VII

"Ah!" said Armand, with the profound irony of a wounded heart

in his words and tone.  "Love, so the scribblers say, only feeds

on illusions.  Nothing could be truer, I see; I am expected to

imagine that I am loved.  But, there!--there are some thoughts

like wounds, from which there is no recovery.  My belief in you

was one of the last left to me, and now I see that there is

nothing left to believe in this earth."

She began to smile.

"Yes," Montriveau went on in an unsteady voice, "this Catholic

faith to which you wish to convert me is a lie that men make for

themselves; hope is a lie at the expense of the future; pride, a

lie between us and our fellows; and pity, and prudence, and

terror are cunning lies.  And now my happiness is to be one more

lying delusion; I am expected to delude myself, to be willing to

give gold coin for silver to the end.  If you can so easily

dispense with my visits; if you can confess me neither as your

friend nor your lover, you do not care for me!  And I, poor fool

that I am, tell myself this, and know it, and love you!"

"But, dear me, poor Armand, you are flying into a passion!"

"I flying into a passion?"

"Yes.  You think that the whole question is opened because I ask

you to be careful."

In her heart of hearts she was delighted with the anger that

leapt out in her lover's eyes.  Even as she tortured him, she was

criticising him, watching every slightest change that passed over

his face.  If the General had been so unluckily inspired as to

show himself generous without discussion (as happens occasionally

with some artless souls), he would have been a banished man

forever, accused and convicted of not knowing how to love.  Most

women are not displeased to have their code of right and wrong

broken through.  Do they not flatter themselves that they never

yield except to force?  But Armand was not learned enough in this

kind of lore to see the snare ingeniously spread for him by the

Duchess.  So much of the child was there in the strong man in

love.

"If all you want is to preserve appearances," he began in his

simplicity, "I am willing to"

"Simply to preserve appearances!" the lady broke in; "why,

what idea can you have of me?  Have I given you the slightest

reason to suppose that I can be yours?"

"Why, what else are we talking about?" demanded Montriveau.

"Monsieur, you frighten me ! . . .  No, pardon me.  Thank you,"

she added, coldly; "thank you, Armand.  You have given me timely

warning of imprudence; committed quite unconsciously, believe it,

my friend.  You know how to endure, you say.  I also know how to

endure.  We will not see each other for a time; and then, when

both of us have contrived to recover calmness to some extent, we

will think about arrangements for a happiness sanctioned by the

world.  I am young, Armand; a man with no delicacy might tempt a

woman of four-and-twenty to do many foolish, wild things for his

sake.  But YOU!  You will be my friend, promise me that you

will?"

"The woman of four-and-twenty," returned he, "knows what she

is about."

He sat down on the sofa in the boudoir, and leant his head on his

hands.

"Do you love me, madame?" he asked at length, raising his head,

and turning a face full of resolution upon her.  "Say it

straight out; Yes or No!"

His direct question dismayed the Duchess more than a threat of

suicide could have done; indeed, the woman of the nineteenth

century is not to be frightened by that stale stratagem, the

sword has ceased to be part of the masculine costume.  But in the

effect of eyelids and lashes, in the contraction of the gaze, in

the twitching of the lips, is there not some influence that

communicates the terror which they express with such vivid

magnetic power?

"Ah, if I were free, if"

"Oh! is it only your husband that stands in the way?" the

General exclaimed joyfully, as he strode to and fro in the

boudoir.  "Dear Antoinette, I wield a more absolute power than

the Autocrat of all the Russias.  I have a compact with Fate; I

can advance or retard destiny, so far as men are concerned, at my

fancy, as you alter the hands of a watch.  If you can direct the

course of fate in our political machinery, it simply means (does

it not?) that you understand the ins and outs of it.  You shall

be free before very long, and then you must remember your

promise."

"Armand!" she cried.  "What do you mean?  Great heavens!  Can

you imagine that I am to be the prize of a crime?  Do you want to

kill me?  Why! you cannot have any religion in you!  For my own

part, I fear God.  M. de Langeais may have given me reason to

hate him, but I wish him no manner of harm."

M. de Montriveau beat a tattoo on the marble chimneypiece, and

only looked composedly at the lady.

"Dear," continued she, "respect him.  He does not love me, he

is not kind to me, but I have duties to fulfil with regard to

him.  What would I not do to avert the calamities with which you

threaten him?--Listen," she continued after a pause, "I will

not say another word about separation; you shall come here as in

the past, and I will still give you my forehead to kiss.  If I

refused once or twice, it was pure coquetry, indeed it was.  But

let us understand each other," she added as he came closer.

"You will permit me to add to the number of my satellites; to

receive even more visitors in the morning than heretofore; I mean

to be twice as frivolous; I mean to use you to all appearance

very badly; to feign a rupture; you must come not quite so often,

and then, afterwards"

While she spoke, she had allowed him to put an arm about her

waist, Montriveau was holding her tightly to him, and she seemed

to feel the exceeding pleasure that women usually feel in that

close contact, an earnest of the bliss of a closer union.  And

then, doubtless she meant to elicit some confidence, for she

raised herself on tiptoe, and laid her forehead against Armand's

burning lips.

"And then," Montriveau finished her sentence for her, "you

shall not speak to me of your husband.  You ought not to think of

him again."

Mme de Langeais was silent awhile.

"At least," she said, after a significant pause, "at least you

will do all that I wish without grumbling, you will not be

naughty; tell me so, my friend?  You wanted to frighten me, did

you not?  Come, now, confess it ? . . .  You are too good ever to

think of crimes.  But is it possible that you can have secrets

that I do not know?  How can you control Fate?"

"Now, when you confirm the gift of the heart that you have

already given me, I am far too happy to know exactly how to

answer you.  I can trust you, Antoinette; I shall have no

suspicion, no unfounded jealousy of you.  But if accident should

set you free, we shall be one"

"Accident, Armand?" (With that little dainty turn of the head

that seems to say so many things, a gesture that such women as

the Duchess can use on light occasions, as a great singer can act

with her voice.)  "Pure accident," she repeated.  "Mind that.

If anything should happen to M. de Langeais by your fault, I

should never be yours."

And so they parted, mutually content.  The Duchess had made a

pact that left her free to prove to the world by words and deeds

that M. de Montriveau was no lover of hers.  And as for him, the

wily Duchess vowed to tire him out.  He should have nothing of

her beyond the little concessions snatched in the course of

contests that she could stop at her pleasure.  She had so pretty

an art of revoking the grant of yesterday, she was so much in

earnest in her purpose to remain technically virtuous, that she

felt that there was not the slightest danger for her in

preliminaries fraught with peril for a woman less sure of her

self-command.  After all, the Duchess was practically separated

from her husband; a marriage long since annulled was no great

sacrifice to make to her love.

Montriveau on his side was quite happy to win the vaguest

promise, glad once for all to sweep aside, with all scruples of

conjugal fidelity, her stock of excuses for refusing herself to

his love.  He had gained ground a little, and congratulated

himself.  And so for a time he took unfair advantage of the

rights so hardly won.  More a boy than he had ever been in his

life, he gave himself up to all the childishness that makes first

love the flower of life.  He was a child again as he poured out

all his soul, all the thwarted forces that passion had given him,

upon her hands, upon the dazzling forehead that looked so pure to

his eyes; upon her fair hair; on the tufted curls where his lips

were pressed.  And the Duchess, on whom his love was poured like

a flood, was vanquished by the magnetic influence of her lover's

warmth; she hesitated to begin the quarrel that must part them

forever.  She was more a woman than she thought, this slight

creature, in her effort to reconcile the demands of religion with

the ever-new sensations of vanity, the semblance of pleasure

which turns a Parisienne's head.  Every Sunday she went to Mass;

she never missed a service; then, when evening came, she was

steeped in the intoxicating bliss of repressed desire.  Armand

and Mme de Langeais, like Hindoo fakirs, found the reward of

their continence in the temptations to which it gave rise.

Possibly, the Duchess had ended by resolving love into fraternal

caresses, harmless enough, as it might have seemed to the rest of

the world, while they borrowed extremes of degradation from the

licence of her thoughts.  How else explain the incomprehensible

mystery of her continual fluctuations?  Every morning she

proposed to herself to shut her door on the Marquis de

Montriveau; every evening, at the appointed hour, she fell under

the charm of his presence.  There was a languid defence; then she

grew less unkind.  Her words were sweet and soothing.  They were

lovers--lovers only could have been thus.  For him the Duchess

would display her most sparkling wit, her most captivating wiles;

and when at last she had wrought upon his senses and his soul,

she might submit herself passively to his fierce caresses, but

she had her nec plus ultra of passion; and when once it was

reached, she grew angry if he lost the mastery of himself and

made as though he would pass beyond.  No woman on earth can brave

the consequences of refusal without some motive; nothing is more

natural than to yield to love; wherefore Mme de Langeais promptly

raised a second line of fortification, a stronghold less easy to

carry than the first.  She evoked the terrors of religion.  Never

did Father of the Church, however eloquent, plead the cause of

God better than the Duchess.  Never was the wrath of the Most

High better justified than by her voice.  She used no preacher's

commonplaces, no rhetorical amplifications.  No.  She had a

"pulpit-tremor" of her own.  To Armand's most passionate

entreaty, she replied with a tearful gaze, and a gesture in which

a terrible plenitude of emotion found expression.  She stopped

his mouth with an appeal for mercy.  She would not hear another

word; if she did, she must succumb; and better death than

criminal happiness.

"Is it nothing to disobey God?" she asked him, recovering a

voice grown faint in the crises of inward struggles, through

which the fair actress appeared to find it hard to preserve her

self-control.  "I would sacrifice society, I would give up the

whole world for you, gladly; but it is very selfish of you to ask

my whole after-life of me for a moment of pleasure.  Come, now!

are you not happy?" she added, holding out her hand; and

certainly in her careless toilette the sight of her afforded

consolations to her lover, who made the most of them.

Sometimes from policy, to keep her hold on a man whose ardent

passion gave her emotions unknown before, sometimes in weakness,

she suffered him to snatch a swift kiss; and immediately, in

feigned terror, she flushed red and exiled Armand from the sofa

so soon as the sofa became dangerous ground.

"Your joys are sins for me to expiate, Armand; they are paid for

by penitence and remorse," she cried.

And Montriveau, now at two chairs' distance from that

aristocratic petticoat, betook himself to blasphemy and railed

against Providence.  The Duchess grew angry at such times.

"My friend," she said drily, "I do not understand why you

decline to believe in God, for it is impossible to believe in

man.  Hush, do not talk like that.  You have too great a nature

to take up their Liberal nonsense with its pretension to abolish

God."

Theological and political disputes acted like a cold douche on

Montriveau; he calmed down; he could not return to love when the

Duchess stirred up his wrath by suddenly setting him down a

thousand miles away from the boudoir, discussing theories of

absolute monarchy, which she defended to admiration.  Few women

venture to be democrats; the attitude of democratic champion is

scarcely compatible with tyrannous feminine sway.  But often, on

the other hand, the General shook out his mane, dropped politics

with a leonine growling and lashing of the flanks, and sprang

upon his prey; he was no longer capable of carrying a heart and

brain at such variance for very far; he came back, terrible with

love, to his mistress.  And she, if she felt the prick of fancy

stimulated to a dangerous point, knew that it was time to leave

her boudoir; she came out of the atmosphere surcharged with

desires that she drew in with her breath, sat down to the piano,

and sang the most exquisite songs of modern music, and so baffled

the physical attraction which at times showed her no mercy,

though she was strong enough to fight it down.

At such times she was something sublime in Armand's eyes; she was

not acting, she was genuine; the unhappy lover was convinced that

she loved him.  Her egoistic resistance deluded him into a belief

that she was a pure and sainted woman; he resigned himself; he

talked of Platonic love, did this artillery officer!

When Mme de Langeais had played with religion sufficiently to

suit her own purposes, she played with it again for Armand's

benefit.  She wanted to bring him back to a Christian frame of

mind; she brought out her edition of Le Genie du Christianisme,

adapted for the use of military men.  Montriveau chafed; his yoke

was heavy.  Oh! at that, possessed by the spirit of

contradiction, she dinned religion into his ears, to see whether

God might not rid her of this suitor, for the man's persistence

was beginning to frighten her.  And in any case she was glad to

prolong any quarrel, if it bade fair to keep the dispute on moral

grounds for an indefinite period; the material struggle which

followed it was more dangerous.

But if the time of her opposition on the ground of the marriage

law might be said to be the epoque civile of this sentimental

warfare, the ensuing phase which might be taken to constitute the

epoque religieuse had also its crisis and consequent decline of

severity.

Armand happening to come in very early one evening, found M.

l'Abbe Gondrand, the Duchess's spiritual director, established in

an armchair by the fireside, looking as a spiritual director

might be expected to look while digesting his dinner and the

charming sins of his penitent.  In the ecclesiastic's bearing

there was a stateliness befitting a dignitary of the Church; and

the episcopal violet hue already appeared in his dress.  At sight

of his fresh, well-preserved complexion, smooth forehead, and

ascetic's mouth, Montriveau's countenance grew uncommonly dark;

he said not a word under the malicious scrutiny of the other's

gaze, and greeted neither the lady nor the priest.  The lover

apart, Montriveau was not wanting in tact; so a few glances

exchanged with the bishop-designate told him that here was the

real forger of the Duchess's armoury of scruples.

That an ambitious abbe should control the happiness of a man of

Montriveau's temper, and by underhand ways!  The thought burst in

a furious tide over his face, clenched his fists, and set him

chafing and pacing to and fro; but when he came back to his place

intending to make a scene, a single look from the Duchess was

enough.  He was quiet.

Any other woman would have been put out by her lover's gloomy

silence; it was quite otherwise with Mme de Langeais.  She

continued her conversation with M. de Gondrand on the necessity

of re-establishing the Church in its ancient splendour.  And she

talked brilliantly.

The Church, she maintained, ought to be a temporal as well as a

spiritual power, stating her case better than the Abbe had done,

and regretting that the Chamber of Peers, unlike the English

House of Lords, had no bench of bishops.  Nevertheless, the Abbe

rose, yielded his place to the General, and took his leave,

knowing that in Lent he could play a return game.  As for the

Duchess, Montriveau's behaviour had excited her curiosity to such

a pitch that she scarcely rose to return her director's low bow.

"What is the matter with you, my friend?"

"Why, I cannot stomach that Abbe of yours."

"Why did you not take a book?" she asked, careless whether the

Abbe, then closing the door, heard her or no.

The General paused, for the gesture which accompanied the

Duchess's speech further increased the exceeding insolence of her

words.

"My dear Antoinette, thank you for giving love precedence of the

Church; but, for pity's sake, allow me to ask one question."

"Oh! you are questioning me!  I am quite willing.  You are my

friend, are you not?  I certainly can open the bottom of my heart

to you; you will see only one image there."

"Do you talk about our love to that man?"

"He is my confessor."

"Does he know that I love you?"

"M. de Montriveau, you cannot claim, I think, to penetrate the

secrets of the confessional?"

"Does that man know all about our quarrels and my love for

you?"

"That man, monsieur; say God!"

"God again!  _I_ ought to be alone in your heart.  But leave God

alone where He is, for the love of God and me.  Madame, you SHALL

NOT go to confession again, or"

"Or?" she repeated sweetly.

"Or I will never come back here."

"Then go, Armand.  Good-bye, good-bye forever."

She rose and went to her boudoir without so much as a glance at

Armand, as he stood with his hand on the back of a chair.  How

long he stood there motionless he himself never knew.  The soul

within has the mysterious power of expanding as of contracting

space.

He opened the door of the boudoir.  It was dark within.  A faint

voice was raised to say sharply--

"I did not ring.  What made you come in without orders?  Go

away, Suzette."

"Then you are ill," exclaimed Montriveau.

"Stand up, monsieur, and go out of the room for a minute at any

rate," she said, ringing the bell.

"Mme la Duchesse rang for lights?" said the footman, coming in

with the candles.  When the lovers were alone together, Mme de

Langeais still lay on her couch; she was just as silent and

motionless as if Montriveau had not been there.

"Dear, I was wrong," he began, a note of pain and a sublime

kindness in his voice.  "Indeed, I would not have you without

religion"

"It is fortunate that you can recognise the necessity of a

conscience," she said in a hard voice, without looking at him.

"I thank you in God's name."

The General was broken down by her harshness; this woman seemed

as if she could be at will a sister or a stranger to him.  He

made one despairing stride towards the door.  He would leave her

forever without another word.  He was wretched; and the Duchess

was laughing within herself over mental anguish far more cruel

than the old judicial torture.  But as for going away, it was not

in his power to do it.  In any sort of crisis, a woman is, as it

were, bursting with a certain quantity of things to say; so long

as she has not delivered herself of them, she experiences the

sensation which we are apt to feel at the sight of something

incomplete.  Mme de Langeais had not said all that was in her

mind.  She took up her parable and said--

"We have not the same convictions, General, I am pained to

think.  It would be dreadful if a woman could not believe in a

religion which permits us to love beyond the grave.  I set

Christian sentiments aside; you cannot understand them.  Let me

simply speak to you of expediency.  Would you forbid a woman at

court the table of the Lord when it is customary to take the

sacrament at Easter?  People must certainly do something for

their party.  The Liberals, whatever they may wish to do, will

never destroy the religious instinct.  Religion will always be a

political necessity.  Would you undertake to govern a nation of

logic-choppers?  Napoleon was afraid to try; he persecuted

ideologists.  If you want to keep people from reasoning, you must

give them something to feel.  So let us accept the Roman Catholic

Church with all its consequences.  And if we would have France go

to mass, ought we not to begin by going ourselves?  Religion, you

see, Armand, is a bond uniting all the conservative principles

which enable the rich to live in tranquillity.  Religion and the

rights of property are intimately connected.  It is certainly a

finer thing to lead a nation by ideas of morality than by fear of

the scaffold, as in the time of the Terror--the one method by

which your odious Revolution could enforce obedience.  The priest

and the king--that means you, and me, and the Princess my

neighbour; and, in a word, the interests of all honest people

personified.  There, my friend, just be so good as to belong to

your party, you that might be its Sylla if you had the slightest

ambition that way.  I know nothing about politics myself; I argue

from my own feelings; but still I know enough to guess that

society would be overturned if people were always calling its

foundations in question"

"If that is how your Court and your Government think, I am sorry

for you," broke in Montriveau.  "The Restoration, madam, ought

to say, like Catherine de Medici, when she heard that the battle

of Dreux was lost, `Very well; now we will go to the

meeting-house.'  Now 1815 was your battle of Dreux.  Like the

royal power of those days, you won in fact, while you lost in

right.  Political Protestantism has gained an ascendancy over

people's minds.  If you have no mind to issue your Edict of

Nantes; or if, when it is issued, you publish a Revocation; if

you should one day be accused and convicted of repudiating the

Charter, which is simply a pledge given to maintain the interests

established under the Republic, then the Revolution will rise

again, terrible in her strength, and strike but a single blow.

It will not be the Revolution that will go into exile; she is the

very soil of France.  Men die, but people's interests do not die.

. . .  Eh, great Heavens! what are France and the crown and

rightful sovereigns, and the whole world besides, to us?  Idle

words compared with my happiness.  Let them reign or be hurled

from the throne, little do I care.  Where am I now?"

"In the Duchesse de Langeais's boudoir, my friend."

"No, no.  No more of the Duchess, no more of Langeais; I am with

my dear Antoinette."

"Will you do me the pleasure to stay where you are," she said,

laughing and pushing him back, gently however.

"So you have never loved me," he retorted, and anger flashed in

lightning from his eyes.

"No, dear"; but the "No" was equivalent to "Yes."

"I am a great ass," he said, kissing her hands.  The terrible

queen was a woman once more.--"Antoinette," he went on, laying

his head on her feet, "you are too chastely tender to speak of

our happiness to anyone in this world."

"Oh!" she cried, rising to her feet with a swift, graceful

spring, "you are a great simpleton."  And without another word

she fled into the drawing-room.

"What is it now?" wondered the General, little knowing that the

touch of his burning forehead had sent a swift electric thrill

through her from foot to head.

In hot wrath he followed her to the drawing-room, only to hear

divinely sweet chords.  The Duchess was at the piano.  If the man

of science or the poet can at once enjoy and comprehend, bringing

his intelligence to bear upon his enjoyment without loss of

delight, he is conscious that the alphabet and phraseology of

music are but cunning instruments for the composer, like the wood

and copper wire under the hands of the executant.  For the poet

and the man of science there is a music existing apart,

underlying the double expression of this language of the spirit

and senses.  Andiamo mio ben can draw tears of joy or pitying

laughter at the will of the singer; and not unfrequently one here

and there in the world, some girl unable to live and bear the

heavy burden of an unguessed pain, some man whose soul vibrates

with the throb of passion, may take up a musical theme, and lo!

heaven is opened for them, or they find a language for themselves

in some sublime melody, some song lost to the world.

The General was listening now to such a song; a mysterious music

unknown to all other ears, as the solitary plaint of some

mateless bird dying alone in a virgin forest.

"Great Heavens! what are you playing there?" he asked in an

unsteady voice.

"The prelude of a ballad, called, I believe, Fleuve du Tage."

"I did not know that there was such music in a piano," he

returned.

"Ah!" she said, and for the first time she looked at him as a

woman looks at the man she loves, "nor do you know, my friend,

that I love you, and that you cause me horrible suffering; and

that I feel that I must utter my cry of pain without putting it

too plainly into words.  If I did not, I should yield. But you

see nothing."

"And you will not make me happy!"

"Armand, I should die of sorrow the next day."

The General turned abruptly from her and went.  But out in the

street he brushed away the tears that he would not let fall.

The religious phase lasted for three months.  At the end of that

time the Duchess grew weary of vain repetitions; the Deity, bound

hand and foot, was delivered up to her lover.  Possibly she may

have feared that by sheer dint of talking of eternity she might

perpetuate his love in this world and the next.  For her own

sake, it must be believed that no man had touched her heart, or

her conduct would be inexcusable.  She was young; the time when

men and women feel that they cannot afford to lose time or to

quibble over their joys was still far off.  She, no doubt, was on

the verge not of first love, but of her first experience of the

bliss of love.  And from inexperience, for want of the painful

lessons which would have taught her to value the treasure poured

out at her feet, she was playing with it.  Knowing nothing of the

glory and rapture of the light, she was fain to stay in the

shadow.

Armand was just beginning to understand this strange situation;

he put his hope in the first word spoken by nature.  Every

evening, as he came away from Mme de Langeais's, he told himself

that no woman would accept the tenderest, most delicate proofs of

a man's love during seven months, nor yield passively to the

slighter demands of passion, only to cheat love at the last.  He

was waiting patiently for the sun to gain power, not doubting but

that he should receive the earliest fruits.  The married woman's

hesitations and the religious scruples he could quite well

understand.  He even rejoiced over those battles.  He mistook the

Duchess's heartless coquetry for modesty; and he would not have

had her otherwise.  So he had loved to see her devising

obstacles; was he not gradually triumphing over them?  Did not

every victory won swell the meagre sum of lovers' intimacies long

denied, and at last conceded with every sign of love?  Still, he

had had such leisure to taste the full sweetness of every small

successive conquest on which a lover feeds his love, that these

had come to be matters of use and wont.  So far as obstacles

went, there were none now save his own awe of her; nothing else

left between him and his desire save the whims of her who allowed

him to call her Antoinette.  So he made up his mind to demand

more, to demand all.  Embarrassed like a young lover who cannot

dare to believe that his idol can stoop so low, he hesitated for

a long time.  He passed through the experience of terrible

reactions within himself.  A set purpose was annihilated by a

word, and definite resolves died within him on the threshold.  He

despised himself for his weakness, and still his desire remained

unuttered.

Nevertheless, one evening, after sitting in gloomy melancholy, he

brought out a fierce demand for his illegally legitimate rights.

The Duchess had not to wait for her bond-slave's request to guess

his desire.  When was a man's desire a secret?  And have not

women an intuitive knowledge of the meaning of certain changes of

countenance?

"What! you wish to be my friend no longer?" she broke in at the

first words, and a divine red surging like new blood under the

transparent skin, lent brightness to her eyes.  "As a reward for

my generosity, you would dishonour me?  Just reflect a little.  I

myself have thought much over this; and I think always for us

BOTH.  There is such a thing as a woman's loyalty, and we can no

more fail in it than you can fail in honour.  _I_ cannot blind

myself.  If I am yours, how, in any sense, can I be M. de

Langeais's wife?  Can you require the sacrifice of my position,

my rank, my whole life in return for a doubtful love that could

not wait patiently for seven months?  What! already you would rob

me of my right to dispose of myself?  No, no; you must not talk

like this again.  No, not another word.  I will not, I cannot

listen to you."

Mme de Langeais raised both hands to her head to push back the

tufted curls from her hot forehead; she seemed very much excited.

"You come to a weak woman with your purpose definitely planned

out.  You say--`For a certain length of time she will talk to me

of her husband, then of God, and then of the inevitable

consequences.  But I will use and abuse the ascendancy I shall

gain over her; I will make myself indispensable; all the bonds of

habit, all the misconstructions of outsiders, will make for me;

and at length, when our liaison is taken for granted by all the

world, I shall be this woman's master.'--Now, be frank; these are

your thoughts!  Oh! you calculate, and you say that you love.

Shame on you!  You are enamoured?  Ah! that I well believe!  You

wish to possess me, to have me for your mistress, that is all!

Very well then, No!  The DUCHESSE DE LANGEAIS will not descend so

far.  Simple bourgeoises may be the victims of your treachery--I,

never!  Nothing gives me assurance of your love.  You speak of my

beauty; I may lose every trace of it in six months, like the dear

Princess, my neighbour.  You are captivated by my wit, my grace.

Great Heavens! you would soon grow used to them and to the

pleasures of possession.  Have not the little concessions that I

was weak enough to make come to be a matter of course in the last

few months?  Some day, when ruin comes, you will give me no

reason for the change in you beyond a curt, `I have ceased to

care for you.'--Then, rank and fortune and honour and all that

was the Duchesse de Langeais will be swallowed up in one

disappointed hope.  I shall have children to bear witness to my

shame, and"  With an involuntary gesture she interrupted

herself, and continued:  "But I am too good-natured to explain

all this to you when you know it better than I.  Come! let us

stay as we are.  I am only too fortunate in that I can still

break these bonds which you think so strong.  Is there anything

so very heroic in coming to the Hotel de Langeais to spend an

evening with a woman whose prattle amuses you?--a woman whom you

take for a plaything?  Why, half a dozen young coxcombs come here

just as regularly every afternoon between three and five.  They,

too, are very generous, I am to suppose?  I make fun of them;

they stand my petulance and insolence pretty quietly, and make me

laugh; but as for you, I give all the treasures of my soul to

you, and you wish to ruin me, you try my patience in endless

ways.  Hush, that will do, that will do," she continued, seeing

that he was about to speak, "you have no heart, no soul, no

delicacy.  I know what you want to tell me.  Very well,

then--yes.  I would rather you should take me for a cold,

insensible woman, with no devotion in her composition, no heart

even, than be taken by everybody else for a vulgar person, and be

condemned to your so-called pleasures, of which you would most

certainly tire, and to everlasting punishment for it afterwards.

Your selfish love is not worth so many sacrifices..."

The words give but a very inadequate idea of the discourse which

the Duchess trilled out with the quick volubility of a

bird-organ.  Nor, truly, was there anything to prevent her from

talking on for some time to come, for poor Armand's only reply to

the torrent of flute notes was a silence filled with cruelly

painful thoughts.  He was just beginning to see that this woman

was playing with him; he divined instinctively that a devoted

love, a responsive love, does not reason and count the

consequences in this way.  Then, as he heard her reproach him

with detestable motives, he felt something like shame as he

remembered that unconsciously he had made those very

calculations.  With angelic honesty of purpose, he looked within,

and self-examination found nothing but selfishness in all his

thoughts and motives, in the answers which he framed and could

not utter.  He was self-convicted.  In his despair he longed to

fling himself from the window.  The egoism of it was intolerable.

What indeed can a man say when a woman will not believe in love?

Let me prove how much I love you.--The _I_ is always there.

The heroes of the boudoir, in such circumstances, can follow the

example of the primitive logician who preceded the Pyrrhonists

and denied movement.  Montriveau was not equal to this feat.

With all his audacity, he lacked this precise kind which never

deserts an adept in the formulas of feminine algebra.  If so many

women, and even the best of women, fall a prey to a kind of

expert to whom the vulgar give a grosser name, it is perhaps

because the said experts are great PROVERS, and love, in spite of

its delicious poetry of sentiment, requires a little more

geometry than people are wont to think.

Now the Duchess and Montriveau were alike in this--they were both

equally unversed in love lore.  The lady's knowledge of theory

was but scanty; in practice she knew nothing whatever; she felt

nothing, and reflected over everything.  Montriveau had had but

little experience, was absolutely ignorant of theory, and felt

too much to reflect at all.  Both therefore were enduring the

consequences of the singular situation.  At that supreme moment

the myriad thoughts in his mind might have been reduced to the

formula--"Submit to be mine ' words which seem horribly

selfish to a woman for whom they awaken no memories, recall no

ideas.  Something nevertheless he must say.  And what was more,

though her barbed shafts had set his blood tingling, though the

short phrases that she discharged at him one by one were very

keen and sharp and cold, he must control himself lest he should

lose all by an outbreak of anger.

"Mme la Duchesse, I am in despair that God should have invented

no way for a woman to confirm the gift of her heart save by

adding the gift of her person.  The high value which you yourself

put upon the gift teaches me that I cannot attach less importance

to it.  If you have given me your inmost self and your whole

heart, as you tell me, what can the rest matter?  And besides, if

my happiness means so painful a sacrifice, let us say no more

about it.  But you must pardon a man of spirit if he feels

humiliated at being taken for a spaniel."

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

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

allowed herself to be addressed as a Divinity, and thereby set

herself above all other mortals, no power on earth can be so

haughty.

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

invented some nobler way for a man to confirm the gift of his

heart than by the manifestation of prodigiously vulgar desires.

We become bond-slaves when we give ourselves body and soul, but a

man is bound to nothing by accepting the gift.  Who will assure

me that love will last?  The very love that I might show for you

at every moment, the better to keep your love, might serve you as

a reason for deserting me.  I have no wish to be a second edition

of Mme de Beauseant.  Who can ever know what it is that keeps you

beside us?  Our persistent coldness of heart is the cause of an

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

devotion, to be idolised at every moment; some for gentleness,

others for tyranny.  No woman in this world as yet has really

read the riddle of man's heart."