VIII

There was a pause.  When she spoke again it was in a different

tone.

"After all, my friend, you cannot prevent a woman from trembling

at the question, `Will this love last always?'  Hard though my

words may be, the dread of losing you puts them into my mouth.

Oh, me! it is not I who speaks, dear, it is reason; and how

should anyone so mad as I be reasonable?  In truth, I am nothing

of the sort."

The poignant irony of her answer had changed before the end into

the most musical accents in which a woman could find utterance

for ingenuous love.  To listen to her words was to pass in a

moment from martyrdom to heaven.  Montriveau grew pale; and for

the first time in his life, he fell on his knees before a woman.

He kissed the Duchess's skirt hem, her knees, her feet; but for

the credit of the Faubourg Saint-Germain it is necessary to

respect the mysteries of its boudoirs, where many are fain to

take the utmost that Love can give without giving proof of love

in return.

The Duchess thought herself generous when she suffered herself to

be adored.  But Montriveau was in a wild frenzy of joy over her

complete surrender of the position.

"Dear Antoinette," he cried.  "Yes, you are right; I will not

have you doubt any longer.  I too am trembling at this

moment--lest the angel of my life should leave me; I wish I could

invent some tie that might bind us to each other irrevocably."

"Ah!" she said, under her breath, "so I was right, you see."

"Let me say all that I have to say; I will scatter all your

fears with a word.  Listen! if I deserted you, I should deserve

to die a thousand deaths.  Be wholly mine, and I will give you

the right to kill me if I am false.  I myself will write a letter

explaining certain reasons for taking my own life; I will make my

final arrangements, in short.  You shall have the letter in your

keeping; in the eye of the law it will be a sufficient

explanation of my death.  You can avenge yourself, and fear

nothing from God or men."

"What good would the letter be to me?  What would life be if I

had lost your love?  If I wished to kill you, should I not be

ready to follow?  No; thank you for the thought, but I do not

want the letter.  Should I not begin to dread that you were

faithful to me through fear?  And if a man knows that he must

risk his life for a stolen pleasure, might it not seem more

tempting?  Armand, the thing I ask of you is the one hard thing

to do."

"Then what is it that you wish?"

"Your obedience and my liberty."

"Ah, God!" cried he, "I am a child."

"A wayward, much spoilt child," she said, stroking the thick

hair, for his head still lay on her knee.  "Ah! and loved far

more than he believes, and yet he is very disobedient.  Why not

stay as we are?  Why not sacrifice to me the desires that hurt

me?  Why not take what I can give, when it is all that I can

honestly grant?  Are you not happy?"

"Oh yes, I am happy when I have not a doubt left.  Antoinette,

doubt in love is a kind of death, is it not?"

In a moment he showed himself as he was, as all men are under the

influence of that hot fever; he grew eloquent, insinuating.  And

the Duchess tasted the pleasures which she reconciled with her

conscience by some private, Jesuitical ukase of her own; Armand's

love gave her a thrill of cerebral excitement which custom made

as necessary to her as society, or the Opera.  To feel that she

was adored by this man, who rose above other men, whose character

frightened her; to treat him like a child; to play with him as

Poppaea played with Nero--many women, like the wives of King

Henry VIII, have paid for such a perilous delight with all the

blood in their veins.  Grim presentiment!  Even as she

surrendered the delicate, pale, gold curls to his touch, and felt

the close pressure of his hand, the little hand of a man whose

greatness she could not mistake; even as she herself played with

his dark, thick locks, in that boudoir where she reigned a queen,

the Duchess would say to herself--

"This man is capable of killing me if he once finds out that I

am playing with him."

Armand de Montriveau stayed with her till two o'clock in the

morning.  From that moment this woman, whom he loved, was neither

a duchess nor a Navarreins; Antoinette, in her disguises, had

gone so far as to appear to be a woman.  On that most blissful

evening, the sweetest prelude ever played by a Parisienne to what

the world calls "a slip"; in spite of all her affectations of a

coyness which she did not feel, the General saw all maidenly

beauty in her.  He had some excuse for believing that so many

storms of caprice had been but clouds covering a heavenly soul;

that these must be lifted one by one like the veils that hid her

divine loveliness.  The Duchess became, for him, the most simple

and girlish mistress; she was the one woman in the world for him;

and he went away quite happy in that at last he had brought her

to give him such pledges of love, that it seemed to him

impossible but that he should be but her husband henceforth in

secret, her choice sanctioned by Heaven.

Armand went slowly home, turning this thought in his mind with

the impartiality of a man who is conscious of all the

responsibilities that love lays on him while he tastes the

sweetness of its joys.  He went along the Quais to see the widest

possible space of sky; his heart had grown in him; he would fain

have had the bounds of the firmament and of earth enlarged.  It

seemed to him that his lungs drew an ampler breath.

In the course of his self-examination, as he walked, he vowed to

love this woman so devoutly, that every day of her life she

should find absolution for her sins against society in unfailing

happiness.  Sweet stirrings of life when life is at the full!

The man that is strong enough to steep his soul in the colour of

one emotion, feels infinite joy as glimpses open out for him of

an ardent lifetime that knows no diminution of passion to the

end; even so it is permitted to certain mystics, in ecstasy, to

behold the Light of God.  Love would be naught without the belief

that it would last forever; love grows great through constancy.

It was thus that, wholly absorbed by his happiness, Montriveau

understood passion.

"We belong to each other forever!"

The thought was like a talisman fulfilling the wishes of his

life.  He did not ask whether the Duchess might not change,

whether her love might not last.  No, for he had faith.  Without

that virtue there is no future for Christianity, and perhaps it

is even more necessary to society.  A conception of life as

feeling occurred to him for the first time; hitherto he had lived

by action, the most strenuous exertion of human energies, the

physical devotion, as it may be called, of the soldier.

Next day M. de Montriveau went early in the direction of the

Faubourg Saint-Germain.  He had made an appointment at a house

not far from the Hotel de Langeais; and the business over, he

went thither as if to his own home.  The General's companion

chanced to be a man for whom he felt a kind of repulsion whenever

he met him in other houses.  This was the Marquis de

Ronquerolles, whose reputation had grown so great in Paris

boudoirs.  He was witty, clever, and what was more--courageous;

he set the fashion to all the young men in Paris.  As a man of

gallantry, his success and experience were equally matters of

envy; and neither fortune nor birth was wanting in his case,

qualifications which add such lustre in Paris to a reputation as

a leader of fashion.

"Where are you going?" asked M. de Ronquerolles.

"To Mme de Langeais's."

"Ah, true.  I forgot that you had allowed her to lime you.  You

are wasting your affections on her when they might be much better

employed elsewhere.  I could have told you of half a score of

women in the financial world, any one of them a thousand times

better worth your while than that titled courtesan, who does with

her brains what less artificial women do with"

"What is this, my dear fellow?" Armand broke in.  "The Duchess

is an angel of innocence."

Ronquerolles began to laugh.

"Things being thus, dear boy," said he, "it is my duty to

enlighten you.  Just a word; there is no harm in it between

ourselves.  Has the Duchess surrendered?  If so, I have nothing

more to say.  Come, give me your confidence.  There is no

occasion to waste your time in grafting your great nature on that

unthankful stock, when all your hopes and cultivation will come

to nothing."

Armand ingenuously made a kind of general report of his position,

enumerating with much minuteness the slender rights so hardly

won.  Ronquerolles burst into a peal of laughter so heartless,

that it would have cost any other man his life.  But from their

manner of speaking and looking at each other during that colloquy

beneath the wall, in a corner almost as remote from intrusion as

the desert itself, it was easy to imagine the friendship between

the two men knew no bounds, and that no power on earth could

estrange them.

"My dear Armand, why did you not tell me that the Duchess was a

puzzle to you?  I would have given you a little advice which

might have brought your flirtation properly through.  You must

know, to begin with, that the women of our Faubourg, like any

other women, love to steep themselves in love; but they have a

mind to possess and not to be possessed.  They have made a sort

of compromise with human nature.  The code of their parish gives

them a pretty wide latitude short of the last transgression.  The

sweets enjoyed by this fair Duchess of yours are so many venial

sins to be washed away in the waters of penitence.  But if you

had the impertinence to ask in earnest for the moral sin to which

naturally you are sure to attach the highest importance, you

would see the deep disdain with which the door of the boudoir and

the house would be incontinently shut upon you.  The tender

Antoinette would dismiss everything from her memory; you would be

less than a cipher for her.  She would wipe away your kisses, my

dear friend, as indifferently as she would perform her ablutions.

She would sponge love from her cheeks as she washes off rouge.

We know women of that sort--the thorough-bred Parisienne.  Have

you ever noticed a grisette tripping along the street?  Her face

is as good as a picture.  A pretty cap, fresh cheeks, trim hair,

a guileful smile, and the rest of her almost neglected.  Is not

this true to the life?  Well, that is the Parisienne.  She knows

that her face is all that will be seen, so she devotes all her

care, finery, and vanity to her head.  The Duchess is the same;

the head is everything with her.  She can only feel through her

intellect, her heart lies in her brain, she is a sort of

intellectual epicure, she has a head-voice.  We call that kind of

poor creature a Lais of the intellect.  You have been taken in

like a boy.  If you doubt it, you can have proof of it tonight,

this morning, this instant.  Go up to her, try the demand as an

experiment, insist peremptorily if it is refused.  You might set

about it like the late Marechal de Richelieu, and get nothing for

your pains."

Armand was dumb with amazement.

"Has your desire reached the point of infatuation?"

"I want her at any cost!" Montriveau cried out despairingly.

"Very well.  Now, look here.  Be as inexorable as she is

herself.  Try to humiliate her, to sting her vanity.  Do NOT try

to move her heart, nor her soul, but the woman's nerves and

temperament, for she is both nervous and lymphatic.  If you can

once awaken desire in her, you are safe.  But you must drop these

romantic boyish notions of yours.  If when once you have her in

your eagle's talons you yield a point or draw back, if you so

much as stir an eyelid, if she thinks that she can regain her

ascendancy over you, she will slip out of your clutches like a

fish, and you will never catch her again.  Be as inflexible as

law.  Show no more charity than the headsman.  Hit hard, and then

hit again.  Strike and keep on striking as if you were giving her

the knout.  Duchesses are made of hard stuff, my dear Armand;

there is a sort of feminine nature that is only softened by

repeated blows; and as suffering develops a heart in women of

that sort, so it is a work of charity not to spare the rod.  Do

you persevere.  Ah! when pain has thoroughly relaxed those nerves

and softened the fibres that you take to be so pliant and

yielding; when a shrivelled heart has learned to expand and

contract and to beat under this discipline; when the brain has

capitulated--then, perhaps, passion may enter among the steel

springs of this machinery that turns out tears and affectations

and languors and melting phrases; then you shall see a most

magnificent conflagration (always supposing that the chimney

takes fire).  The steel feminine system will glow red-hot like

iron in the forge; that kind of heat lasts longer than any other,

and the glow of it may possibly turn to love.

"Still," he continued, "I have my doubts.  And, after all, is

it worth while to take so much trouble with the Duchess?  Between

ourselves a man of my stamp ought first to take her in hand and

break her in; I would make a charming woman of her; she is a

thoroughbred; whereas, you two left to yourselves will never get

beyond the A B C.  But you are in love with her, and just now you

might not perhaps share my views on this subject.  A pleasant

time to you, my children," added Ronquerolles, after a pause.

Then with a laugh:  "I have decided myself for facile beauties;

they are tender, at any rate, the natural woman appears in their

love without any of your social seasonings.  A woman that haggles

over herself, my poor boy, and only means to inspire love!  Well,

have her like an extra horse--for show.  The match between the

sofa and confessional, black and white, queen and knight,

conscientious scruples and pleasure, is an uncommonly amusing

game of chess.  And if a man knows the game, let him be never so

little of a rake, he wins in three moves.  Now, if I undertook a

woman of that sort, I should start with the deliberate purpose

of"  His voice sank to a whisper over the last words in

Armand's ear, and he went before there was time to reply.

As for Montriveau, he sprang at a bound across the courtyard of

the Hotel de Langeais, went unannounced up the stairs straight to

the Duchess's bedroom.

"This is an unheard-of thing," she said, hastily wrapping her

dressing-gown about her.  "Armand! this is abominable of you!

Come, leave the room, I beg.  Just go out of the room, and go at

once.  Wait for me in the drawing-room.--Come now!"

"Dear angel, has a plighted lover no privilege whatsoever?"

"But, monsieur, it is in the worst possible taste of a plighted

lover or a wedded husband to break in like this upon his wife."

He came up to the Duchess, took her in his arms, and held her

tightly to him.

"Forgive, dear Antoinette; but a host of horrid doubts are

fermenting in my heart."

"DOUBTS?  Fie!--Oh, fie on you!"

"Doubts all but justified.  If you loved me, would you make this

quarrel?  Would you not be glad to see me?  Would you not have

felt a something stir in your heart?  For I, that am not a woman,

feel a thrill in my inmost self at the mere sound of your voice.

Often in a ballroom a longing has come upon me to spring to your

side and put my arms about your neck."

"Oh! if you have doubts of me so long as I am not ready to

spring to your arms before all the world, I shall be doubted all

my life long, I suppose.  Why, Othello was a mere child compared

with you!"

"Ah!" he cried despairingly, "you have no love for me"

"Admit, at any rate, that at this moment you are not lovable."

Then I have still to find favour in your sight?"

"Oh, I should think so.  Come," added she, "with a little

imperious air, go out of the room, leave me.  I am not like you;

I wish always to find favour in your eyes."

Never woman better understood the art of putting charm into

insolence, and does not the charm double the effect? is it not

enough to infuriate the coolest of men?  There was a sort of

untrammelled freedom about Mme de Langeais; a something in her

eyes, her voice, her attitude, which is never seen in a woman who

loves when she stands face to face with him at the mere sight of

whom her heart must needs begin to beat.  The Marquis de

Ronquerolles's counsels had cured Armand of sheepishness; and

further, there came to his aid that rapid power of intuition

which passion will develop at moments in the least wise among

mortals, while a great man at such a time possesses it to the

full.  He guessed the terrible truth revealed by the Duchess's

nonchalance, and his heart swelled with the storm like a lake

rising in flood.

"If you told me the truth yesterday, be mine, dear Antoinette,"

he cried; "you shall"

"In the first place," said she composedly, thrusting him back

as he came nearer--"in the first place, you are not to

compromise me.  My woman might overhear you.  Respect me, I beg

of you.  Your familiarity is all very well in my boudoir in an

evening; here it is quite different.  Besides, what may your `you

shall' mean?  `You shall.'  No one as yet has ever used that word

to me.  It is quite ridiculous, it seems to me, absolutely

ridiculous.

"Will you surrender nothing to me on this point?"

"Oh! do you call a woman's right to dispose of herself a

`point?'  A capital point indeed; you will permit me to be

entirely my own mistress on that `point.' "

"And how if, believing in your promises to me, I should

absolutely require it?"

"Oh! then you would prove that I made the greatest possible

mistake when I made you a promise of any kind; and I should beg

you to leave me in peace."

The General's face grew white; he was about to spring to her

side, when Mme de Langeais rang the bell, the maid appeared, and,

smiling with a mocking grace, the Duchess added, "Be so good as

to return when I am visible."

Then Montriveau felt the hardness of a woman as cold and keen as

a steel blade; she was crushing in her scorn.  In one moment she

had snapped the bonds which held firm only for her lover.  She

had read Armand's intention in his face, and held that the moment

had come for teaching the Imperial soldier his lesson.  He was to

be made to feel that though duchesses may lend themselves to

love, they do not give themselves, and that the conquest of one

of them would prove a harder matter than the conquest of Europe.

"Madame," returned Armand, "I have not time to wait.  I am a

spoilt child, as you told me yourself.  When I seriously resolve

to have that of which we have been speaking, I shall have it."

"You will have it?" queried she, and there was a trace of

surprise in her loftiness.

"I shall have it."

"Oh! you would do me a great pleasure by `resolving' to have it.

For curiosity's sake, I should be delighted to know how you would

set about it"

"I am delighted to put a new interest into your life,"

interrupted Montriveau, breaking into a laugh which dismayed the

Duchess.  "Will you permit me to take you to the ball tonight?"

"A thousand thanks.  M. de Marsay has been beforehand with you.

I gave him my promise."

Montriveau bowed gravely and went.

"So Ronquerolles was right," thought he, "and now for a game

of chess."

Thenceforward he hid his agitation by complete composure.  No man

is strong enough to bear such sudden alternations from the height

of happiness to the depths of wretchedness.  So he had caught a

glimpse of happy life the better to feel the emptiness of his

previous existence?  There was a terrible storm within him; but

he had learned to endure, and bore the shock of tumultuous

thoughts as a granite cliff stands out against the surge of an

angry sea.

"I could say nothing.  When I am with her my wits desert me.

She does not know how vile and contemptible she is.  Nobody has

ventured to bring her face to face with herself.  She has played

with many a man, no doubt; I will avenge them all."

For the first time, it may be, in a man's heart, revenge and love

were blended so equally that Montriveau himself could not know

whether love or revenge would carry all before it.  That very

evening he went to the ball at which he was sure of seeing the

Duchesse de Langeais, and almost despaired of reaching her heart.

He inclined to think that there was something diabolical about

this woman, who was gracious to him and radiant with charming

smiles; probably because she had no wish to allow the world to

think that she had compromised herself with M. de Montriveau.

Coolness on both sides is a sign of love; but so long as the

Duchess was the same as ever, while the Marquis looked sullen and

morose, was it not plain that she had conceded nothing?

Onlookers know the rejected lover by various signs and tokens;

they never mistake the genuine symptoms for a coolness such as

some women command their adorers to feign, in the hope of

concealing their love.  Everyone laughed at Montriveau; and he,

having omitted to consult his cornac, was abstracted and ill at

ease.  M. de Ronquerolles would very likely have bidden him

compromise the Duchess by responding to her show of friendliness

by passionate demonstrations; but as it was, Armand de Montriveau

came away from the ball, loathing human nature, and even then

scarcely ready to believe in such complete depravity.

"If there is no executioner for such crimes," he said, as he

looked up at the lighted windows of the ballroom where the most

enchanting women in Paris were dancing, laughing, and chatting,

"I will take you by the nape of the neck, Mme la Duchesse, and

make you feel something that bites more deeply than the knife in

the Place de la Greve.  Steel against steel; we shall see which

heart will leave the deeper mark."

For a week or so Mme de Langeais hoped to see the Marquis de

Montriveau again; but he contented himself with sending his card

every morning to the Hotel de Langeais.  The Duchess could not

help shuddering each time that the card was brought in, and a dim

foreboding crossed her mind, but the thought was vague as a

presentiment of disaster.  When her eyes fell on the name, it

seemed to her that she felt the touch of the implacable man's

strong hand in her hair; sometimes the words seemed like a

prognostication of a vengeance which her lively intellect

invented in the most shocking forms.  She had studied him too

well not to dread him.  Would he murder her, she wondered?  Would

that bull-necked man dash out her vitals by flinging her over his

head?  Would he trample her body under his feet?  When, where,

and how would he get her into his power?  Would he make her

suffer very much, and what kind of pain would he inflict?  She

repented of her conduct.  There were hours when, if he had come,

she would have gone to his arms in complete self-surrender.

Every night before she slept she saw Montriveau's face; every

night it wore a different aspect.  Sometimes she saw his bitter

smile, sometimes the Jovelike knitting of the brows; or his

leonine look, or some disdainful movement of the shoulders made

him terrible for her.  Next day the card seemed stained with

blood.  The name of Montriveau stirred her now as the presence of

the fiery, stubborn, exacting lover had never done.  Her

apprehensions gathered strength in the silence.  She was forced,

without aid from without, to face the thought of a hideous duel

of which she could not speak.  Her proud hard nature was more

responsive to thrills of hate than it had ever been to the

caresses of love.  Ah! if the General could but have seen her, as

she sat with her forehead drawn into folds between her brows;

immersed in bitter thoughts in that boudoir where he had enjoyed

such happy moments, he might perhaps have conceived high hopes.

Of all human passions, is not pride alone incapable of

engendering anything base?  Mme de Langeais kept her thoughts to

herself, but is it not permissible to suppose that M. de

Montriveau was no longer indifferent to her?  And has not a man

gained ground immensely when a woman thinks about him?  He is

bound to make progress with her either one way or the other

afterwards.

Put any feminine creature under the feet of a furious horse or

other fearsome beast; she will certainly drop on her knees and

look for death; but if the brute shows a milder mood and does not

utterly slay her, she will love the horse, lion, bull, or what

not, and will speak of him quite at her ease.  The Duchess felt

that she was under the lion's paws; she quaked, but she did not

hate him.

The man and woman thus singularly placed with regard to each

other met three times in society during the course of that week.

Each time, in reply to coquettish questioning glances, the

Duchess received a respectful bow, and smiles tinged with such

savage irony, that all her apprehensions over the card in the

morning were revived at night.  Our lives are simply such as our

feelings shape them for us; and the feelings of these two had

hollowed out a great gulf between them

The Comtesse de Serizy, the Marquis de Ronquerolles's sister,

gave a great ball at the beginning of the following week, and Mme

de Langeais was sure to go to it.  Armand was the first person

whom the Duchess saw when she came into the room, and this time

Armand was looking out for her, or so she thought at least.  The

two exchanged a look, and suddenly the woman felt a cold

perspiration break from every pore.  She had thought all along

that Montriveau was capable of taking reprisals in some

unheard-of way proportioned to their condition, and now the

revenge had been discovered, it was ready, heated, and boiling.

Lightnings flashed from the foiled lover's eyes, his face was

radiant with exultant vengeance.  And the Duchess?  Her eyes were

haggard in spite of her resolution to be cool and insolent.  She

went to take her place beside the Comtesse de Serizy, who could

not help exclaiming, "Dear Antoinette! what is the matter with

you?  You are enough to frighten one."

"I shall be all right after a quadrille," she answered, giving

a hand to a young man who came up at that moment.

Mme de Langeais waltzed that evening with a sort of excitement

and transport which redoubled Montriveau's lowering looks.  He

stood in front of the line of spectators, who were amusing

themselves by looking on.  Every time that SHE came past him, his

eyes darted down upon her eddying face; he might have been a

tiger with the prey in his grasp.  The waltz came to an end, Mme

de Langeais went back to her place beside the Countess, and

Montriveau never took his eyes off her, talking all the while

with a stranger.

"One of the things that struck me most on the journey," he was

saying (and the Duchess listened with all her ears), "was the

remark which the man makes at Westminster when you are shown the

axe with which a man in a mask cut off Charles the First's head,

so they tell you.  The King made it first of all to some

inquisitive person, and they repeat it still in memory of him."

"What does the man say?" asked Mme de Serizy.

" `Do not touch the axe!' " replied Montriveau, and there was

menace in the sound of his voice.

"Really, my Lord Marquis," said Mme de Langeais, "you tell

this old story that everybody knows if they have been to London,

and look at my neck in such a melodramatic way that you seem to

me to have an axe in your hand."

The Duchess was in a cold sweat, but nevertheless she laughed as

she spoke the last words.

"But circumstances give the story a quite new application,"

returned he.

"How so; pray tell me, for pity's sake?"

"In this way, madame--you have touched the axe," said

Montriveau, lowering his voice.

"What an enchanting prophecy!" returned she, smiling with

assumed grace.  "And when is my head to fall?"

"I have no wish to see that pretty head of yours cut off.  I

only fear some great misfortune for you.  If your head were

clipped close, would you feel no regrets for the dainty golden

hair that you turn to such good account?"

"There are those for whom a woman would love to make such a

sacrifice; even if, as often happens, it is for the sake of a man

who cannot make allowances for an outbreak of temper."

"Quite so.  Well, and if some wag were to spoil your beauty on a

sudden by some chemical process, and you, who are but eighteen

for us, were to be a hundred years old?"

"Why, the smallpox is our Battle of Waterloo, monsieur," she

interrupted.  "After it is over we find out those who love us

sincerely."

"Would you not regret the lovely face that?"

"Oh! indeed I should, but less for my own sake than for the sake

of someone else whose delight it might have been.  And, after

all, if I were loved, always loved, and truly loved, what would

my beauty matter to me?--What do you say, Clara?"

"It is a dangerous speculation," replied Mme de Serizy.

"Is it permissible to ask His Majesty the King of Sorcerers when

I made the mistake of touching the axe, since I have not been to

London as yet?"

"NOT SO," he answered in English, with a burst of ironical

laughter.

"And when will the punishment begin?"

At this Montriveau coolly took out his watch, and ascertained the

hour with a truly appalling air of conviction.

"A dreadful misfortune will befall you before this day is out."

"I am not a child to be easily frightened, or rather, I am a

child ignorant of danger," said the Duchess.  "I shall dance

now without fear on the edge of the precipice."

"I am delighted to know that you have so much strength of

character," he answered, as he watched her go to take her place

in a square dance.

But the Duchess, in spite of her apparent contempt for Armand's

dark prophecies, was really frightened.  Her late lover's

presence weighed upon her morally and physically with a sense of

oppression that scarcely ceased when he left the ballroom.  And

yet when she had drawn freer breath, and enjoyed the relief for a

moment, she found herself regretting the sensation of dread, so

greedy of extreme sensations is the feminine nature.  The regret

was not love, but it was certainly akin to other feelings which

prepare the way for love.  And then--as if the impression which

Montriveau had made upon her were suddenly revived--she

recollected his air of conviction as he took out his watch, and

in a sudden spasm of dread she went out.

By this time it was about midnight.  One of her servants, waiting

with her pelisse, went down to order her carriage.  On her way

home she fell naturally enough to musing over M. de Montriveau's

prediction.  Arrived in her own courtyard, as she supposed, she

entered a vestibule almost like that of her own hotel, and

suddenly saw that the staircase was different.  She was in a

strange house.  Turning to call her servants, she was attacked by

several men, who rapidly flung a handkerchief over her mouth,

bound her hand and foot, and carried her off.  She shrieked

aloud.

"Madame, our orders are to kill you if you scream," a voice

said in her ear.

So great was the Duchess's terror, that she could never recollect

how nor by whom she was transported.  When she came to herself,

she was lying on a couch in a bachelor's lodging, her hands and

feet tied with silken cords.  In spite of herself, she shrieked

aloud as she looked round and met Armand de Montriveau's eyes.

He was sitting in his dressing-gown, quietly smoking a cigar in

his armchair.

"Do not cry out, Mme la Duchesse," he said, coolly taking the

cigar out of his mouth; "I have a headache.  Besides, I will

untie you.  But listen attentively to what I have the honour to

say to you."

Very carefully he untied the knots that bound her feet.

"What would be the use of calling out?  Nobody can hear your

cries.  You are too well bred to make any unnecessary fuss.  If

you do not stay quietly, if you insist upon a struggle with me, I

shall tie your hands and feet again.  All things considered, I

think that you have self-respect enough to stay on this sofa as

if you were lying on your own at home; cold as ever, if you will.

You have made me shed many tears on this couch, tears that I hid

from all other eyes."

While Montriveau was speaking, the Duchess glanced about her; it

was a woman's glance, a stolen look that saw all things and

seemed to see nothing.  She was much pleased with the room.  It

was rather like a monk's cell.  The man's character and thoughts

seemed to pervade it.  No decoration of any kind broke the grey

painted surface of the walls.  A green carpet covered the floor.

A black sofa, a table littered with papers, two big easy-chairs,

a chest of drawers with an alarum clock by way of ornament, a

very low bedstead with a coverlet flung over it--a red cloth with

a black key border--all these things made part of a whole that

told of a life reduced to its simplest terms.  A triple

candle-sconce of Egyptian design on the chimney-piece recalled

the vast spaces of the desert and Montriveau's long wanderings; a

huge sphinx-claw stood out beneath the folds of stuff at the

bed-foot; and just beyond, a green curtain with a black and

scarlet border was suspended by large rings from a spear handle

above a door near one corner of the room.  The other door by

which the band had entered was likewise curtained, but the

drapery hung from an ordinary curtain-rod.  As the Duchess

finally noted that the pattern was the same on both, she saw that

the door at the bed-foot stood open; gleams of ruddy light from

the room beyond flickered below the fringed border.  Naturally,

the ominous light roused her curiosity; she fancied she could

distinguish strange shapes in the shadows; but as it did not

occur to her at the time that danger could come from that

quarter, she tried to gratify a more ardent curiosity.

"Monsieur, if it is not indiscreet, may I ask what you mean to

do with me?"  The insolence and irony of the tone stung through

the words.  The Duchess quite believed that she read extravagant

love in Montriveau's speech.  He had carried her off; was not

that in itself an acknowledgment of her power?

"Nothing whatever, madame," he returned, gracefully puffing the

last whiff of cigar smoke.  "You will remain here for a short

time.  First of all, I should like to explain to you what you

are, and what I am.  I cannot put my thoughts into words whilst

you are twisting on the sofa in your boudoir; and besides, in

your own house you take offence at the slightest hint, you ring

the bell, make an outcry, and turn your lover out at the door as

if he were the basest of wretches.  Here my mind is unfettered.

Here nobody can turn me out.  Here you shall be my victim for a

few seconds, and you are going to be so exceedingly kind as to

listen to me.  You need fear nothing.  I did not carry you off to

insult you, nor yet to take by force what you refused to grant of

your own will to my unworthiness.  I could not stoop so low.  You

possibly think of outrage; for myself, I have no such thoughts."

He flung his cigar coolly into the fire.

"The smoke is unpleasant to you, no doubt, madame?" he said,

and rising at once, he took a chafing-dish from the hearth, burnt

perfumes, and purified the air.  The Duchess's astonishment was

only equalled by her humiliation.  She was in this man's power;

and he would not abuse his power.  The eyes in which love had

once blazed like flame were now quiet and steady as stars.  She

trembled.  Her dread of Armand was increased by a nightmare

sensation of restlessness and utter inability to move; she felt

as if she were turned to stone.  She lay passive in the grip of

fear.  She thought she saw the light behind the curtains grow to

a blaze, as if blown up by a pair of bellows; in another moment

the gleams of flame grew brighter, and she fancied that three

masked figures suddenly flashed out; but the terrible vision

disappeared so swiftly that she took it for an optical delusion.

"Madame," Armand continued with cold contempt, "one minute,

just one minute is enough for me, and you shall feel it

afterwards at every moment throughout your lifetime, the one

eternity over which I have power.  I am not God.  Listen

carefully to me," he continued, pausing to add solemnity to his

words.  "Love will always come at your call.  You have boundless

power over men: but remember that once you called love, and love

came to you; love as pure and true-hearted as may be on earth,

and as reverent as it was passionate; fond as a devoted woman's,

as a mother's love; a love so great indeed, that it was past the

bounds of reason.  You played with it, and you committed a crime.

Every woman has a right to refuse herself to love which she feels

she cannot share; and if a man loves and cannot win love in

return, he is not to be pitied, he has no right to complain.  But

with a semblance of love to attract an unfortunate creature cut

off from all affection; to teach him to understand happiness to

the full, only to snatch it from him; to rob him of his future of

felicity; to slay his happiness not merely today, but as long as

his life lasts, by poisoning every hour of it and every

thought--this I call a fearful crime!"

"Monsieur"

"I cannot allow you to answer me yet.  So listen to me still.

In any case I have rights over you; but I only choose to exercise

one--the right of the judge over the criminal, so that I may

arouse your conscience.  If you had no conscience left, I should

not reproach you at all; but you are so young!  You must feel

some life still in your heart; or so I like to believe.  While I

think of you as depraved enough to do a wrong which the law does

not punish, I do not think you so degraded that you cannot

comprehend the full meaning of my words. I resume."

As he spoke the Duchess heard the smothered sound of a pair of

bellows.  Those mysterious figures which she had just seen were

blowing up the fire, no doubt; the glow shone through the

curtain.  But Montriveau's lurid face was turned upon her; she

could not choose but wait with a fast-beating heart and eyes

fixed in a stare.  However curious she felt, the heat in Armand's

words interested her even more than the crackling of the

mysterious flames.

"Madame," he went on after a pause, "if some poor wretch

commits a murder in Paris, it is the executioner's duty, you

know, to lay hands on him and stretch him on the plank, where

murderers pay for their crimes with their heads.  Then the

newspapers inform everyone, rich and poor, so that the former are

assured that they may sleep in peace, and the latter are warned

that they must be on the watch if they would live.  Well, you

that are religious, and even a little of a bigot, may have masses

said for such a man's soul.  You both belong to the same family,

but yours is the elder branch; and the elder branch may occupy

high places in peace and live happily and without cares.  Want or

anger may drive your brother the convict to take a man's life;

you have taken more, you have taken the joy out of a man's life,

you have killed all that was best in his life--his dearest

beliefs.  The murderer simply lay in wait for his victim, and

killed him reluctantly, and in fear of the scaffold; but YOU . .

. !  You heaped up every sin that weakness can commit against

strength that suspected no evil; you tamed a passive victim, the

better to gnaw his heart out; you lured him with caresses; you

left nothing undone that could set him dreaming, imagining,

longing for the bliss of love.  You asked innumerable sacrifices

of him, only to refuse to make any in return.  He should see the

light indeed before you put out his eyes!  It is wonderful how

you found the heart to do it!  Such villainies demand a display

of resource quite above the comprehension of those bourgeoises

whom you laugh at and despise.  They can give and forgive; they

know how to love and suffer.  The grandeur of their devotion

dwarfs us.  Rising higher in the social scale, one finds just as

much mud as at the lower end; but with this difference, at the

upper end it is hard and gilded over.

"Yes, to find baseness in perfection, you must look for a noble

bringing up, a great name, a fair woman, a duchess.  You cannot

fall lower than the lowest unless you are set high above the rest

of the world.--I express my thoughts badly; the wounds you dealt

me are too painful as yet, but do not think that I complain.  My

words are not the expression of any hope for myself; there is no

trace of bitterness in them.  Know this, madame, for a

certainty--I forgive you.  My forgiveness is so complete that you

need not feel in the least sorry that you came hither to find it

against your will...  But you might take advantage of other

hearts as child-like as my own, and it is my duty to spare them

anguish.  So you have inspired the thought of justice.  Expiate

your sin here on earth; God may perhaps forgive you; I wish that

He may, but He is inexorable, and will strike."

The broken-spirited, broken-hearted woman looked up, her eyes

filled with tears.

"Why do you cry?  Be true to your nature.  You could look on

indifferently at the torture of a heart as you broke it.  That

will do, madame, do not cry.  I cannot bear it any longer.  Other

men will tell you that you have given them life; as for myself, I

tell you, with rapture, that you have given me blank extinction.

Perhaps you guess that I am not my own, that I am bound to live

for my friends, that from this time forth I must endure the cold

chill of death, as well as the burden of life?  Is it possible

that there can be so much kindness in you?  Are you like the

desert tigress that licks the wounds she has inflicted?"

The Duchess burst out sobbing.

"Pray spare your tears, madame.  If I believed in them at all,

it would merely set me on my guard.  Is this another of your

artifices? or is it not?  You have used so many with me; how can

one think that there is any truth in you?  Nothing that you do or

say has any power now to move me.  That is all I have to say."

Mme de Langeais rose to her feet, with a great dignity and

humility in her bearing.

"You are right to treat me very hardly," she said, holding out

a hand to the man who did not take it; "you have not spoken

hardly enough; and I deserve this punishment."

"_I_ punish you, madame!  A man must love still, to punish, must

he not?  From me you must expect no feeling, nothing resembling

it.  If I chose, I might be accuser and judge in my cause, and

pronounce and carry out the sentence.  But I am about to fulfil a

duty, not a desire of vengeance of any kind.  The cruellest

revenge of all, I think, is scorn of revenge when it is in our

power to take it.  Perhaps I shall be the minister of your

pleasures; who knows?  Perhaps from this time forth, as you

gracefully wear the tokens of disgrace by which society marks out

the criminal, you may perforce learn something of the convict's

sense of honour.  And then, you will love!"

The Duchess sat listening; her meekness was unfeigned; it was no

coquettish device.  When she spoke at last, it was after a

silence.