step of the descent to sentimental folly with hollow flatteries.

"You will never forget to come at nine o'clock."

"No; but are you going to a ball every night?"

"Do I know?" she answered, with a little childlike shrug of the

shoulders; the gesture was meant to say that she was nothing if

not capricious, and that a lover must take her as she

was.--"Besides," she added, "what is that to you?  You shall

be my escort."

"That would be difficult tonight," he objected; "I am not

properly dressed."

"It seems to me," she returned loftily, "that if anyone has a

right to complain of your costume, it is I.  Know, therefore,

monsieur le voyageur, that if I accept a man's arm, he is

forthwith above the laws of fashion, nobody would venture to

criticise him.  You do not know the world, I see; I like you the

better for it."

And even as she spoke she swept him into the pettiness of that

world by the attempt to initiate him into the vanities of a woman

of fashion.

"If she chooses to do a foolish thing for me, I should be a

simpleton to prevent her," said Armand to himself.  "She has a

liking for me beyond a doubt; and as for the world, she cannot

despise it more than I do.  So, now for the ball if she likes."

The Duchess probably thought that if the General came with her

and appeared in a ballroom in boots and a black tie, nobody would

hesitate to believe that he was violently in love with her.  And

the General was well pleased that the queen of fashion should

think of compromising herself for him; hope gave him wit.  He had

gained confidence, he brought out his thoughts and views; he felt

nothing of the restraint that weighed on his spirits yesterday.

His talk was interesting and animated, and full of those first

confidences so sweet to make and to receive.

Was Mme de Langeais really carried away by his talk, or had she

devised this charming piece of coquetry?  At any rate, she looked

up mischievously as the clock struck twelve.

"Ah! you have made me too late for the ball!" she exclaimed,

surprised and vexed that she had forgotten how time was going.

The next moment she approved the exchange of pleasures with a

smile that made Armand's heart give a sudden leap.

"I certainly promised Mme de Beauseant," she added.  "They are

all expecting me."

"Very well--go."

"No--go on.  I will stay.  Your Eastern adventures fascinate me.

Tell me the whole story of your life.  I love to share in a brave

man's hardships, and I feel them all, indeed I do!"

She was playing with her scarf, twisting it and pulling it to

pieces, with jerky, impatient movements that seemed to tell of

inward dissatisfaction and deep reflection.

"WE are fit for nothing," she went on.  "Ah! we are

contemptible, selfish, frivolous creatures.  We can bore

ourselves with amusements, and that is all we can do.  Not one of

us that understands that she has a part to play in life.  In old

days in France, women were beneficent lights; they lived to

comfort those that mourned, to encourage high virtues, to reward

artists and stir new life with noble thoughts.  If the world has

grown so petty, ours is the fault.  You make me loathe the ball

and this world in which I live.  No, I am not giving up much for

you."

She had plucked her scarf to pieces, as a child plays with a

flower, pulling away all the petals one by one; and now she

crushed it into a ball, and flung it away.  She could show her

swan's neck.

She rang the bell.  "I shall not go out tonight," she told the

footman.  Her long, blue eyes turned timidly to Armand; and by

the look of misgiving in them, he knew that he was meant to take

the order for a confession, for a first and great favour.  There

was a pause, filled with many thoughts, before she spoke with

that tenderness which is often in women's voices, and not so

often in their hearts. "You have had a hard life," she said.

"No," returned Armand.  "Until today I did not know what

happiness was."

"Then you know it now?" she asked, looking at him with a

demure, keen glance.

"What is happiness for me henceforth but this--to see you, to

hear you? . . .  Until now I have only known privation; now I

know that I can be unhappy"

"That will do, that will do," she said.  "You must go; it is

past midnight.  Let us regard appearances.  People must not talk

about us.  I do not know quite what I shall say; but the headache

is a good-natured friend, and tells no tales."

"Is there to be a ball tomorrow night?"

"You would grow accustomed to the life, I think.  Very well.

Yes, we will go again tomorrow night."

There was not a happier man in the world than Armand when he went

out from her.  Every evening he came to Mme de Langeais's at the

hour kept for him by a tacit understanding.

It would be tedious, and, for the many young men who carry a

redundance of such sweet memories in their hearts, it were

superfluous to follow the story step by step--the progress of a

romance growing in those hours spent together, a romance

controlled entirely by a woman's will.  If sentiment went too

fast, she would raise a quarrel over a word, or when words

flagged behind her thoughts, she appealed to the feelings.

Perhaps the only way of following such Penelope's progress is by

marking its outward and visible signs.

As, for instance, within a few days of their first meeting, the

assiduous General had won and kept the right to kiss his lady's

insatiable hands.  Wherever Mme de Langeais went, M. de

Montriveau was certain to be seen, till people jokingly called

him "Her Grace's orderly."  And already he had made enemies;

others were jealous, and envied him his position.  Mme de

Langeais had attained her end.  The Marquis de Montriveau was

among her numerous train of adorers, and a means of humiliating

those who boasted of their progress in her good graces, for she

publicly gave him preference over them all.

"Decidedly, M. de Montriveau is the man for whom the Duchess

shows a preference," pronounced Mme de Serizy.

And who in Paris does not know what it means when a woman "shows

a preference?"  All went on therefore according to prescribed

rule.  The anecdotes which people were pleased to circulate

concerning the General put that warrior in so formidable a light,

that the more adroit quietly dropped their pretensions to the

Duchess, and remained in her train merely to turn the position to

account, and to use her name and personality to make better terms

for themselves with certain stars of the second magnitude.  And

those lesser powers were delighted to take a lover away from Mme

de Langeais.  The Duchess was keen-sighted enough to see these

desertions and treaties with the enemy; and her pride would not

suffer her to be the dupe of them.  As M. de Talleyrand, one of

her great admirers, said, she knew how to take a second edition

of revenge, laying the two-edged blade of a sarcasm between the

pairs in these "morganatic" unions.  Her mocking disdain

contributed not a little to increase her reputation as an

extremely clever woman and a person to be feared.  Her character

for virtue was consolidated while she amused herself with other

people's secrets, and kept her own to herself.  Yet, after two

months of assiduities, she saw with a vague dread in the depths

of her soul that M. de Montriveau understood nothing of the

subtleties of flirtation after the manner of the Faubourg

Saint-Germain; he was taking a Parisienne's coquetry in earnest.

"You will not tame HIM, dear Duchess," the old Vidame de

Pamiers had said.  " 'Tis a first cousin to the eagle; he will

carry you off to his eyrie if you do not take care."

Then Mme de Langeais felt afraid.  The shrewd old noble's words

sounded like a prophecy.  The next day she tried to turn love to

hate.  She was harsh, exacting, irritable, unbearable; Montriveau

disarmed her with angelic sweetness.  She so little knew the

great generosity of a large nature, that the kindly jests with

which her first complaints were met went to her heart.  She

sought a quarrel, and found proofs of affection.  She persisted.

"When a man idolises you, how can he have vexed you?" asked

Armand.

"You do not vex me," she answered, suddenly grown gentle and

submissive.  "But why do you wish to compromise me?  For me you

ought to be nothing but a FRIEND.  Do you not know it?  I wish I

could see that you had the instincts, the delicacy of real

friendship, so that I might lose neither your respect nor the

pleasure that your presence gives me."

"Nothing but your FRIEND!" he cried out.  The terrible word

sent an electric shock through his brain.  "On the faith of

these happy hours that you grant me, I sleep and wake in your

heart.  And now today, for no reason, you are pleased to destroy

all the secret hopes by which I live.  You have required promises

of such constancy in me, you have said so much of your horror of

women made up of nothing but caprice; and now do you wish me to

understand that, like other women here in Paris, you have

passions, and know nothing of love?  If so, why did you ask my

life of me? why did you accept it?"

"I was wrong, my friend.  Oh, it is wrong of a woman to yield to

such intoxication when she must not and cannot make any return."

"I understand.  You have merely been coquetting with me,

and"

"Coquetting?" she repeated.  "I detest coquetry.  A coquette

Armand, makes promises to many, and gives herself to none; and a

woman who keeps such promises is a libertine.  This much I

believed I had grasped of our code.  But to be melancholy with

humorists, gay with the frivolous, and politic with ambitious

souls; to listen to a babbler with every appearance of

admiration, to talk of war with a soldier, wax enthusiastic with

philanthropists over the good of the nation, and to give to each

one his little dole of flattery--it seems to me that this is as

much a matter of necessity as dress, diamonds, and gloves, or

flowers in one's hair.  Such talk is the moral counterpart of the

toilette.  You take it up and lay it aside with the plumed

head-dress.  Do you call this coquetry?  Why, I have never

treated you as I treat everyone else.  With you, my friend, I am

sincere.  Have I not always shared your views, and when you

convinced me after a discussion, was I not always perfectly glad?

In short, I love you, but only as a devout and pure woman may

love.  I have thought it over.  I am a married woman, Armand.  My

way of life with M. de Langeais gives me liberty to bestow my

heart; but law and custom leave me no right to dispose of my

person.  If a woman loses her honour, she is an outcast in any

rank of life; and I have yet to meet with a single example of a

man that realises all that our sacrifices demand of him in such a

case.  Quite otherwise.  Anyone can foresee the rupture between

Mme de Beauseant and M. d'Ajuda (for he is going to marry Mlle de

Rochefide, it seems), that affair made it clear to my mind that

these very sacrifices on the woman's part are almost always the

cause of the man's desertion.  If you had loved me sincerely, you

would have kept away for a time.--Now, I will lay aside all

vanity for you; is not that something?  What will not people say

of a woman to whom no man attaches himself?  Oh, she is

heartless, brainless, soulless; and what is more, devoid of

charm!  Coquettes will not spare me.  They will rob me of the

very qualities that mortify them.  So long as my reputation is

safe, what do I care if my rivals deny my merits?  They certainly

will not inherit them.  Come, my friend; give up something for

her who sacrifices so much for you.  Do not come quite so often;

I shall love you none the less."